It's just like home!, May 29, 2004

My own living conditions aside, the main reason I love this book is that it is a look into REAL homes. Not those models you see in magazines or on TV. This is how real people live and that's what makes it all the more appealing. When faced with astronomical land prices, people are forced to live in a smaller space, while trying to keep their own "style," which is what this book is about.

As one reviewer wrote, the photos are circa 1992, but over 10 years later, things haven't changed--my friend's apartment (she lives in Fukushima, though) looks just like some of these places--an organized mess. Even when I was living there a few years ago, my place had that "less is more" feel, with no furniture and piles of books and CDs lining the walls.

The photos are bright and the overall atmosphere created is one of comfort--even when faced with mountains of "mono"--and that is the idea. One man's trash is another man's treasure and while some may cringe when seeing some of these places, one must always remember that these are/were people's homes and that, to them, this is comfort! The photos are not glamorous (the author is not a professional photographer and clearly states as much), but they are not meant to be, nor do they need to be.

This is book is a great piece of nostalgia for people who lived in Japan (like myself), and a wonderful insight into the way real people live in one of the largest, most expensive cities in the world.

A Seperate Peace, May 28, 2004

A Separate Peace is a story about a high school boy named Gene. Gene is a friend of the most popular boy in his school. His name is Finny. Finny is the best at all the sports and is quite a daredevil too. Finny tries to show off and at the same time get Gene some self-esteem. He does this by jumping out of a very tall tree and landing in a river. When he gets Gene to do it too, that gives Gene some confidence. When thinking their friendship over, Gene determines that Finny just brings him along to all the crazy excursions so that he'll (Gene) fail his classes. That thought is completely ridiculous for someone to think about Finny. One night, Gene finds out that he had Finny all wrong and that Finny brought him because they were best friends. Gene was extremely frustrated that he had his best friend all wrong. In his anger, he jounced the limb that Finny was out on, and made him fall. It is very surprising that Gene did this. If anything you would think that Gene would try to be very nice to Finny to make up for it. Instead, he ruined his best friend's life. When Finny fell, he broke his leg. That was where Gene's life started getting worse. Finny was now crippled for life. A lot was revealed to Gene during the time when Finny was bed ridden. Gene realized how very real WWII was. Since nothing much from WWII took place in America, some Americans at that time developed the theory that the whole war was a hoax. Finny was able to convince Gene that this theory was true, even though he didn't believe it himself. Gene's friend Leper Lepellier was the average person who was scared of everything. When he joined the war, it seemed as false as ever. Gene thought that the war couldn't be real if Leper, the most scared person in the world, joined the war effort. Then, he came back to the school. The war had driven him crazy. When Gene saw this, he realized that the war was very real and that everything that was in the newspapers was true after all. Leper was hallucinating and seeing things that weren't there. He was going to be given a section eight discharge, but he deserted. That is like a dishonorable discharge only worse. A section eight is what the army gives people with mental problems. If you get a section eight discharge, you would have an unbelievably hard time getting a job. Most people won't give a person with a section eight discharge a job. Leper started talking nonsense when Gene came to see him. Soon after, the meanest person in this book except for Gene, Brinker, held a meeting to try to find out what happened to Finny. (No one except Gene and Leper knew exactly what happened) Leper came to the meeting and testified against Gene, and Finny, disgusted with the fact that his best friend had betrayed him, left the room, ran down the school hallway and fell down the stairs, which rebroke his recently healed leg. When the doctor reset his leg, some marrow went to the heart and killed him.
Thus end the tragic events of a tragic story. Gene ruined his friend's life and indirectly killed him. Anyone in Gene's place would probably feel irreversibly horrible about themselves. This story depicts what a person will do when driven by jealousy.

Laura Grows Up, May 20, 2004

In learning about the Amish I find their life is similar: a long boring childhood filled with lots of work, married life that is even more work and always a struggle, and in between, These Happy Golden Years where a person reaches young adulthood
and spends a good deal of time socializing and meeting friends and having many happy times.

This is the perfect place for the "Little House" series to end. But if you're like me, You'll keep reading: The First Four Years(Laura and Almonzo's new marriage), Farmer Boy(Almonzo's childhood), and Little House in the Ozarks(a collection of newspaper articles Laura wrote as an adult). Then I guess it will be time to visit the "Little House" museum in Minnesota!

A must for any Mac owner!, May 10, 2004

It's true that it meets most of my needs and with a simple, clean interface. I can make a music CD and store files in no time and it can even create Video CDs and DVDs with menus.

Of course, to many, Toast may seem redundant, as Mac OS X can handle most of your burning needs natively, but I prefer to use 3rd party software for those things, as it was created specifically for that purpose. However, the two things that Toast can do that Panther cannot are create Video CDs and burn DVDs directly from MPEG and Quicktime files without the need to demux audio.

I get some Japanese TV shows from friends in Japan in MPEG format and I like to watch them on my TV, so it's nice to be able to burn them into VCD or DVD format for viewing and backup. If you do a lot of video downloading, this really can come in handy. Also, it works GREAT with EyeTV (sold separately) for the Mac, so you can record your favorite TV shows and put them on CD!

My only complaint is that the DVD/VCD menu option stinks. There is only one menu interface and you cannot choose layout, music, background photo or anything. It's just a plain blue screen with a thumbnail of the video and text titles. And the thing is, it's not very nice--it's borderline gaudy and not what I'd choose for a standard menu layout.

But, with that aside, this is a product I can wholeheartedly recommend for any Mac user with above-average burning needs.