I am in Osaka too. If the schedule is good, I can join for the beer too.
34 karma · joined April 28, 2011
I am not sure if this will be of any help, but I have noticed there is a fashion trend among some young people, mostly girls, to dress like babies, you know with ping dresses and stripped stockings, baby aprons etc. They always seem to be currying some lollipop-type candy with them. I have seen them in Tokyo/Osaka but it seems very possible that this trend exists abroad as well. They seem to behave like a tribe, so they should have their magazines, events, web-sites.
Maybe if you could get in touch with that tribe and advertise yourself properly there, you may have chances of good conversion there.
However I believe one should not indulge in it.
This faith is very precious and this is exactly why it is a sin to rely upon it in the wrong circumstances. I live in Japan, that has a very low crime rate, but I found it very interesting when they told me "Don't leave anything valuable at the office. There is very little chance that something might happen, but can you imagine how you will feel and act towards your colleagues if something happens..." What you value you must protect. Although it sounds controversial, this means that it is your obligation to protect your faith to the goodness of people from the ones that could destroy it.
I agree that the core problem is the lack of economic unification.
I don't know if Greece is a third-world country, but definitely the Greek government managed this crisis are such, so it looks like Greece is going to share their fate.
Independently of who is going to benefit from what will happen from now on, the Greek government will be forced sell everything that belongs to the Greek people at ridiculously cheap amounts just to pay back the loans...
It has happened before, everywhere that IMF went...
I am very sorry, the site is not updated yet (because I didn't have time to get to it yet :( Sorry, things are getting a little crazy with day job recently... )
This group was initiated by Garr Raynolds of http://www.presentationzen.com/ but Garr became very busy, so since last year, together with another guy we run the show.
It has to do with the change of perspective. When traveling you usually curry your original perspective with you so it is kind of difficult to see things from another angle while bound for back home.
I guess it depends on how you travel though (the OP sounds like a very serious traveler).
My current work as a system engineer implementing ERP systems for overseas affiliates, takes me often to work abroad (from Japan, that is) for a few weeks a time. Although I don't have time to do almost any sight-seeing at all, and although they will usually have me stay in more or less high grade hotels (that narrow one's vision, because they are the same, everywhere), it is working together with the local operators and managers, eating together, understanding their work ethic and habits, getting their feedback, pushing it together through the transition period, so when I go back I feel I understand a little bit more about the country from these interactions than from whatever I saw during my limited time off work.
I had already traveled a lot ( as a tourist ) before I left Greece to come and live in Japan, when I started to make a life here, I practically had to rediscover myself. It is not so much the big things, it's the small ones : habits that I took for granted, jokes that do not sound funny, if you can ask someone's phone number... Like a very thin safety net of supporting culture I never new was there just disappeared underneath me.
I also had a fresh view of Greece , and my life before
I think traveling gives you a change of perspective difficult to grasp at home
The monetary system, as it exists today is based on debt as a lever for growth. Banks can get a deposit of 1$ and God/King/Char/President/Whatever gave them the right to lend 5$ with it, and hold the 5th person under obligation of debt, to pay back that one dollar which the bank that gave it to him DIDN'T HAVE in the first place. You have to give back that 1 dollar or you will lose what you bought with it. Proponents of this practice call it "value" of potential, they argue that banks can do this because if they lend 5$ for every 1$ they have, people who borrow these 5$ will really work their asses off and pay 5$ back, which means that banks valuate the "potential" of the market to create 5$ out of 1$. Then come investors, speculating the value of this "potential", buying the debt and selling it again for 12$ this time etc.
I thought that bitcoin was a chance to fight back the economy of debt. Every coin is 1BTC, no bank would be able to get it and magically transform it to 5BTCs any more. Potential would once again be expressed as ability to produce more or better of your products made for the same cost and EXCHANGE them for more or better products made by someone else, REAL things as assets against REAL things as liabilities exchanged through a non manipulatable medium.
Then, I woke up :) Bitcoin adopters and proponents are so unbelievably vested in the current status quo that they managed to create a caricature of the same, old monetary system replicated in the bitcoin world: exchanges that don't exchange bitcoins but integers, speculators, market crashes... like Wall Street No.2... and naturally "It is not profitable any more, sell"...
Actually, it might come as a surprise but Greece seems to have a lot of public assets which would give it a much better clear position than many other countries in Europe if they were to be compared.
However of course, it is no secret nowadays that even with a great clear position, if cash flow is not positive you may easily go under.
Do you understand how easy it would be to judge how a government performed by comparing two of these? And ask all the right questions, exactly as MS investors do with the "developers, developers, developers" CEO?
[EDIT] Disclaimer, I am Greek, I have no illusions about the management abilities of my country (sometimes I think we are born without the part of brain responsible for financial planning ;-), but I have strong opinions about the economy of debt, the way it is manipulated by the "market" and it's implications on the life of people. My opinion is biased, of course.
Of course, this is Japan and one can still get the credit for doing work behind the scene but I think it is an interesting idea to hack the "soft boss-hard boss" paradigm
Ability to code in another domain gives you leverage for work done IN that domain. The caveat is that knowing ONLY how to code without working knowledge of the domain itself will not get you very far.
It is so ironic, there are so many different diets, just to conceal the simple fact that if one eats excessively they will get fat and the simple fact that if one wants to be in good shape, there is a very simple straightforward answer, eat less move more. Instead we busy ourselves with the new " scientific breakthrough" that allows us to be eating bacon all year long and then drink the magic pill and wear our bikini just in time for the miss skinny contest.
P.s. The interesting dude is Odisseas, who before going close ro the sirens, he assessed the risk and decided, to hear their sing but not
I can understand that when I don't have a clue about how much is my product value, I can probe the market for an optimal price setting, but... but then again I should not be clueless about my niche and my product costs, should I? If I have a concrete plan saying that I need to make 40% profit, why should I take 60%, even if someone is willing to give it to me?
Why can't I say "Well, thank you for your kind offer, but I value my work at this price, this is enough for me to make a decent living, with the extra money please go buy cookies for your kids or give it to charity or whatever."
I mean, I look at myself, making everyday choices about what I can afford and what not, I would like to buy a good quality thing if I can afford it, and the list is usually longer than my affordance... well, my customers are in the same situation like me, they definitely have one more thing they would love to buy with their budget if they can afford it, so why should I take advantage of the fact that they would pay more for mine, if I already make enough?
Like someone before said, does the author know why he was able to sell it at double price? Knowing who his target customers are, should he?
Especially if one uses the incremental iteration paradigm, the commit history together with the code diff IS the documentation of one's code in it's most fundamental way, that is when I changed something, why, what I was ( thinking that I was ) doing etc.
In case that one has to maintain existing code, of course, the whole history is not available but still, refactoring committed similarly documents the evolution of the code in a similar way.