Tokyo really is a city of contrasts. Is it the high-tech, bustling, Bladerunner-esque landscape you see on TV? Absolutely. However not all of the districts are quite as frenetic as Ginza or Shibuya. If you look hard there are also back-waters of serenity in some of the temples.

Straight off the plane I decided to lean more towards the quiet side and went to the Imperial Palace. I went straight for the canonical picture of the palace, Nijubashi Bridge.

At the beginning of October I visited Japan for the first time. I landed in Tokyo, travelled out to Mount Fuji and then west to Nagano Prefecture, finally heading back to Tokyo via Kyoto and Nara. It was a lot to try to pack in to two weeks but it worked out pretty well all things considered.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be documenting in words and pictures my trip, focusing mainly on the locations but with odd entry about the things that seemed constant throughout my time there.

A new version of my handy URL shortening app for iPhone and iPod touch has just hit Apple’s App Store. Please go and download it — it’s free!

I’ve added to the services that were supported in the previous version and now www.cut supports nine shortening services:

• is.gd
• bit.ly
• cli.gs
• tinyurl.com
• to.ly
• cuthut.com
• uCut.it
• rfly.me
• tiny.cc

Also new in version 2.0 is a “URL Scheme.” This is a technical name for something that’s very useful. Picture the scene: you’re in Safari and you want to send the current URL to www.cut. Previously you had to copy the URL to the clipboard and manually launch it. Now, all you need to do is add “wwwcut:” to the beginning of the URL and www.cut launches automatically.

• Deliberately uninformed, relentlessly so [a rant] – “Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year. Many of those people have seen every single episode of American Idol. There is clearly a correlation here.” Wholeheartedly agree with this post. Not knowing stuff is fine. Being proud of not knowing stuff? Not so much.
• Twitter Can Predict the Stock Market – “Mao compared the national mood to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. She found that one emotion, calmness, lined up surprisingly well with the rises and falls of the stock market — but three or four days in advance.”

My first ideas when I first heard that this weeks PhotoFriday theme was “Architecture” was New York. I flirted with other places and ideas — such as the Eiffel Tower and a couple of shots from Vienna — but I kept coming back to the sky-scrapers and bridges of Manhattan. In the end I picked this one because it has Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building.

• Ideas are Nothing – Execution is Everything – “How often have you been approached by somebody who has a great idea for an iPhone app, and they will tell you the idea if you just do the programming, and then you will both share in the profits? As an aside, I wonder if this happens to book authors as well.”
• ‘Fractal’ mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot dies aged 85 – Ah, I remember all that time playing with Fractint on my 386SX… And I still don’t really understand the maths.

A few years ago I was very much “into” the whole open source movement. I read LWN (still do, actually). I bought a copy of The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

But one thing I never really did was contribute to open source projects. I never really had much need. They largely did what I wanted and when they didn’t, well, the modifications were too big to consider attempting in my spare time.

I’m not sure if this is close or abstract enough to count as a “Macro Shot,” which is this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, but I thought that it was close enough to be a contender. It’s a picture of the dead hard disk from my MacBook.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Unforgettable.” I’m entry number 198.

People are still laying flowers and postcards near where John Lennon died nearly thirty years after his death, so I think this qualifies as being “Unforgettable,” which is this weeks PhotoFriday challenge.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Reflect.” I’m entry number 257.

• Aerial views of New York – Neat pictures of Manhattan (and bits of New Jersey).
• Wallace and Gromit to appear on Christmas stamps – For once: Christmas stamps that I approve of.
• My First Week with the iPhone – I always assumed that a touch device like the iPhone would be pretty much useless for blind users. It’s good to be wrong.