Category: Nerding Out

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Hikikomori Video

hikikomori

My del.icio.us crawling for videos of Japan picked up something interesting today – a well shot mini-documentary on the social-withdrawal phenomena of Hikikomori. I’m not adding this as a video podcast episode since this is not original material, but definitely check it out. Hikikomori video.

I have to agree with one of the skateboarder interviewees with the thought that, in some ways, everyone is otaku. I have plenty of friends who I would consider business-otaku. I think I am music-otaku, or perhaps even photography-otaku. If not for the great shots of Japan at night, the video is well worth the guy rocking out on drums at the end. Give it a watch if you are in mellow mood.

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Nielsen Ratings for Video Games

Today Neilsen announced that it will begin reporting on market data for video game usage in mid-2007. With the constant bickering on who will with future market share between Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PS3, and Nintendo’s Wii – I guess we will finally actually guess intelligently. What isn’t clear though is exactly how Nielsen plans on gathering this data.

Nielsen GamePlay Metrics will use a patented approach to harvest this existing information from current and next-generation video game consoles within these sample households. The new service will passively record the titles of games while capturing key demographic detail about players.

Interesting. Does this mean they will simply “listen” to what the user is playing? At any rate, this should be a huge tool for video game marketers, developers and, and platform producers all around. With the additional demographics on what gamers are actually playing, expect to see more boring Madden and FPS Racer titles as well. But alas, we all really know that 89% of NASCAR fans are really playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

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Staying Synchronized

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I’ve got a small confession to make. Graduate school is not that incredibly difficult – it is certainly not medical school. When it comes down to the subject material, given enough time and enough brain cycles, its all pretty elementary stuff. Even our country assessment models for international marketing are nothing but multiplication, addition, division …. the basics. However, finding time to stay organized when everything is flying past your head at 100mph and multiple assignments are competing for your precious thoughts, now THAT’s where it gets difficult.

Classes have slowed a bit down to a dull roar – just three simultaneously for the next two weeks instead of the six we have had for the last four weeks. I spent the better part of today synchronizing my work calendar with my personal calendar. I’ve never had such a large part of my life planned out like I have now. I think I pretty much know what I’m doing until January 8th. I suppose its comforting in one way, knowing where you will be and when, knowing exactly how much free time you think you have, and how much you really have – sometimes wishing I had never seen the latter.

Today, I was able to flex a little IT muscle as well. It felt good to bring out the skills I have used so heavily in the past six years of my professional life. Our admissions office is doing some data analysis so I’ve started the task of doing some data manipulation and data aggregation. It was a great time to take a look at open-source ETL tools.

All in all a good day.

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Finding a Job … With Technology

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I’ve always been a proponent of adage “work smarter, not harder”. But sometimes, those work smarter opportunities find their ways to me without even needing to try. Earlier this week, I happened to be spending a few minutes searching in advance for some internship opportunities overseas when I ran across a very pleasant surprise that has made my ability to network and find MBA internships that much easier.

A Google search had promptly redirected me to monster.com for job and internship listings for one of my favorite companies, Nintendo. To my surprise, I was unaware that if you have a LinkedIn account and the LinkedIn FireFox plugin, a great little sidebar pops up when you are viewing a job entry such as those on Monster.com. Check out the screen shot here:

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This sidebar then tells you how many people in your LinkedIn network actually work for that company presently and are open for contacting. Dance monkey dance! Do the work for me. This will make one part of my job / internship search that much easier.
To get a LinkedIn account, simply visit http://www.linkedin.com – consider it “MySpace for people seeking professional networking”. To get the FireFox plugin for LinkedIn, visit that link and follow the instructions.

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Google / Apple

Google Apple

Just as I was about to settle in and focus on some reading tonight, two companies I have been following recently in the past few months pull an interesting move, coming together in such an odd way as Google CEO Eric Schmidt joins Apple’s board of directors. What lies in store for these two giants? I just hope they don’t start putting my audio apps to the web-desktop …. or should they?

Too much to think about now. For now, its stick to the goal of finishing Operations and Leadership reading before the holiday weekend!

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ふぁみこんたいそう

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“Famicon taisou, famicon taisou”

I found myself doing these great exercises after a 50 minute written quiz on Globalization and Corporate Reponsibility yesterday. Its been nearly 10 years since I have had to take a written-quiz, blue book style, in any class. Since freshman year of my undergraduate degree at Syracuse University, most of my professional and personal work has been done with the help of electronic devices. It’s amazing how one can nearly loose their ability to write with an actual environment-altering device.

But fear not those also in hand pain, a little famicon taisou (Nintendo Exercises) later, and you too will be up and ready for more writing. Though, I doubt one will ever beat Takahashi Meijin’s (Hudson Soft exec) 16 taps/second button pressing skills, at least not without the Nintendo Max!

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Getting Organized, Getting Ready

Change of address, turn gas off, turn electricity on, get Internet access, find a storage company, move all my belongings somewhere else, get renter’s insurance … the list went on and on. I am surprised that with the recent move, I haven’t forget something. But all the while, I’ve got this sinking suspicion that I really have.

With graduate school about to begin, and my somewhat masochistic choice to continue my employment part-time while in school looming overhead, I fear my personal task list is about to explode in my face. So this week, I’ve turned my attention to different organizational techniques that I am hoping will free up some creative time and keep me somewhat sane for the next three years.

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Automated and Secure iPod Backups

As my digital life becomes more complicated I’ve run across numerous backup strategies that have been helpful. However, I recently discovered an easy way to keep a digitally secure copy of my most critical documents with me at any point in time. This article is a shortened version of a larger article I am working on regarding comprehensive mac backup strategies.

The Goal

Make a portable, secure, and do-not-have-to-think-about-it backup solution for my critical documents.

As an MBA student who is working on lots of projects at any point time, having an easy and secure backup on my iPod seems like the most practical solution. However, being a busy MBA student, this is not something I want to have to think about every week or even every day.

I have a 15″ MacBookPro, a 4GB iPod Nano, and OSX 10.4.6. Lets go…

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