I am my connectome

The images of neurons give a different perspective.
They make me use this wonderful organ "brain" positively, even more.

The child-driven education

Fascinating.

How social networks predict epidemics

It was interesting to watch this talk.

What stops population growth?

This is what I understand for a long time about population growth. It's just that this video explains it visually very clearly.

What stops population growth? from Gapminder Foundation on Vimeo.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 is released

Rails 3.0: It's ready!

Ruby on Rails 3.0 Release Candidate 2 is released

It's getting closer to the final release.

Rails 3.0: Release candidate 2

How we found hundreds of potential Earth-like planets

Ruby 1.9.2 is released

Ruby 1.9.2 was released two days ago.
I don't know why I missed it for two days...

Population growth and sustainability

It was amazing.

Jason Clay: How big brands can help save biodiversity

A monkey economy as irrational as ours

It was interesting.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 Release Candidate is out

First thing first. I have to mention this.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 Release Candidate is out.

Soutenance au doctrat - c'était formidable

J'ai eu de la chance d'assister à la soutenance au doctorat à l'université.

Le candidat, les professeurs, les étudiants, les familles et les amies – tout le monde était très gentil et poli à moi. Je vous remercie tout le monde.

C'était une experience merveilleuse.

Cette soutenance me rappelait des souvenirs du temps ou j'était dans le domaine universitaire. Ça me manque beaucoup. Je voudrais y retourner.

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I had a chance to attend a doctoral defense at a university.

The candidate, the professors, the students, the families and friends, everybody was very kind and polite to me. I would like to express my appreciation to everybody.

It was a great experience.

This doctoral defense reminded me of the time when I was in academic. I miss it very much. I would like to go back there.

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大学の博士論文発表を見る機会に恵まれた。

発表者も、教授も、学生も、家族も、友人も、みんなとても親切で丁重だった。心から感謝している。

すばらしい経験だった。

学生だったころを思い出し、そのように考え、そのように話すことができたことを、本当に懐かしく思う。　できれば、戻りたいものだ。

Richard Feynman talks about light

Problem with restarting MySQL server installed through aptitude on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

I thought this would be useful for other people, too.

I would like to express my gratitude to the people who kindly answered my questions.

Problem with restarting MySQL server installed through aptitude on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

Butler and Duke - NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship

It was a great game - every minute of the game.

Installing Ruby 1.9.1 with Ruby Version Manager (RVM) on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

For some reason, Ruby 1.9.1 didn't install on my Mac OS X Snow Leopard because of an error:


Error running 'make ', please check /Users/home_dir/.rvm/log/ruby-1.9.1-p378/make*.log


The error in ~/.rvm/log/ruby-1.9.1-p378/make*.log:


compiling readline



readline.c: In function ‘username_completion_proc_call’:
readline.c:1159: error: ‘username_completion_function’ undeclared (first use in this function)
readline.c:1159: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
readline.c:1159: error: for each function it appears in.)
make[1]: *** [readline.o] Error 1
make: *** [mkmain.sh] Error 1


So compiling Ruby 1.9.1 with the default readline installed on Snow Leopard didn't work.

By looking at "rvm --help" or ~/.rvm/README, there is an option to specify custom configure options, i.e. -C|--configure. Also there is a flag to force ./configure on install even if Makefile already exists, i.e. --reconfigure.

So I installed readline with MacPorts and installed Ruby 1.9.1 with the option and the flag:


$ sudo port install readline

$ rvm install 1.9.1 --reconfigure --configure --with-readline-dir=/opt/local


Then installation succeeded.

One-to-many relationships in Tokyo Cabinet

I just posted what I tried:

how to build one to many rows in tokyo cabinet?

United Nations Press Conference in Copenhagen Climate Change Conference

The most interesting press conference I have ever seen in the conference.

Press Conference by United Nations on December 19, 2009.

Copenhagen Climate Change Conference

First of all, I have a great respect to all the people, delegates and leaders of the countries, who worked so hard for long hours day and night, staying overnight into late in the morning. Many of them haven't slept for 48 hours.

I have been following it watching the webcast.

At around 3am in the local time, the draft of what is called Copenhagen Accord was presented in front of the Plenary, asking the parties to consider in one hour, after only small number of countries in the closed door spent many hours to draft it, leaving majority of delegates waiting. It was good that the one hour timeline approach was soon dropped.

Basically majority of the parties were forced to swallow what was created by small number of countries (it seems to me, possibly even before the beginning of the conference). The draft should have been created in the Plenary involving all the parties. All the parties were working hard and willing to do whatever takes to solve this difficult problem of climate change all two weeks.

I have been following the last Plenary overnight taking a break here and there and after almost 12 hours later, I couldn't continue any more unfortunately, so I could not see how it was ended. But the those hours saw the involvement of all the parties and that should have been the way all throughout the two weeks. I think that may have brought a better result.

United States' attitude in Copenhagen Climate Change Conference

Since the beginning of the Conference, there have been many informal consultations involving only a small number of countries despite the fact that the delegates from many countries were there to work in the plenaries. And many countries expressed their concern about "transparency".

Now the United States is using the same word, "transparency", for a different context.

First of all, if "transparency" is important, they should ratify the Kyoto Protocol, instead of just announcing what they do about clean energy technology in their country.

Second, while they used the word, "transparency", they formed a closed door meeting with only handful of countries, despite the fact that great majority of the head of states and the leaders are there in the Conference. What they are doing doesn't have any "transparency".

It almost sounds like to me that they took advantage of the situation where many countries are upset about "transparency" in the Conference and used the same word in a different context to diffuse people's attention away from their own responsibilities. In other words, the perception of the majority of parties have been that the United States and China are the blocker of the deal and the United States manipulated to make it look as if China is the only problem.