Tag - surferspud

 
 

SURFERSPUD

LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Apr 18, 2002
From hotels to self-pumping soccer balls
www.jtbusa.com/enhome/ If you're looking for hotel deals in Japan, it seems you're better off getting out of the country first. A weekend of frantically trying to locate Tokyo hotels with vacancies turned up a lot of discount sites, few of which were really cheap and most of which were difficult to traverse. A big exception was also the biggest surprise: Japan Travel Bureau. Japan's largest travel agency, which isn't known for getaways on the cheap, has a U.S. site that's filled with bargains. Go figure.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Mar 7, 2002
Enron mania and other diversions
www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,50688,00.htmThe Spudmeister feels like he's cheating a bit here, directing you to a mere article, but it may foretell the next step in digital piracy. The tool tomorrow's pirates are using today is the iPod.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Feb 7, 2002
Geek culture bashing
http://homepage.mac.com/jcarusone/iMovieTheater2.html The unveiling of the new iMac has reignited the Mac vs. Windows debate all over the Internet, with journalists, computer users, economists and other eccentrics predicting whether the latest Apple hardware/software combo will take a bite out of Microsoft's desktop dominance. Surferspud is sure Apple will do just that -- the day after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi lives up to one of his promises and actually reforms something. In the meantime, check out the two camps taking potshots at each other, like this iMovie of a Steve Ballmer rant turned into a wicked music clip: The Ballmer Funk Video. Steve is the sweaty CEO of Microsoft.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Jan 17, 2002
Chives or chocolate on that, spuds?
www.chocovader.com/ I love how candy aisles in Japanese convenience stores have become shrines to the branded characters of pop culture, shrines where no one pays their respects to the chocolate, which has become a wrap-around commodity to get collectibles placed at kid's eye level. The altars have been built to worship Hello Kitty figurines filled with chocolate covered peanuts, Peanuts characters tucked into a chocolate egg, or Harry Potter chocolate frogs that, just like in the books, come with a trading card. Go and pray that you will be lucky enough to chance upon a full stock of the deity du jour -- Chocovaders. That's a katakana-ized version of chocolate space invaders. The chocolate, rather regrettable if you eat it, forms a ball around a plastic bubble, which itself contains a UFO or alien toy soldier. The first time toy-maker Tomy pulled this stunt, businessmen were buying and selling small, plastic dinosaurs for tens of thousands of yen each.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Dec 20, 2001
For the surfing Santa
www04.giftcertificates.com/index.cfmGiftCertificates.com has Uncle Spud's name written all over it. And it has your name written all over it, too, if you've got more nieces and nephews than you can count on one finger. And if you haven't broken out the plastic yet. Let's face it, it even has your name on it if you still have Mom and Dad on left on your list. Send a Supercertificate and the recipient can choose from hundreds of stores, restaurants, Internet sites, specialty schools, video rental shops . . . OK, you get the idea.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Dec 13, 2001
Pounding the mouse pad
www.acupuncturefootwear.com/h_acu2.html You'd be hard pressed to do a day of shopping in Tokyo's Harajuku-Aoyama-Shibuya-Daikenyama hub and not find a particular brand of footwear. All the designers seem to be represented. Except one: this cool little trendsetter from London called Acupuncture. I should've known to look on the Net first. Acupuncture's artsy site doesn't sell the goods but it'll direct you to several online stores that do.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Nov 15, 2001
Mad about movies
www.apple.com/trailers/ It was only three years ago, wasn't it? The trailer for "Star Wars: Episode I" hit the Net and before you knew it, everyone with a modem and a hard drive was downloading the thing via a 28 Kbps connection. And telling you how it only took them 12 hours to do it. Well, now "Episode II" has hit the Net, and Quicktime and your new ADSL/cable connection are gonna make you feel like you've traveled light years between episodes.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Oct 4, 2001
A look at terror
www.newyorker.com/FROM_THE_ARCHIVE/ARCHIVES/?010924fr_archive05 As modern journalism sinks ever deeper into its spoon-feed-me mentality, William T. Vollman, a novelist and magazine reporter, actually does the hard research. Before embarking on an assignment to Afghanistan to find out what the Taliban is all about, he read the Koran, twice. Here's his 2000 New Yorker piece on a rocky, barren chunk of earth that last month became an export base for horrific crimes against humanity.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Aug 2, 2001
From old Edo to South Park
www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/flashback/0009/ National Geographic has been running a flashback series highlighting its rich photographic history. Here's the September 2000 peek-to-the-past: a Hadaka Matsui feat at Saidaiji Temple in Okayama just after World War II. The photographer's flash provided the only illumination during this Lunar New Year observance in which unclothed young men jammed into a pitch-black room fight to come up with camphor-scented batons.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Jul 26, 2001
The next big thing
www.sciam.com/2001/0801issue/0801scicit4.html Back in 1995, the domestic electronics and telecom industries were about to unleash the Pride of Japan on the world: PHS. Ooops. We just went with full cellular handsets instead. A few months later, a big consortium was telling us we wouldn't be able to take vacations without APS cameras and film. We went digital. A couple years ago Apple's Steve Jobs began telling us the Next Big Thing was gonna be desktop movie making. Nope. We wanted Napster. Now the telecoms are back -- fully aware of the Internet -- telling us we can't wait to connect via 3G. This Scientific American article has an idea of how we're gonna dis the progenetors of globalization in the latest round.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Jul 12, 2001
Cars, clothes, a bat and the new prozac
www.bmwfilms.com/site_layout/splash.asp Now that companies have realized the Internet, the great conduit that it is, fails as a business model unto itself, the buzz is all about lifestyle sites. BMW's is an emerging warehouse of short films. Well-polished short films. The first, "Ambush," is a near-six-minute car chase. In the end, no one catches up to the Beemer, which sure looks sexy with all those bullet holes.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Jul 5, 2001
Surfin' safari
www.signonsandiego.com/sports /20010626-9999_1s26surfing.htmlWhen they wrapped up "The Endless Summer" in the mid-1960s, one of the three main components of what would become the all-time definitive cult film went his own way. The trio would not sit down together again until June 15, 2001. Here's a brief report of that uneasy truce, a report that seems to have appeared out of thin air. It did not run until June 26 -- almost two weeks after the meeting -- in The San Diego Union-Tribune. There is no indication as to whether it's a staff piece, a freelance contribution or a wire report. What's more, it has a Denver dateline, though the event took place in a San Diego suburb.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Jun 14, 2001
Going somewhere?
www.orbitz.com The five biggest U.S. airlines got together on Orbitz to offer cut-rate fares and other travel specials. But since United, American, Northwest Delta and Continental don't belong to any of Asia's ticket cartels, you're not gonna get a discount if you're living in Japan (the regulations protecting those cartels are among the many reasons why the Internet will never take off in Asia). But surf by anyway just because Orbitz's tertiary offerings -- news, tips and airport rundowns -- are so good.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
May 31, 2001
Baseball and junk food
www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/index.html "Professional baseball is played at the edge of biological time," the Exploratorium says, "just within a human's ability to react." The pages then go on to demonstrate, not explain, how the pros cope with earning a living on the edge. Games allow you to learn whether you can hit a major league fastball, or how you might adjust your swing when a knuckleballer is relieved by a flame-thrower. Lots of Flash.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
May 10, 2001
A few sites for baseball fans
http://mariners.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/sea/homepage/sea_homepage.jsp The Seattle Mariners' official site is part of Major League Baseball's sprawling footprint on the Web. MLB did a very smart thing this year in taking over every team's site and hiring beat writers to go head-to-head with the ink-stained wretches of the local dailies -- and with the likes of ESPN.com and USAToday.com. The results are awesome, and already some of MLB's reporters are scooping the established pros. The site keeps you up to date on Ichiro and Sasaki in English and Japanese. And it couldn't be easier to jump to other team sites, like that of the Boston Red Sox, where you can follow Hideo Nomo and Tomokazu Ohka.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Apr 19, 2001
Calling all Internauts...
www.zingasia.com An Asia travel site that for some reason wants to be a portal. The only other shopping experience on the Net that offers so much to contemplate is Amazon. But looking for vacation possibilities just isn't the same as browsing through books, and the reams information and suggestions can be a little overwhelming, a little like getting lost in Bangkok's maze of sois.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Mar 21, 2001
Bookmarks old and new
www.newkoyo.com The New Koyo Hotel is doing for Tokyo what Kao Sahn Road has done for Bangkok. Beware of an influx of budget travelers. A gaijin zoo is springing up north of Ueno, and the temporary inhabitants are being attracted by room rates that start at 2,500 yen. The Web site is packed with other information and links indispensable to the backpack set.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Mar 7, 2001
Go ahead, try some
www.tokujo.ac.jp/Tanaka/WWW97/ Hello4/yumie.html This is part of Yumie Harada's home page, the part where she describes her love for natto. And maybe this kind of personal approach is what's needed to get natto virgins past that stench and actually place the stuff in their mouths. Yumie gives the food's history, a recipe for making it, a nutritional value table and her own reflections on natto.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Feb 21, 2001
Spud the magic surfer
www.geocities.com/Baja/4954/ This is how Spudster entertained himself this past weekend, trawling through sites like Internet Magic and challenging the online wizard to do things like figure out what Pokemon character he was thinking about. The wizard can also tell you who you were in a past life and amaze you with all kinds of virtual card tricks. Sadistspud is now unleashing the wizard on his readers.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Feb 7, 2001
Top 10 alternative reasons to go ADSL
www.icebox.com Like most of the Net's other starving-artist showcases, there's an overwhelming choice here, but the favorite appears to be Queer Duck. The episodes, about a gay mallard, are sharp social satire in which it's difficult, at least at first, to determine whether the author is preaching discrimination or acceptance. But be careful, Icebox can bite; it'll never be ready for Saturday morning TV.

Longform

High-end tourism is becoming more about the kinds of experiences that Japan's lesser-known places can provide.
Can Japan lure the jet-set class off the beaten path?