Top of Yokohama: Lunch Buffet

I went to a restaurant called "Top of Yokohama" (トップ・オブ・ヨコハマ) in Shin-Yokohama last week. I heard about the restaurant from my wife. She told me that for 2.000 yen per person, we can have a lunch buffet (eat all we can eat), which was rarely heard in Japan but is getting more popular these days. Most of the food is mainly light though, ranging from croissants to salads and desserts. While I was there, there were only two kinds of heavy foods, that is if you can call them heavy: spaghetti and gratan (was it macaroni one ?).

Located on the 42th floor, it has a nice view. The restaurant circles around the hotel and you can choose the seat that you like. We chose the seat facing Nissan Stadium, and if you are discern enough, you can spot Ikea Kohoku store on the right part. Looking at the busy activities on the ground below, somehow I began to see my daily activities from broader perspective. Perhaps since we can't see far on the grounds, our minds tend to be short-sighted. At the same time though, I also felt like playing a game similar to SimCity (wiki).



We sat for more than two hours filling our stomachs. I personally liked the chocolate croissants, and our custom-made coffee-floats.


Now, I am hungry. Maybe I should return there tomorrow :)

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Soerabaya (Surabaya) - Djokjakarta (Yogyakarta) by Train in 1937

I found this train schedule when I was reading a book by Edward Tufte: Envisioning Information (edwardtufte.com). What made me surprised about this book is that, it was a secret military document describing a train schedule plan from Soerabaya (now Surabaya, my hometown) To Djokjakarta (now Yogyakarta). The year is written 1937 in the plan, and Tufte wrote that the plan belonged to the Dutch first, and then was rewritten by the Japanese.

Yes, the plan is excellent in envisioning information, as it can describe 16 variables on a flat paper like Tufte has said, but that's not the point why I am surprised. Although it is not described clearly if the plan has been executed and trains were operating according to the plan, I find it strange that if we had such a complex plan in 1937 (70 years ago), in which you can also find the plan of "normal", "express", and "super express" trains, why doesn't our current train transportation in Surabaya have at least such a schedule right now ?

The latest schedule which I found from www.eastjava.com only has one train going from Gubeng Surabaya to Yogyakarta in a day, as opposed multiple trains in the 1937 plan above. Now, aren't you just surprised ? The plan is inside a Western book describing about information today, but I haven't seen it before ( nor experienced the benefit of it of course) back in Indonesia.



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Flock 2 is now Available.

Flock 2, which uses Mozilla Firefox 3 engine is now available and can be downloaded from flock.com. I have discussed a little bit about flock a while back, in which I mentioned that it differentiates itself from the other browsers because it is a social browser, it is so integrated to famous social services such as YouTube, Facebook, Digg, etc.

If you had wanted to try Flock, but haven't had the chance to do so because you don't want to go back to using Firefox 2 engine, I think this is your chance to try it. Believe me, due to some "testing" tasks that were given to me, I currently have to use Firefox 3 (and IE7 !), and the inexistence of the internal RSS reader and other stuffs in Firefox 3, really made me wonder how I used to browse the Internet. Perhaps I am exaggerating too much, but I felt almost the same as when I try to remember how I used to live without a mobile phone.

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Neurosky: Brain Controlled Interface

I noticed this company called Neurosky a few days ago on a news article from JapanToday. I was a little bit skeptic at first since I thought that an interface by brain (at least a cheap one at that) is not possible on this day and age. Well, I was wrong. I was speechless when I saw the video above, which I found from Neurosky's website. I have always thought that perhaps we are in the middle of an important age in history, and this new invention made my belief even stronger.

The other day, I wrote a post about interface feedback and I wrote about virtual keyboards in science fiction movies which are formed by light, and although it sounds cool, now I feel that maybe it can be considered a high-tech (or low ?) imagination of an ancient civilization. I feel that I was watching a 1980 robot movie in which there is a big microphone inside a robot, or the old Knight Rider movie series.

Square Enix, a game company, has already planned to develop a game based on the new invention, and although concentrating to push buttons is still not as efficient as typing keyboards if you want to write a blog or letter, I bet it is just a matter of time before more advanced devices using this new technology are invented. Now, 10 years ago, could you have imagined that touch interfaces would look so ancient ? Let me see, if I remember correctly, that was Pentium 2 age !!

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Beautiful Versions of Our Faces

I found an interesting paper while I was watching Siggraph 2008 videos yesterday. The paper is called "Data-Driven Enhancement of Facial Attractiveness" and it describes a method to extract and modify the feature points of our faces based on some training data, so that the input faces will become more handsome or beautiful. Oh, I just can't wait to see the program uploaded on the web and try the program myself by inputting my photo. Who knows, maybe we can also make it an application on Facebook.

Maybe they can extend the method by also adding the method to output the ugly versions of our faces, or extend it so that not only does it work for people, but also for cartoon/anime characters. Anyone would like to see the "moe" version of your faces ? :)

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Throwing waste in recycle bins eliminates jobs ?

If you think the title is rubbish, I want to tell you that I don't agree with the above argument too. It was my friend's argument that I can't refute yet as of now, and I am hoping I will be able to find a way to do it after discussing with you.

I met one of my friends the other day, and we talked while walking to the nearest station. On the way though, he just threw his smoked cigarette on the road. I told him that it was not good to do so, and guess what ? Yes, just like written in the title, he said to me: "although I agree that it's not a good thing, it helps cleaners so that they don't lose their jobs".

The argument caught my tongue. Although I completely disagree with him, I can see his point of view and I just can't bring myself to say "oh, it will be a better world if everything is already clean so that we don't need cleaning service" since if suddenly there were no trash on the roads/streets, some people would inevitably lose their jobs, wouldn't they.

On another side note though, although I doubt anyone reading this blog would start a business of collecting garbage, I am quite surprised that I haven't heard of any private company doing some sort of cleaning service in my country, since I think piles of garbage are wasted everyday in their improper places in Indonesia, causing major flood in big cities, and I don't think there is any government regulation preventing people to open up a cleaning service business.

Anyway, can you suggest what I should say to my friend the next time I meet him ? Surely, you don't want your child to say: "Mom/Dad, we shouldn't throw garbage in the garbage cans because the cleaners will lose their jobs.", do you ?

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