Best iPhone App ever, if you commute by Bus in Boston – Open MBTA

By daigo | Published: Monday, February 1, 2010

Amazing. Recently, I wrote about how I was disappointed that I (stupidly) paid $0.99 for an app called Catch The Bus. That paid application only supports 5 MBTA bus lines. On that post, I got a comment that said “Hey Check out OpenMBTA mobile website.” The website was awesome. Once you get used to the very plain simplistic design, the functionality was all there. It was very cool mobile website. I even had it added to my Home Screen,

And today, I just realized that Open MBTA has an iPhone App version out!It is an open source project and is free! as in free speech AND free beer. It is friggin’ awesome. If you commute using public transportation in Boston, you GOTTA download this app. It is so cool and I am really grateful for the developers who spend time developing this stuff – Thanks Dan!. You have created arguably the most usable app that I have on my iPhone.

Posted in Linux, Mac, and LAMP Open Source, Tech, Gadget, and Computer | Leave a comment

Another ranting and nonsense on Twitter (for 2010-01-31)

By daigo | Published: Sunday, January 31, 2010

I miss baseball. This time of the year is the hardest. I tweeted about Eri Yoshida, first female to pitch in Arizona Winter League, and Jeremy Lin, Harvard basketball player who could be first Asian American draft pick in NBA history. HIsanori Takahashi still don’t have team yet.
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Japan’s knuckleball princess

By daigo | Published: Thursday, January 28, 2010
Eri Yoshida, photo by Reuters via Sankei Shinbun

Japan's nuckleball princess Eri Yoshida, photo by Reuters via Sankei Shinbun

Japan’s 18-year-old knuckleball princess, Eri Yoshida, is participating in instructional Arizona Winter League. And now I read that she is named a starter for the Opening Day game.

Yoshida to Start Friday

The Arizona Winter League (AWL) announced Japanese RHP Eri Yoshida, the 18-year old female knuckleball phenom from Japan, will start on Opening Night for the Yuma Scorpions in their AWL contest against Team Canada. First pitch is set for 6:00 pm at Desert Sun Stadium.

Yoshida was the first Japanese female to play professionally in Japan and her debut for the Kobe 9 Cruise in the Kansai League was attended by over 12,000 fans.

Since arriving in Arizona for the start of the AWL’s 3-day spring training session, Yoshida, listed at 5′1″ and 114 lbs, has been roomed with Tiffany Brooks, a two-time silver medalist in international women’s baseball who is also here to play in the 2010 edition of the AWL. Yoshida threw yesterday in one of the afternoon intra-squad games held at the Ray Kroc Complex and looked impressive with good command and location.

Yoshida’s manager during the AWL will be Mike Marshall, the President and Field Manager of the GBL’s Yuma Scorpions. Marshall played in Japan in the ’90s for the Nippon Ham Fighters and is very excited to have Yoshida on his roster, “Having played in Japan, I am thrilled to be able to return the wonderful hospitality that I have received and help Eri further her dream.”

Brooks will also be making history, becoming the first female from the United States to pitch in the league. Brooks has also been working out in the field at first base and getting tutelage from AWL hitting coordinator Darryl Brinkley.

- By Dan Hawkins, 1/27/2010

Here is a link to press release when she joined the team in Dec 15. She pitched an inning in a intra-squad exhibition game, going 1 Inning, 1 hit, 1 walk, 1 K, and a run scored (un-earned). In her blog, she says “American baseball is more slippery, feels bigger, and distance between seams feels wider, and I need to get used to it.” (but actually, the baseball size should be exactly the same – at least should be in the pro leagues. However players do say those because it uses different material for threads and hide, and the seams in US are said to be higher than in Japan, causing Japanese pitchers to say it feels bigger.) Eri-chan’s story has come across the Pacific a little bit, here is an AP story of her start in Japan, or MLB,.com story about how the “history was made in professional baseball”. More recently, Yahoo’s Big League Stew has written about her coming to AWL. She has even “beaten” the Hroshima Carp in an exhibition inning. Also, there was an interview with her posted on Boston’s WEEI’s Sox Booth blog last year.

I do think it is a long-shot that she makes it in to the pro ball in U.S. I just heard former Brockton Rox coach Justine Siegal speak at a SABR event in Boston last fall. She is a very smart and strong woman, but even she had very tough experience with all-male professional baseball world (good story of her in NCAA Champion magazine, 2009 Fall profile.) It would be interesting what would develop from this Eri and Tiffany Brooks’ story (This Huffington Post story about Brooks is quite interesting), and hope it is not just a publicity stunt. After all, it could be the modern day story of legendary Jackie Mitchell, who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in 1931

More Photo Links from sankei.jp.msn.com:
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Different look to Google Reader and Google Calender

By daigo | Published: Thursday, January 28, 2010

I’ve been using Google Reader to track my news and using Google App’s calender, which sync to my iPhone. Just found out using following user scripts, I can make them look nice too. Very cool.

Very nice.

Update: I guess Google released a redesign of Google Reader, causing “Mark all as read” button to disappear. That makes it unusable for me, so I am back to the old Google design…. Hope the new user script will come out again. (too lazy to update/trouble shoot myself…)

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Departures

By daigo | Published: Tuesday, January 26, 2010

I saw a very good movie, an academy award winning Japanese film (2009 Best Foreign Language Film of the Year), Departures, or Okuribito as it is called in Japan. It is very good, I highly recommend it.

First, it would be amiss to not mention the main character’s name is Daigo. I used to tell people Daigo is not very common name, and I told that to my wife when first I met her, then, the first Japanese person she saw on the TV (I think it was one of Olympic event) was another Daigo. Anyway, it was very good movie, but why can’t Japanese men tell their wives the truths? The main character, Daigo, did not tell his wife that he purchased $180,000 cello, and he wouldn’t tell her what his job was. I had the same reaction when I saw 1996 Japanese film Shall We Dance, (BTW, don’t bother with American remake with J-Lo and Richard Gere) when the main character wouldn’t tell his wife that he is taking dance lesson. That was driving me crazy. Perhaps the same reason Daisuke wouldn’t tell his team about his injury….

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Twitter for 2010-01-24

By daigo | Published: Sunday, January 24, 2010

SABR meeting was great, and that was about it for this week.
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I like to eat!

By daigo | Published: Thursday, January 21, 2010

A friend of mine Gil Asakawa always randomly tweeted his yummy food description with hashtag #twEATs. I loved it. I take lots of photos of food I eat. It is on my flickr pages like here, here, here and here. Lately, I got an iPhone and started using foursquare, a going out log, which is cool, and I have been a Yelp “elite” squad for some time now (what ever that is). All those things are kind of related, and I just needed a place to get all those things together. Then, I remembered another nice iPhone/web integration is Tumblr. I used to try to do a Sketch-a-day website with it and failed miserably. It was summer of 2008, it just took way too much time and effort. It had been a dead blog for over year and half. So, here, I just decided to resurrect it. There, become my “Itadakimasu” Tumblr.

Japanese people say “Itadakimasu” before you eat. Which, roughly translated, means “Thank you god/source for this meal.” I decided that when I say Itadakimasu, I will also take a snap shot with my iPhone. And Tublr it here. Just because.

Posted in Life is Good | 1 Comment

Daisuke, Okajima Twitter for Jan. 17, 2010

By daigo | Published: Sunday, January 17, 2010

This week’s twitter digest include Daisuke Matsuzaka groin injury (which I translated “inner thigh injury), Okajima’s 1 year deal and others.

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Catch the Bus iPhone application (and MBTA Bus 70)

By daigo | Published: Sunday, January 17, 2010

Little disappointed in the “Catch the Bus” iPhone application. I paid $0.99 thinking it will at least provide me with MBTA Bus schedule, but it only supports 5 lines (as of today, Jan. 16., 2010). Bus lines 39, 111, 114, 116, and 117. It doesn’t say that on the application page when you buy it. Oh well. Yes, it is only 99 cents but I could have send it to Partners in Health… Anyway. I hope MBTA puts GPS on my bus line (70 and 70A) so that I get some use out of the app. Based on the feedback it is getting, it would be awesome when that day comes.

I take bus 70, which goes from Watertown Sq, Watertown to Central Sq, Cambridge. I don’t have schedule handy, so I am going to put it here in my blog, and bookmark it so I can access it from my iPhone. By the way, this blog looks great from iPhone thanks to Crowd Favorite’s Word Press Mobile Edition plug in. So here I go.

UPDATE: AWESOME! Thanks to the comment from Dan, I’ve discovered OpenMBTA. It even tells you how many of those trips are left, and even show you the closest location via geo-location. Crazy!

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Posted in Tech, Gadget, and Computer | 2 Comments

Japanese pitchers and uniform number 18

By daigo | Published: Thursday, January 14, 2010

Blog called Mets by the numbers had a kind of interesting post about significance of uniform numbers in Japanese culture: Why Igarashi Was Issued No. 18, following the news that Mets’ new reliever, Ryota Igarashi, picked the uniform number of 18 this year.

Of course, our man Daisuke Matsuzaka wears number 18 for the Boston Red Sox.

When I first read the question “Why is number 18 significant number in Japan?”, first answer that popped in my head, speaking from my personal experience growing up in Japan, was that its because Yomiuri Giants’ number 18 has always been “Ace’s number.” But funny thing is when I looked it up, in my lifetime only two Yomiuri Pitchers have worn 18: Tsuneo Horiuchi from 1967-86 and Masumi Kuwata (also played for Pittsburgh Pirates) from 1986-2006.

Horiuchi is no doubt a great pitcher, he is in Japanese hall of fame and won bunch of Sawamura awards and MVPs, and Kuwata, for the most part, was a a great pitcher, too.

Other significant pitchers that I came across with quick internet search of who wore 18 are:
Victor Starffin, Motoshi Fujita (both Yomiuri Giants), Tetsuya Yoneda (Hankyu Braves, Japanese HOF), Hideki Irabu (Lotte- Yankees) and Daisuke Matsuzaka (Seibu Lions).

Masahiro “Ma-kun” Tanaka (Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles), and Hideaki Wakui (Seibu Lions), who said I am not worthy of Daisuke’s 18 at first and wore 16 for a while, wear 18 now, that I can think of off top of my head. Both are considered up and coming aces. Wakui won last year’s Sawamura awards.

On the side note, I grew up rooting for Chunichi Dragons and their ace’s number has always been 20, and my friend told me that for Yaklut Swallows (Igarasghi’s team), ace’s number has aways been 17. So I guess in that regard, you can’t say 18 is Japan’s ace number entirely – but because of popularity of Yomiuri Giants, it could be argued. Also undoubtedly, in high school, ace’s number is 1. This is across the board ‘fact’ and I don’t think anyone would argue this in Japan. There was a news recently that Nippon Ham Fighters have kept number 18 open for this year’s biggest draft hopeful Yuki Saito, so that is another indication that 18 is a aces number. Speaking of Fighters, it is interesting that “Japan’s ace” Yu Darvish is wearing 11.

Posted in Asian Issues, Baseball, Softball, and Judo | 1 Comment