Geek news warning: sane people and anybody for whom such acronyms as PHP or GPL merely evocate some brand new drugs the kids might be into these days: you are probably better off skipping this one.

I’ll try to keep it short.

Spam Karma 2 is now released as GPL v.2. This essentially means you can do anything you want to it, except claim you made it (copyright and attribution notice must remain there). You should also note that any attempt at deriving some ill-deserved profit from it through harebrained web marketing schemes will earn you both my long-standing scorn and a nut-shriveling decrease to your actual karma.

I suppose another angle to that post’s title could be:
Officially discontinuing Spam Karma’s development: so long and thanks for all the fish
as this is what this truly is about.

But, such a title would be slightly misleading (and no doubt heavily quoted out of context): Indeed, I am hereby officially announcing that I will no longer support, maintain or further develop Spam Karma (beside some very occasional, very limited poking, until the transition to a self-maintained project is completed). However, thanks to the magic of free software, all the unsung heroes of the Open Source world will soon rise to take over and bring you a stronger, better, more closely supported version of Spam Karma!

Okay, what’s more likely to happen is that nobody will really bother taking over, except perhaps a handful well-intentioned but utterly clueless beginner coders who will quickly find themselves overwhelmed by the task and next be seen running away screaming at the top of their lungs. Hey, I’m not blaming anybody: I wouldn’t waste my time on a non-paying, open-source community project either…

But on the off-chance that you would (and trust me it won’t do anything to help you get laid either), I have set up a Google Code repository, which could become the jumping point to some magnificent community-based development effort (or not). If you are interested in participating in any way, contact me (mail or contact form) with a *brief* description of who you are, what you can do and what you wanna do. I don’t need a resume (I am not hiring), just a very quick idea of what level of responsibility you’d be willing to take on the project. I’ll put in the first couple people that seem to know what they are doing (and do not sound like they’ll be selling everything to Russian mafia-owned spam sites) as administrators of the project, and hopefully from there on, things will work by themselves…

If you think you’d like to tackle any aspect of SK2 development (including possibly porting it to other platforms), here is your chance. Speak now or go back to more fruitful and life-rewarding endeavours forever.

Oh, and as for the “reasons”, well, here they are:

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Location: Hair of the Dog, Golden Gai’s one and only true punk bar.

Yi and I having a heavily inebriated wednesday evening night out, group of young Japanese boys discussing their next band’s club night on the other side of the bar, 時計じかけのオレンジ projecting to the tiny corner screen, random punk score blaring through the speakers…

Barmaid: [handing a menu-like list of all-time punk records] Please pick anything you would like to hear from that list.

Dave: Huh… let’s see… I don’t know… how about Japanese punk…?

Yi: [showing rather random entry in the list] Hey! that Japanese punk band’s called So-Do-Mu!!! Tee hee hee…

Dave: Yay for Sodomu…

Yi: Tee hee hee…

Dave: [to the barmaid] How about playing some “Sodomu”…

Barmaid: Sure, Right on its way…

[couple minutes of fumbling around the mp3 collection on the computer, then finally the track changes...]

Yi: Hey! that doesn’t sound so bad actually…

Dave: Yea, I’m not sure that part is really their own… Probably an intro of sorts…

[Young japanese guys mumbling things about ongoing music in their corner]

Young Japanese Guy #1: Blahblahblah, right?

Young Japanese Guy #2: Blahblahblah… No, I don’t think so, this must
be Chopin…

Young Japanese Guy #3: Chopin? Mmmnnn… Blahblahblah…

Dave: Actually, that’s Beethoven… Moonlight sonata.

Young Japanese Guy #1: Really? Oh… maybe…

Young Japanese Guy #2: Oh yea! of course…

Young Japanese Guy #3: Definitely Beethoven!

[All three guys: swooning to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata's first movement, Adagio Sostenuto]

Dave: …

Dave: So yea… this is one of Tokyo’s most hardcore punk bar.

Dave: …

One little-known feature of the Japanese Input tools on OS X is the ability to easily access a whole lot of unicode symbols without having to go dig through the Character Palette each and every time. If you enable Japanese Input (also known as Kotoeri) on your mac, hitting a keyboard shortcut (apple-space by default, I think) will toggle kana input on and off, whereby you can type japanese words in kanas and press the spacebar to pick a matching kanji (followed by ‘enter’ to validate the transliteration).
The nifty bit comes from the availability of UTF-8 characters that are not kanji, but nonetheless useful in a lot of situations. Just as any other kanji, typing a kana sequence (usually the name of the symbol in Japanese), followed by a press of the spacebar, will automatically let you insert the desired symbol.
Note: Apparently, most of these work equally well on Windows Japanese Input system, but I haven’t tested it.

For example, any Japanese girl knows all too well how to obtain the following cutesy icons:
おんぷ[onpu]　→　♬♩♪♫
ほし[hoshi]　→　☆★

On a more pragmatic note, you can also choose from a very complete set of arrows:
やじるし[yajirushi]　→　↑↓☝⇔ etc.

And one of my personal favourite: european currency symbols that would otherwise take half an hour to find on a standard US keyboard:
ゆーろ[yuro] →　€
ぽんど[pondo] →　£

Another very cool set for your scientific paper-writing needs:
すうがく[suugaku]／えんざん[enzan]　→　√∃∀≠±∇

Not to mention the entire greek alphabet:
あるふぁ[arufa]　α
べーた[be-ta]　β
がんま[ganma]　γ
でるた[deruta]　δ
しぐま[siguma]　σ

etc. etc.

You will find even more of these in this large (albeit probably not exhaustive) list of special character shortcuts.

There is a lot I would like to write about the recent news from Ireland…
But frankly, I can’t be arsed and it would be nothing you couldn’t read elsewhere anyway.

So to keep it short and bitter, I’ll just say that, as a fierce Euro-hopeful, I’m doubly disappointed by this result. Not only because it drags the once promising European process further into the ditch where it’s been for the past couple years, but also that Ireland, of all countries, had to be the one responsible for doing so.

If by now you haven’t heard a thousands times how Ireland virtually owes a huge share of its current miracle economic success to the very European solidarity process they have just bailed out on, then you must have been sleeping for the past 20 years.

It’s bad enough seeing people and countries act as selfish me-first teenagers, but when said country was until not so long a clear beneficiary of such solidarity and decides to leave as soon as they are finally asked to pitch in… That’s both infuriating and slightly dispiriting about people.

We sure did our best to make up for yesterday’s disappointing cancellation of outdoorsy beach partying fun (for weather purposes. damn screwed-up rainy month of May. grrr).

• Saturday night thus got converted into food and drinks in Golden Gai, mad dancing at Yellow with H.
• Theo Parrish is still a music god.
• Worst excuse for last minute flaking, ever, courtesy of Fred and Natalie: “can’t make it. the dog ran out. we are waiting at home for her to come back” (so ok: the dog really ran out during her midnight walk… still, shouldn’t you at least make up an excuse that is believable?).
• Surprisingly fresh and early wake-up, lovely brunch under the sun.
• Took out my fancy (loaned) MTB for a first ride. Now realize how ridiculously clunky my mamachari was in comparison: that thing is made of thin air and climbing hills with it is actually fun.
• Also remembered why sometimes fixed-gear bikes are nice (and why having a plastic bag in your bag is a good idea for when your bike chain derails).
• Collected yet another piece of bleepy machinery.
• Stopped by Café U_U to say hi and check out Yuki’s opening (only one month left to check out her cool artworks, folks!).
• Met up with Justine at Canal Café: chilling in the sunset by the canal with the occasional Chuo-sen train flickering and sparkling in the background: that’s what Tokyo Summer is all about. Unfortunately, getting eaten by mosquitoes as soon as dusk hits: also.
• Stuffed ourselves on delicious Japanese soul-food at ろばたの炉: loads of veggies and mushrooms, incredibly smooth cream cheese tofu, katsuo tataki (seared on a mini-bonfire right there in front of us)… Oh yea: I also finally got my ocha-zuke.
• Capped the night with some lovely Yama Neko sweet potato shochuu to make me appreciate the fact that the road from Iidabashi back to my place is just one long straight line.

Three years since I last owned any serious piece of bleepy-music-making equipment…

Only have to get a midi keyboard next week and we should be back in business for real.

I foresee a sharp decrease in outdoors activities for the weeks to come.