Yet again, I find myself rushing to catch a train that I’m pretty sure will zoom away while I attempt to chase it down – you know, like in the movies. But karma’s on my side today, because I actually make the train, thanks to a system they have here – if you don’t have time to buy a ticket, the clerk at the desk gives you a slip of paper that allows you to pay at your ending station. And they don’t charge you some stupid surcharge like NJ Transit.

Nagano City is kind of like Nagoya, minus the mountains in the distance.

It's Nagano City!

The train station is a sort of two-leveled strip mall of sorts, and there’s a variety of restaurants, convenience stores, and the ubiquitous Yenshop. There’s a shopping mall close by the station with a nice selection of eateries in the basement.

A view of the statue in front of the Nagano City train station.

For now, I’m off to take a bus (bus stops are located right in front of the station) to the fabled land known as Togakushi. I’ve since learned that the roads in Togakushi are as bad – or worse – as you’ve heard about Japanese mountain roads. Ever heard of Initial D? It’s a famous anime series/live-action movie that stars a kid who tears down mountain roads at blinding speeds. My version is called Initial C, and it’s about a guy in a large bus tearing through mountain roads at 2 mph.

By the time I get to Togakushi, the rain is coming down nicely. I’m ready with a pair of rain boots that was graciously lent to me by the innkeeper. that are, quite unfortunately, at least 3 sizes too large. Maybe more. So I came up with this brilliant idea of stuffing my boxers (as in boxer shorts) into them so they could fit. Okay, it was actually a terrible idea and I’m now walking around Togakushi with MY BOXERS IN MY BOOTS. This is beyond embarrassing.

The entrance to Togakushi: take the straight 2km path, or wind around the botanical gardens.

The main attraction in Togakushi is the shrine, and the 2km path that precedes it. You can either take the direct path, or take a stroll through the botanical gardens on the side. I opt for the latter, and slosh around in the mud (thank goodness for oversized rain boots, I guess) for an hour before I make it to the shrine entrance.

A map of Togakushi forest preceding the gate.

The gateway leading to the shrine is kind of, really, seriously deceptive. After the long trek, you’ve finally arrived at the shrine, where you can pay your respects and all that jazz, right? Noooo-pe! The actual shrine is further up, way up, through a long path that slowly gets steeper and more treacherous as you get closer to the top. By treacherous I mean lots of medium-sized rocks and rock stairs on the path digging into your feet and making the ground completely uneven. You do get treated to some views of giant trees, like the redwoods in California, and some great viewing spots/picture-taking areas by a stream running parallel to the path.

Gigantic trees line the sides of the main path up to the shrine.

I'm a sucker for cool-looking bridges and streams.

A set of stairs venturing deeper int o Togakushi forest.

For what it’s worth, the shrine is pretty lame. But it’s more about the trip there and back.

Here's your reward for climbing to the top of the Togakushi path: a shrine.

There are other notable spots in the Togakushi area, like a Ninja museum for kids (tourist trap warning?), random ice cream stores, and a ski resort. I can’t vouch for the quality of any of these, however.

I spend my afternoon traipsing about Nagano City, going through various nooks and crannies. Among one of my sadder findings:

You can visit the place (I think?) where the Olympics' closing ceremonies were held. It's been reduced to a rusted parking lot, merely a shadow of its former self.

So why Nagano?

I don’t really have a good answer, unfortunately. I started in central Japan (Tokyo), and moved west (Nagoya), then even more west (Osaka), then Northwest (Kyoto). I figured I’d circle around and make my way back to Tokyo, where I would take my flight home on Day 22.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to circle around from Kyoto to Nagano. You have to basically backtrack back to Nagoya, then take a different shinkansen directly north.

I wasn't kidding about the fruitcakes.

Leaving Kyoto is a sad experience. I know I’ve said this like five times already, but I feel like I’m leaving a part of me behind – and while I could stay (and cancel my Nagano ryokan reservation – at Hostelworld you have to pay 10% if you cancel, which is not a huge deal), Yashi informs me that there are no more openings for tonight, so I’d have to find another place to sleep anyway. Idea scratched.

There isn’t much to say about the trip to Nagano, other than that I guess I’ve gotten accustomed to the Japanese railway system.

Arriving at Togura is like my first night in Japan. And probably the sign of a bad omen. It’s quickly getting dark, and absolutely POURING when I step off of the train. I have my small umbrella, but after two weeks in Japan it’s bent and one rod is broken. I honestly have no idea how. But I suspect it won’t last the rest of my trip all the same.

Anyway, the walk from the train station to the ryokan looked short on the map, maybe 15-20 minutes tops. Nope! That map must not have been to scale. Or maybe the rain slowed me down. It’s hard to say. Either way, it takes me fifteen minutes just to get to the bridge.

I’ve since nicknamed this bridge “The Bridge of Death”. Let me describe it.

First, it’s about 100 feet high. There’s a very low railing, and it spans two rivers, one of which looks like it has some minor rapids included free of charge. I hazard a guess that falling from this height would hurt a lot. Not that it matters, I’d probably die from sheer fright way before hitting the water.

Normally, I would just stand like 10 feet away from the edge, but that’s not possible since the road is narrow and cars regularly drive by. So I’m stuck tiptoeing the length of the bridge about 2 feet from the railing, as the wind picks up and starts blowing me around. So the choices are either:

1) Don’t get wet but possibly get blown off the bridge from the wind, or
2) Get really really wet.

In the interest of my own self-preservation, I choose option #2 and just trudge through the rain as fast as I can without falling into the murky depths. Did I mention I have a really, really bad fear of heights?

So, yeah, it’s not a good day. In hindsight, I probably should have just walked back to the station, grabbed the first train to Nagoya/Kyoto, and enjoyed lovely Gion district, playing pachinko and singing karaoke.

After crossing the bridge I end up in what I can only call a backwater sort of town, flanked by a large mountain range. It is quite dead, unless you count the occasional dimly-lit street lamp. I walk around a bit, mostly trying to pinpoint the location of the ryokan where I’ll be staying the next two nights. It’s called Kamesei Ryokan, after a legend about a turtle that I will not rehash here because I’ve forgotten it already. It was fascinating though.

I meet the innkeeper, who’s – surprise! – a white guy from the USA named Tyler. Our conversation goes something like this:

Innkeeper: “Hey, how come you didn’t call us up? I could’ve given you a ride from the train station.”

Me: *facepalm*

Innkeeper: “You know, we offer a full course meal of local specialties. You should give it a try. So how about it?”

Me: “Uh, I’m not really-”

Innkeeper: “It’s a really great way to sample a lot of the local cuisine.”

Me: “Thanks but-”

Innkeeper: “You should definitely try it.”

Tyler-san gives me an overview of the surrounding area, and recommends several places for dinner. None of them sound particularly appealing, unless you count the one that’s owned by a retired geisha who doesn’t speak much English. I decide against it though. He also takes pains to remind me, yet again, that I should try the 4300 yen specialty dinner in the ryokan’s own restaurant. I do the mental calculation in my head: roughly a shirt and a half from RageBlue. NO THANKS.

Well, at least the digs are nice.

Eventually he shows me to my room, and it’s nice. Really nice. Much nicer, in fact, than any other room I’ve stayed in during this entire trip. It looks like a four-person room, but fortunately for me, no one else decided to stay at the Kamesei. So I have this huge room to myself. There’s a separate bathroom and nice indoor balcony area, but no shower, because Kamesei is one of the only inns with their own natural onsen (which has its own showers anyway). On my first trip to the bathroom, I spot a medium-sized spider running up a wall and jump back roughly twenty feet. I really hate spiders, and I don’t particularly relish the thought of sitting on the toilet with a spider waiting to drop onto my head.

Yep, that's rain.

I head back out into the great unknown with the purpose of procuring something for dinner. Everything looks closed. I end up at a Hotto Motto fast-food (I guess it’d be fast-casual here) joint and, with my awesome ability to read Japanese and not understand it, manage to order a Korean beef bowl that I take back to my lonely room at the Kamesei.

A fine choice of cuisine, courtesy of Hotto Motto.

With nothing much to do and no desire to go back out into the rain, I enjoy an evening soak in the onsen, and for a time, think of nothing but my own quiet thoughts. Tomorrow is another day.

I did, however, need a decent note-taking application for daily reminders and the like. I had only one real requirement: the app had to let you add a widget on your home screen that actually displayed the note. And believe it or not, I couldn’t find a single one on the Market that did the job right without looking like a cartoony slanted Post-It note.

So finally I decided to just write one myself.

Clear Note Widget is the result. It does one thing and one thing only, which is to let you add and display notes on your home screen. You can customize the look and feel of your widget up to the point where you can make the background completely transparent. Which looks pretty cool.

Here’s some screenshots of the app at work:

Clear Note Widget is 99 cents on Android Market.

Thanks to the Market’s liberal returns policy, you can buy it, try it for 15 minutes, and return it if it doesn’t meet your (arguably high) standards for Sticky Noting.

An oldie but goodie.

Nature Valley Fruit and Nut Bars

The fruit and nut bars have long been a staple in my snack food diet, and for good reason: they’re tasty and aren’t horribly bad for you. I consider them the standard by which all other snack foods must be judged. I eat several hundred of these a year. I’m serious.

Anyway, the nice thing about these bars is that they have a nice, satisfyingly chewy consistency, unlike many of Nature Valley’s other offerings. Ever try the dark chocolate bars? They’re dry, rock-hard, and taste horrible to boot. The last and only time I bought a big box of the stuff from Costco, I had to resort to Tom Sawyer-level trickery to get other people to eat them (“wow, mmm, they’re so goooood!”).

So if you haven’t tried the Fruit and Nut bars, you should do so. They come highly recommended. The strawberry yogurt ones are good too.

Smart Fries. In the flesh.

Gourmet Basics Smart Fries, Classic Sea Salt

I came across these fries after surfing around Amazon looking for healthier alternatives with high reviews. These got some pretty high marks across the board. Well-deserved? You be the judge.

So the main draw of the “smart” fries is that they’re “air-popped”, which sounds awfully like popcorn to me. In actuality, the fries are thin and curvy little tidbits that are also hollow, ie. filled with air. That’s “air-popped”. As a result, eating a fry doesn’t give you the same satisfaction you get from eating a single pototo chip. It feels like you’re eating, well, nothing.

These taste almost exactly like the famous Calbee Shrimp chips (which look more like fries than these). It’s lightly salted, and not bad as far as taste is concerned.

One bag is 1 ounce, and contains a lot of fries. Considering each fry is like .0000001 ounces, the amount of work it takes to eat an entire 1 oz bag of fries feels like going through five bags of snack-size potato chips

The bag is also half-full/empty:

Peeking inside a bag of Smart Fries.

Clif Kid Zbar, Variety Pack

Credit slickdeals for this one. I bought the 24-pack of these Zbars, albeit with some hesitation considering how bad normal Clif bars taste. I can safely report that the Kid Zbars are much better than the adult Clif bars.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Clif Kid Zbars are made for kids. Now my rule of thumb is that anything for kids usually tastes better than comparabler adult stuff, with certain exceptions like Flintstones Complete chewable vitamins. Try them if you don’t believe me. But the Zbars are actually quite good even though they don’t look particularly appealing. As for the differences between the three different types of bars (Honey Graham, Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Brownie), there aren’t many. Chocolate Brownie is a little more chocolate-y than the rest, Chocolate Chip has…chocolate chips, and Honey Graham tastes like Chocolate Chip without the chips.

As you can probably tell, I don’t have a lot to complain about here. I also don’t have a picture of the bars because I ate them all.

It was probably a mistake buying this variety pack considering I dislike 24 out of 50 of the included bags.

Doritos, Lays, Fritos, Cheetos, Variety Pack

Tucked away in the Cheetos ingredients label under all of the marked-up fat and sodium content is a well-known crowd-pleaser: monosodium glutamate, aka MSG, aka the stuff they put in Chinese food to make it taste extra salty and extra good. Is MSG actually bad for you? I can’t really tell you, because Wikipedia can’t really tell me, because no one seems to have really figured it out yet, despite the fact that the stuff’s been around for 100 years or so.

For me, I’m not so finely attuned to the taste of MSG that I can identify it on contact, like my brother, who also claims that it gives him headaches.

But I don’t know why a bag of Cheetos needs MSG, and because of this Cheetos has lost 90% of its respect points.

Anyway.

In the variety pack, you get two different kinds of Doritos, three types of Lays potato chips, some Fritos and some Cheetos. What’s annoying is that there isn’t an even number of bags in the box, no; instead, you get a lot some arbitrary mix of bags that Frito Lay decided to throw into a Classic Mix box. That means 20 bags of Doritos, 10 bags of Cheetos, 8 bags of Lays, 8 bags of Fritos, and another 4 bags of Lays BBQ flavor.

Now, this review is a little biased because I absolutely hate Doritos. So you might have to take this with a grain of salt, or MSG, when I say that both types of Doritos taste the same: terrible. But for the purposes of conducting a thorough review, I ate every single bag of Doritos in the box. (I first tried to give them away but no one wanted them…) The sacrifices that I make for science.

The two bright spots in this variety pack are the bags of Regular Lays and Fritos. And the nice thing about both of them is that their respective ingredient lists are bare amd empty, like it should be; Lays is made of potatoes, oil, and tons of salt. Fritos is made of corn, corn oil, and tons of salt. That is how I like my chips, down to its simplest form with a ton of salt.

Do yourself a favor and buy a big bag of Regular (or Wavy) Lays, and a bag of Fritos. Your brain (if those rumors about MSG causing brain tumors are true…) will thank me later.

The anatomy of a Balance Bar Gold, S'mores Flavor

Balance Bar Gold, S'mores

Balance Bars are pretty highly rated, or at least they were highly rated on drugstore.com, where I bought two boxes of the S'mores and Lemon Meringue flavors.

The reason that these are so-called Balance bars are named so is because they’re supposed to provide you with a nice balance of protein, carbs, and fat. That sounds great on the wrapper, but I don’t see why you need to have 20% fat to go along with the 40% protein and 40% carbs. It sounds like a hollow excuse for making a really fatty chocolate bar.

And the Balance Bar Gold ™ does not taste like a really fatty chocolate bar, nor does it stack up with actual S'mores. These bars don’t taste like S'mores any more than Smart Fries taste like French Fries.

But do they taste bad?

Not quite. But they don’t taste good either. I felt like writing some poetry, so here’s a haiku describing the sensation of eating a Balance Bar Gold ™ bar, S'mores flavor.

Bar goes in the mouth
Tastes just like chocolate
With sawdust and corn

Unfortunately I still have to eat 13 of these bars.

The Amazing Lemon Meringue Balance Bar

Balance Bar Gold ™, Lemon Meringue

Now, normally, I would have grouped the Balance Bars together, but this time I figured that the Lemon Meringue flavor deserved its own special place. Not a special place in hell, as you might have guessed. Oh, no. Quite the opposite.

After chewing my way fiercely through a Balance Bar Gold, ™ S'mores flavor, I was initially hesitant to try another. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I still had approximately twenty-nine bars left, which equates to over 3 pounds of bars, I wasn’t left with much of a choice.

I’ll say it straight: lemon meringue is the Balance Bar you want. Sell your S'mores bars on eBay, or whatever you do with leftover bars, and just buy these instead.

As you might expect, these bars have a distinctly lemon-y flavor. There’s also that annoying hint of cornmeal that seems to define all protein/carb bars, but the lemon does a pretty good job at hiding it.

Really Basic Stuff: A Quick Primer in webOS Usage

Most of the time, you’ll want to access your Launcher/app drawer. To do that, swipe from the bottom black bezel (the one with the button on it). Note that if you’re already in an application, this will only bring you to your card deck, which shows all of your open apps (aka cards). Touching the currently card and swiping it upwards will close that application, while left and right swipes will go through your cards. Swipe up again from the bottom bezel to bring up the Launcher. Pressing the Home key (that oval button on the bottom bezel) will do the same thing but I’ve found that it’s simply annoying to use in actuality.

To change preferences or get help within an application, check the top left corner. Usually you’ll be able to swipe downwards (this time, starting from the top left black bezel) to bring up the application menu with preferences and other fun goods.

The lock button is located on the top side of the Touchpad. Pressing it once will lock or unlock the pad, while holding it down will bring up the shutdown menu.

Updating Your Touchpad

First things first. Your stock Touchpad is version 3.0.0. The latest is 3.0.2. Time for an update.

Check out the System Updates application in the Settings tab.

The System Updates app will display your current version and let you download the latest one, if there is one. As of this writing, 3.0.2 wasn’t available (probably due to your fellow fire-salers hitting the update servers). However, there’s another way to get your Touchpad updated to the latest version, and that’s the webOS Doctor, a Java application prepared by HP that is supposed to be for recovering your device after bricking it. But it also works as an update alternative.

To see the Doctor, log into your HP webOS account. You’ll be using the same account that you created when you first booted the Touchpad. This page will also let you change your personal options, like your security question and email address, as well as show you your current devices. We’re only interested in the button that says “Device Options”, which is located next to the OS Version. Click that.

That’ll pop up another little box that has three options: I Lost My Phone, Remove From My Account, and Get webOS Doctor. I would suggest getting the Doctor.

The Doctor is a pretty damn big file and clocks in at a little over 220 megs. Once it’s installed, run it. Plug in your Touchpad and follow the prompts.

Eventually, the Doctor will download and install the 3.0.2 update, and reboot your device. Congratulations, you’ve completed the first step…the first of many steps.

Speeding Up Your Touchpad

The 3.0.2 update should speed things up a bit compared to the stock. But there’s a couple of ways to make things even faster and reduce choppiness.

First, you’ll want to turn off logging. Logging is basically storing all of the messages that Linux is outputting (that you can’t see and usually don’t matter) in case someone wants to debug it. Well, considering that the Touchpad is going the way of the dodo, these functions are pretty well useless, unless you’re some kind of super whiz-kid ninja hacker, in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this post in the first place.

Disable Logging, Part 1

Go to the Apps tab and load up the Phone & Video Calls application. As stupid as this sounds, you’ll need to either log in to or create a Skype account to get this trick working. Assuming you completed that step and you can see the DialPad in front of you (you’ll need to tap it to open it up), type in ##5647# and hit Dial. Presto! You should see a new menu appear that has four logging options. We’re only interested in the last one, Change Logging Levels…, so tap that. You should now see another dialog box with the option Set Logging to Minimal. Give that another tap.

Install Preware

Preware is a software installer/portal application that lets you install a whole crapload of homebrew (aka unsanctioned apps that are generally less friendly and look worse than your typical app store fare but seriously extend functionality). Its real strength lies in letting you install certain patches and nifty utilities, chief among them two patches that can reduce your device’s logging even further.

To start, you need to get your touchpad into Developer Mode. This lets it interface with your PC.

To activate this mode, go to the “Just type…” search box on the top of your home screen and type in webos20090606. You should see an option immediately pop up underneath it, aptly labeled “Developer Mode”. Touch it. Smell it. Like it.

After this, you’ll see a screen that prompts you to submit the developer mode password. Leave this field blank and click Submit.

Now you’re ready for phase two of installing Preware: installing Preware.

But before that, you actually need to download the webOS Quick Installer. This lets you install (duh!) homebrew from your PC to your Touchpad when connected through USB (vs. Preware, which lets you do it straight from your Touchpad). You’re going to use it to install Preware. (make sure your Touchpad is not connected to your PC)

Download the Quick Installer (PC).

Once installed, the program should prompt you to install the Novacom drivers. Do so. Quick Installer should automatically download and install the drivers.

Now you may connect your Touchpad to your PC, but don’t make any selections on the Touchpad. Back to the Quick Installer, click on the button that looks like a globe with arrows around it. This will sync the repository catalog to the installer. Once you have control of the program, type in preware in the search box and hit enter/click the magnifying glass. You should see one option on the left, and a whole bunch of stuff on the right side. Verify that it shows Preware in large letters, and hit Install.

You now have Preware.

Disable Logging, Part 2, 3 and 4

Open up the newly acquired Preware, and you should see a short list of options: Available Packages, Installed Packages, and List of Everything. You want Available Packages (tap). Next navigate to Patch -> System -> Muffle System Logging. Glance over the patch details, and when you’re ready, tap the Install button on the bottom. You don’t need to restart now, since we’ve got a couple more packages to install.

Next up is EOM Overlord Monitoring, available from Available Packages -> Linux Application -> Utilities. Read the description, and then hit install.

And finally, do the same for Available Packages -> Patch -> Misc -> Remove Dropped Packet Logging.

Make Swipes and Animations Smoother

There’s an excellent patch called Increase Touch Sensitivity and Smoothness which will effectively speed up animations and make things look smoother to the touch. Grab it from Available Packages -> Patch -> Misc. There are two versions, a standard version and a 10 version which I’m not quite sure about. Try both and see.

Get Rid of the Ripple Effect

You know the drill by now, right? Available Packages -> Patch -> System -> Remove Tap Ripple gets rid of that water rippling effect whenever you tap the screen, making things that much smoother.

Disable the Keyboard Clicking Sound

Sometimes it’s easy to mistake the Touchpad, with its ultra-realistic PC bleeper click sound, for the 110-key real deal, right? Uh, we’ll let our 10 words per minute speed record speak for itself. Get rid of the infernal clicking noise by going into Settings -> Sounds & Ringtones, and changing the value of “Keyboard Clicks” to Off, and you just might do yourself (and the whole world) a favor.

Overclock Your Touchpad

I remember the good old days of having to use pencils to overclock my PC. Fortunately, on the Touchpad, it’s a lot simpler.

Open up Preware and go to Available Packages -> Applications -> Govnah. Install it. This app lets you configure your maximum clock speeds and view a whole ton of data.

Get back to Preware. Swipe down from the top left corner to open up the application menu, and choose the Manage Feeds option. You’ll probably see a nice list of random feeds that are connected to Preware – these feeds basically populate your application list. Scroll all the way to the bottom, to the section titled “New Feed”. Guess what we’re going to do here?

Tap on the Name field and type in webos-kernels-testing. In the URL field, put in http://preware.is.awesome.com/ (I’m not sure that it matters, but the original thread from XDA uses it). Now hit Add Feed. You should get a disclaimer that you will need to agree to to continue. Now completely restart your Touchpad. (This step is required)

Once your Touchpad has finished rebooting, fire up Preware again. Open up the application menu and select Update Feeds. Hopefully you won’t get any errors here – if you do, delete the feed you just added and redo it.

You now have the ability to download new kernels, which provide you with overclocking powers.

In Preware, go to the Available Packages -> Kernel -> All. You should see a couple of options here, like F4 Phantom, F15 Eagle, Warthog, etc. I opted for F4 Phantom, but you can choose really any of them. Install it.

If you’ve gotten this far, then all you need to do to overclock your Touchpad is to change some settings. Load up Govnah.

The default page in Govnah is your at-a-glance profile view: it shows the frequency of both of your CPU cores, as well as some battery temperature and current data. Tap on the Profile option, and then tap on Advanced Settings, and then CPU Frequency. This should bring you to yet another list of options, although these options will be your bread and butter for overclocking.

Your Governor option (the first one in the list) should be ondemandtcl, unless you want both of your CPU cores to be constantly overclocked (probably not a good idea). Pay particular attention to the Min Freq and Max Freq options – they directly control your CPU frequencies. If your Max Freq is a mere 1.242 Ghz, you may change it here to 1.512 or even 1.728 if you so choose. I’ve been running my Touchpad on 1.512 Ghz and it’s been rock solid, but you may want to go deeper. Three levels deeper. Heh.

The Min Freq is the absolute lowest frequency that your Touchpad will go, even when idling. I’d suggest keeping it at 192 Mhz.

Congratulations, you’ve successfully overclocked your Touchpad.

Making Your Touchpad Look Cooler

Change Your Background Image

Hit the Settings tab again, and this time select Screen & Lock. Here you can Change Your Wallpaper (drop your images into /Wallpapers) and adjust brightness and auto-dimming.

Miscellaneous Stuff

Get Rid of the Default Email Signature

By default, the email client will attach a signature to all of your emails, even if it’s a reply: “Sent from my HP Touchpad”. This always seemed like a douche-y sort of move on phone/tablet companies’ parts, so let’s get rid of it and make the world a less douche-y place.

With the email client open, open up the application menu (swipe downwards from the top left corner, near the area that says “Email”) and select Preferences & Accounts. This’ll bring you to email preferences, where you can toggle whether you want to be prompted whenever you delete an email. In the middle of the page, there should be an Accounts listing, with all of your email addresses. The nice thing is you can change the signature for each account, and not just all of them at once. So tap on the email account that has the offending signature, and you’ll be at the Account Settings screen. And again, near the center of this screen, you’ll see a Signature field. Tap that to edit your sig.

Take a Screenshot

Hold down the Launcher button (that lone button on the bottom bezel) and press the Power Button. This will take a screenshot and store it in your /screencaptures folder.

Touchpad VNC and Remote Desktop Apps

Did you know there’s a very usable, free VNC client for the Touchpad? It’s called Rcontrol (beta), and you won’t find it on Preware or the HP App Store. Instead, mosey on over to here to download it. Install it with the WebOS Quick Install java application (see above, Installing Preware).

Splashtop is a remote desktop/VNC alternative that works really well with the Touchpad. Besides letting you control your PC from afar, Splashtop supports streaming music and user-configurable desktop resolutions. Note that it uses a proprietary protocol, which means you’ll need to install a separate application, called the Splashtop Streamer. You can find the Splashtop Touchpad app on the official HP App Store (it’s $9.99).

In my opinion, both of these two applications open up a new world of possibilities for Touchpad owners. Having access to your home PC from any place with wi-fi means you don’t necessarily need to lug around a laptop any more. That’s huge.

Improving Your Touchpad’s Battery Life

First, make sure you follow everything in the Speeding Up Your Touchpad section. The stuff in there will also improve your battery life, except for the overclocking part.

Battery Saver

If you’re unnaturally lazy like me, you probably don’t dutifully turn off your Touchpad every day before you go to bed to save battery life. A Preware app called Battery Saver (originally created for use on the Pre, but it still works, whatever) automatically puts the device in airplane mode during the hours that you specify. On the Touchpad, this equates to turning off the wi-fi, great if you have your device continually fetching mail every 5 minutes. Grab it from Available Packages -> Applications.

PHP stands for…you know, I actually have no idea what PHP stands for. Who really cares, anyway? Certainly not me, and probably not you either. Or maybe you do care. Well, too bad. Sherlock Homes said it best: “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.”

So we aren’t going to worry about trivial matters like this.

Instead, the important thing to know is that PHP is the de-facto language of the Web, powering high-powered sites like Facebook, Digg, and – I know you won’t believe this – angbox. All those blogs you read online? They’re probably created with WordPress, which means…yep, PHP.

Learning programming languages is rarely fun, unless you’re a born nerd. I know this because I am not a born nerd, evidenced by the fact that I got C+’s in Physics, Calculus, and pretty much every math and science course I’ve taken since the seventh grade. But I’m going to make a serious effort to keep things enjoyable, unlike every other PHP site out there that is boring as hell. I plan to do this with a lot of heavy sarcasm.

So why would you want to learn PHP?

This is an important question, maybe the most important question. Well, first, PHP is, quite simply, the most accessible language I’ve ever dealt with. That is big. It’s hard to describe how big. You know that kid who made an iPhone game when he was 9? Yeah, that’s great and all, but if he had tried his hand at PHP he could’ve built himself a fleet of websites by 5. That’s how easy it is. No, seriously, it’s a really flexible language where you will never hear the words “stack”, “inheritance”, or “null pointer exception.”

The second reason is that it’s rewarding. Not personally rewarding in a, hey, I just spent 27 years building a giant robot that lights up and nods its head but doesn’t actually DO anything, cool right? …kind of way. But actually rewarding, to the tune of $50 billion dollars rewarding. That’s the low end of what Facebook is worth now. And Facebook, most PHP developers will probably tell you with an exasperated sigh, isn’t a difficult web site to create. Yes, you too can develop a Facebook clone with the help of these tutorials*.

For people who aren’t interested in reading through my previous paragraphs, let me give you a two-sentence summary: PHP is easy. PHP can make you oodles of money*.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s get PHP up and running on your computer, so we can start you on the path to fame and fortune.

*results not guaranteed.

Check out php.angbox.

This isn’t the big problem with the game.

Truth be told, I was never a fan of walking from Town A to Town B while getting attacked fifteen times on the way. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been more appreciative of games where I can just blast through things quickly and efficiently, moving from one chapter to the next. And in that sense, Thirteen (potentially) performs admirably.

It’s just (almost) everything else that fails miserably.

Before Final Fantasy XIII, I finished Uncharted 1 and 2, two supremely excellent games/movies on the PS3. The rough outline for Uncharted could double for XIII, easily. Watch cutscene, go through a few battles, jump around, watch another cutscene. Repeat. Yet Uncharted succeeds where FFXIII doesn’t, for two reasons: an excellent cast/story, and the fierce/fun gunbattles between the cutscenes.

Spoilers ahead. It probably doesn’t matter anyway, though. There isn’t a whole lot to spoil.

So what kind of story does FFXIII have to offer? Well…I’m not sure, honestly. If I could put it into one sentence, it would sound like this: “protagonist from floating world pretends to be outcast to save sister but fails and gets turned into outcast with group of sorry individuals who try to protect an ancient being from being destroyed to prevent Creator from coming and remaking the world but ultimately fail due to the fact that said group decides to attack the ancient being for unknown reasons causing floating world to collapse.”

That was terrible, I know. It was quite honestly the best I could do after playing through the game, reading all of the datalogs, and doing some “quality” research on GameFAQ message boards.

It makes me sad that I can no longer take a SquallEnix game and reduce it to something cohesive, like “girl accidentally gets sent back in time, boy rescues girl, discovers ancient evil sucking life out of planet and destroys it.” Or how about FF7, the previously-undisputed King of Convoluted plots (but actually fun!), which would probably be “washed-out soldier discovers corporation sucking life from planet, recovers from PTSD, defeats bad guy and saves the world”.

Let me try this again.

The story revolves around a female named Lightning “Worst Birthday Ever” Farron, who lives in a futuristic floating paradise. She’s your “strong-willed” heroine, which in SquelchEnix terms means really grouchy. When the game starts, Lightning pretends to be a “L’cie” (basically someone who can use magic that’s also being hunted down and “purged” by the government) to find her sister, a girl who is an honest-to-goodness L’cie. Unfortunately for both parties, Lightning meets her sister only to watch her turn to crystal, a consequence of being a L’cie. Basically, if you’re a L’cie, you have something called a focus – a task from the gods that you have to accomplish. If you succeed, your reward is to be turned into a human crystal. If you fail, well…you turn into a zombie.

So once you turn into a L’cie, you’re pretty much screwed.

It probably goes without saying that your motley cast of characters all turn into L’cie.

In other words, the rest of the game involves you trying to undo your screwed-ness. But wait! There’s more! It also turns out that the emperor is actually a major Bad Guy named “Barthandelus” masquerading as a normal human. He’s a pseudo-god who simultaneously helps your group escape at points while attacking you at prime intervals throughout the game. He is also, in his non-human form, a giant rectangular head. I can’t respect any boss that is just a giant head. Anyway, it seems that one of his goals is to “strengthen” your party, so you can defeat one of the godlike beings that keeps the floating world afloat. If this being, Orphan, is defeated, mankind is doomed, and the Maker will swoop in and recreate the world. Or something.

So what happens? Your party goes through the entire game doing a whole lot of nothing except fighting monsters and moving forward (because you sure as hell can’t go backwards…damn linear story!) You get to Orphan, who’s locked in some funky-looking technoworld, and have a big final fight with Barthandelus. And then you have a big final fight with Orphan. I don’t know why. And then the futuristic floating paradise collapses. And then two people in your party execute some sort of ice attack that prevents the paradise from crashing into the planet, and everyone who previously lived in the floating paradise falls down onto what I suppose is now their new home. Have a nice day!

The story, you might have gathered by now, is not good.

The voice acting is also not good, but it’s not horrible either. I’ve since thought about this, and honestly, the first third of the game I thought the voice acting was absolutely terrible (mostly thanks to Vanille, with her pseudo-Australian fob accent). By the end of the game you realize that it’s not the voice acting that’s bad; it’s the script. And the crap that gets spewed out of some of the characters’ mouths is usually ridiculous, irritating, or some combination of the two. A lot of it, incidentally, reminds me of The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan’s glorified epic.

Character development, normally done well in other Squawk games (well, it was done well in FFX anyway…), is unrealistic, to say the least. Unless you count the fact that every character undergoes a one-time, “flick-of-a-switch” change: Lightning goes from annoying grouch to suddenly-happy optimist. Hope goes from scrub kid to some kind of optimist leader material with choice monologues about saving the world. Snow, the carefree optimist, turns into a carefree optimist. Basically, everyone becomes an optimist. That’s all the character development in this game.

How about the battle system? Repetitive, frustrating and difficult, mostly. This is easily the first FF game where normal battles actually pose a challenge. That’s not necessarily a good or bad thing, it’s just – well, I’ll let you decide. Boss battles, especially, are the icing on the cake. Hah! Good luck beating most of the bosses on your first try. I have a intimate relationship with the “Game Over” screen, thanks to late-boss-battle buzzer-beater attacks that just happen to decimate my party, allowing Barthandelus (insert your favorite XIII boss here) to just flick his finger and wipe everyone out. Real nice. I still have nightmares about Destrudo.

Reason One why battles are so difficult is because, for most of the game, your characters are broke as hell. You don’t earn Gil for defeating monsters any more – you get a chance of picking up an item. Most of the time that item is a cheap organic souvenir that you’re supposed to use to upgrade your weapons. Problem is, you don’t get enough of high-quality stuff (which are worth more exp for your items) through battles for it to make a difference.

What you are supposed to do is grind at very strategic points during the game, since there are certain types of enemies (usually soldiers) who drop credit chips that are actually worth some money. And money, unlike most Final Fantasy games, is EXTREMELY crucial in this game. Upgrading weapons (of which a GameFAQ is virtually required, no joke) is a costly affair, and without careful planning your group is going to just barely survive until about 3/4 through the game, when a side quest nets you a ridiculous sum of money. Unfortunately, I found this out much later.

Reason Two why battles are difficult is…if the leader of your group dies, the game is over. (and you only control the leader of the group, the ai controls the rest) Throughout most of the game, you don’t get to pick your leader either. Trust me, there’s plenty of room for frustration here.

There is really only one bright spot to such a ludicrous game. And that is presentation. Music, graphics, the interface – these are all done very, very well, and it makes you wonder how much time was spent on these instead of, you know, the story.

My advice for anyone even remotely considering playing this game: go play FFIX instead.

It starts with a trip to the station.

Kyoto Station, that is – and honestly, one of the craziest buildings I’ve been inside in the past sixteen days. It’s huge, futuristic as all hell, and from the outside looks like a giant shipping boat built out of LEGOs.

Kyoto Station aka the LEGO Boat

This might give you an idea of the sheer scale of this place:

A look inside Kyoto Station.

Okay, probably not. Inside, there’s all kinds of wacky things, like a wedding altar (maybe doubling as a church? not sure), a bakery that has more fruitcakes on display that I’ve probably seen in my entire life, and maybe thousands of stairs (and escalators). Oh, and completely random and unnecessary artsy-fartsy pieces spread throughout the place. I love it.

Who said getting married at the train station was tacky?

My destination today is Ryoan-ji, a Zen temple famed for its rock garden more than anything.

To get there, you need to take a thirty-minute bus ride. I manage to board the bus without much incident, and spend the entire trip staring out the window like a tourist.

Inside the grounds, there’s some nice scenery, mostly situated around a lake and surrounding trees. There’s a romantic-looking foot bridge that crosses a part of the lake; Monet would have appreciated it.

View of the lake in the Ryoan-ji grounds.

Statue in the Ryoan-ji grounds.

Before you can sit and gaze at the rocks, you have to enter a house and take off your shoes. Somebody PLEASE steal my shoes! I need a new pair but I’m too cheap to buy one in Japan unless I’m forced to.

The house contains some framed Japanese calligraphy, culminating in (I guess?) a large folding screen decorated with aggressive splashes of kanji. There’s also a small model of the rocks-that-I-have-yet-to-see along with some terse descriptions (all in Japanese, unfortunately). Or maybe they’re warnings. Like DO NOT MOVE THE MODEL ROCKS. Two other large bedroom-sized rooms here are completely bare except for a bunch of drawings on the walls, depicting a series of mountains.

After catching all of that, I’m finally at The Rocks.

At first glance, I’m not impressed.

The essence of Ryoan-ji: the Rock Garden.

The Rock Garden is a large outdoor area (separated from the crowd by, well, more rocks) filled with white gravel. Meticulously raked white gravel, I might add. Someone has created perfect horizontal lines running across the garden, and perfectly round patterns going around the rock islands. I don’t know they did this or how this is even possible, but it’s pretty incredible. So that’s mystery #1.

The meticulously maintained white gravel surrounding the rocks.

Mystery #2 is the rocks themselves. Not a mystery like Stonehenge, considering these rocks are tiny, irregular in shape, and fairly bland on the surface. But why these rocks? And what’s the meaning of the arrangement? I sit down and attempt to ponder the answer to these questions, but the comings and goings of tourists interfere with my internal reflection.

There are (supposed to be) a total of fifteen rocks, all but two of which are placed on top of some mossy dirt. The two standouts are flat rocks surrounding the leftmost mossy island. According to legend (and by legend, I really mean Wikipedia), normal people are supposed to see fourteen rocks from every angle; only the enlightened can see the fifteenth. Naturally, I can see only thirteen. I always knew I was special.

There’s another area leading to a different house, but it’s blocked off by a NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT sign. I briefly entertain the idea of pretending I’m German and walking past the sign, but think better of it. You don’t want to mess around with these holy places.

In the end, there’s no path of enlightenment for me, nor do I have any sort of epiphany that lets me see the fifteenth rock (or even the fourteenth rock).

The rest of my afternoon is spent wandering around the Sanjo/Kawaramachi area and its many side streets, going from covered mall to covered mall and shopping for stuff I didn’t know I needed. Among the highlights:

• The so-called “Ninja Kyoto Restaurant and Labyrinth” (along with a place next to it named, appropriately, “SWEETS OF NINJA”)
• Wandering into a music store and catching a live performance by Jpop singer Nakano Sayuri. And then seeing some random guy there wearing an unintelligible, but no less memorable, t-shirt that reads “YOUR MEMORY PUT IS LOOM”.
• Finding another RAGEBLUE store! One of the few affordable male clothing stores in Japan (and a little more upscale than the ubiquitous UNIQLO). And the clothes actually fit me. Perfectly.
• Furniture isn’t very cheap here. I spot a nice, basic recliner chair only to balk at the price: 167,000 yen, which translates to about 1400 bucks. Geez. Japan needs an IKEA.

Ninja Kyoto: Restaurant and Labyrinth. Next door to Sweets of Ninja.

That ends my exciting afternoon in Kyoto. For tonight’s event at Ichiensou, Yashi (the innkeeper) suggests a picnic on the “beach” (closest thing they have to a beach in Kyoto) overlooking the small river that runs through Gion. Apparently the beach is the hangout spot for bored teenagers and the equivalent of street performers: during our picnic, we get front-row seats to an impromptu fire juggling show and a male singer dressed in a suit and going absolutely nuts with his moves and Initial D-fueled dance track. It’s quite a spectacle.

Later, when most of the Ichiensou’ers get ready for bed, three of us form a splinter group and hit the town. We’re looking for a Pachinko parlor, but it turns out there’s some local rule where the parlors can’t stay open past 10 pm. Boy, that’s disappointing. After zigging and zagging through the Kyoto nightlife, we end up at a bar. Fun fact: one guy in our party is named Alejandro, so of course I have to ask him the obvious question. How’s Lady Gaga? His response: “I hate her!!”

Tomorrow is my last day in Kyoto, and I’m more than a bit sad.

But no longer!

Because you can now buy Amazon gift cards at Best Buy. They just look a little different, most notably emblazoned with “Amazon Kindle” on the front. But to the trained eye, they’re the same as regular Amazon gift cards. You can find them hanging on a peg in the e-reader section (Kindle, Nook, etc) in $25 and $50 increments. When you buy one, you simply scratch off the back and add the code to your Amazon account.

I should also add that you can use your Best Buy gift cards and store credit to buy Amazon gift cards.

So why would Best Buy, a megastore where probably 99% of the products are cheaper on Amazon, carry a competitor’s gift cards? There’s only one answer I can come up with, which is: they have absolutely no idea. This is, coming from someone who has watched the decline of Best Buy as a customer, something that makes me very happy.

This seems to be a common theme on my travels in Japan. Most tourists have the “wake up early” mindset, which I’ve found didn’t really fly in Tokyo – major places there don’t even open until 9 or 10. I’m also a late-to-bed, late-to-rise sleeper.

The 6-person room at IchiEnSou. My new digs.

Today my destination is Nara, home of several parks, temples, shrines, and deer.

I roll into Nara station at 11:40 AM, and coming out of the train, the first I notice is that it’s rustic. The station has this major wooden theme going, with a wood drop ceiling and large treelike pillars. It’s wholly different from the modern wonders of Kyoto station (more on that tomorrow), and a gentle reminder that Nara is more at home with nature than it is with 50 feet video screens.

And yet, the scene right outside of the station is typical of modern-day Japan: lots of apartment complexes/office buildings packed close together, power lines running and criss-crossing through side streets

It takes me about 50 feet to realize that there is only one road leading to Nara Park, and it’s a heavy uphill. No thank you, sir. I rent a bicycle from a shop behind the station instead.

The bike I get is blue, has a big grey basket in the front and a chain system that keeps applying fresh dirt to my pants. Still, I manage to forge ahead to my first real taste of the park, a large lake where it looks like you can have someone ferry you across (closed right now, for some reason). It’s a good place to rest for a bit and take a swig of lemon-flavored Vitamin Water, my new favorite bottled drink. It costs me 180 yen.

Sanjo-dori: the main road leading to Nara Park.

A couple of hills and side streets later, I’m inside the park, near the Nara National Museum. And I have my first encounter with a deer.

Deer in the United States are one and the same. They’re afraid of humans, probably because we run over most of their kin. I’m sure every deer has some sad story to tell about a cousin and a car. That leads to generally unfriendly relations between the deer and the humans.

Beware of deer! (not really)

Not so in Nara! The deer here are nonchalant, have really rounded antlers, and walk around with genuine smiles on their faces. Above all, they’re friendly, and it’s hard to walk by and not have a few of them sniff you to make sure that you aren’t carrying any stray deer biscuits on you. Ignore the warning signs and just focus on how cute they are.

One of many friendly deer.

And another deer lazing around.

But the most exciting part of Nara, at least from a certain person’s perspective, is Todai-ji temple.

A pond on the outskirts of Todai-ji Temple.

This is the imposing structure to end all imposing structures. It’s gigantic to say the least, and from a distance it really looks like something pulled right out of feudal Japan. Inside sits the throne of a massive buddha – probably the biggest I’ve seen here – along with another buddha (his buddy? his servant? not sure) and what looks like a giant warrior holding a paintbrush and a scroll. And a really mean face.

The massive Todai-ji Temple.

Don't think I've seen a larger buddha before.

Other notables in Todai-ji are a large scale model of the temple, a large pillar with a square hole cut into it where little kids can crawl through, and lots of shops selling small trinkets. Considering my crap fortune from Asakusa (back in Tokyo), I figure that it’s high time to buy another one. Here’s what the future holds for me:

About time things started going my way.

This one’s definitely a keeper.

After my jaunt through the temple, and a short break trying to take pictures with some more deer, I walk down what I’d called the “main dirt road” and end up at another orange shrine. There’s a wedding going on, and the bride and groom are decked out in some serious garb for the occasion. The ceremony captures my attention for a bit, but I can’t help shake the feeling that I’m just another tourist gawking at someone else’s big day.

A little while later, I’m flying through the streets of Nara again (but downhill this time!), eventually stopping at one of the super-long indoor malls that I’ve seen day in and day out here in Japan. My late lunch consists of another chicken sandwich from McDonalds – a McDonalds that I should mention is the first I’ve ever seen with a grand piano.

And alas, I thought I was done with parking tickets after I left the States. Turns out my bicycle was tagged (with a warning, at least as far as I can decipher it) by some ninja officer while I was busy chowing down my chicken sando.

I spend some time bumming around Nara, then take the train back to Gion and spend more time bumming around the shopping district. Tonight promises to be quite interesting, with Yashi (the proprietor of IchiEnSou) scheduling a night walk around town.

Our group of IchiEnsou’ers makes our way in a wide circle around Gion as Yashi points out various sites of interest. For example, did you know that there’s a structure in Gion where visitors tack on little strips of paper with their hopes and dreams (and complaints)? It reminds me of a woolly mammoth, or something out of a Miyazaki movie.

The paper strip covered stone woolly mammoth...thing.

Eventually, we reach the top of a hill (sort of) overlooking the city. There isn’t much of a view, mostly because there really isn’t much of a hill. The city of Gion is surprisingly flat.

We circle around, passing by a large pagoda, and a few interesting temple buildings. And I almost walk into a spider’s web.

View of Shijo-dori from the gate leading to Yasaka shrine.

Dinner is at a super small Korean restaurant nestled in an alleyway somewhere in downtown Gion. The owner also happens to be the hostess, waitress and only chef, but she makes a mean multi-course feast for our group. Total bill (per person): 1300 yen, roughly 16 bucks.