Author: jlick

Kyoto City Day 3

Yesterday I had free of meetings, but I still hadn’t finished updating my presentation materials for Thursday, so I spent most of the day in the hotel room adding slides and tweaking things here and there. I think I’m pretty satisfied with it now.

The session I’m presenting at is on the topic of Zombie PCs and specifically about how they are used for spamming and what can be done about it. At the last minute we got some pressure to add Mr. Hua Wang (王华) from China Telecom as a speaker, and I was told he would talk about how they deal with Zombie PCs, so I agreed to let him into the session too. Yesterday we got a copy of his presentation materials and it had only a little bit on zombies, so we had to back-pedal on that. hserus and I sat down with him and Yuxiao Li (李欲晓) from Internet Society of China to discuss it and decided to do a panel discussion at the end instead, with him on the panel.

In the evening we had the opening ceremony. It may seem odd to have the opening ceremony in the middle of the week, but the actual conference part starts today. The stuff before are tutorials, pre-meeting, and meetings for related organizations. They converted one of the big halls into a party room with tables with food and beer and wine, and later some desserts. Pretty nice.

Kyoto City Day 2

Yesterday we had our APCAUCE regional updates session in the afternoon. Despite getting off to a rocky start, we had a good turnout, good presentations and a lot of good discussions afterward. China had the biggest contingent, which is nice to see. They are making a lot of progress on their huge spam problem, but a lot more still needs to be done. We also had updates for Japan and Singapore, and I did updates for “Chinese Taipei” and USA. There were also folks from New Zealand, Korea and India in attendance, if I’m not leaving anyone out.

Had some trouble with my conference badge though. Out of political considerations our organizational policy is to use the title “Chinese Taipei” and my badge had a different word on it. I had put in the registration comments to request they used “Chinese Taipei” but somehow that slipped through. Fortunately the registration desk was able to make up a new badge right away.

hserus and Dave Crocker were staying on for an organizational meeting into the evening and I wasn’t willing to wait around that late for dinner, so I set off on my own. There’s very little around the hotel and convention center, but hserus mentioned that one stop down the subway line there were a bunch of restaurants. Unfortunately I think he meant two stops down. I got out one stop down and there was hardly anything, except a Chinese restaurant and a Korean restaurant. I kept walking down towards the next station down (北山, or Kitayama though I want to pronounce it beishan) and as I got closer I saw a McDonald’s, but fortunately there were a lot of other restaurants nearby.

I settled for a Japanese restaurant under the Royal Host restaurant. The menu didn’t have many pictures so it was hard to order and Japanese menus tend to have too much hiragana and katakana so I can’t use my meager Chinese skills to read them. They had one of those “plastic model food” displays in the front window, so I went outside and pointed at what I wanted. I got a marinated pork with rice dish and a bowl of what I think was soba noodle soup, plus tea and a bottle of Kirin Ichiban. I’ve at least learned how to read the katakana for “beer”.

There was also a sporting goods shop nearby, so I popped in and picked up a nice knit cap and also a headband to replace the one hserus lent me and I lost. Oops. At first I wast getting shocked by the prices (2800 yen for a knit cap, about $28), but I found some cheaper “Made In China” stuff that was perfectly good enough and 1/10th the price. With the scarf I bought the first night, and the gloves I brought with me, I was fine except my ears were freezing and about to fall off. Once I had the cap though, I was quite comfortably warm all over.

There was also a SunPlus convenience store nearby so I popped in there to get some snacks and beverages, since there’s nothing like that around the hotel except a soda vending machine in the subway station. After getting all stocked up, I returned to the hotel.

京都市

Got to Kyoto yesterday all right. Got only a couple of hours sleep the night before, dragged myself out of bed at 5:20am and headed to Taipei CKS International Airport. Found out they opened the new D wing of Terminal 2 when I got the boarding pass. I’ve started flying EVA instead of United Airlines since on UA you have to connect through Tokyo Narita to go anywhere. I’m not even silver in EVA’s membership yet, but my Diners Club card gets me into their lounge free, so not a big deal. Anyways, the flight was uneventful, though the immigration line at Kansai Airport was about 40 minutes. When going through customs the inspector was surprised I came from Taiwan not the US. Public transportation is great here, so it was only a few minutes between exiting customs and departing by train to Kyoto. Then in Kyoto transferred to the subway and was at the hotel shortly after.

The area around the hotel is very scenic and nice, though there’s not much out here besides the convention center, hotel, and a bunch of parks. So there’s not much to speak of in the way of dining or shopping options here. But the subway gets you to most of the city pretty easily. Weather here is pretty chilly at just above 0 celsius, so adequate clothing is necessary.

Last night hserus had plans to meet up with his friend shradha who has lived in Japan for several years. He invited me and his friend thaths to come along. Turns out that thaths used to work with my friend jam1esp1ark back at Netscape. Small world. After many adventures we finally ended up along Shijo Street in downtown Kyoto and shradha took us to a nice Japanese restaurant with a wide variety of different foods. We had stuff like edamame, agedashi tofu, radish salad, takoyaki, marinated beef, sashimi, etc. To wash things down we had a wheat sake and later moved on to Suntory Beer. Anyways, it was a fun time.

京都

There’s been a lot of talk about Kyoto this week, which is kind of confusing. I’m actually going to the city of Kyoto next week. So it’s annoying that people are going around using Kyoto as some kind of shorthand for the cure to global warming. I’m sure it’s an honor and all to name such an important agreement after an historic Japanese city. But that city still exists. So please, at least call it the Kyoto Protocol, Kyoto Treaty, or Kyoto Accord. Or at least something other than just plain Kyoto. Thank you.

Cold over, dislocated thumb?

Today I woke up with no more congestion, no more itchy throat, no more cough. Yay, so that’s pretty much over with.

However, my left thumb has been acting up lately. For the past four days I will wake up with my thumb sore and when I try to move it, it makes a strong popping noise, kinda like when you crack your fingers. Is it possible I’ve dislocated it? Pulling on the thumb a few times makes the popping go away, and the soreness goes away after about an hour after waking. Weird.