800 MBs of RAM. And you know what? I haven’t even used Flash since I started Chrome.

So in the midst of Flash versus Apple (well, we’ve sort of blown past it, but anyway), let me just point something out here…

You blow.

Oh, right, I renamed that “MultilineTableViewController” to “multilineTableViewController” (lowercase M) because everything else has lower-case-initial-letter.

Kalle-Alms-MacBook-Pro:trunk me$ svn rm Classes/MultilineTableViewController.h
D         Classes/MultilineTableViewController.h
Kalle-Alms-MacBook-Pro:trunk me$ svn rm Classes/MultilineTableViewController.m
D         Classes/MultilineTableViewController.m

Great! Let’s add the new lower-case one to SVN now while at it…

Kalle-Alms-MacBook-Pro:trunk me$ svn add Classes/mult*tab**tab**tab**beep**beep*

Hm?

Kalle-Alms-MacBook-Pro:trunk me$ svn add Classes/*tab**tab*
.DS_Store                     gridreaderViewController.h    mgImageSourceRequest.m        mgScrollView.m                muddyGrid.m
.svn/                         gridreaderViewController.m    mgImageView.h                 mgWindow.h                    tile.h
UIImage+Scaling.h             gridreaderViewController.xib  mgImageView.m                 mgWindow.m                    tile.m
UIImage+Scaling.m             mg2DTileSet.h                 mgMinimap.h                   mgXMLParser.h                 worldViewController.h
fileIO.h                      mg2DTileSet.m                 mgMinimap.m                   mgXMLParser.m                 worldViewController.m
fileIO.m                      mgImageSource.h               mgMinimapButton.h             mgXMLWorld.h
gridreaderAppDelegate.h       mgImageSource.m               mgMinimapButton.m             mgXMLWorld.m
gridreaderAppDelegate.m       mgImageSourceRequest.h        mgScrollView.h                muddyGrid.h

Wait.

Where’s my class…?

Turns out SVN fucktardedly presumed “oh im shure he ment delt da fl thats lcase here insted lolstfucoksknmfur”. Luckily I had the files in memory.

The wonderful adventure continues.

svn: Failed to add file 'foo/Doc-credits.png': an unversioned file of the same name already exists
Kalle-Alms-MacBook-Pro:iphone me$ rm foo/Doc-Credits.png
Kalle-Alms-MacBook-Pro:iphone me$ svn up
Restored 'foo/Doc-Credits.png'
svn: Failed to add file 'foo/Doc-credits.png': an unversioned file of the same name already exists
Kalle-Alms-MacBook-Pro:iphone me$ masturbate furiously
-bash: masturbate: command not found

This time, the file Doc-Credits.png exists and the file Doc-credits.png needs to be added.

For the record, Mac OS X is at fault here — Apple decided to “be compatible” with Windows and not allow filenames of the same size with different capitalization, which *NIX does allow.

That doesn’t make SVN any less retarded though. After all, it’s running on the OS, so it should know the OS.

But… when I try to change it so that Swedish is the default input methods …. I can’t. Uh. Right.

… huh? Why can’t I drag and arrange my input methods in order of preference?

The deal is, whenever I open a new … window. Or tab, in Safari… I get it in Japanese.

Imagine this scenario: I open up a new tab in my browser! I decide to boldly go where none other has boldly gone before, and I type in “www.google.com” BUT!

BUT!!!! I do not GET “www.google.com” in the browser.

No sir. I don’t. I get “っっw。ごおgぇ。cおm”

in the browser.

And this is not what I wanted! Nope. No sir. Not anywhere or any way.

Can you feel my frustration shining? For now, I’ve turned Japanese off, so any time I talk to my girlfriend or whoever I will do so in “Konnichiwa watashi no chinchin wo sutte kudasai” romaji. Anyone got any nice clues on this one? It’s completely unbelievable that they’d not realize that people, sometimes, would prefer not to have their languages thrown at them in alphabetic order. (Yes, “Japanese” comes before “Swedish”.) Or is it that every tester was an American, thus “English” comes before “Japanese” and it’s not a “problem”?

EDIT: I finally figured this out. The reason it was acting up was because of 3 separate factors which, combined, do not work:

1. Japanese input.
2. Swedish as alternative input
3. English as operating system language.

The fix is to change the OS language to Swedish. I personally hate having the OS in Swedish, but I’m apparently given no choice. Better that than no Japanese though, I suppose.

Which at the top of it had in big colored text the words: HURRY, RENEW YOUR SUBSCRIPTION BY APRIL 15 2010.

Yes. Capital letters. And then, at the bottom of this OMG DO IT NOW OR PERISH LIKE THE NEANDERTHALS!!1111111111oneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneone email… there is the following: To continue to receive the NVIDIA UK Corporate Newsletter, you don’t need to take any action! On April 15 2010, your subscription will automatically be transferred to our UK database.

Which means “right, we just screamed at the top of our lungs to tell you that you actually don’t have to do anything“.

Asshats.

(Oh and yes, I comprehend that they have now divided their newsletter up by country, and that this is what they’re trying to say. They’re just saying it like asshats.)

Note in particular the line that in parentheses starts with “also misspelled as”.

kthxbyem8s

Game software copy protection goes far back beyond that, of course, and in contrast, GCP (I invented this acronym, probably) can be justified a bit more. Music is something that we, on a nearly instinctual level, love to share with each other, be that by playing together or listening together or simply showing each other the kind of stuff that makes us feel certain ways. Music is such an integral part of the human society that’s been with us for as long as we’ve had hands to play with or mouths to sing with. The industrialization thereof is perhaps the most critical error of ours. Games on the other hand may have been with us for a long time (Go for example dates back to the 4th century BC), but it’s not as intimately associated with sharing as music. That said, game piracy of course thrives just as any other software piracy does, and the game developers seek new methods to battle the piracy.

Most recently, Ubisoft, the makers of titles such as Assassin’s Creed, have decided to take this a step further, thus evolving the DRM. Rock Paper Shotgun has an article on the subject of how Ubisoft not only restricts the player from starting the game without doing an online check to verify the game has not been pirated, but it even throws the player out of the game if their internet connection at any point in time drops offline, while playing.

I actually think that’s pretty awesome. I mean, the balls required to do that? Not to speak of, the conviction that their players will be loyal to the point of ridicule, that they buy the game anyway. Reminds me of Metallica.

Actually, I knew I’d failed all along. I’m actually surprised I got that high.

Next time Kalle will get the opportunity to (with any chance of success) try this test: approximately 2015.

Yes, I do indeed feel like a fucking loser. Now back to your regularly scheduled (albeit seldomly updated) blog.

Anyway, the iPhone does not love linux. I knew this though. And this isn’t so much me complaining that the iPhone doesn’t love linux, as it is me marvelling at the grotesqueness of it all.

Look at what I am forced to do, in order to install “apps” from the Apple store onto my iPhone — and no, this is not about jailbreaking the phone, although you might think it is considering all the steps:

1. I have to get Windows or Mac OS. Yep. I read about iTunes in Wine (Windows emulation in linux) and heard it was “garbage”. I do this. I put Windows back on my lap top. For my iPhone. Because it is my master.

2. I have to install iTunes. I do this. Whilst asking myself “why must I…?” I do this. Obediently.

3. I have to confirm my Apple Account, FROM INTERNET EXPLORER. Hang on a minute here.
- I get an email to my gmail address,
- with a confirmation link,
- and clicking it in Firefox
- gives me the Apple “download iTunes for free!!!11111oneneone” page …
- and then when I open iTunes
- I get the “you have not validated your account — please check your email and follow the confirmation link” …
- so finally after many laps of chasing my own ass,
- I try the confirmation link in IE
- and voilá. Beau-fucking-tit-ful. Welcome to Apple Computing. We come in peace from the 1990′s. We mean you no harm.

Thus, finally, I can get on with installing apps on my iPhone. Great hardware, by the way, pity about its maker.

*) Only a select few understand that one and it has nothing to do with Harry Potter.

New Years I was originally supposed to spend by myself — or with friends, supposedly — because my girlfriends’ family said I could absolutely not attend the new years events they were planning because I wasn’t “family.” I went from “well, sucks, I would’ve liked to hang with my girlfriend on New Years,” to “ah well, I’m sure it’s an important event to the Japanese,” and then to “what the hell…!”, in chronological order.

The reason I went from “ah well” to “what the hell” was that my neighbor Kim, who has gotten a girlfriend fairly recently, was invited to her family’s New Years celebration — so with me and my girlfriend closing in on two years (or one year, if you don’t count the time before I came to Japan), what is so horribly bad about me attending? My girlfriend informed me it was a matter of to what degree the family values Japanese traditions, and I suppose that makes sense. And besides, she eventually compromised things so that she can stay here overnight on the 31st so we will be together on New Years in the end — fairy-tale ending all around.

Merry Christmas everyone, by the way. It’s actually snowing in Kyoto. Not the stick-to-the-ground kind of snow, but more the wimpy “it’s sorta white but it could just as well be rain” kind you’d expect in a place this far south. On New Years Eve (the 24th, that is), I and my girlfriend went to Kim’s apartment and hung out with 5 other people, ate Swedish christmas food (hurray for IKEA), and watched Kalle Ankas julafton (hurray for BitTorrents) on my neighbor’s computer (hurray for … Windows?), and drank glögg (hurray for IKEA).

The 25th, me and my girlfriend took it slow and went around a shopping mall, and then in the evening we went to an awesome Yakiniku restaraunt (basically a BBQ-style restaurant) near where she lives. I came home just earlier now, and woke Kim up to hear the horrific news…

Originally he was meant to go to his girlfriend’s place and stay there several nights over into the new year, with the one compromise that he sleep “with the men” in some separate place. Yesterday evening, around 11 pm, they changed their mind about this arrangement. They decided that nah, he can’t sleep there after all, because “the brother will be out and about a lot, and Kim won’t know how to operate the gas/electricity system.”

Translation: “bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit, bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit/bullshit bullshit.” So Kim’s to go there today and return back home today. Gee, that is absolutely horrendous. And so inconceivably incorrect, courtesy-wise. The reason, we think, is actually that his girlfriend has been coming to Kyoto a little too often and been staying a little too late lately, so her mother has gotten grumpy. Mothers, I tell you, scary people.

I can’t speak for others living in Japan with Japanese girl- or boyfriends, but I know that for me, the biggest shock coming here has been and most likely will continue to be, the codes of conduct regarding hospitality. The abysmal differences in how to behave properly, and how to be hospitable.

Now, the hilarious part about this…

“As soon as it jumps above 13.0, I’m going to withdraw money.” — I decided on this back after posting the previous post. If you look at the graph, it more or less rubs its genitals against the 13.0 line but it just never takes the stride. So frustrating. My thinking here is in any case that I am going to gradually withdraw money even at “low” exchange rates, as soon as the yen is increasing. My thinking is that if I do this, I will not end up having to withdraw money when it’s at a super-low rate, like now. Unfortunately for me it just never went above 13.0, so I now have 2,000 yen in total, and rent payment day is this Monday — and the rent is nearly 40,000 yen.

As for “the first” mentioned above, the yen per crown is now for the first time below 11.0, down at 10.93 yen/crown.

At this point, I’m no longer paying 40% more than I used to. I’m paying 64% more than I used to. So if your rent is, say, $400 a month and this happened to you, you’d suddenly look at the bill and read “$656″ and wonder whatever happened to your vacation plans. Or, to your savings, for that matter. Your electricity bill? Let’s say $50 normally; now? $82. And so on and so forth. Can you see the reason for my whining about mentioning the yen now?

I wish I hadn’t picked the one country in the world which would “miraculously” stay afloat while the rest of the economies in the world started tumbling.