Kerid Crater

This crater was formed by a volcanic explosion, and when the magma from underneath the rock flowed out of the volcano, the empty cavity collapsed, forming the crater.

Gullfoss

Not a tiny waterfalls like the ones I showed along the Ring Road, this one is big. So big that companies have offered to put a hydroelectric dam on it, only for the offers to be rejected because people wanted the waterfall to stay as it was.

Icelandic horses

Along the drive, I passed by a sign that just said “come see Icelandic horses”. I figured why not? They’re furry!!

Geysir

This was my first time seeing actual exploding geysers! The water here is just naturally hot because of geothermal energy.

Because of the winter, I didn’t get the chance to see other things since there was only daylight for around four hours. After the three days of driving, I had racked up quite a bit of mileage on the car (1184.6 km)!

Photos here

Let’s Cross The Street… Diagonally!

This is no surprise really. There are lots of people in Tokyo. The crazy thing is that at the Shibuya crossing, the lights for cars can be red at the same time for all directions, and allows pedestrians to cross the intersection in any direction they want.

Their Metro System Is Complicated

That picture there shows only the metro lines operated by the JR Railway Company. There is another set that is run by other companies such as the Tokyo Metro Company. Route planning apps save the day!

Nintendo Is Big Around Here

Akihabara has many shops that sell used gaming consoles like Gameboys, Super Nintendos, and N64’s. They even sell tons of used games for them too. I managed to pick up a used copy of Tetris DS before I left.

I Finally Played TGM3 at the Arcade

TGM3 is a Japanese variation of Tetris that is designed to be very very hard (see this). The video starts getting crazy at about 3 minutes and becomes completely insane at about 5:08. Ever since playing lots of Tetris during my undergrad and learning about this game, I finally got the chance to play this at the arcade and not on an emulator. This was at HEY (Hirose Entertainment Yard) in Akihabara.

People Still Like Pokemon

I don’t think kids today in North America still watch Pokemon, but in Japan it’s still popular – popular enough for Pokemon themed stores.

Japanese War History

Yasukuni Shrine is a shrine that commemorates those who died serving the Empire of Japan. Some of these commemorated people happen to be considered war criminals, where 14 of them are A-Class war criminals, which makes this place quite controversial. It was reported that Shinzo Abe, as the Prime Minister of Japan, visited this shrine, which angered the governments of China and Korea. Near the shrine itself, there is a museum that chronicles Japanese war history, known as the Yushukan, where visitors can see various relics and artifacts from the different wars that Japan has been involved in.

The Future Is Here

The Miraikan, also known as the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, displays the latest cutting-edge technology from Japan. Asimo, the Honda Robot is one of the main attractions here, as well as the display of humanoid android robots (like the picture below).

Odaiba, A Less Busy Part of Tokyo

Odaiba is an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, and has lots of attractions like scenery, museums (like the Miraikan), shopping, and amusement parks (like Legoland and Joypolis).

Lots of Temples and Shrines

Tokyo has no shortage of temples and shrines. The Sensoji Temple in Asakusa is among the famous ones. To me it is that Japan is to temples and shrines as Europe is to churches and cathedrals.

Scenery at High Places

Tokyo Skytree is the tallest structure in Japan and features an observation deck that allows visitors to see the surrounding area. I felt my ears popping as the elevator took me to the top because of the sheer height of the building. At the observation deck, there are touch screens that give information on various landmarks that can be seen. On a clear day, it is possible to see Mount Fuji from here.

For Collectors of Figurines

The Akihabara Radio Hall has a collection of stores with lots and lots of figurines from various anime series. Other stores even sell models of tanks, battleships, etc. There was one in particular that sold giant models from blockbuster Hollywood movies like Robocop, Batman, and Terminator. Would have liked to take a better picture, but they had a strict no photography policy.

WTF

It’s true. Japan has lots of weird stuff. That picture below is for a place called the Robot Restaurant. It’s hard to explain. It’s better to watch this (it starts off pretty weird and just gets weirder).

Links to more photos:

• Tokyo
• Akihabara
• Asakusa
• Yasukuni Shrine
• Odaiba
• Tokyo Skytree

This gave us a lot of opportunities to find out what was wrong with our robots before the real competition began. We found out that are mechanical and electrical systems were quite robust, while our software system was the weakest link of the three.

In the downtime, we were taken on a tour of the nearby Eichbaum Brewery. The tour was quite difficult to follow because it was pretty much all in German. Even though I had learned some German, it was still quite difficult for me to follow.

I had been to Mannheim before and both times I went to Mannheim before this time, I had a very negative experience. The first time, I got food poisoning (I still remember which restaurant it was), and the second time, my friends and I waited at the Mannheim train station for 4 hours for a train to Berlin with a scheduled departure time of 12am.

Having had lived in Germany before meant I recognized a lot of brands like food chains, department stores, cell phone companies, etc. Because of that, my teammates often asked me different things about Germany such as how German phone plans worked and how to sign up for a plan. I explained it to them and even asked the cashier at the supermarket who didn’t speak English about phone plans.

On another day, we were also taken on a tour to the nearby city of Heidelberg. I had also been here before and vaguely knew my way around. We hiked up to the castle again, but we were there in the evening so the inside of the castle was closed by the time we arrived, so we just went as high as we could.

After spending a few days in Mannheim, all three of the teams organized transportation together to Eindhoven, where the real competition would begin. The workshop allowed us to see what our robots were capable of and what we could improve on early, so that we would be better prepared for the real thing.

Link to photo album here

The museum showcased their history by displaying their past motorcycle, car and aircraft engine designs.

Some of their brands like the BMW 328 still exists today, but there is little resemblance in the historic version of it.

They’ve made so many cars that they have a giant display of all the logos.

One of their concept cars was displayed too. The idea was that each fin on the car could orient itself depending on whether the car wanted to accelerate or decelerate.

Another concept car was the BMW GINA. There isn’t a lot of information about this car. I guess it stayed as a concept car.

The museum also had a bonus exhibit for Rolls Royce, which is one of BMW’s child companies.  Not really a car I’d buy, but it would still be pretty sweet to own one.

The BMW Museum was pretty interesting and I wish I had booked the factory tour ahead of time.  Apparently I was supposed to book the factory tour a few weeks in advance in order to get a spot.  That would have made the visit to the museum even better.

Link to photo album here

Eavesdropping

Conversations between characters are seen by other characters and are taken completely out of context. When the conversation is taken out of context, people get angry and then arguments happen.

Arguments

After a misunderstanding, usually the angry character begins raging at somebody, not realizing that there was a misunderstanding in the first place. What’s worse, they don’t believe what other people tell them and thus, the argument continues.

Crying

Because the arguments got so intense, people start crying. Usually the characters who have felt wrongfully accused by the one is angry.

Love Triangles

This is yet another cause of crying in these dramas. In every show, there are always at least 2 girls who like the same guy. The most random one was when a guy dated his cousin (who has later revealed to have no blood relation), but his adopted sister secretly liked him too.

Although, in a way, I’m kind of saying, “Every action movie has explosions”, and yes it’s true that every story has a conflict involved, but the plot devices TVB uses are the same over and over. I’d like to see a show where eavesdropping or love triangles don’t happen or something. Despite this however, there are some shows that are still very amazing to watch. The amazingness comes from the dialogue people have during the arguments. For example, in Heart of Greed and Moonlight Resonance, the arguments people made were logical and well thought out. It didn’t feel like they were arguing for the sake of arguing.

This year, the company celebrates the 125th anniversary of the company’s founding as well as the 150th birthday of Robert Bosch. Because of this special occasion, the company created a photo book, known as Global Impressions of Bosch and in it, are 125 photographs of Bosch employees from all over the world taken at the same instant.  This book was given to every single employee, or associates as the company calls us, as an appreciation for all of our hard work.  I flipped through it, and I have to say, there are some really nice pictures.  I also found the pictures online in the form of YouTube videos (link at bottom).  I really like the idea of getting all the pictures at the same instant.  They managed done to pack as much as they could about Bosch at the exact same time.  It’s like they say, each picture is worth a thousand words.  With 125 pictures, that’s like 125000 words.

YouTube Videos: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=global+impressions+of+bosch&aq=f

Bosch News: http://www.exportapr.boschsecurity.com/content/language1/html/4863_ENU_XHTML.asp

Up until now, I’ve never opened an MMS successfully. My Internet settings on the phone were never set
probably plus I never bothered to do it. I also didn’t know the billing rates for opening them either.
But now, an opportunity arose for me to require MMS. The Deutsche Bahn has three options for distributing tickets purchased online. The first one is by printing them out, but I don’t have a printer. The second method is having them mailed to me, but that costs 3.50 euro. The third and best option, is to have them sent as MMS. Knowing that my phone, the P1i, has this ability, I looked for how to do it. After going through lots of Googling and reading through translated German sites, I finally figured it out.

Now, I use Vodafone in Germany, but this method may work on other providers even. I am also using GPRS, and not 3G (I don’t have a dataplan unfortunately). The way to do it is to register an account on Vodafone.de using your phone number. Obviously, if you use a different provider, you’d go to their website to make the account. I clicked through their services and found an option called the “HandyKonfigurator”. What it does is it sends me the proper settings required for my phone. I clicked through the dropdown boxes, found my phone and pressed continue. Vodafone then sent me a file that would inject the settings into my phone. They also sent me a PIN that I had to enter before my phone settings were changed. I did as I was asked, and now I can receive MMS messages!

Vodafone Internet Account Settings

• Address: event.vodafone.de
• No user name and password required
• IP Config and DNS Addresses are set to automatic
• Proxy Server: 139.7.29.17 at port 80

Vodafone MMS Account Settings

• Service Center Address: http://139.7.24.1/servlets/mms

After being here for a little while, I’ve come to notice a bunch of things here that are just a lot different that what I’m used to in Vancouver, and I’ve made a list of these things here:

Old-style architecture with beautiful roads of cobblestone

Cool retro looking keys

Keyholes that you can actually look through

Tobacco companies are allowed to advertise and packs of cigarettes are readily available and cheap (about 5 euro)

Ads for Google Chrome but not any other browser

Obscure looking vehicles

Rides on the metro cost about 3.40 euro, which is about 4.50 CAD and about the same as Vancouver

For the rest of them I don’t have pictures for, but here they are:

• Lots of people of middle eastern descent, mostly from Turkey
• Nobody claps, but instead pounds their fist on the table repeatedly
• Some people wear their wedding rings on the right hand
• Car brands that only exist here (Citroën, Alfa Romero, Opel, etc.)
• Some people here actually drive Fords instead of European cars, but it’s the only American brand here that I’ve seen
• Since people don’t like using the 1c and 2c coins, they tend to round up transactions to the nearest 5c, which is probably why the cashier asked me if I had a 5c coin

The Blog-Health-o-Meter reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 6,600 times in 2010. That’s about 16 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 85 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 120 posts. There were 48 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was November 23rd with 83 views. The most popular post that day was South Korea: Yet Again Swallowing the Bitter Pill.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were zamunda.net, facebook.com, dailyblogged.com, google.com, and en.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for p1i windows 7, p1_usb_signed_drivers, p1_usb_signed_drivers.rar, p1_usb_signed_drivers package, and failed to load resource sony ericsson.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

South Korea: Yet Again Swallowing the Bitter Pill November 2010
1 comment

Connecting a Sony Ericsson P1i to a Windows 7 x64 Computer in Phone Mode December 2009
1 comment

Snow Leopard on a Dell Inspiron 1520 June 2010
17 comments

How to Install Solidworks 2008 on a x64 Operating System November 2009

SolidWorks 2010 Side-By-Side Configuration Error Fix August 2010
5 comments