A Simple Explanation of the Halting Problem

The halting problem is a problem in computer science that can be stated as follows: Given a description of an arbitrary computer program, decide whether the program finishes running or continues to run forever. (Wikipedia) Alan Turing proved that there is no program can solve the halting problem for all possible inputs. Below is a sketch of a proof.

Assume a halting solver h exists that determines whether any program p halts on any input x, where x itself can also be a program. Note that “halt” means that the program terminates, so it is the opposite of “hang”. In pseudo-code, we could express h as the following.
h(p,x) = return (p halts on input x)
Then we can define the following tricky program e.
e(p) = if h(p,p) is False then return False else HANG
And we can pass the program e as input to e.
e(e) = if h(e,e) is False then return False else HANG
Now there are only two cases:

1. e halts on e: then h(e,e)=True, which would make e(e) hang – contradiction
2. e does not halt on e: then h(e,e)=False, which would make e(e) halt – contradiction

So we have arrived at a contradiction and our only assumption was that a halting solver exists, so we can conclude that a halting solver cannot exist.

Here is the main idea. This tricky function e calls the halting solver and asks it: “If I were to run myself with myself as input, then what would I do? Whatever you tell me I’ll do, I’ll just do the opposite.” It’s really just like the argument that you can’t predict someones future actions because they could just ask for the prediction and contradict it. But in a deterministic world, you could predict someone’s actions as long as you didn’t tell them what the prediction was. Analogously, it may be possible to solve the halting problem for all practically useful inputs. So Turing’s theorem alone need not discourage us from seeking reasonably comprehensive code validators.

Setting Up Deal Radars

The internet is an amazing place to find great deals. In the last few months, I got a $20 Amazon gift certificate, about $20 of Amazon mp3/video downloads, and enough airline miles for 3 round-trip domestic flights – all for free. I also got a really nice bike for $20 that I easily sold for $80 when I had to move. The only problem is finding the deals without wasting tons of time looking for them. In response to this problem, I’ve set up a system of deal radars to help seek out the best deals with minimal effort.

The system has two components, both based on RSS feeds. The first component is designed to look for specific deals that I want and the second is design to scout for anything interesting.

Specialized radars are usually based on a craigslist search. For example, say you are looking for a new bike, but you’re not in a big hurry and you’d rather wait for a good deal. Start by doing a craigslist search restricted to a price lower than you would expect to pay, and perhaps add keywords for the brand and other details. If nothing impressive turns up, scroll to the bottom of the page where a small orange RSS icon appears, and copy that link into an RSS to email service like feedmyinbox.com. If you’re not too busy, give your cell phone’s email address (all cell phone companies have email to SMS gateways). After setting this up, you’ll receive real-time feeds of potential deals on your cell phone, so you’ll be the first to know when an exceptional deal shows up and you can snatch it right away.

General-purpose radars are built by collecting RSS feeds of deal websites in Google Reader. Start by searching for deal sites that match your tastes. You can also search for specific deals that you heard about and see which sites listed that deal. Then subscribe to the RSS feeds of all of these sites with Google Reader. This not only makes it quick and easy to scan through deals because it lists all of the headlines in one page, but also provides some very useful information: the list of recommended sites, which is determined based on your current subscriptions. If you periodically check out the recommended sites and subscribe to a couple of them, and then unsubscribe from your worst performers, you’re subscriptions will undergo an evolutionary process. After enough generations, you should end up with a list of subscriptions that is well optimized for the type of deals that you like.

Using these radar systems, you should be able to save a decent amount of money for just a couple minutes a day of effort.

Practical Keychain Gear

One day while I was in Osaka I noticed a compass marker embedded in the floor of a subway station. I thought it was a good idea because whenever you emerge from a particular subway exit for the first time, you never know your orientation.  I thought back on how much time I wasted in Japan trying to get my orientation, even when I knew exactly where I was on the map. It wasn’t just when I was leaving the subway either.  Sometimes I was leaving a big department store on a different side than the one I came in through. And many times it was just because I lost my orientation while walking the complicated network of streets. Whenever I lost my bearings, I almost always ended up asking someone for help. After seeing the compass marker in Osaka, I finally realized that it was time to get a compass.

Of course, a GPS system is a more powerful alternative, but it has some drawbacks. GPS devices are much more expensive and generally less convenient to carry around unless its built into your cell phone. But even if you have an iPhone, that just compounds the last issue, which is that GPS units run out of batteries. On the other hand, a compass and map system does just about everything you need, weighs very little, fits in your pocket, never runs out of batteries, and costs about $1. In Japan, you can find compasses at 100 Yen shops and get maps for free at any subway station or tourist area. I love GPS too, but you have to admit that a compass and map system is pretty impressive.

I decided to mount a small compass to my keychain to make sure that I would always have it when I needed it. So I bought a compass for 100 Yen that worked great; I compared it to the marker in the subway and it lined up exactly. After this success, I started thinking about other things I wanted to be sure I always had available. So I took off to find all the ingredients for the lifehacker’s keychain. When I was done, this is what I had.

• Spherical compass with glow-in-the-dark dial.
• LED Light with on/off switch and temporary-on button.
• Waterproof pill canister containing earplugs
  and MicroSD to USB adapter.
• Nite Ize S-Biner to clip my keys to my shoes while running.

Generally speaking I like to be as minimalist as possible, but at the same time I like to be as functional as possible, and I think this gear strikes a balance between the two.

10 Outdoor Strength-building Exercises

Learn these exercises so you will always be able to stay fit without depending on a gym membership or bulky equipment, which is great when you are traveling. Even if you do have a gym membership, you might be able to save some time by using this simple exercise plan at home every once in a while. This list also emphasizes compound exercises, which help boost testosterone, a necessary ingredient for muscle growth.

1. Running/swimming – These are great cardio workouts that require very little equipment, just shoes and a bathing suit. Swimming is preferable because it distributes the workload move evenly over the body and has lower impact on joints, but you might not always have access to a pool or body of water.
2. Squat-press – The squat press is a combination of a squat and a military press. While rising from squatting position, raise a weight from shoulder level directly upwards above your head. For weight, you can use a tire swing at the playground, a rock, or a couple gallon-sized gallon-sized jugs of water. If your legs are strong enough, try doing a Pistol in which one legs is extended straight out. This is a highly compound exercise that works the quadriceps, calves, glutes, hamstrings, lower back, deltoid, trapezius, and triceps. It may seem odd that one exercise works both the quadriceps and hamstrings considering that these muscle groups are antagonistic (ie. work in opposite directions). This is known as Lombard’s Paradox, but basically that’s just the way the muscles work.
3. Pull-ups and Chin-ups – Pull-ups are done with arms spread and palms facing away, whereas chin-ups are done with arms closer together and palms facing towards your body. These are great compound exercises which work the lats, teres major, lower trapezius, rhomboids, and biceps. Compared with pull-ups, chin-ups work the biceps harder and the back less. All you need is a bar or tree branch, which can often be found in a park or playground.
4. Push-ups – Push-ups can be done anywhere with no equipment. They work your pectorals, triceps, and anterior deltoids. You can place your hands close together making a diamond shape with your thumbs and index fingers to put more emphasis on the triceps.
5. Dips – Dips are usually performed on parallel bars which can be found at the playground or park, but yon can also do them on a bench/chair by extending your legs with feet on the ground and back to the bench with your hands on the seat. This form is easier because some of your weight is support by your feet. Dips primarily work the triceps, but are still a powerful compound exercise because they work the pectorals, especially if you lean forward a bit.
6. Body rows – The body row is a row exercise that uses your body weight. Monkey bars are great for body rows. From a hanging position, swing your legs up and rest your feet on one of the bars so that you are in an upside-down push-up position. Then just use your arums to pull yourself closer to the monkey bars. This works your lats, posterior deltoids, and biceps.
7. Crunches – Crunches can be done anywhere with no equipment.  They primarily work the abs, but you can also work the obliques if you twist your torso to one side when rising from crunches.
8. Leg Raises – Leg  raises can either be done while laying on your back or while hanging from a chin-up bar or tree branch. If you are doing them on your back, it may help to hang on to a tree or bench behind your head to keep your body from rocking. Like crunches, they work the abdominals, but leg raises focus more on the lower abdominals, whereas crunches focus more on the upper abdominals.
9. Lunges – Lunges are performed by taking a big step in which the knee of your rear leg almost touches the ground and your front leg makes a 90 degree angle. Then repeat by alternative legs. Like squats, lunges work the quadriceps, calves, glutes, and hamstrings. Deeper lunges affect the glutes and hamstrings more.
10. Step-ups – Step-ups require a bench or rock to step onto.  Step one leg up, then the other leg up, then one leg down, then the other leg down. Just like the square and lunges, step-ups work the quadriceps, calves, glutes, and hamstrings.

There is some redundancy in these exercises, so you don’t have to do all of them in each session.

Implementing Geolibertarianism

I have been thinking about an economic system called geolibertarianism for some time now. It seems to be the most moral and practical economic system, but very few people have heard of it or thought about it. Therefore, I have outlined below a possible implementation of geolibertarianism as a foundation to begin a discussion of the system’s potential.

Natural resource consumption (including real estate residency, mining, drilling, and pollution) is taxed and there are no other taxes. All taxes besides property taxes are used for government, military, and infrastructure. Property taxes are assessed in proportion to the value of the land, neglecting the value of any improvements such as houses and buildings. Land values are computed in arbitrary units by multiplying the area of the plot by a function of the local population density, considering only non-vacant land in the density calculation. A dollar value is generated by multiplying by a scale factor discussed below. The nation’s property tax revenue is then distributed evenly to all citizens age 18 or over as a monthly check called the citizen’s dividend.

When property taxes are delinquent for an extended period of time, the government does not interfere or try to force the resident to pay, it simply lists the property as vacant. When someone starts paying the tax for that property, they are declared the new resident and the previous resident is now considered a trespasser. However, this will almost never happen because the grace period for tax payment will be long enough that an owner will be able to sell their property before a new resident can take over, even in the event of an unexpected loss of income. This allows the original resident to avoid losing the improvement value of the property.

The tax rate will be scaled annually based on the level required for the citizen’s dividend to constitute a “living wage”. In other words, the tax rate is chosen so that an individual could live a modest life in a small apartment using his or her citizen’s dividend, relieving individuals of the need to work to survive. I would estimate that a living wage for 2010 would be about $1000 per month, or $12,000 per year. This amounts to a total cost of $2.761 Trillion per year for all adult Americans. [1] This cost could be supported by a land value tax in which the annual tax for each property is 9% of its 2010 market value, even if farmland is exempted from taxation. [2] However, since the assessment neglects improvement value, tax rates would not be proportional to 2010 market values, since these do incorporate improvement value. Still, 9% of 2010 market value is a good estimate of the expected tax rate. This is significantly higher than the current rate of 0.2 – 4%. [3] So for a typical family with two adults living in a home that is currently valued at $200,000, annual property taxes would be around $18,000 and their citizen’s dividend would be $24,000, with a net gain of $6,000 per year that can be used for health insurance and other necessities.

For more on the philosophy of geolibertarianism, see Ownership and Georgism.

[1] US Population age 18 and over (2008): 230,118,000
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0007.pdf
[2] Total non-farm non-financial real estate value (2010): $30,892,100,000,000
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1.pdf
[3] Annual state property taxes vary from 0.2 – 4% of market value.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax

Unintended Consequences of Obama’s Healthcare Reform

The Obama Administration’s ambitious healthcare reform is poised for its initial test run this upcoming year. The Affordable Care Act introduces a wide range of regulations that aim to reduce the costs of healthcare for Americans. One controversial component of this legislation will set a limit on how much revenue insurance companies can use for administrative costs, marketing, employee bonuses, and dividend payments to shareholders. In other words, there will be a mandated minimum percentage of revenues that must go to healthcare expenses and healthcare quality improvements. If insurance insurance providers fail to meet these limits, they will be compelled to pay out rebates to their subscribers to make up the difference. Legislators hope that this new requirement will convince providers to streamline their overhead costs and sell policies at lower premiums.

The budget limits for insurance companies are measured by the medical loss ratio (MLR), which is defined as the percentage of revenues used for healthcare expenses and healthcare quality improvements. According to the new regulations, large insurance provide will have to maintain an 85% MLR and smaller firms will be expected to maintain an 80% MLR.

The idea is not new; limits on the medical loss ratio have already been implemented in 34 states by state legislatures. [1] This begs the question of whether federal intervention will be able to accomplish more than the states could by their own efforts. It also casts doubt on the assumption that medical loss ratio limits are helpful to begin with. Any legislation of this magnitude has the potential for serious unintended consequences. Iowa, Maine, Georgia, and South Carolina have already requested waivers for exemption from the new plan over fears of market destabilization. [1]

If we think about how insurance works for a minute, we can see that the whole idea of a fixed MLR requirement is at odds with the general concept of insurance. Insurance companies provide a financial service by accumulating money when claim rates are low and disbursing the money when claim rates rise, which stabilizes costs for consumers. MLR requirements demand that the accumulation process is arbitrarily reset at the end of the year. This prevents efficient techniques like front-loading in which savings are built-up during a customer’s younger years in preparation for the costly senior years. In accordance with a mathematical theorem called the law of large numbers, larger companies will experience lower fluctuations in claim rates. However, smaller firms will be put at increased risk. In response to these concerns, the Affordable Care Act includes a provision for “credibility adjustments”, which allows the government to make discretionary exceptions to the MLR limits for smaller firms.

We recognize that 2718(b) allows the NAIC to “take into account the special circumstances of smaller plans, different types of plans, and newer plans, …” … We expect other types of insurers will ask for special treatment as well. – The Consumer Representatives to the NAIC [2]

In essence, smaller insurance companies will be forced to rely on the good grace of politicians for permission to survive.

But this is not the full extent of the trouble for smaller firms. MLR limits also place constraints on marketing budgets, which could be a death sentence for startups that haven’t yet established a brand name. And potential investors will likely redirect their capital to more lucrative sectors that don’t come with built-in upper limits on dividends. Without investment capital, it will become virtual impossible to disrupt the established industry giants.

Even the biggest insurance companies will be hurt. Lack of administrative funding will produce a brain drain of management talent to other, less regulated industries. And there will be less money to run insurance fraud investigation departments, resulting in higher premiums due to losses. Some services such as nurse hotlines may also take a hit if they don’t qualify as healthcare quality improvements.

The one sure-fire way to lower profit margins and increase value for consumers is to promote competition. The Affordable Care Act does just the opposite, in the unfounded belief that telling companies how to do their job will somehow outweigh this economic truth. It seems that there will never be enough evidence, theoretical or empirical, to convince the world that central planning just doesn’t work.

America does have a healthcare problem, but it’s not because of greedy insurance executives. It is because the government is enforcing a doctor cartel on behalf of the American Medical Association to keep doctor’s salaries artificially inflated, the Food and Drug Administration is making it more expensive than necessary to bring new drugs to the market, insurance regulations are stifling competition amongst providers, and liability laws are forcing doctors to purchase expensive malpractice insurance that ends up diverting money to lawyers and malpractice insurance companies. In short, it is government regulations that are causing our problems; further regulations are only going to make matters worse. And the salt on the wound is that we are paying quite a hefty sum to have this mistake implemented. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that reforms will cost $940 billion over a 10 year period, adding to our tax burden and $13.8 trillion national debt. [3]

[1] “Health Policy Brief: Medical Loss Ratios,” Health Affairs, Nov. 12, 2010. http://www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief.php?brief_id=30

[2] Letter to NAIC by NAIC consumer representatives, Oct. 8, 2010. http://www.naic.org/documents/committees_conliaison_1010_mlr_comments.pdf

[3] “Health Care Reform Bill: Cost, Details, Changes Released,” Huffington Post, March 18, 2010.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/18/health-care-reform-bill-c_n_505128.html

My $13/month phone plan

One of the interesting things I learned in Japan was that text messaging is often more convenient than voice calling despite its much lower information content. In Japan, people almost never talk on the phone in the subway and it’s much less common to see people talking while walking on the street. Instead, they use text messaging because it doesn’t distract others around them. Also, text messages can be easily understood in noisy environments such as busy streets and restaurants.

So like the Japanese, I ended up making almost all of my phone calls from the privacy of my apartment. And since I had internet access in my apartment, I was able to make all of my calls using the free VOIP service in Gmail, which allows you to call any US landline or mobile phone for free from anywhere in the world. When I was away from home, I used a pre-paid cell phone from SoftBank to send text messages. I was amazed that the phone only cost about $25 and had unlimited messaging and email for $21 per month with no contract. The phone itself was really high quality and seemed much more expensive.

So when I got back to the US, I decided to try to setup a similar plan. After a little research, I found that the AT&T GoPhone service offers 1000 texts/emails for $9.99 per month with no additional taxes or fees. They also have unlimited messaging for $19.99 per month, but I’ve never used more than 1000 messages in one month, so I bought an R225 GoPhone for $19.99 plus sales tax and subscribed to the $9.99 per month plan. The phone also has its own email address for receiving email and can send email, both cases counting as one of the 1000 messages.

The GoPhone can do voice calling and internet, but it is really expensive, so I would only use it in case of emergency. But of course, whenever you fill out a form for something, you have to give a phone number for the business to contact you. One option is to let them call your GoPhone and then dial into the voice mailbox later from your computer. But there is an even better option that is totally free. I signed up for Google voice which gives you a free phone number with a voice mailbox. When a voicemail comes in, it sends an email to your Gmail inbox with a text transcript generated by speech recognition technology. I setup a forwarding filter so that whenever a new voicemail arrives from my Google Voice number, an email is sent to my GoPhone with the transcript of the voicemail included.

For voice calling, Gmail’s VOIP service is free, but it has the disadvantage that it doesn’t work on the iPod touch. For more flexibility, I decided to pay $2.99/month for unlimited calling to US & Canadian landlines and mobiles through the Skype service. This allows me to make calls using my iPod touch wherever WiFi access is available. Skype allows you to set the caller ID to your phone number, so when I call using my iPod touch, the caller ID shows up as if I’m calling from my GoPhone, which makes it easier for my friends and family to recognize who is calling. The battery only provides about 90 minutes of talk time, but with the Energizer XP2000 external battery I can triple the time (note: if you have iOS4 installed, you can continue talking after pressing the power button, which turns off the screen and saves battery power). Also, using the touchTXT app on the iPod touch, I can send and receive text messages for free through the AIM service without using up my cell phone quota.

One of the best aspects of this plan is that there are no contracts. So if you leave the country or change your mind and decide you need an iPhone, you won’t lose more than one month’s expenses. And I used to pay $5 per month to insure my phone because it was so expensive, but now that I’m using a $20 phone, there is no need for insurance either. Eventually I might need to get a phone with a data plan for internet access, but for now I’m going to save my money and try to avoid getting more addicted to the internet.

Hand-held Productivity with the iPod Touch

I originally bought an iPod touch to use as an electronic dictionary for Japanese. I’ve been quite satisfied with Kotoba, a free Japanese-English dictionary application. Ever since I moved to Japan, I’ve been keeping my iPod touch in my pocket at all times to help with all the Japanese around me. Due to the fact that I’ve always had it with me, I ended up putting it to use in more ways than I originally expected. This made me realize that the iPod touch fulfils a need that I didn’t know I had.

It’s a computer that fits in your pocket and it can be used easily with one hand. This means that I can be productive almost any time my attention is free. I can study while standing on the subway with one hand gripping the railing or holding a bag. And I can look up words in my Japanese dictionary in one hand while typing a text message in Japanese on my cell phone in the other hand. You can’t do these things with a laptop or even an iPad.

I’ve also gotten a lot of use out of my iPod touch while waiting for my friends who were running late, which seems to be always. I just start studying and then I don’t really care too much how late they are because I would be doing the same thing if I was at home. Now I feel that having a hand-held pocket computer is an invaluable asset. Below are my favorite uses for the iPod touch that work anywhere because they don’t require internet access.

• Studying Japanese with Anki. As mentioned in How to Study Japanese, I use Anki ($25) to study Japanese vocabulary and kanji whenever I have a little bit of extra time. Even if it’s only a minute, I can log a few words and accomplish something.
• Reading books with Kindle. When I have larger chunks of free time, I like to read books. The iPod touch’s screen is definitely smaller than a typical page of a book, but I find it manageable. You can also transfer the Kindle books to a Kindle device or PC to read on a larger screen at no extra cost.
• Watching Photoshop video tutorial podcasts. Lately I’ve been studying photography and Photoshop quite a bit, so I subscribed to some podcasts that teach you how to use Photoshop with step-by-step video tutorials. I like PhotoWalkthrough, Photoshop User TV, and Pixel Perfect. It’s really nice to have this option for when your focus is weak since video is a very powerful medium for engaging focus. I’m also on the lookout for some really good audio podcasts though.
• Storing PDF reference documents in iBooks. I bought a new camera recently and it came with a pretty thick manual. I definitely didn’t want to carry it around, but I also didn’t want to miss a good shot because I didn’t know how to operate the camera. So I downloaded the PDF for the manual from the internet and uploaded it to iBooks and now I can reference it anytime I need to.
• Navigating with Google Maps screenshots. Although it would be nice to have internet access for navigation, if you know where you are going ahead of time, you can map out your route from home and save screenshots for each of the steps. To take a screenshot, press and hold the power button and press the home button. The screenshot will be saved to the “Saved Photos” folder of the Photos app. By stepping through all the steps on the route and saving a screenshot for each of them, you will have all the information you need.
• Storing passwords with MyKeePass. Most of my passwords are only necessary for my computer, but I like having my debit card pin numbers and locker combinations available anywhere. I use an app called MyKeePass ($1) to access the password database that I normally access from my desktop using the KeePass program.
• Showing photos to friends. The iPod touch has a nice screen to show my recent photos to friends. And the pinch-to-zoom feature is a real crowd-pleaser.

There are also a few accessories that I would recommend. The most important is probably a case. I really like the Incipio Silicrylic X Polycarbonate Case (for 2nd or 3rd generation iPod touch, 4th generation is here). I’ve dropped mine a few times and I still can’t notice any visible damage. I also occasionally use a backup battery, for example during flights and train rides. The Energezier XP2000 is extremely small and has the ability to recharge the iPod touch’s battery two times. This unit also works for any USB device – it charges from USB and outputs to USB. Finally, I would recommend a compact USB power adapter like the Apple USB Power Adapter. Again, this will work with any USB device.

Life in Japan – Part 4

Well, my 3 month stay in Japan is almost over. It’s a bit sad to be leaving so soon. I’ve become really accustomed to living here and I want to spend more time with the great friends I’ve met. And I still have a long ways to go with learning Japanese.

After my last post, I decided to move to Osaka to experience the different culture there. On the way, I stayed in Yokohama to visit some friends that were introduced to me by a mutual friend living in New York. We had a fun time exploring China town and the beautiful new developments near the harbor.

The next day, I stopped in Nagoya to visit a friend that I met during my first week in Tokyo. During the day, I explored the city and the famous castle on my own. I felt that foreigners were more rare in Nagoya becase a young man waved at me, a child said “The foreigner… (something I didn’t hear)”, and an old man kept trying to tell me where to go, but I couldn’t understand him because his voice was so raspy. After my friend was done with work, we had dinner together and walked around while she told me about her city.

When I arrived in Osaka, there was only one guy I knew in the city and he didn’t respond to my message for weeks, so initially I was totally on my own. The first night I stayed in a cheap hotel called the Chuo Oasis, which is new and clean, in a pretty central location, and only $40 per night. The next day I found a monthly apartment called the Melon House in a little Korean-town near the Namba district and signed the lease. The apartment was pretty bare-bones. There was no real heating or insulation, so I was usually freezing. And there were really low door frames, so I had to duck 3 times to go from my futon to the bathroom. But overall it was fine because the location was really good and the one-month lease was really convenient.

The Namba area is one of the most exciting places in Osaka. For the first couple weeks, I was going there every night to talk to random people on the street. I verified what my friends had told me: people in Osaka are more friendly than people in Tokyo. I only got ignored half of the time when approaching people. And I immediately noticed many differences from Tokyo. Osaka is really dirty looking, people throw cigarrette butts on the ground like its a fashion statement to do so, and you can see two or three people riding on a regular bicycle all the time. It’s amazing how many bicycles there are in Osaka. Why can’t we do this in American cities? I also thought it was funny how about 50% of the people in McDonald’s were girls who were putting on makeup using huge mirrors and intense-looking makeup equipment.

One thing that I couldn’t have guessed is that there are more male “hosts” than female “massaji” girls. I talked to some of the hosts and did a little photo shoot with one of them because his style was so interesting (see the Osaka gallery). While I was taking shots, one of the other hosts started taking pictures of us on his cell phone because he thought it was funny that I was taking pictures of them. I also randomly met some “nanpa” (pick-up) experts during my own nanpa escapades (starting conversation on the street with strangers is considered nanpa, even if it is guy to guy). I asked one if I could watch him and he said he would ask his gang if it was ok. I overheard them say that I wasn’t good enough at Japanese and so they didn’t let me watch. I ended up running into them a couple more times during the course of the month though.

Currently, Japan is famous for being one of the few first-world countries in the world with a declining population. But I saw so many young mothers carrying their babies around, I can’t imagine what it would look like if they didn’t have a declining population. My friend who took a long time to respond ended up introducing me to his adorable friend who was a 22-year-old single mother of a 3 year old, living with her mother in a three-generation, all female household. I even got to meet her kid, who was super cute, though initially she was really scared of me because I was the first foreigner she ever met.

Japan definitely has a different attitude about Alcohol than the US. Outside my apartment, there was a vending machine that said “Liquor Store” in English. Any kid with some pocket change could go and buy a beer there. And I saw some pretty drunk men in the subway. One was stumbling so much that the station attendant ran after him. He stumbled toward the tracks just as a train was rushing in. If the station attendent hadn’t caught him, he probably would have died. Another time, I saw a man crawling toward his briefcase that he had dropped about 10 steps back. I asked him in Japanese if he was ok because at first I didn’t realize he was drunk and he responded in English “Will you be my friend? (unintelligible mumbling)”.

The whole time I’ve been in Japan, I’ve only met one Christian. He knocked on my door in the morning and immediately started talking in English. “Thank you for coming to the door. I want to ask you a question about the Bible. Some people think it’s the word of God and some people think it’s just a book written by the white people. What do you think?”

One of the coolest things I did in Osaka was make friends with several people who didn’t speak English. If I hadn’t studied Japanese, then I never could have met them. I even became friends with some Koreans using Japanese, which was a foreign language for both parties. I also met up with a group of friends in Kobe that I met in the US. They showed me around their city and we had some delicious Shabu-Shabu. Kobe seems like a nice-sized city to live in. I was originally planning on living there the whole time, but it’s harder to find short-term housing there.

I also got to see some of the beautiful nature of Japan. I went hiking with friends in Koya-san, Yoshino, Tateyama (Toyama-ken), and Unazuki. Koya-san has many beautiful temples that you can see for free; I would say it is one of the best tourist destinations in Japan that I’ve seen. In Yoshino, I took a picture of a Mamushi, one of Japan’s two most venomous snakes, from about 1 meter away. I didn’t know it was so dangerous at the time, but thankfully I’m still alive. In Tateyama, I hiked through the 1.5m deep snow of the Japanese Alps wearing sneakers and carrying my camera and tripod. Sometimes you can walk on top of the snow, but sometimes we ended up falling into the snow and getting buried up to the waist. Unazuki had a gorge with brightly painted red bridges, huge dams, and autumn colored trees lining the sides.

In terms of learning Japanese, things went about as I expected. I definitely made some progress, and I think I made a bit more progress than if I was taking a class, but with less time expended and stress endured. I realized that the main bottleneck I have in learning Japanese is that I have so many other interests that I don’t want to focus entirely on studying Japanese. Even for 3 months, being completely focused on one thing doesn’t feel balanced.

So now I’m back in Tokyo, catching up with the some of the friends that I haven’t seen for a month, and also trying to figure out what’s going to happen when I get back to the US. At this point, I don’t even know what city I’m going to live in. Only a few days left to decide!

Advanced Digital Photo Editing on a Budget

When I first saw Adobe Photoshop Elements, my initial assumption was that it was a really watered-down version of Photoshop designed for cropping, red-eye removal, and basic adjustments like brightness and contrast. But my assumption was totally wrong. In fact, Photoshop Elements is more like a version of Photoshop stripped down to the subset useful for digital photography, whereas the full version has many features intended for graphic design.

I might never have discovered Elements if it weren’t for the fact that a copy of Photoshop Elements came bundled with my Wacom Pen and Touch tablet. The tablet works really well with Elements, allowing you to draw with pressure-sensitive brushes, making editing much more fun than with a mouse. The tablet cost $99 and came with Elements, which costs about the same, though the version it comes with is not the latest. So I installed it and started checking it out. I was impressed that it supported all the same layer blending modes as Photoshop, and has tons of the same filters in the Filters menu for things like adding photo filters, light sources, blurs, textures, vignettes, and much more.

Elements also had all the important tools like the healing brush, clone stamp, dodge, burn, sponge, magic wand, quick select, lasso, impressionist brush, color replacement, unsharp mask, magic extractor, and all the basic ones.

The most important missing pieces are probably the curves, channel mixer, layer masks, and trim functions. But fortunately, all of these can be added to Elements for free. The curves and channel mixer functions are included in the free no-time-limit demo of Elements+, a plug-in that expands the functionality of Elements. The layer mask function is included in Elements version 9, but since I have version 7, I installed a plug-in that installs the layer mask function. And there is another plug-in that installs the trim function.

There are definitely a lot of features that are not included in Elements and aren’t installable. The pen tool for advanced selections is missing and the layer styles are less powerful, for example. But the missing features are mostly for graphics design. For photography, there isn’t anything that I have missed so far.

Also worth mentioning is the free version of the Neat Image plugin, which does a great at noise reduction on photos taken in low-light. The free version is limited in the size of the image it operates on, but it goes up to 1024×768, which is sufficient for photos to be uploaded on the internet.

For photographers, one of the most valuable plug-ins is Adobe Camera Raw. The full Photoshop version of Adobe Camera Raw has the same functionality as the Develop module of Adobe Lightroom. The Elements version of Camera Raw has more limited functionality, but it has all the functionality of the Basic section, which has all the most important sliders. As far as I know, the functions not included in the Elements version of Camera Raw can be performed in the Elements editor, like gradient filters and camera distortion correction.

Adobe Lightroom is designed to be an efficient photo organizer and streamlined editor for basic non-destructive edits. Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are designed to be layer-based bitmap editors that function on both the pixel-level and the image-level. If money is not a factor, the best setup is to have both Lightroom and the full version of Photoshop. But if you are on a tight budget, you can get almost all the photo-editing functionality of these expensive pieces of software with just the relatively affordable Photoshop Elements combined with the plug-ins mentioned above.

Tip for Canon DSLR users: I tried a few RAW image browsers and the Canon ZoomBrowser EX application was by far the fastest – several times faster than IrfanView and Photoshop Elements. Canon also has a RAW image thumbnailer and previewer codec that lets you see thumbnails in folders and previews in the Windows previewer.

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