Photography, as opposed to just taking snapshots, is something that I’ve been dabbling in for a while, especially since getting my digital camera. Some of those photos have appeared here in my weblog, others have been shared with family and friends, one or two hang on my walls.

But this entry is not about me. It is about a photographer who lives here in the San Francisco bay area called Jesse Kalisher. His website contains a number of black and white shots from all over the world (there are also a few colour shots in there if you look hard enough for them).

My favourite, and perhaps it is biased by the fact that I live here, is this shot of the Golden Gate bridge in the dawn fog. Which is your favourite? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Well, not to be outdone by the high-tech toilets from the far east, it would seem that students at MIT here in the US have created a high-tech urinal. Called You’re In Control (say it to yourself and you’ll get it), the thing is basically a computer game coupled with a urinal.

The demo unit seems to have been used in conjunction with some water bottles and a hose, allowing public use by both male and female parties. If you have the bandwidth for it on your internet connection, be sure to check out the video of one of these public demo sessions.

I promise that’s it for toilets. No more.

Well, it seems that I was behind the curve so to speak. Wired magazine had an article all about something far more advanced than the toilet I encountered in the hotel room.

Seems that this one comes with a remote control and also automatically raises the seat when somebody approaches. My favourite quote from the article though has to be this:

“Things are spraying, sloshing, squirting and swooshing. The theme from Jaws suddenly starts playing in my head, and I tell you I retracted my personal parts from that toilet very quickly,” Cohen said.

I have to say, I understand exactly what he means, only I wasn’t brave enough to press the buttons while sitting on the thing (well, other than the STOP button which I pressed the second I sat down to stop what the status panel described as Preparation).

Even TechTV is getting in on the act with a segment on Fresh Gear, their technology review program, all about Toto’s Neorest toilet. You can read their reporter’s reactions too on the show’s web pages.

Last night I went on a little mission of exploration around the hotel here in Taipei, despite the light drizzle. Here’s a few of the snapshots I took while out in the rain as night fell…

What’s so special about a toilet in Japan you ask? Well, I thought that the one in my hotel room (photo below) was already extreme with the two temperature heated seat, and the control panel down the right side with three buttons and a rotary control.

From the front to the back, the controls are:

• Stop
• Shower
• Bidet
• Status Light
• Heated seat temperature setting
• Water jet pressure control

That’s not the most advanced though it seems. Reading the in-flight magazine on my flight from Tokyo to Taipei, I discovered an article describing the author’s visit to a friend in Tokyo. It seems that his toilet actually talked to its user. It told him he was overweight and more (seems it analyses what you give it and reports on your health too!).

Here’s a selection of photos from around Tokyo showing some of the differences between old and new (click each photo to popup a larger view):

Clockwise from the top left, these are:

1. One of the gates to Asukusa’s temple area
2. A little girl dressed up in traditional costume to visit the temple
3. One of the many duty free shops in the Akihabara/Electric Town area
4. A lantern in the main temple area at Asukusa

Well, I am sitting in a Yahoo Internet Cafe here in Tokyo’s Narita Airport looking out over a number of planes standing at gates. The access is free, but you have to use their machines. Not a huge problem, except that they have Japanese keyboards – press the wrong button (like one of the ones on either side of the space button – it is not big enough to be a bar) and the thing starts trying to convert everything that you type into Japanese characters. Clever, but not easy for somebody who doesn’t understand any Japanese to turn off.

I will probably upload some photos from Tokyo when I arrive in Taipei – did not have internet access in my room last night because I had to move to a new room in a different part of the hotel.

Just left London after spending a few days there for my brother’s wedding. The day went off really well, even the weather held. (Sunday made up for that by raining so hard that all the roads in the area were flooding).

The reception was held at the local vineyard/restaurant (Barnsgate Manor) and I think everybody had a great evening. I will try to upload some photos later on – I have 145 of them at the moment.

My brother and new sister-in-law are now enjoying their honeymoon down under in Australia, and I am in Japan for a business trip. Staying in the Shinagawa Prince Hotel in Tokyo.

I am currently typing this in on a laptop in the hotel’s Yahoo internet cafe – which has proved challenging as the machine’s native language was of course Japanese. Took me a while to find somebody to get it out of its native mode and into a mode I could use, but even now the keyboard layout is slightly different making it a little challenging for me… I think in future I will do what I did earlier today and just bring my laptop down.

Once again my Yahoo! email address is attracting large numbers of ~150K emails containing the SWEN virus. Does this signal a return of SWEN? For those of you unfortunate enough to be using the world’s least secure (not to mention worst) operating system on your desktop or laptop machines, here’s some advice:

1. Run Windows Update/Bandage daily (hourly?). The best chance you have on a Windows box is to make sure all the patches are installed. Still won’t solve the problem as there are so many holes in Windows it would make a Swiss cheese jealous, but its the best option you have short of unplugging the thing from the world (choose either the power cord or the network one, and leave it disconnected ;-).
2. Stop using IE and Outlook/Outlook Express – these are the portals that virus writers most often use to get in, not using them prevents these two easy access gateways to your system. Instead, I recommend Mozilla which does a better job of web page rendering and email handling. It also includes, out of the box, popup blocking and a very effective spam filter. Upgrade now, and purge as many MS virus gateways as possible from your system. Software from MS has a proven track record of allowing these things in, so avoid using their poor quality code where possible.
3. Please delete emails with attachments, always. Especially ones that claim to be patches to any or all of the problems with Windows. We all know that there are so many holes in it that a single 150KB download is not going to be able to repair them all. I don’t think I’ve seen a single Windows Update download that small.
4. Download (or buy) the ultimate patch for Windows: a Linux installation CD. I’d recommend RedHat or Mandrake, though Mandrake can be a real pain to add anything to – most of the add-on packages are only available through their club, which is just another way of saying maintenance program.

Of course, you could always switch to an Apple platform… access to all the applications you’re used to (even the nasty browser from MS, though a very old version of it), with the added benefits of better security and a nicer user interface. It also happily displays X11 applications on the desktop, giving you access to all the unix graphical tools and remote display capabilities.