Chicks dig it

Big doll

2008-09-01T08:44:00.001-07:00

Men found

2008-08-18T01:08:00.001-07:00

"Today three Russian climbers lost in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan for 2 weeks established contact: one of the hikers called his wife and said he is OK". -- Russian TV news report.

Opening of Olympics, Russian TV commentary

2008-08-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

- Some 200 girls carrying the names of the countries in the ceremony are selected from millions for their appeal, we can vouch for this. They were eager to get to know our second commentator Vyacheslav and he responded to them in the same way. As for myself, I've got a nice girl in Russia...
Vyacheslav: uhm... indeed. Moving on with our report,...

Ad compain for Russia

2008-08-05T02:49:00.000-07:00

Apparently this ad ordered by Russian government from a western ad agency was quite controversial in Russia. I find it quite funny though.

Life of rich and famous

2008-08-04T03:10:00.000-07:00

My induction to the Moscow bohemian life happened a couple of days ago with introduction to the up and coming actresses Daria and Ekaterina Nosik (and yes, they are twins). We watched their performance in a basement club aptly called Schwein which was cool, since the place is so tiny and the stage is close to the tables, and then chatted with them a bit.

icml

2008-07-10T01:05:00.000-07:00

a snippet of a dialogue at ICML:

person introducing: Stewart
me: pardon?
person: Stewart. Stewart Russel.
me: *stunned*
me: the author?
SR: yes
me: I have all the editions.
SR: Do you have Russian edition?
me: *stunned*

Helsinki, Redrum

2008-07-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

Went to this club last night: Redrum. They promised a "famous" japanese dj, and delivered one, but I actually liked their in-house DJ better. The guy talked a lot and declared himself the ambassador of reggae.

Kimchi fiesta

2008-06-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

2008-03-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

Very nice. Thanks Kei.

Michele made this girl roll her eyes crazily while she was making japanese-style moans ;-) it's pretty good. I've just bought Canon G9, hope it works. This is in addition to the Zorky 4 cam that i am carrying now, which i lost the skill to operate and already ripped my first film out of the cartridge ;-/ In old times it wouldn't be a problem for me to take the film out and rewind it in a dark room, but these days.. I wonder if I can even find an empty cartridge anywhere these days.
Zorky-4

Yeah sure.

2007-12-25T14:52:00.001-08:00

This one is strictly for dental experiments:

2007-12-06T17:46:00.000-08:00

Here's the demo of dynamic balancing by a Sarcos humanoid robot given during Humanoids 2007 conference here in Pittsburgh last week. This is one of our professors (Chris Atkeson) and my classmate in the background!

And here is a similar work on the very similar Sarcos in Japan's ATR: movie

Modern Dance class wisdoms

2007-09-22T16:33:00.001-07:00

"Study a little, dance a lot."

Day 7, Hanabi, Day 8 Aikido

2007-08-05T06:15:00.000-07:00

So first week is gone in a blink. Damn. Went to see hanabi at edogawa though was cool. Took 3 attempts to get the right train, each error had to be fixed by returning to the original station. Nice, and this is under the guidance of a local.

Went to the famous Honbu Dojo today. So here comes the list of thins NOT to do to survive your fist visit in Japanese dojo.
DO NOT be barely on time.
DO NOT ask the first guy where is the entrance to the dojo from the locker room to find out that he is a 50 year old blackbelt with two fresh cut scars on his cheek.
DO NOT get another blackbelt as your partner and stick to him for whole session (actually that wasn't bad)
but DO NOT drop your blackbelt partner so that his head bounces from your knee.

Day 5: down with cold but nanpa must go on

2007-08-02T06:33:00.000-07:00

Inflated the gymnic ball today to add it to the 2 other balls that guys have been already using in the lab. "You've got the biggest ball in the lab". "Why, thank you."

Photos

2007-08-01T19:21:00.000-07:00

Here are the pics up to today.

night 3 morning 4

2007-07-31T19:13:00.000-07:00

so after being eaten by mosquitoes and ants and whatever other strange insects decided to jump on me i decided to stop being a Hiro and moved to the hallway.

Jet lag has a good side-effect that it's no problem to wake up at 5am. So I went to stretch my sore spots from sleeping on the floor to a local park. It was a quarter to 7am and local elderly just started assembling around to clean the park and to socialize. I did some tai chee and was a bit surprised they paid no attention to me. Instead I was imagining that tomorrow's village paper would say on the front page "Local elderly community revitalized by a foreigner doing tai chee in the park in wee hours".

After that I went to the american embassy which is a cult place for everyone who ever studied japanese by Jorden Noda books. yes, i saw the mythical toranomon and okura hotel. the security looked tight but much less threatening than in american embassies in canada and russia. a tip for terrorists: the guard power at the main gate can be reduced by 50% by involving two guards in answering the question what the best way to get to a station X.

night 3

2007-07-31T08:20:00.000-07:00

went to shinjuku and harajuku today to pick up my keys and buy a prepaid cell phone. total score: nanpa 1, gyakunan 1, correct keys: 0.
yeah that's right. they gave me a wrong key so I am typing this while camping in the front yard of my traditional j-house being eaten by mosquitoes and ants (thanks for the aikido unoform saving some spots).

first days

2007-07-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

First day: my office is between the imperial garden and a school. The bathroom has a view of schoolgirls training to play tennis and juggle some kind of rods and the conference room has the view of the roofs of the imperial palace.

my welcome pack included a cubicle with a pc setup with ubuntu and a bottle of vodka on the desk. nicce.

Had to buy an envelope in a postoffice today. It's like a mini tv-drama. It had a prologue, the catharsis and the epilogue. The clerk has to use (1) a book with prices, and (2) an english dictionary, to translate the word "taishikan" that i just used in japanese back to english "embassy" to use in her english response ;-)

Undefeatable robot

2007-07-02T21:20:00.001-07:00

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=FokiPmQkUiU

Tokyo trip research

2007-06-30T23:34:00.000-07:00

I decided to stay on the outskirts of Tokyo, close to the area I stayed during my first visit, Ikebukuro. Now it's even further than that, the ward of Nerima 練馬区, the station is called Kotake Mukaihara 小竹向原 which I translate as "Freakin nowhere with little bamboo". Speaking of freaking that wikipedia article gave some good and bad news. Good news: Miyazawa Rie is from there, Musashino Daigaku ("Musashino, Musashino.." -- Matsu Takako in April Story) is also there, as well as apparently a bunch of manga artists. But also a Ju-on house. Damn. I guess I won't be able to sleep there that much. The other info I found online is quite endearing tho:

Apparently they have some nice beer places.
Awesome little food joints I am gonna embarrass myself and will end up cutting off my pinky.
Nerima also is a part of a great phrase Nerima Daikon Brothers.

Overall it's quite intriguing.

Beerbot

2007-06-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

Asahi Beerbot. The article.

2007-05-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

Hanson Robotics Jules

Keepon dancing, beatch!

2007-04-11T20:22:00.000-07:00

Ok this is a cool dancing robot made by a student here:

It seems to be quite popular on youtube. Even humans want to be this cool:

But the robot stays always ahead adding some street cred:

The future of HCI

2007-03-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

Wired link.

Clean-up time

2007-03-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

Corpse collecting robot. Of course it's in Japan.