Spring is here, and with it the end of the Japanese school year. I have been asked to write a letter to my students, which will appear in what is, as far as I can tell from the explanation I was given, their yearbook. Spring 2013 Dear graduating students, What Continue Reading
A recent episode of Glee included a cover of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back which was a blatant ripoff of Jonathan Coulton’s several-year-old version — much to Jonathan Coulton’s surprise, since he was neither contacted nor credited. Fox’s stubborn refusal to admit their wrongdoing towards Johnathan Coulton raises questions about the integrity Continue Reading
I have fond memories of many video games. I used to go back and play those old games fairly often, but as time wears on this happens less and less. There are a few reasons for this. One is incompatibility with modern gaming systems. If you can’t make the software Continue Reading
One of the things in my mess of being busy in the past couple of months was Ludum Dare, a game jam which is held every four months. A game jam is a challenge in which game developers must create a video game from scratch — concept, design, coding, everything Continue Reading
I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve had a busy and stressful couple of months. I’m now on vacation in Florida, halfway around the world from home. Screw United Airlines The plane trip was terrible. I bought my tickets from United against my better judgement because they were the Continue Reading
Amazon.co.jp launched its Kindle store last month. When I logged into my US account today to see if the next Dresden Files book had come out yet, I saw a message telling me that I can consolidate my Japanese and US Kindle libraries. Great news, indeed. However, it looked like Continue Reading
The Cheeky Child At the beginning of every one of my classes (at all levels of education from preschool to high school), I ask each student, “How are you?” This would take too much time if I had more students. As things stand it’s a good, regular way to start Continue Reading
This is the third and final entry in my series of rants about the animated movie, Tangled. I liked the movie, but was disappointed that it wasn’t better. I believe it could have rivaled anything out of Pixar’s studio. Check out parts one and two, and keep in mind that Continue Reading
My friend PyroFalkon is a huge fan of The Sims. He was the one who introduced me to the Legacy Challenge, which has taken over how I play The Sims. He has created a new challenge which he calls the Sims 3 Socialism Challenge and is currently beta testing it in Continue Reading
The internet is awash, lately, with sites aimed at making university-level education available for free to anyone with an internet connection. Such sites have generated a lot of excitement this year. Apparently these Massively Open Online Classes have been around for a while now in one form or another. Now Continue Reading