However, one issue that cropped up during an IRB session was I could not copy and paste Japanese characters into the IRB repl. This is very very painful for my day to day use with Ruby (Imagine not being able to use the ‘|’ character while writing UNIX pipelines).

Below is an example of me trying to enter the character あ into IRB and watching it fail.

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> ab = "?"    <---- Tried entering the character あ
SyntaxError: (irb):1: invalid multibyte char (UTF-8)
(irb):1: unterminated string meets end of file
from /usr/local/bin/irb19:12:in `'

After a lot of head scritching I was able to narrow it down to something with readline:

$ irb --noreadline
irb(main):002:0> ab = "あ"
=> "あ"
irb(main):003:0>

After some more digging into the issue. The root cause seems to be the lack of GNU readline. By default, Ruby will link in the system installed readline library on OS X which is called editline [4]. Unfortunately, editline does not support UTF8 or multi-byte character sets which makes this a no-go for daily usage.

Most of the other references suggest downloading readline from source and installing into /usr/local however I believe this defeats the purpose of using something like MacPorts. After a bit of finagling I found that this is the invocation to get things working.

wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/rub...
tar xvzf ruby-1.9.1-p243.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.9.1-p243
# Don't trust MacPorts version of autoconf because it somehow nuked the
# --with-readline-dir option
/usr/bin/autoconf
./configure --with-readline-dir=/opt/local --enable-shared --program-suffix=19 --enable-pthread
make
sudo make install

I have it wrapped up in a script which you can see here.

References

[1] http://wonko.com/post/how-to-compile-rub…
[2] http://frozenplague.net/2009/01/ruby-191…
[3] http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/
[4] http://thrysoee.dk/editline/

Thanks Pink Tentacle

However, not all government projects are pork-barrel political showcases (I hope). One interesting project located in Yokohama is called Zoorasia. Zoorasia is a large zoo with a multitude of animals from around the planet. The Zoo itself is divided into 7 areas at present that match certain geographic areas of the world. In each area are a set of representative animals from that region. For example there is an Oceanian Grassland area and one of the prominent animals there are kangaroos.

The zoo is run by the Yokohama Greenery Foundation which was established as far back in the mid 70s. Back then it originally called itself the (sorry if I mistranslate here…) The Yokohama City Park Foundation (Nin-idantai Yokohama-shi Kouen Kyoukai – 任意団体横浜市公園協会) however renamed itself to the Yokohama Greenery Foundation in 1984.

The zoo itself is a little inconvenient to reach by public transportation (aka it takes awhile by bus and train). But from what I have seen the park is extremely nice with a very reasonable entrance fee (600Y). One thing I do wonder is whether Zoorasia can support itself in the long run since it is a great resource for families around the area. It would be a shame if maintaining such a nice zoo is actually not sustainable with the budget that they have. But it does seem that Zoorasia’s parent organization has some backing by the Yokohama government which I hope is a good thing. (At least I can feel some of the tax I pay is going to something interesting)

References (In Japanese)

• Zoorasia’s website (English available!)
• Some words on the philosophy of Zoorasia from the Zoorasia President
• Japanese Wikipedia Page on Zoorasia
• The Yokohama Greenery Foundation

One thing that is interesting is the origin of place name Akihabara. A friend of mine has an excellent post here

Read more!

It makes me wonder if some policy makers are out of touch with reality, sometimes.

Although I never knew ‘Itojun’ personally I
was always impressed by someone who was able
to hold commit rights to the main 3 families
of the *BSD trees and make a real difference
in trying to push out the adoption of IPv6 out
far and wide.

My understanding is that parts of the kame stack
that he had a major hand in were at one point
used as the basic for the IPv6 stack in the Linux
kernel. I’m not sure if that is the case anymore
with the IPv6 stack in Linux but I thought that
was an interesting tidbit in Linux networking
implementation history.

May he rest in peace.

• The Wide Announcement
• Undeadly.org’s News Post on it
• OpenBSD 4.2 Commemorating Itojun

Executive Summary

1. Install Visual Studio Express or some other Visual C++ variant
2. Install the Platform SDK (You need this if you want windows.h and you DO)
3. Make minor changes in Ruby config.h (Not necessary for all versions of Visual Studio)
4. Write the MyTest code and extconf.rb file from the book
5. Run ruby extconf.rb to generate a nmake-based Makefile
6. Startup a command prompt with the SDK environment variables set
7. Run nmake to compile the library
8. Done!

The detailed version

Download Visual Studio

Unless you’re using cygwin or mingw as your compiler you’ll probably want to get Visual Studio. The latest incarnation is Visual Studio 2005 which is a free download. I’ve found that it’s a pain to find the right URL to download it from on Microsoft but that’s Microsoft for you.

Download the Windows Platform SDK

Since the Windows version of Ruby ties in with many Win32 libraries it’s necessary to get the Platform SDK. If you DON’T download it you will see strange error messages when trying to compile your Ruby extension such as this:

c:\ruby\lib\ruby\1.8\i386-mswin32\win32/win32.h(32) : fatal error C1083: Cannot
open include file: 'windows.h': No such file or directory
NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\BIN\cl.EXE"' : return code '0x2'
Stop.

windows.h is NOT included by default in Visual Studio 2005 (but I believe it is in older versions of Visual Studio) so you need the platform SDKs to get the right development libraries. While it would be nice if the C-based version of Ruby could easily hook into the .Net platform, this would probably require significant hacking the mkmf library in Ruby to get it to work transparently. I doubt that will happen soon.

Once again, I found Microsoft’s website really annoying to navigate in order to try to find the Platform SDK so you might want to click here then make sure you have the latest platform SDK (As of this writing the latest was R1)

Tweak $RUBY_HOME/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-mswin32/config.h

For some versions Visual Studio (noteably Visual Studio 2005), the config file located in $RUBY_HOME/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-mswin32/config.h (Usually $RUBY_HOME installs to C:/Ruby) will require a tweak to allow compilation. Or you could rebuild Ruby from scratch yourself but I prefer to use the All-in-one installer. In the config.h file delete or comment out the following lines:

#if _MSC_VER != 1200
#error MSC version unmatch
#endif

Finally! Let’s compile it already

Okay now you’re ready to finally to actually compile your code. In order to get all the environment variables set properly you might want to launch a command prompt from the shortcuts the Platform SDK makes in the Start Menu then make sure to run vsvars32.bat from Visual Studio’s directory (Usually in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin). Now with that all set you can finally compile something! (whew!):

C:\cygwin\home\foo\exttest>ruby extconf.rb
creating Makefile

C:\cygwin\home\foo\exttest>nmake

Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 8.00.50727.42
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

        cl -nologo -I. -Ic:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-mswin32 -Ic:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.
8/i386-mswin32 -I. -MD -Zi -O2b2xg- -G6  -c -Tcmy_test.c
cl : Command line warning D9035 : option 'Og-' has been deprecated and will be r
emoved in a future release
cl : Command line warning D9002 : ignoring unknown option '-G6'
my_test.c
        cl -nologo -LD -Femy_test.so my_test.obj msvcrt-ruby18.lib  oldnames.lib
 user32.lib advapi32.lib wsock32.lib  -link -incremental:no -debug -opt:ref -opt
:icf -dll -libpath:"c:/ruby/lib" -def:my_test-i386-mswin32.def -implib:my_test-i
386-mswin32.lib -pdb:my_test-i386-mswin32.pdb
   Creating library my_test-i386-mswin32.lib and object my_test-i386-mswin32.exp

C:\cygwin\foo\exttest>irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'my_test'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> test = MyTest.new
=> #

References

• Visual Studio Express
• Windows Platform SDK (This will point you to SP1 but you want a more recent version)
• Ruby LDAP and Windows
• Ruby + Mysql on Windows
• A Ruby talk thread on build issues

Got to wait until Feb 2007 to get your hands on one though. Hope it doesn’t cost too much

This is the true face of the PlayStation 3 debut in Japan. Hardcore gamers are not here waiting in line overnight, buying a first-run PS3, and running home to play some good old next-gen gaming. Rather, opportunistic Japanese businessmen have the largest presence, hiring poor Chinese men and women to wait in line for a PS3

Frankly, this is yet another blunder for Sony but I bet it will be silenced by the Japanese media so the only people who will know about it are:

• People reading this blog (All 3 of you!)
• Gamers not in Japan
• All the Kotaku.com readers

A very sad thing this is. It really makes me wonder whether it’s even fun anymore to sit in line for these launch events if some enterprising people are just going to hire some homeless folk to wait in line for them. Anyways, if you’re reading this. Spread the word far and wide, please.Read it yourself on Kotaku

Happy New Year’s all. Slashdot linked to an article on Voice over IP Adoption in Japan.

I’ve looked over the pricing structure of Voice over IP and found it not that useful if you’re a light phone caller (me) as you must factor in the costs of an Internet connection monthly which costs around 5000Y or so for a broadband connection that can support VoIP practically. On top of which you are topped a surcharge monthyl fee to activate Voice over IP and of course you are charged for usage time. After doing the math out, a phone line is slightly cheaper. . . go figure.

Link to Story

It’s about a boy who wakes up in a telephone booth which has been mysteriously selaed in an envelope of concrete. Using only the contents of his pockets (two pens, a paperback novel, three coins and 20 ft of unwaxed dental floss) our hero must fashion and execute an escape plan before he runs out of oxygen.

There’s an article on the New York Times on the Japanese homeless and some of the problems they have to deal with. Many of them are out of work salary men who through some unfortunate twist lost their jobs and became homeless due to not being able to find a replacement job. It seems teen boys and young boys gang up and then go out hunting for them and beat them up.

Ick. They’re justification? “We’re cleaning up the garbage.” I’m not a fan of people not attempting to be productive to society but I’m not sure about outright hostility. That gets me incensed. Preying on the weak is a poor excuse. A better way would be to help find ways to educate these people and try to put wind in their sails again so they can float in wild ocean of life.

Link to story

Why is that everyime I try looking on a phone or cable companies website for information for their brick & mortar stores I can’t find anything? It requires seaching and searching. Instead they’ve jumped on this notion of “Use the Online Services!!!” That’s great when things are workign as they planned. But how abuot when they aren’t? That’s where interacting with a human in person can be much more clarifying about the problem.

This article is mainly covering the Open Source movement and its local heroes. But this quote really caught my eye:

“An English-only or even an English-mainly policy necessarily condemns most people, and thus the country as a whole, to a permanent state of mediocrity, since people are unable to be spontaneous, creative and self-confident if they cannot use their first language,”

Most Americans probably won’t even think about this at all. The ones that probably really get it are ones that have spent some time abroad and have to use a computer that has been localized or speak another language at home. All of a sudden you can’t read the menus and dialogues and many of the interactions with the computer. You’re a little lost in what to do. Now imagine trying to ‘get work’ done in this environment. This is what many many people deal with when having to deal with a non-localized computer. On top of dealing with computing for the first time they are forced to use a language they have no internal sense of.

Link to story

The New York Times has an article about Japanese cel companies combatting spam and viruses today. With the impending standardization of cel phone software this could prove to a nasty ground for virus writers as bascially today’s cel phones are basically computers.. just with specialized software. However, if the software becomes semi standardized then affecting lots of phones just got easier.

On a side note. Microsoft wants to get into the cel phone / PDA market with their OS. And looking at their fabulous track record for getting nailed with viruses AND also the prolificness of their development toolsets what do you think is going to happen? Thanks M$! We need more viruses. (not)

Link to Story

Recently at an interview for a company I noticed that when they pulled out my resume and were using it as the standard template for what to ask me about. I noticed that all of my job titles were changed! They were interested in a UNIX Sys Admin type and it seems the recruiter I was working through ended up changing my job titles to pass through the keyword searches.

This ended up causing a lot of problems when the interviewer asked me about my job history and what I had done. For the past few years I have been working as a Systems QA guy for network equipment. I used a lot UNIX systems and administrated them for our lab on the side to ensure we could get work done. My main job was doing QA of course but I ended up picking up the slack of local network admin and UNIX admin on the side. When asked about what my job title was I honestly answered I was doing QA which caused the interviewer to backpeddle as they were staring at the title UNIX Sys Admin on my resume and wondering what was up. I ended up trying my best to explain I had nothing to do with changing my resume job titles and explained it must have been the recruitment agency that changed it. I do not believe in modifying something like your job title just to get into an interview however it seems the recruiter I work with does. This really got me annoyed as I like being up front with where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

It made me start thinking, “Do people do this regularly just to get their foot in the door?” If so, that really disgusts me. The job search/hiring process is not easy for both ends of the equation (for both the employer AND job searcher) without having to add in the extra variable of what I feel is dishonesty. I have warned my recruiter that if they do this again I will not work with them as this is akin to dishonesty. At first the recruiter didn’t think so however I really pushed the screws into them explaining that your job history is you. If you change around your job titles JUST to get an interview then that is dishonest to oneself and to the company you are applying for. This is not a valid way to try to get your resume through the door. Yes it is A way but if I have to start distorting myself just to get a job with company X. Perhaps, I shouldn’t work for that company since I’d like to believe that most people want to do GOOD working for a company not bad.

In the end I didn’t get the job because of ‘experience’ as a UNIX sys admin working on super large systems. I feel a little bummed about it but I guess they wanted to take the safe path and find someone who can claim they have UNIX sys admin on their resume for X years on large systems rather than take a chance. I find my skills section sometimes the hardest part to explain to interviewers that interview me since they want to compartmentalize me as one thing or another based on JUST my job title I’ve noticed and expect when I describe my work history to back up these conclusions. I guess there are people that do have that experience but how do you get started working on ‘large systems’? This isn’t something you can all of a sudden get without having worked in that type of environment. But I guess from the employer’s standpoint it’s easier to just match up the checkpoints and decide. Ah well…
Whatever happened to the job interview being a chance to show why you would work well in that position in spite of what might look like obstacles? Perhaps that is more my fault for not showing them?

In the end I still believe in honesty is the best policy. Leave distortions to the politicians.

When I was in Akihabara a month or so back I found The Linux Cafe. No I’m not joking! I bet if you google for it you might be able to find it. But here’s some pics showing proof:

I’ve seen USB flash drives in the U.S. and they’re okay. But in Japan you can get lots of cool designed ones. There is one for Gundam fans (picture pending), probably even for for Hello Kitty. However I found this one pretty neat:

If you’re a student of Japanese at some point you’ve probably come across the need for a dictionary. In Japan, Electronic dictionaries are very very very popular. They’re small, light, have amazing battery life (none of this hours nonsense. Let’s talk about months!), and depending on the model have excellent dictionaries/thesaurus’ included in them. This is all in about the size of something a little bit bigger than a Palm Pilot and usually much more durable (I’ve dropped a few quite a few times and they keep going). And the prices aren’t too bad. The range from real cheap ($50) to hundreds of dollars. However, shopping for one can be really confusing if you’re at the store.
There is literally a whole isle full of these things (I’ll have a pic in the future) with the whole price range and far too little information on what the differences are (unless you can read Japanese and even then it’s not easy to find all the relevant information).
This site that I found has a really wonderful breakdown of what to look for in an Electronic dictionary. If chosen well it can be a really powerful tool for the Japanese learner. If chosen poorly it will be just another paperweight to add to your desk.

Link to Reviews