IntelligentJazz

Saw IntelligentJazz with TERUMASA HINO (trumpeter) at the Motion Blue on a on-off Sunny-Rainy day in Yokohama. It's nice to smell the air back home once in a while.

Every salaryman ought to get a dose of Tom Peters (in Japanese) to juice things up during the morning train commute, especially one who's fortunate enough to enjoy the zoo-like tranquility of the Tokaido line from Yokohama to Shibuya.

Desperately-Seeking Renters

Here is a novel concept to assist desperately-seeking apartment and house renters (or landlords). The site uses google maps to locate and give you a visual representation of the listings on the Craigslist. It works for most large cities for which the Craiglist keeps a directory. The only drawback is that you cannot search by "city" (such as limiting a search to, say, "Studio City").

New Romantic

A dose of BBC insight for a rainy day in L.A.:

New Romantic

1. (n.) a bloke who walks around wearing his sister's make-up, pouting.

or

2. (n.) a music genre of the early 1980s typified by Adam and the Ants, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, and the Human League, who walked around wearing their sisters' make-up and pouting.

Mobile Phone in California

Just bought a new, polished-black shell for my relatively ancient (by Japanese standards, which I've become rather fond of over the past 7-8 years) Motorola i205 at a stall at the Burbank Media Center.

This returning to the simpler designs of the old rotary-dial days actually is part of my conscious decision to focus more of life and work toward simplicity over clutter, practicality over fanciful design that serves nothing other than an aesthetic purpose.

The i205 may not be nearly as sexy as, say, Makoto Saito's AU KDDI Design Project: Penck; cell phone technology and design simply aren't areas where the U.S. can boast any sort of competitive edge over Japan. But then again, unlike the Oyayubi Sadai (the "thumb generation"), I don't need all the sophisticated messaging functions out here in California (mainly because no one else I know uses these functions).

I do dread the day when I need to make the switch over to the Blackberry. Nothing like another device to help me increase my productivity:

The idea that gadgets always make us more efficient "is a scam, an illusion," says David Greenfield, director of the Hartford-based Center for Internet Studies. That's because at their heart, gadgets enable multitasking.

And a growing body of evidence suggests that multitasking can easily turn into multislacking. It also increases errors, short-circuits attention spans, induces air-traffic-controller-like stress, and elongates the time it takes to accomplish the most basic tasks by up to 50% or more, according to University of Michigan psychology professor David Meyer.