My good friend Christian Liensberger is giving away two MSDN Premium with Visual Studio Team System subscriptions, worth nearly $11,000! To be eligable you need to create a short screencast about a Microsoft technology, e.g. "how to get started with Silverlight 2". The competition runs from July 1st until July 31st. I will be helping with the judging.

See Christian's blog for full details.

Microsoft has just released a new version of Windows Search, which is well worth getting if you have Vista because it's much faster than the built-in Vista search. Searching using the start menu search box feels at least five times faster now!

Get it here.

Long Zheng has started the Windows UX Taskforce. The goal: to create a list of all the little UI inconsistencies and annoyances in Windows, so that Microsoft might fix them for Windows 7.

So if there's anything that bothers you about the Windows Vista UI, now's your chance to let people know.

As you may or may not know, NASA aims to return to the moon. In 2010, the Space Shuttle will fly for the last time, to be succeeded in 2013 by the Orion crew vehicle (part of project constellation), a capsule which looks a lot like a modern version of the Apollo command modules that between 1968 and 1972 sent 24 humans to the moon, half of which walked on it (one major difference is that the Orion will be reusable up to ten times; the Apollo capsules could be used only once).

The Orion will not only be used for supply missions to the International Space Station (taking over those duties from the Space Shuttle), it will also take humans to the moon (no later than 2020, according to NASA). Further plans include establishing a permanent settlement on the moon, learning to live and work on another planet, and to use this knowledge and technology for human exploration of Mars in the first half of the 21st century (again according to NASA). As a fan of space exploration I regret not having witnessed any of the original moon landings, so it would be great if they could pull all this off (especially if they go to Mars in my lifetime that would be awesome).

To gather detailed information about the moon (e.g. about possible landing sites) NASA is first sending the unmanned Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter. And you can send your name with it. If you register your name on this site, it will become part of a database that will be put on a chip on the LRO, so your name will be in orbit of the moon.

Yes, it's completely pointless. I don't care, it's just a fun idea. :)

As some of you know, I play Flight Simulator. I tend to go for the serious, realistic simulation.

This video shows you can also have fun with Flight Simulator when you relax realism a bit. :)

Watch the video on YouTube

At last, the final set of photo's from my trip to Okinawa. :)

March 9th we planned to go to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, the world's largest tropical aquarium. Because we've been told regular bus fares to the aquarium are expensive, we took an organised tour which also included several other attractions, lunch, and was still cheaper than a normal bus ticket. The tour first took us to Cape Manza, a very nice cliff. After this we had lunch at a hotel (very fancy lunch, very nice) and then went to the aquarium. The aquarium was very impressive indeed, especially the main tank. They had very large manta rays, more than 2 metres across! They are beautiful animals, and they look almost like birds with the swimming motion they make. This can be seen in the video attached to this post.

After the aquarium we went to some castle ruins nearby, not incredibly impressive, and finally to a pineapple park. I think this was mainly a commercial agreement between the bus company and the park. Anyway, they had pineapple ice cream (very nice, although the nicest ice cream flavour we discovered during this vacation: that title goes to sugar cane ice cream, and sweet potato ice cream is also high on the list), and you could taste (and buy, of course) pineapple wine (also very nice) and eat as much pineapple as you liked.

On March 10th, we went whale watching in the morning. Although we did see plenty of whales (or two of them, very often), they didn't jump out of the water, so it was only backs and tails unfortunately. After this we went to the Sefa Utaki, a holy grove, one of the most sacred places in Okinawa apparently. Unfortunately it started raining pretty hard. The end of the day was spent on Kokusai-dori (international street), a big shopping street where we'd been before but hadn't looked around properly yet. This also gave me the chance to buy some sweets (Okinawan brown sugar of coure, what else) which I could take to the lab (it's a custom in most Japanese work places to bring souvenirs (usually food) if you've been on a trip). I think you could survive in Okinawa purely on the free samples they have on this street. :)

The final day, March 11th, is poorly represented in the photographs because my camera's battery died. We visited the peace park and the associated museum. The museum provided great insight into the Japanese involvement in World War 2, and of course the Battle of Okinawa in particular. Most impressively, the museum was very objective, painting neither side of the conflict as good or bad guys. One of the better war museums I've ever visited, on par with the one in London. It's truely amazing the horrors the Okinawan population went through (at the hands of both American and Japanese soldiers) during that battle, where the Japanese attempted to draw out the battle as long as possible to give the mainland forces more time, and were told to fight to the last man rather than surrender. Some 120,000 Okinawans died during the battle.

After the peace park we visited a nearby memorial dedicated to a group of more than 200 middle school girls who were forced to become nurses for the army. The memorial museum paints a horrible picture of how the lives of these ordinary girls were destroyed by the war. They were forced to nurse the wounded soldiers in horrible conditions until they were suddenly discharged near the end of the battle and sent outside into the crossfire. Many were killed, and many simply pressed a grenade to their chest and blew themselves up. Only a handful survived. Reading their stories and seeing the pictures was a very emotionally powerful experience for me, and it was quite obvious the same was true for most visitors.

Finally, we went to the airport to take our flight home. Because we hadn't realised just how late this flight would arrive in Tokyo we were a bit concerned we might not catch the last train, but everything went very smooth, we got our luggage back in no time and had more than half an hour to spare in the end.

And thus ended a fantastic vacation, my longest tourist trip so far in Japan. I've got a feeling this won't have been the last time I've gone to Okinawa (if not during the rest of my stay in Japan, I will certainly return at some later point in my life).

There are 33 images attached to this post. Click here to view them.

March 7th was our first real day in Naha. We met with Yuichiro, a friend of someone from our dorm in Tokyo. Together with him we first visited Shuri castle, the palace of the Ryukyu kingdom back when Okinawa was still independent. Like many things in Okinawa, it was almost completely destroyed during the battle of Okinawa in 1945 but was restored. After this we visited the Tama-udun, the royal mausoleum of the Ryukyu dynasty. Next we visited the Shikinaen royal garden, and lastly another garden, Fukushu-en.

On March 8th we first visited an underground naval base, which was one of the last holding points of the Japanese army during the battle of Okinawa. This underground system of tunnels had been carved out of the rock entirely by hand (pick-axes and stuff, no machinery), a sign of how little resources the Japanese army had left by this point.

Afterwards we went to the Gyokusendou cave, the largest limestone cave in Japan. The Japanese have taken the opportunity to build an incredibly touristy theme park called Okinawa World around this cave, which was mostly pointless and consisted mainly of souvenir shops (and of course, in true Japanese style, it was set up so that you had to pass through the shops to get from one part of the park to another). They had some performances (see the second video attached to this post) which, while sort of nice, were presented like they were for a children's TV show. And the girl who was presenting it seemed to be trying to break the world record for how often you can cram the particle "ne" (which loosely translates as "isn't it?") into a sentence. :)

Also at Okinawa World was the Habu Park. Habu are poisonous snakes that live in Okinawa. They had several variety of Habu, a snake show (which we didn't see), and of course a distillery for the famous Habu Sake, which is basically sake with snakes in it. They literally sell bottles of sake with Habu in it, you see them all over the place in Naha. Whether this does anything to the taste or if it's just for aesthetic purposes I don't know.

There are 39 images attached to this post. Click here to view them.

On March 5th we first went to pay for the ferry we would take the next day. Then we took the ferry to Hateruma, the southernmost island of Japan, where we rented bicycles and cycled around the island. This is as far south as you can get while staying inside Japan. We also visited a beautiful white-sand beach, called "Emerald Beach". A perfect tropical beach, although we didn't do any swimming.

On Match 6th, we got up very early (5 in the morning) to catch the ferry to Okinawa Honto, the main island of Okinawa, which would leave at 6:20h. On this large cruise ferry we even had a cabin (although shared with several other people so we managed to get a little more sleep on board. The trip took 14 hours in total, arriving around 8 at night. We just spent the time reading and hanging around doing nothing. :) I managed to get a nasty sunburn while I was watching the loading and unloading at the one stop in between. I spent only 30 minutes or so on deck but it was enough apparently.

After we arrived in Naha, we took a taxi to the hostel, "Okinawa Guesthouse", with the world's most incompetent taxi driver. Not only did he not know where the guesthouse was, but he was also incapable of taking directions; despite several phonecalls with the hostel he still couldn't find it. Eventually someone from the hostel had to come and pick us up. :S

There are 12 images attached to this post. Click here to view them.

On March 3rd we had planned our "jungle trip". Although it is possible to walk from one side of the island to another straight through the jungle we weren't really prepared for that, and it would take at least a full day, so a slightly shorter version was in order.

We took a boat trip on the Urauchi river, described by the Lonely Planet as similar to the Amazon. Real jungle here, and mangroves and everything else you'd expect. From where the boat landed we had two hours to hike to two waterfalls, Maiyudo and Kanpire falls, and back.

We also wanted to go to the Pinaisara falls, on another part of the island, but we didn't make that with the time. In the evening, the hostel had a small "party" with Awamori, the local Okinawan liquor. Very strong stuff. But we did get a chance to talk to the other guests at the hotel, including a large group of students who turned out to be from Tokyo (half the people we met in Okinawa were from Tokyo, that was my impression at least :P ).

On March 4th we returned to Ishigaki where we'd stay for two days (this time in Ishigaki itself, not in Kabira) with the goal to explore some of the closer islands. First up was Taketomi, one of the few places where you can still see real traditional Okinawan architecture (pretty much all of the original Okinawan stuff was destroyed during the battle of Okinawa in World War 2, when the Americans invaded Okinawa in preparation for the invasion of Japan itself; Okinawa was literally bombed to hell, very little remained afterwards). We got a map with a very nice walking route which took us around the entire island in a few hours.

There are 28 images attached to this post. Click here to view them.

On the third day on Ishigaki (March 1st), Danny would go diving again but I wouldn't. Although I considered going again but the high cost and the fact that I'd hurt my foot on the boat the day before persuaded me otherwise. Instead I went to Ishigaki town. There wasn't much to see there but I managed to pass the time with the museum, a temple, and the many shops (I think Ishigaki has more souvenir shops than inhabitants). I also bought some manga because I hadn't realised how much time to read I'd have in the evenings here.

The next day we said goodbye to Kabira, but not before taking some more pictures of the area since the sun was finally showing. Masako from Umicoza gave us a lift to the harbour, where we took the ferry to Iriomote (about one hour). Iriomote is probably the most untouched nature Japan has: the island is almost entirely covered by jungle. After checking in at the hostel (Irumote-so) we wanted to go to the island Yubu, which is separated from Iriomote only by a very shallow bit of water, and the way to get there is by waterbuffalo cart. You could probably also walk, but the carts are more fun. It was however not close to our hotel and there are very few buses on the island so we had to hitchhike. On the island itself is a small park and zoo, not spectacular but nice and the waterbuffalos were the main attraction anyway. :)

After Yubu we went to Iriomote Onsen, a very nice "Rotenburo" (open air hot spring) and then went back to the hostel and walked around there a bit before dinner. Iriomote really is extraordinarily beautiful and I have to say it's the favourite of all the islands we've visited (although they all have their own charm).

In the evening the people from the hostel organised an (apparently daily) event of firefly watching. We were taken to a very quiet stretch of road with no lighting at all where a lot of other people were also watching. Hundreds of fireflies were flying around the bushes, really an amazing sight that unfortunately proved impossible to photograph (with my equipment anyway).

There are 24 images attached to this post. Click here to view them.

Well, I'm back from Okinawa. It was a great vacation but tomorrow it's back to work. Of course, I've got many pictures to show you all. In total I took over 500 pictures so as I said earlier it will take some time to sort it all out.

I plan to do it much the same way as my earlier pictures of Nikko, with multiple posts. Each post will span one or more days, depending on the number of pictures for each day.

On the first day, we left in the morning for Tokyo International Airport (Haneda). Haneda is an incredibly busy airport. It ranks among the busiest airports in the world (in 2006 it was number four, much busier even than Schiphol) despite the fact that nearly all the flights there are domestic flights. We went there by monorail, which was slightly more expensive than the alternative (Keikyu line) but a very scenic route. We were easily in time, and the flight departed 13:35, twenty minutes later than planned.

After arrival on Ishigaki island we were picked up by Masako from the Umicoza diving club who took us to the small town Kabira where the club is located (about 30 minutes drive from Ishigaki city). We met with Satoki and Aki at Umicoza and discussed the diving plans for the day after. Then we went to our hotel (a minshuku, Japanese style inn), "Koen Chaya". We had dinner there and spent the evening reading, not much else to do in Kabira at night. :)

The next morning we got up early and walked to Umicoza. They took us to their boat, and then we went to the first diving point, Yonehara East. Because I have no diving experience whatsoever I briefly snorkeled so I could get used to the fins etc. (Danny has a license so he didn't do this). After that we split up into two teams, Satoki and Danny in one team and Aki and me in the other. We dove to a depth of five metres to view the coral. It was a bit disorienting at first and I especially had trouble getting my legs to go where I wanted, but it was incredible. Aki had an underwater camera so you can see some pictures of that as well.

We dove for about 30 minutes and then got out and went to the second diving point, the manta ray point, with the obvious intention that we might see manta rays. This spot was too deep for me so I only snorkeled, while Danny dove. Either way, there were no manta rays, but it was still a beautiful spot.

After getting back to the diving club we had lunch there, and spent the remainder of the afternoon exploring the surroundings of Kabira.

There are 22 images attached to this post. Click here to view them.

If you're wondering why it's even more silent than usual on my blog, it's because I am, as I previously announced, on vacation in Okinawa. So far I have visited the islands Ishigaki (where we dived to see corals, my first time diving ever, which was great), Iriomote (jungle), Taketomi (traditional Okinawan architecture) and Hateruna (southermost point of Japan) and yesterday we took the ferry from Ishigaki to Okinawa Honto, which took 14 hours. So today is our first day in Naha, the capital of Okinawa. The remainder of our vacation will be spent on this island.

I have seen so many beautiful views I can't begin to list them. When I get back next week I'll have a lot of photos to sort through, so it'll take time, but rest assured they will be published here.

See everyone later!

It's easy to forget that Tokyo is in a mountainous area. Although Tokyo itself has a lot of hills and half the place names seem to end in the kanji for "valley" (including where I live: 世田谷 Setagaya and 祖師谷 Soshigaya both end in "valley") there is little real evidence. Tokyo is so densely populated that there's always something obstructing your view.

But from the 5th floor of the IIS building, where my lab is, when the weather is really clear you can indeed see mountains. Here are two shots in the same direction, one taken without zoom and one with 4x zoom (the maximum optical zoom for my camera).

The big mountain in the middle is Mt. Fuji, I think. It's about the right direction, and there's not much else it could be.

There are 2 images attached to this post. Click here to view them.

I woke up this morning to find that it was snowing. It's not a lot, and it pretty much melts as soon as it hits the ground in most places (creating that dreadful slush everywhere), but it's snow nonetheless.

Seeing is believing, so here's two pictures.

There are 2 images attached to this post. Click here to view them.

It appears I had accidentally broken Windows Mobile 2003 support with Pocket Dictionary 1.1. This new version fixes that. Pocket Dictionary 1.2 works on Windows Mobile 2003 and up.

Pocket Dictionary 1.2 is mostly a bugfix release. Besides the Windows Mobile 2003 bug, it has a few other minor fixes. See the Change Log for full details.

One important change: Pocket Dictionary now requires the .Net Compact Framework 3.5. It will not work on 2.0 anymore! The main reason for this change is because it fixes a bug with the ComboBox control that was preventing the context menu (with the cut/copy/paste options) from working correctly on the search field. Make sure you install the new Compact Framework before installing Pocket Dictionary.

Get Pocket Dictionary here.

We've been talking about it pretty much since I arrived in Japan, and the original plan was to do it last autumn but obviously that didn't happen, but now it's finally going to happen: we're going to Okinawa in the beginning of March.

Okinawa, for those who don't know, is a group of islands south of Japan. They're quite far from the main four islands of Japan (so far that they're actually closer to Taiwan and the Phillipines). It's in the tropics, which is why it's a bad idea to go there in the summer.

Today I've booked the flights. On February 28th we'll fly to Ishigaki, an island to the southwest of Okinawa Honto (the main Okinawa island) and the southermost city in Japan. At some point we'll go by boat to Naha (the capital of Okinawa prefecture) on Okinawa Honto, and from there we'll fly back March 11th.

Should be a lot of fun!

It's a question that comes up quite often, and much has been said about it already. But I figured I'd throw in my two cents.

The situation is this: you've got a computer with 4GB RAM, but Windows (or Linux, or MacOS, etc.) reports you have only 3.25GB (or some other number less than 4GB). Where did the rest of the RAM go? How can you use the full amount? The answer to that last question is unfortunately that you can't, not with a 32 bit version of Windows anyway.

Here's what's going on. To read and write information in memory a computer program must specify where in memory it wishes to do so. For this it uses an address (I'm leaving virtual memory out of this discussion because it's irrelevant and would only complicate matters, so in this article when I say address I mean a physical address, that refers to an actual byte on your real RAM chips). Ever since the introduction of the 386 these addresses have been 32 bits in size. This means that there are 2 to the power of 32, or 4294967296 possible addresses. Because the x86 architecture addresses individual bytes, this means a maximum of 4294967296 bytes, or 4GB, can be addressed. This is the physical address space.

Many devices like your video or sound card use memory mapping to allow software to communicate with those devices. What this means is that they use certain addresses don't actually refer to a byte in memory; instead writing to that address sends information to that device. To do this they reserve a portion of the physical address space. If your video card is using 512MB of that address space and you install 4GB of memory in the system, you would need 4.5GB of address space to address all that, which you don't have. So 512MB of physical RAM cannot be addressed (because those addresses are used by the video card) and thus cannot be used or even "seen" by the OS.

Note that it's not only the video card; most other devices do this as well. Using the System Information tool in Windows (Start, Run, msinfo32.exe) you can see all hardware devices that do this and what address ranges they use under the "Hardware Resources, Memory" option (for the oldies: notice how there are still some devices that map into the old "upper memory" region (the area between the first 640KB and 1MB of RAM)). The ranges are shown as hexadecimal numbers.

Most 32 bit processors support an extended addressing mode called PAE (Physical Address Extension) which allows it to use 36 bit addresses for a total of 64GB of address space. 64 bit CPUs can use 64 bit addresses which allow for (theoretically) more than 16 million GB RAM (16 ExaBytes). However, for compatibility reasons all hardware devices will map into the first 4GB reason of address space (otherwise they wouldn't be able to run a 32 bit OS). So there's still an overlap and in the default scenario you'd still lose part of your RAM (even if you have e.g. 8GB RAM, you'd lose part of the first 4GB and see only e.g. 7.2GB). But most modern motherboards are capable of remapping the upper portion of RAM into the range above 4GB so all of it can theoretically be used (unless you actually have 64GB of RAM on a system with PAE).

I say theoretically because you still need OS support for the 36 bit addressing (or a real 64 bit OS on 64 bit systems). Windows does support PAE (among other things it's needed for Data Execution Prevention in Windows XP SP2 and up) but unless you have Windows Server it doesn't actually allow you to use the address above the 4GB boundary so you still lose RAM even if your motherboard has this support. The 64 bit versions of Windows (even the client versions) allow you to use 18TB of RAM so naturally it can use the full 4GB if your motherboard can do the remapping.

So simply put, if you want to use 4GB RAM and not lose any of it, you need a 64 bit CPU and either Windows Server, a 64 bit version of Windows, or some other operating system that either supports PAE or 64 bit.

After another uneventful flight I'm back in Japan. I had a lot of fun in the Netherlands, seeing my family and friends again, but tomorrow it's back to work.

Because I can't really sleep in moving vehicles (aircraft, cars, trains, etc.) unless I'm extremely tired I once again didn't get any sleep on the plane, but since we had personal screens with interactive entertainment on this flight it wasn't so bad. I saw various stuff including The Simpsons Movie, which was okay but not spectacular, but the real surprise was the movie Stardust, which I had never heard of and only picked because the name sounded interesting and because it listed Ian McKellen among the actors (who as it turns out didn't really have a part but only narrates). It was a genuinely fun fantasy movie which I'll probably want to see again sometime (but then not on a 5" screen and without engine noise in the background). If you haven't seen it and like lighthearted fantasy movies (e.g. The Princess Bride) I can definitely recommend Stardust.

There are 5 images attached to this post. Click here to view them.

Or nearly, anyway.

And it's been quite a year for me. A year in which I found out I would go to Japan, went there, and passed the exams so I could stay. Eight months I spent outside the Netherlands, beating my previous record of six weeks by a large margin.

I left behind friends and family, but made a lot of new friends, visited some great places, and generally had a great time. And I got to see my family again in the past week, and tonight I'm having a new years party with a lot of my old friends which is bound to be lots of fun too.

And there was work, dominated first by the Tokyo University entrance exams, then by lectures and the Rinko, and a lot of reading throughout. Looking forward I hope to get a more solid grasp on my research topic soon, and finish the lectures so I can concentrate on research. Work also meant learning Japanese, which I'm still nowhere near as good at as I would like. I have my moments, in which I construct compex sentences that surprise even me, but most of the time I'm still struggling, mainly lacking the necessary vocabulary to express myself, and the experience in building Japanese sentences on the fly.

What will 2008 bring? I can't say. More good times in Japan, I'm sure. Good progress towards my PhD would be nice too. :)

As I post this, 2008 is only 15 minutes away in Japan. Here I have another eight hours to go. But no matter in which time zone you are: happy new year! あけましておめでとうございます！ (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu)

I'm going back to the Netherlands for two weeks starting today. I must say I'm looking forward to eating decent bread again. :P

The disadvantage: I had to get up really early, it's 6:45 in the morning as I'm writing this. But I'll survive. :)