もう春休みだよね！いいんじゃない？とはいえ、春休みはもうつまらなくなってきた。。

自転車で京都に行く、西門する、というように、私は予定があまりない。。お金がないと、旅行は難しくなるよね！どうしよう。。

今まで、私は一般的に寮にいて、天気があったかくなるために待ちながら、西門する。３月１５日から、毎日曜日、訓練のために私はUC Centerのたかはしさんのチャリブと自転車に乗ろう！日曜日の訓練は８０キログライダと聞いた。頑張ろうぜ！

成績はまだ出ていない。。私はちょっと緊張している！たぶん、JLPで私はBしかもらわない。よく頑張ったのに、いろんなのJLPの試験では小さい間違ったがいっぱいあっちゃった。

残念だね！

明日、何もないから、面白い写真が撮れるようにICUの周りの裏通りで自転車に乗ろう！天気が晴れといい！

私はマンガをほんやくしながら、面白くて新しい単語をならった。下にある言葉はそれだ：

イチャイチャする - To flirt; To make out
下らない - Stupid, trivial
真に受ける - To take seriously
聞き耳 - Straining one's ear

ではでは、そろそろ終わった！

お疲れ様！

That's right, I finally received a beta key for the Windows 7 Beta! It only took me four hours of sitting in front of my computer in the middle of the night and mashing the "Refresh All" key, but I finally I got through:

We have a winna'!

So now I'm good to use Windows 7 until August, and if I submit enough constructive bug reports, I just might get a free copy of Windows 7 when it launches!

Due to timezone differences, in one more hour I'll have been up 24 hours. Launch time in the US was 12/9 12:00pm PST; that's 12/10 5:00am JST. I didn't sleep because I didn't want to miss out on this opportunity! Now, it's time to hit the hay!

Today's the last day of winter break, so I'm just milling about the dorm, doing laundry and chatting it up with friends back home. I don't have much to report, really, though I am planning to do a post on the New Year's festivities I participated in thanks to a friend of mine and his very kind family.

Speaking of which, Happy New Years! I hope your year-end/year-beginning festivities were lively!

And I've decided to try and keep a Twitter account going for at least as long as I'm in Japan. I discovered a fairly easy way to send in "tweets" (updates) from my cellphone, so I'm hoping that during my day-to-day stuff I'll remember to take a few seconds and send out an update if I'm doing something neat. If you want to follow me, check out my account here: http://twitter.com/MasterKale.

P.S. Technical problems totally destroyed all the Japanese I'd typed up, so no translation this post :(

P.S. コンピューターの問題があったから、全部の打った日本語はなくならせられた。だから、翻訳がない ：（

I migrated my computer over to the Beta release of Windows 7 before the new year. Every time I re/install an OS on my machine, I back up a few folders stored in the AppData folder containing Pidgin's chatlogs, Thunderbird's e-mails, and Firefox's browser preferences.

Dropbox is a relatively new automated file synchronization service that gives users 2GB of free online storage to synchronize documents to. Using a desktop app (available for Windows, Mac, or Linux), you can specify a single folder as your "dropbox", the contents of which are automatically synchronized to your storage space online. Your Dropbox account can then be linked to any number of other machines, and those machines in turn will download and make available all of the documents that have been synchronized to your account.

What does Dropbox have to do with backing up the three folders I mentioned earlier? Well, through the magic of a few NTFS Symbolic Links, I've managed to move folders that are otherwise in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming and place them in the folder I've designated as my dropbox in my Documents folder; as a result, I can keep all of my chatlogs, e-mails, and browser preferences automatically synchronized online and accessible from anywhere I have internet access, and I can easily restore all of those files the next time I install an OS.

To accomplish this, I used Vista's mklink command:

mklink [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] link target

• /D – Creates a directory symbolic link. Default is a file symbolic link.
• /H – Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
• /J – Creates a Directory Junction.

You can read more about the /D and /H flags with a bit of googling, but for now we'll focus on the /J flag. When set, the /J flag tells the OS to point any requests to the link directory to the target directory. Here's an example:

mklink /J "C:\Users\AppData\Roaming\.purple" "D:\My Dropbox\Pidgin"

First, we initiate the link program with mklink with the /J active. Next, we give the program the folder path that we want to link to another folder somewhere else in the computer. We're telling it to point (a hypothetical) Pidgin's settings and chatlogs folder to another location. That location is specified in the last folder path. In this case, I'm pointing it to the Pidgin folder stored within the Dropbox synchronization directory.

Before you hit enter, make sure the link folder is completely empty of any file or folder. When everything's set, hit enter and you'll have made a directory junction between the two folders.

It's worth taking a moment to explain how the OS handles the junction. First, if you go to C:\Users\AppData\Roaming\.purple, though it appears as though files are in the folder, what you're really seeing are the files stored in D:\My Dropbox\Pidgin. To Pidgin, it appears as though all the files it needs to run are in their proper location, but in reality it's accessing and modifying files in the Pidgin dropbox folder.

How does all of this fit in with Drobox? Each of the three Directory Junctions I created points to a target folder in the My Dropbox folder. Whenever Pidgin, Thunderbird, or Firefox makes a change to any of their files, Dropbox see the changes and synchronizes the files to my Dropbox storage space online. With just a few short minutes in the command line, I was able to automate the archival of some of the most important files on my computer and set up an easy means of accessing them should something ever happen to my machine.

I hope this tutorial helps out someone in a similar bind as me. If you find a better way of automating file backups to an online location (maybe even a personal FTP server!), let me know; I'm always looking for new ways to automate archiving of important files!

EDIT: I found out that for Pidgin, it's probably better/easier to just go into Environment Variables (Right-click "My Computer" > "Properties" > "Advanced system settings" > "Advanced" tab > "Environment Variables") and create a System Variables titled PURPLEHOME with the directory path to the folder containing the .purple folder as the value. I might have run into a problem where the junction was causing some system slowdown, so I'll give this method a go and see if its easier on my harddrive!

I went to ComiKet yesterday with a couple of friends. ComiKet, or Comic Market, is an annual convention that gives fledgling doujinshi artists a chance to get their work out to the general public. In the 33 years since it's inception, ComiKet attendance has grown from an estimated 600 people to approximately half-a-million. The rare, one-time-only prints of comics, some from well-known artists, that are offered each year contribute to these growing numbers.

昨日、私は二人の友達とコミケットに行きました。毎年、コミケット、つまりコミックマーケット、は二回に起こります。コミケットでは、作者の乳臭者が他の人に新しい同人誌を売ります。最初の大会から、参加する人は五十万人ぐらいになりました。毎年、稀で売られる同人誌は contribute to these growing numbers.

The trek to the convention center started at 3:15am. After waking up, showering, and eating, I met up with Darrik and Justin at Musashi-Sakai Station to catch the 4:37am train to Shinjuku. From Shinjuku, we took the Yamanote Line to Oosaki Station, and from there the Rinkai Line to Kokusai-Tenjijo Station.

昨日の旅行は3時15分ごろに始まりました。私は起きて、シャワーを浴びて、朝ご飯を食べて、武蔵境駅にデリクとジャスッテンに会いに行きました。4時37分に私たちは最初の中央線の電車に新宿まで乗りました。新宿で、大崎駅に行く山手線の電車に乗り換えました。大崎駅から国際展示所駅まで臨海線の電車に乗りました。

My first taste of the madness that was ComiKet was at Kokusai-Tenjijo Station. The three of us arrived at Kokusai-Tenjijo Station around 6:15 or so and stepped off the train into a writhing mass of people! As hundreds of people tried to squeeze through a few ticket gates, the obvious bottleneck that formed forced everyone close together and to move as one entity; it was impossible to go anywhere but forward with an ever-expanding group of people pushing you from behind!

6時15分に国際展示所駅で、私はコミケットのような可笑しい事を始めて見ました！電車を降りたら、いっぱいように人がいるグループに入りました！五百や六百ぐらい人は少し改札口に通ってみている間、the bottleneckはみなさんを一生に行かせました！私は後ろに行きたくても、本当にできませんでした！

After Kokusai-Tenjijo Station, we ran off to wait at the Tokyo Big Site convention center parking lot. The lot had been converted into a staging area for the massive number of people who showed up early to secure a spot in line. By the time we'd were settled in group B7, sometime around 6:45am or so, 14 other groups of people had already been established (with approximately 150 people per group)! The gates of the convention center didn't open until 10:00am, so Darrik, Justin, and I killed time listening to music or playing games on either a DS or a PSP.

国際展示所駅の後で、私たちは東京ビッグサイトのstaging area待ちに走りました。東京ビッグサイトの駐車場はみんなの参加する人が開く時まで座れるように、staging areaになられました。6時45分ごろに、私たちがＢ７のグループに入った時までに、他のもう来た人はクループを14つもう作ってしまいました！全部のグループは150人くらいがいました。コミケットの門10時に開いたから、デリクとジャスッテンと私はＤＳやＰＳＰのゲームをやりました。

At around 9:30am, everyone was herded into the convention center to await the opening of the first day of ComiKet. At 10:00am, the gates opened, and people made mad dashes off to the various booths to wait in line for limited edition wall scrolls or doujinshi. The three of us casually made our way through the convention center, walking up and down the rows and stopping whenever we saw something interesting.

9時半ごろに、みんなさんは東京ビッグサイトの中に連れて行きました。門が開くようになったら、たくさん人はいろいろな所に限定版の掛け軸や同人誌を買いにmade mad dashes。私たちは3人で見歩きました。

I'm not a huge fan of doujins, but all things considered, it was a lot of fun. I picked up a few...interesting...doujin, though I also scored a step-by-step guide to building a mecha-themed robot out of Legos, some awesome Evangelion stickers, and other assorted baubles. I spent more money than I'd like to admit (around $40), but I did come to Japan to experience the culture, however strange it may look to my gaijin eyes!

私は同人誌が好き嫌いじゃないのに、コミケットの経験は絶対面白かったです！私はたくさん物を買いました。少しエッチのような同人誌が、Ｌｅｇｏのメッカロボットの作り方の本と、エヴァンゲリオンのシールと、色々な物とそれです。私は使いたいお金を以上使ったけけれども、日本の経験するために日本に来ましたよ！たｔよyo,