IKEA Japan was in the news today in a paper in Sweden. Apparently a man in Chiba had little accident when trying to assemble a chest. According to a METI's recent press release a screw broke and a piece of it hit him in the eye. Apparently the man had tried a slotted screwdriver (flathead) on a phillips (whether they really mean a phillips, or pozi, I don't know). Now, I could be wrong but the things I have bought from IKEA has a manual containing a rather big picture of a screw head with a cross on it. For me this means that one should use a crosshead driver and preferably nothing else.

So a little info on screwdrivers, link
Read it and think of the man in Chiba.

So it is time to educate mankind, and what better subject than the Japanese language. Some people say that the Japanese language is the world's most difficult language and when it comes to the written Japanese this might be correct. However the spoken language is very simple, you only need two words, or rather two sounds.

You see how easy it is. The best part of it is that it is also true, at least to 63 %.
Now you try!

Update on "the change of layout". As you can see it looks the same. After a lot of contemplating I decided to revert it back to the original layout, mostly because I liked the colours. But I still had the problem of the width, or rather the lack of width. So what to do? Well, some advanced edge programming skills can sometimes come in handy. So I altered the margins. To alter the margins however, is a delicate operation where there is no room for mistakes. I usually use the analogue of a surgeon and surgery.


Ok, so I know that was just a load of rubbish, I had a look at a manual and changed the pixel value in three places. Still, being fairly illiterate when it comes to computers I feel rather good with myself.

So I changed the layout. Change; something to like, something to hate or just something to get used to. I usually hate when newspapers change the layout or the size too for that matter. I can't find things and I want it to return to what it looked like before. Then again one doesn't want to be a conservatist (is this really a word?), someone that can't stand change and wants things to remain like they have always been. I guess I am a one of those who are annoyed for a couple of minutes and then forgets the reason why and is finally content with the change. To take an example, web browsers. I, like many others, used MS Internet Explorer, and had for a fair amount of years. In my defence I can say that I used Netscape and only defiantly change to explorer*. A friend of mine showed me firefox and its at that time unique tab-system. Anyhow, firefox, no not for me I thought, but after giving it a try I changed web browser and have never used explorer again, apart from those rare times when a programmer have missed out on the wonders of non-MS web browsers and decided just to support explorer.

So, where were we, right, change of layout. Yes, I had to change the layout since, my previous layout was too narrow to show the full size of youtube. Now I use something called "streched...". Unfortunately it also meant changing the colour of my blog, too bad, I liked the ochre colour that I had before...............but then again, we can't be against change can we!

* Yes, I try to stay away from anything MS, at least if I can. Open source all the way!

I just noticed that I still haven't written anything about music.
I know this is a bit old but I just had to spread the word or at least let more people see it. Not that that many people come to my little blog. Still though.



Yes, a wee bit of a political statement of the situation of today's Japan from the foreign community in Japan - GAIJIN INVASION

No, I'm only joking but the song is really catchy, please enjoy. I sure do. now having listened to the song eight times to the despair of my partner.