stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

Kamarura giant Buddha and Hasedera Temple

Sun, 25 May 2008 10:02:00 GMT

Caught the train from Shubiya to Karamura, and went wandering around. There is a giant Buddha statue there, as well as some really nice temples.

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Tokyo fish markets

Sat, 24 May 2008 17:26:00 GMT

Up at 5am to checkout the Tokyo fish markets. It was fun, and the uber fresh sushi was great.

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Ikebukuro

Fri, 23 May 2008 12:52:00 GMT

Ikebukuro is the electronics zone in Tokyo, so of course I had to go out for some shopping. The place is full of neon, and quite fun to just wander around. In general the electronics didn't seem all that cheap to me, although there was certainly stuff I hadn't seen in the US (and therefore lots of stuff that I wouldn't see in Australia). For example, the cool Toto electric toilet seats (link points to site with lots of pictures of bums) that we have at work were for sale there, and seemed to vary in price from about $40 US to about $1,000 US. Who pays a thousand dollars for a toilet seat!?!

I got to Ikebukuro on the JR Yamanote line, which I paid for with a Suica stored value card. Even the train payment is cool here -- the Suica card is one of two options that is a contact-less payment system for transport. I suspect there is a RFID token or something in the card, and you just wave it in the general direction of the turnstile at the train station. It works on all the train networks (of which there are four or so), as well as buses, some vending machines, and even in some stores. My first card was defective after one ride, which resulted in a lot of patiently not speaking Japanese customer service people, but it was sorted out in the end.

Mobile phones are cool here too, and thats what most of the cool stuff in the electronics stores were. For example a lot of the phones support live TV streaming, although I am told that is old school here now.

Anyways, lots of fun.

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Shibuya crossing and Shibuya 109

Wed, 21 May 2008 19:11:00 GMT

I wandered out of work a little early this afternoon. I wanted to get some shots of Shibuya crossing, which is meant to be one of the busiest street crossings in the world. It wasn't too insane when I was there, but the pictures don't do it justice. For a start there were three giant TV screens playing in the intersection as well.

I also wandered through all 8 stories of Shibuya 109, which is meant to be high fashion. Its basically wall to wall teenage and early twenties women, and the sort of clothing stores which attract young women. Oh, and most of the stores were playing loud dance music, so it was a bit like wandering around a bright pink night club, without the drinking.

So, a fun hour or two.

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Grumps was in town

Mon, 19 May 2008 13:20:00 GMT

So Catherine took him to San Francisco Zoo. Catherine's birthday cake this year was also an awesome Hello Kitty cake.

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Washington DC monuments

Mon, 19 May 2008 10:03:00 GMT

While in Washinton DC with Peter and Graham a few weeks ago we went for a walk down the Potomac and through Washington DC. Along the way we discovered a billion monuments. I have a theory that eventually all of Washington DC will be monuments, with no room for anything else.

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Taiwan

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:44:00 GMT

I just got back from a quick trip to Taiwan. So much fun!

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Disney's Animal Kingdom and the Movie Allstars hotel

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:50:00 GMT

I'm still catching up on photos from ages ago that I haven't got around to putting online. These are from Disney's Animal Kingdom and Movie Allstar hotel at Disney World. Animal Kingdom wasn't as good as the Magic Kingdom, mainly because the kids weren't big enough for most of the rides, the queues were really long, and the crowd management not as good... And we went during the off season!

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Pictures from Kennedy Space Center and Disney World

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:17:00 GMT

It turns out I've been really slack about putting new pictures online recently. So, here are some left over shots from Kennedy Space Center and the shuttle Discovery launch (taken by Catherine on the second camera), as well as our day at Disney's Magic Kingdom.

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Shuttle Discovery STS120 launch photos, and cute hotel room cleaning at Disney World

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:14:00 GMT

Its a shame about the dirty sensor in my SLR, but apart from that I am very happy with these shots. Worst case I can crop the spot out of images, or do something with photoshop. These images are entirely unprocessed.

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More Disney World, and Kennedy Space Center day one

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:28:00 GMT

More shots from Disney World, including a breakfast with some people pretending to be Disney characters (which the kids were very excited about), and shots from Kennedy Space Center (which I was very excited about). This was the day before STS120 launched, and the shots of the shuttle you can see here still have the protective rotating part of the launch gantry in place. This is removed around 12 hours before launch, which would have been about 11pm the night of the day these shots were taken.

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Boca Raton, FL to Disney World, Orlando, FL

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:13:00 GMT

These are pictures we took during the drive from Boca Raton to Disney World. The beach is Delray.

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Pictures from around Dublin

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 07:13:00 GMT

I'm finally getting around to getting some of the pictures I took around Dublin online.

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A quick trip to Monterey aquarium

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:08:00 GMT

I've been really slack with putting pictures online recently. These are from a quick trip we went on to Monterey Bay Aquarium before I went to Dublin in April. The aquarium rocks, there's so much to take pictures of, and the kids like it so much that we could go back dozens of times.

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California coast, pigeon point lighthouse, Monterey acquarium

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:50:00 GMT

Finally, we took Catie down the Californian coast. The trip was something along the lines of north on the 101 from home, take the Half Moon bay exit, go down through the hills to Half Moon bay until you hit the coast highway, and turn left. We stopped at a state beach, Pigeon Point lighthouse, and Monterey Bay acquarium.

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A day at the zoo, and some SF Bay shots

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:11:00 GMT

I've been really slack at putting these online. Here are some shots of our trip to San Francisco Zoo with Catie, and a side trip to the Golden Gate bridge on the way home.

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Field trip 1: Jelly Belly factory

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 04:16:00 GMT

The first field trip we made with Catie was to go off to the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, CA. They offer free tours, and it's about an hour and a half away from Mountain View.

Overall, the factory was fairly boring, with lots of automated processes, and a bunch of workers shuffling ingredients. It would have been better if they allowed cameras in. Then again, the kids loved it, so perhaps I am just bored easily now...

The best bit? I got to see a room with 20 million calories in it. It's the American dream it tell you!

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Catie's random shots around Mountain View

Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:37:00 GMT

Catie just had me empty the camera for her... Here are her random shots from the drive from Canberra to Sydney, flight to the US, around our house, and at Villa Montalvo (an arboureum in Los Gatos).

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Our random adventure

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 14:18:00 GMT

I've been oncall for a while, and therefore tethered to the network. We broke this tether today by driving down to Half Moon Bay, California (past the pony ride place we should stop at sometime in the future), and turning left. There were four or five state beaches along the road, two of which we stopped at. The first wasn't anything special, but the second was quite nice.

The second beach was in fact nice enough for Andrew to ditch all his clothes and go for a swim. The water was very cold. I wont be putting the naked four year old photos online I suspect. Anyway, we had a play on the beach, and got to try to stop the kids just before they ran off the unstable cliff.

Further down the road was a lighthouse (Pigeon Point Lighthouse), which was cool. The best bit was the cliff views around the area, and it would have been nice to spend more time there, but the kids were getting tired. We packed up and headed back the way we had come, although we were only thirty or fourty miles from Santa Cruz at this point.

We stopped off on Fry's on the way home, and had a layover at the apartment before heading out to dinner at Denny's. I wouldn't mention the dinner except for me winning each of the kids a stuffed toy from one of those grabber robot games. I guess that makes me the best father ever or something.

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Work went on an adventure

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 03:21:00 GMT

My team and some ring-ins went for an adventure to Napa Valley, which is a winery district about two hours away from Mountain View (and about an hour away from San Francisco) for a little team building thing. There were two choices, a winery tour in which you get to blend your own merlot, or paintball.

I've been paintballing before, so I figured I'd go the winery route, which I really enjoyed. There was a tour of the big wine vat thingies (a bit boring) and a cave system which the winery made to age their wine in (that was fun). Then we mixed the merlot, which involved a lot of plastic implements, squinting, tasting, and general mess making. Lots of mess.

Looking at Sean's generally painty state, and Armando's wounds after paintball, I think I made the right decision. Anyway, a good day, and I'm grateful that Shoshana took the time to organize it.

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