July 31, 2010

901 Tequila Branding

I clicked on a banner advertisement for the first time in a long time, and ended up at a web site that I think has done an excellent job of creating an emotional atmosphere and connection with its audience. 901 Tequila is a tequila from Justin Timberlake and I think visiting the site, experiencing the marketing and method of delivery, and exploring a bit about how and why they went this direction is very interesting.

I've grabbed the background song and image in case the site ever goes away. (Make sure to hit play on the song.) But definitely check out the site as it is several orders of magnitude better to interact with it in its native form.

Posted by josuah at 8:30 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 23, 2010

SamBakZa's There She Is!

Ah! The series from SamBakZa is complete! Make sure to stop by their web site and support them!

There She Is!

Cake Dance

Doki & Nabi

Paradise

Imagine

Posted by josuah at 7:35 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 17, 2010

Distant Worlds II

I attended the Friday half of the Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy at the San Francisco Symphony last night. I really enjoyed it, although I would have enjoyed it more if I had the entire hall to myself. ^_^ Primarily because the audience acted less like a symphony performance and more like a get-together. So there was a lot of clapping and cheering and even a few jokes called out. I didn't appreciate all the clapping during the credits, which prevented me from hearing Terra's Theme.

I kept my eyes closed as much as possible, during the performance, so that I wouldn't get distracted by the visuals they had up. They played pieces from a variety of Final Fantasy games, including one from the upcoming FFXIV online game. I know Roger Ebert is skeptical about the artistic nature of games, but having played the games added a lot of emotional depth to the music I was hearing. I have a much deeper understanding of what the music is trying to convey, and an emotional attachment to the songs. I got goosebumps during Aerith's Theme, JENOVA, as well as a few other songs. (No goosebumps during One Winged Angel because that was played sort of like karaoke&emdash;I chanted but the choir was a little weak.) The music from FFXI and FFXIII didn't have the same effect on me, because I didn't really have any context for it. There was an older couple sitting in front of me that didn't even know what Final Fantasy was, and I don't think they got much out of it and were somewhat confused by everyone else's enthusiasm.

One thing that I was confused about was clarified for me last night. I'd picked up the FFXIII soundtrack while in Japan, and although I haven't taken the time to listen to it (on purpose) I did listen to a few songs. And my immediate thought was that this is not Final Fantasy music. It didn't sound right. Sounded much more like a typical classical soundtrack. I thought perhaps Nobou Uematsu was doing something different. But, the FFXIII soundtrack was entirely composed by Masashi Hamauzu.

After getting back to Alla's place, I ordered both Distant Worlds CDs. (The Symphony Store was selling them for $20 each so it was cheaper ordering off Amazon.) I really enjoyed some of the new compositions, and want to be able to listen to them at home.

Posted by josuah at 5:59 PM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 11, 2010

San Jose Obon Festival 2010

San Jose's Japantown is holding their annual Obon Festival, hosted by the SJ Buddhist Church Betsuin. It runs today and tomorrow, for several hours each day. This is the first year I've gone. It's definitely not like the fancy temple Obon festivals you may have seen on TV or in anime, but it was close, taking into account the location and people that would show up.

I did find it a little disappointing. It was a little small, and didn't have a whole lot to see or do. There was a food court, which had a lot of regular-type Japanese and summer food, although there was a taiyaki stand. Unfortunately they were shaped like English muffins rather than fish. But tasted decent.

The one thing I did really enjoy was the Taiko drumming. A few different schools and organizations showed up to perform. The one I was able to attend for the entire duration was the UC Irvine Jodaiko group. Their performance, which also included some fun play between members, kept a big smile on my face.

Posted by josuah at 1:20 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 7, 2010

Lilith Fair 2010

I went to Lilith Fair with Yvonne and two of her friends, Tina and Jackie, yesterday at the Shoreline Amphiteatre in Mountain View. (Make the drive to the venue itself to purchase tickets; they are significantly cheaper that way.) I had a lot of fun, but mostly because of Yvonne, Tina, and Jackie and not the fair. We did end up meeting Dantam and her friends later on, after having gotten there around 1:30pm but not actually listening to any music until 4pm.

The event wasn't put on the way I expected. Gates opened at 2:30pm as I was told by the box office when I purchased the tickets. It didn't take too long to get inside although everyone's bag was thoroughly checked which meant slow entry. But the lawn didn't open until 3:30pm so we ended up standing in that line for a while too. They obviously wanted you to spend time checking out the sponsor booths, getting samples, and buying food, drink, or other little things. Borders was selling CDs at relatively high prices.

After eating a bit on the lawn, I stayed with our spot while they went off to check things out. They came back with a bunch of freebies. All the freebies are for women though, so I didn't really get much. One person still had a bunch of stuff she needed to get rid of before performances on the main stage started, so I was offered something for "my girlfriend".

I did get to see the one artist I really cared about though, which was A Fine Frenzy. Their set was kind of short and on one of the small stages though. And the audio setup wasn't super great. But it was still cool. Much cooler was getting Alison Monro to sign my CD (I bought it from the Borders tent after I found out there was going to be a signing). I think she was happy when I told her I came to Lilith specifically to see them. ^_^ The guy behind me in line was pretty nice and took a photo of me and Alison, which he promised to mail me later.

I didn't get a chance to see Terra Naomi (heard her a bit while in line for the lawn, and sounded interesting) or Kitten and I think I would have liked to. It wasn't that clear to me how the schedule worked; we only found out about the multiple stages after getting inside.

The sponsor booths basically shut down once the main stage opened. Everyone piled in to see the main attractions. But none of them had any real interest for me. All the new interesting artists were outside on the little stages, before the main performances. We stayed through Colbie Caillat, The Bangles, and left in the middle of Miranda Lambert around 8:15pm because they all had class the next day. Looks like we missed Heart and then finally Sarah McLachlan, who is the only one any of us had any interest in listening to.

There are a bunch of other artists participating in Lilith Fair that I would have really liked to see, but they weren't playing in San Francisco. Some of them "oldies" like Sheryl Crow and Suzanne Vega and Beth Orton, but most of them newbies or people I haven't heard about before (too many to list here) and they usually only showed up at one or two of the venues, whichever happened to be closest to where they live. I actually thought Lilith was primarily to show off new interesting female artists, so have a main set featuring artists that made music before I was born was a little disappointing.

Posted by josuah at 7:12 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 28, 2010

Asian Tour

I recently went on something of a whirlwind business trip through three countries as part of a project we've been working on at Netflix for a short time now. My trip started off in Hong Kong, then Shenzhen, China, followed by Seoul, Korea and finally Osaka and Tokyo in Japan. It had been almost ten years since I was last in Hong Kong, and it was my first time visiting Japan. I was in Korea last year for business but not in Seoul that time.

Things were pretty hectic in the beginning. We had one day in Hong Kong to acclimate to the time change, but Shenzhen and Seoul were completely filled each day with meetings and travel so there wasn't any free time at all. Mitch and I extended our stay in Tokyo, Japan a little extra though, so we could do some things that we wanted to. I was especially excited about Tokyo because I've wanted to visit Akihabara and Shibuya for a very long time.

In Hong Kong, we went to Lantau Island via the Ngong Ping Cable Car to see the Tian Tan Buddha tourist attraction. I say tourist attraction because when I was there ten years ago the site wasn't so commercialized. The clouds were very low that day, which meant our cable car went right through some dense fog, and walking around at the peak meant walking around through clouds.

Crossing from Hong Kong into Shenzhen meant going through the China border inspections. It wasn't a big deal, but it is like crossing between countries. (Returning into Hong Kong took much longer.) Shenzhen is pretty much what I expected with small towns, usually containing an obvious main street, based around industrial areas. The factories are what brings workers into Shenzhen and keeps money flowing into that area.

Both Hong Kong and Shenzhen were very hot and humid. My body is not at all accustomed to that sort of environment so I was constantly sweating. I think one day the humidity was listed as 90%, and the temperature was always above 30°C.

After China we flew into Seoul, Korea. I like visiting Korea because I have a friend there that works at Samsung. His English is quite good and we get along well. It happened to be his daughter's 100-day celebration when we were there, and he gave me a cute little rice cake treat. I was also hoping to meet up with someone in Seoul whom I just recently met at Can Jam 2010 when I was exhibiting, but a schedule conflict prevented us from doing so.

One thing that I really liked in Seoul were the interactive maps. Both the subway and shopping mall had an interactive map. Using the touchscreen, you could select where you wanted to go, or search for where you wanted to go, and it would provide detailed animated directions on the map itself for how to get there. This is so much better than the static maps used here in the United States. Although I suspect there would be some hesitation of installing expensive maps in U.S. subway systems out of fear of graffiti or vandalism. People, and police officers, appear to be so much nicer, polite, and courteous in Korea than in the U.S. (Obviously this is even more true in Japan, where manners are extremely important.)

After Korea, we flew into Osaka, Japan for our last business engagement. This is where it first hit me how expensive things are in Japan. I'd heard and read about things being expensive there, but a fruit plate in the hotel restaurant was more than USD $40, and I found out the waitresses at that restaurant were probably only making about USD $10/hr. I thought at least food should be about the same price as in big U.S. cities if the pay scale is about the same, but since it is more expensive and going out to dinners and drinks are such a big part of Japanese culture people must spend a significant portion of their income on food. The pre-packaged meals at 7-11 are priced around what I usually spend if I'm eating out to lunch at home.

Also really expensive are pets. We stopped in a pet store in Osaka, and kittens and puppies are regularly priced over USD $1000 and often close to USD $1500. Some of them were even around USD $3000-$4000. The pet stores were pretty small, and probably had about a dozen or so of kittens and puppies. There was one store that also had some monkeys. No prices were listed on the monkeys; I imagine they might be considered a luxury where if you have to ask, you can't afford it. One thing I noticed though was that all the kittens and puppies were very young. It's a lot easier to sell cute kittens and puppies, and I saw a bunch of girls watching and saying kawaii a lot, but it also makes me wonder what happens to the ones not adopted. If they only keep young ones in the store, the others might be discarded. T_T

After Osaka we went to Tokyo. For a few hours one day Mitch and I took the train to Hakone and went to the Kappa Tengoku onsen. It took about two hours each way by train, and we spent about two hours at the onsen itself. The soaking pool water was very hot. So hot that I immediately started sweating like crazy and my body began tingling all over. I had to get out and shower in cold water once, and also sit mostly out of the pool, in order to cool down. I also got over a dozen bug bites right away. Most of them got bigger and only just started disappearing a couple days ago.

But by far I spent the most time in Akihabara and Shibuya. Akihabara was very exciting for me because of all the shops and the culture. Maid cafés have gotten very popular and there were dozens of maids on the streets handing out flyers and trying to convince customers to enter their shops. We didn't end up going into a maid café though. Which was fine by me since I was spending all my time shopping anyway. Although I would have liked to go to one. As well as check out some of the other crazy theme restaurants; I'm not sure where they are though since they're not in Akihabara. I didn't get a chance to check out a love hotel or capsule hotel either.

There are a bunch of otaku-stores in Akihabara, unsurprisingly. The stores tend to be thin and tall. Only the stores that sell electronics or are like department stores have enough floor space that things don't seem cramped. There was tons of manga, anime, movies and TV shows, figures, video games, and pink stuff. Although when it came to figures and trinkets only the most recent stuff was getting shelf space. I can't read Japanese so manga and anime was pretty much out. Plus, music and videos are super expensive over there. A new release movie on DVD or Blu-ray might be over USD $50. PC and console games are only slightly more expensive than in the U.S. And there is a ton more selection. I picked up a few video games that are only available in Japan including Atelier Rorona, Record of Agarest War, and Agarest Senki Zero; I need to learn how to read Japanese before I can play them though. I would have also gotten Atelier Totori but it was releasing a couple of days after our return flight. I only picked up a couple of music CDs, because at those prices I couldn't just grab stuff that might be good. I did find a Final Fantasy XIII collectors music set though which I immediately purchased. (Have yet to buy the game though.) Mostly I bought figures to add to my collection: I got some Mari Makinami figures from the new Evangelion 2.0 rebuild; Nagi and Tsugumi from Crazy Shrine Maidens; Ein from Phantom, a couple of Vocaloid Hatsune Miku wind-up music toys; a distorted Rei; and Chocobo and Moogle plushies.

The other thing I spent a lot of money on is clothing. I really like Japanese casual street fashion. The sort of interesting stuff you can't find in the U.S. and gets featured in some video games. Most recently in The World Ends With You, a Nintendo DS game that deals heavily with fashion and takes place in Shibuya, although the store names were changed. (The game itself gets a bit repetitive and collecting all the items would take several play-throughs.) To find the better stuff, I ended up shopping mostly at Jeans Mate in Akihabara and Parco in Shibuya. Individual stores in Parco are relatively small and devoted to a single brand, the clothing selection is limited, and there is usually only a handful of specific styles per brand. Prices at Jeans Mate and some of the stores at Parco tended to start at around USD $30 for a T-shirt. But some of the really high-end stores in Parco sold a single T-shirt for USD $300. Some of the stores had more complex clothing, like jackets, that sold for USD $1000. This despite being something that could be made for a few dollars in material and labor. I limited myself to things that were priced at the lower end, but even then I think I spent more on clothing this one time than I've spent on clothing my entire life so far.

There were two things that made it more difficult to buy clothing in Japan. First was the extreme leaning towards girls' clothing. There are entire mall buildings that only contain girl clothes. I would say only about 10% of the stores sold boys' clothing. The two types of stores were also physically segregated in many cases. Only the larger non-boutique stores carried both male and female clothing.

Secondly, the clothes in Japan aren't sized for me. I had to purchase size XL / LL or size 4 (for shirts) and even then it is a tight fit. My shoes are 2cm larger than the largest they stock in shoes and socks. On many occasions I simply couldn't buy the clothes because they didn't sell it in my size. I guess there are a couple of stores that do sell larger clothing, but you have to go find them specially.

I think I could have spent a whole lot more money in Tokyo, both on toys and clothes. And there are still a lot of other things to do and see just in Tokyo itself, never mind the rest of Japan. I'm not much into sight-seeing, but I can imagine myself spending weeks more exploring just Tokyo.

Posted by josuah at 3:37 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 11, 2010

Where I Am

I guess I need to post this. I used to post a lot about what was going on in my life. Now not so much. Partially that is because I've been busy with other things, like running Neko Audio. Partially because I can't really maintain the rate at which I was posting reviews of all the movies, music, and video games I go through. But also partially because things started unravelling in my personal life in the past couple of years.

Anyone who has either followed my blog or bothered to read through will have noticed a large number of posts mentioning Luna. We're no longer married; we split last year. I debated with myself about posting this, but I figure my blog needs to contain a complete picture of things. Otherwise visitors, and myself when I read through the past, would only understand half. At least for the things I do post about.

I have started posting a bit more. There is a giant one year gap in my blog between the end of 2008 and the end of 2009. I won't be posting as frequently as I used to (which is somewhat disappointing to me as I used my blog to record what I thought of movies and video games) but I intend to continue posting about interesting things I come across and interesting things that are happening in my life.

Posted by josuah at 3:31 PM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 15, 2010

Not Everyone Gets A House

I found this article The Mad Scramble for Chinese Real Estate to be an interesting commentary on the large discrepancy between what new workers expect and what the market provides when it comes to housing. What I find particularly interesting is how closely it mirrors expectations of some of the people I've met in the San Francisco Bay Area.

For the majority of residential locations in the United States, housing prices are inline with average salaries. Meaning that a single person who makes an above average salary or a couple that individually make an average salary can easily afford the down payment and mortgage on a nice and relatively spacious home. No one expects the same from downtown New York City or San Francisco. Yet most people seem to expect it from the San Francisco suburbs. Especially if they grew up in another part of the country or moved here for work.

I can understand why. Things aren't that different, superficially. The area seems slightly more populated. The houses are relatively smaller and older. So logically these homes shouldn't cost as much as they do. But that is just a superficial view of things.

The wealth disparity in the Bay Area is significant. The median household income is only slightly higher than the rest the country. In other words, your typical clerk or service industry worker in Mountain View probably makes about $10k more than somewhere in the Mid-West. The difference between $40k/yr. and $50k/yr. is three months. But there's a much higher concentration of IT workers who are making significantly more money. And many of them are dual income. The difference between a single income of $50k/yr. and dual income of $250k/yr. is four years. This means the housing market has a higher percentage of customers (out of all residents) that can afford to pay more. The spread is too large for the people with lower salaries to compete.

In addition, there isn't really more room to expand within the existing cities. That means you won't see additional homes being added to Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Redwood City, Milpitas, etc. There is a bit of room left in San Jose, but not much. The population continues to increase. These cities are job centers. So prices on old small homes go up as demand increases but supply remains constrained.

Given this, I think it's easy to see why a 1200 square foot home might cost $500k. Even though the same home in your hometown might only cost $60k - $80k. You can't simply look at the size of a house and the overall look of its neighborhood and say the cost is wrong. Prices are no longer being artificially buoyed. This is just what things cost due to scarcity of land and the desirability of central housing locations.

(N.B. I haven't done any particular research into this area. This is just what I've concluded based on my own observations and through deductive reasoning.)

Posted by josuah at 11:28 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

May 7, 2010

Accidentally Lose Your U.S. Citizenship

Senators Leiberman (I-CT) and Brown (R-MA) has introduced a bill called the Terrorist Expatriation Act. It's a fairly short and simple proposal to amend 8 U.S.C. 1481 with text that allows for the revocation of U.S. nationality (either through birth or naturalization) for, in short, doing one of two things (paraphrased):

1. purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the U.S. or a U.S. ally that is currently providing support in a situation of U.S. hostilities


2. providing material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization

In my opinion, these two items aren't too controversial when viewed as a general goal. In one sense, they are either expanding upon or clarifying the definition of treason. Which is already listed as a reason your citizenship can be revoked.

However, I take issue with the second statement because it does not including purposefully. It would be quite easy to mistakenly provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization. Maybe you happened to write a big check to a door-to-door solicitor.

I also take issue with the proposed bill as a whole because it allows for revocation of your citizenship without being convicted of anything. The current law only allows for revocation of your citizenship because you have asked for it, or if you haven't then you can challenge it, or if you are convicted of treason (at which point citizenship is fairly moot). But the new section (8 U.S.C. 1481.a.8) that would be added by this bill doesn't require any due process.

Lastly, it's pretty unclear what might qualify as material support or resources. A public protest could easily fall within that generalization. I can also see courts, if any were involved, tied up for months debating whether or not someone acted purposefully.

For all the senators who have made public statements about needing to review the bill before being sure (I'm looking at you, Nancy Pelosi) it takes about 5 minutes. Take a copy into the bathroom.

Posted by josuah at 6:00 PM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 18, 2010

Florence + The Machine

I just got back from seeing Florence + The Machine live at Mezzanine in San Francisco. It was great and I had a lot of fun. Her music is unique and very engaging. There's something about her songs that is very hard to pin down; when asked what type of music it is I don't know that I can say something better than Alternative-Indie, and yet that's wrong. She sings real lyrics that remain catchy and magical. The backing band, and in particular The Machine, brings it all together to create an experience and music I want to listen to over and over again.

I ended up spending the night with Becker, whom I sold my extra ticket to, and a pair of sisters, Heidi and Mary, from Oklahoma who flew over for the weekend just to attend the concert (and do some tourist stuff). Becker was crazy excited the entire time. We also met a girl from Ireland who was stuck on holiday due to the volcano ash. Having them to hang out with did make it more enjoyable for me, although I spent most of the night just enjoying the music.

Before Florence + The Machine came on, some music was being played by DJ's Aaron and Nako. I liked some of what they spun, but probably less than half. The intro band was Holy Hail. Unfortunately it seems as though their setup was messed up because none of us could understand anything being sung. What little I could understand didn't impress me. Pretty much everyone was just standing around waiting for Florence + The Machine to show up.

Florence has an awesome voice and really gets into the music while singing, except she does it while being herself. When watching her on stage, I feel like she's dancing and flailing just the way she wants to and not through some choreographed set. I feel like she dances and moves the way I do. She sounds quite different when speaking instead of singing though.

I particularly like The Machine (Isabella Summers) who is on keyboards. I feel as though the drums provide the musical foundation but Isabella provides the glue. There are drums, bass, guitar, and harp. Everything else that flows throughout the songs is provided by Isabella. So I gave her a heart-hand and she gave me one back. ^_^

After the show, said good-bye to Becker as he was buying a Lungs T-shirt and gave Heidi and Mary a ride back to their hotel.

I should also mention that by chance Carol Chang happened to walk by while I was waiting in line. We talked for a minute or two as she was on her way to meet some friends for diner. I haven't seen her in years. It was really nice to see her again.

Posted by josuah at 10:21 AM UTC+00:00 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)