Pondering...

I am in Starbucks, writing this article. There are so many things I am planning to do this year, including going to Cambridge, Boston, USA for a short program in computer security. The BGM now playing is Arietty's song which is from a Japanese anime by Ghibli. Japan had been my home for 22years. I've never lived overseas, although I have been to my parent's friend's place in Pennsylvania for about 10 days when I was 11, and I went to travel in France for a week and went to San Francisco and Boston for a week, but that's about it.

My dream always had been to go to MIT. When I visited MIT and attended the campus tour there, I could verify my dream that I am heading to the right direction, that it will not only be a dream but become a reality soon. I have this vision that will need some time to become a reality, but I will know for sure that it will be a reality.

I bought this book called Mining the Social Web by Matthew A. Russell. I just started on the book, but I will be studying Python, as Google uses Python, Java, C/C++ in their development. I have visited Google Japan a couple times for their Techtalk last year, and I want to continue doing so, and make connections by networking there.

My favorite programming language so far is Perl as there are so many modules in CPAN. Although some people say it runs slow, it has not been a problem for me since I use 3.2Ghz dual core processor. Times has changed quite a bit nowadays.

If somebody could donate me a desktop having a Core i7 processor and NVIDIA's CUDA enabled processor that runs Windows 7, I will use it for programming a search engine ranking system using CUDA.

Traveling is a fun thing to do, and I enjoy it very much. I usually take along my iPad, Vaio Z or my 2009 Macbook Pro along with me. The best thing about USA is that there are a lot more free wifi everywhere. Japan is pretty much closed when it comes to free wifi, although there are quite a bit of FON accesspoints. I do not own FON by the way.

Taking photos is really fun to do, and I usually use my IXY Digital 930IS I bought in 2010. I like the size of the camera, and when I went to France in 2011, I took along Fujifilm EXR80 I sold to my dad later.

When I go to important events, I take along my Canon EOS Kiss X2 which I got in 2008. The camera has 12mega pixels and takes crisp images. The EF mount supports older camera lenses made for non-digital SLR, so it is a plus. I have a 85mm-300mm lens and several other lenses I sometimes use.