Ippoippo

As I type this, the roast is on the go in the oven, and myself and Yuko are about to chill out with a nice bit of sparkling white wine!

It’s been a bit of a busy week, despite me being on holiday since last Friday (and I go back to work on Tuesday). Yuko has been off since Saturday, and she also goes back to work on Tuesday as well.

Rugby

So, Saturday was rugby day with us watching Wales vs New Zealand at the Millennium Stadium.
The second half was a bit of a disappointment, though the first was quite entertaining. Behind us, we had two Welsh chaps who were exceedingly good singers and got everyone going.
One of the big talking points though was the showdown before the game even started!! As New Zealand started their Haka, the Welsh crowd got quite vocal and started singing Cwm Rhondda. Great stuff. Then there was the stare-off!! There had been rumours that something was going to happen. This time, the Welsh players refused to move away on completion of the Haka, and that seems to have annoyed a few New Zealanders. Indeed, it’s a bit of a talking point leading up to the England vs New Zealand game tomorrow.

Was it disrespectful? Hmmm, don’t know. I suppose I should do some proper research into it. However, at the time, the crowd loved it.

Chilling, and then down to business

After all the fun and games on Saturday, we had a bit of a pampering and chill out session. Well, it was both Yuko’s and my birthday so a bit of pampering at a Spa. Tense back and shoulders well and truly sorted out.
It was a shame then that work got all undone when Yuko and I headed up to Liverpool.
Grrrrrr, what a bloody horrible, badly sign posted one-way system.

We were up in Liverpool for the evening, since Tuesday morning was Yuko’s appointment with the immigration department. Hurrah, after two years of entry clearance, she now has permission to stay here indefinitely.

With all that done, we took the scenic route back through North Wales and stayed over at Dolffanog Bach.
Great location, great food and great hosts.

Today, there has been quite a number of news reports coming out after the IEA formally released it’s Energy report.

Back at the end of October, I wrote about the FT reporting on what was possibly a leak of the IEAs report which has just come out.

To quote again from that…

Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent, the International Energy Agency says in its annual report, the World Energy Outlook, a draft of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.
…
The agency says even with investment, the annual rate of output decline is 6.4 per cent.

SO, my interpretation of that is that no matter what we do geology (global resources) is constraining us.

So, todays official release from the IEA seems to have ‘watered things down’ a bit. I suppose we can’t scare everyone TOO much can we.

The BBC, and Guardian have both reported on it.
Now, the IEA is saying

the era of cheap oil is over and prices could soon be back up to $100 a barrel.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), in its World Energy Outlook for 2008, says prices could soar as high as $200 a barrel by 2030.

The immediate risk to supply, it says, is not one of a lack of global resources.

Instead, it points to a lack of investment where it is needed.

So, those rather telling percentages have disappeared and the IEA is now publically playing down the threat of resource depletion.

Mind you, all this is still scary stuff anyway because they are still reporting that we need to invest more money to ‘develop’ and increase production. Umm, just where is that money going to come from in a world in global recession where the ‘money supply’ is shrinking?

Branson and others, Peak Oil aware?

Again, the Guardian reported on Peak Oil today. This time, it was more UK focused, and what I find more interesting is the companies that have been associated with it.

The report was issued today by the recently established UK industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security, a group of eight companies including transport firms Virgin, Stagecoach and FirstGroup, engineers Arup, architects Foster and Partners, and energy giant Scottish and Southern.

You can see more details here at their own website.

What I think is key is that we are now possibly seeing some companies and businesses reacting to what will become self-evident a few years down the line. This is no longer a bunch of internet-geeks and a few retired oil-geologists talking here.

The folly of growth

Quite an interesting story in New Scientist.

And finally, dodgy vegetables

At last, some bloody common sense!!
In fact, we should scrap these rules now, why wait.

Well, it’s only September 20th-ish… and we’ve been having good weather for the last week. Hell, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were really nice sunny days.

Ah well, never mind, make the most of it while we can.

This Saturday we headed up to Abergavenny on the train for the Food Festival. It was alright, and we picked up some good stuff (some English wine, duck hearts (which we cooked that night and were very tasty… much better than chicken hearts which I’m not particularly keen on), some smoked fish). It was very busy though, and to be honest, the £5.50 entry charge was not worth it. Never mind.

Talking of food… I see yet ANOTHER Japanese Minister of Agriculture has resigned. That department is a complete joke , to be honest.

Before I started writing this post, I started reading through some of the usual Japanese blogs I like to read… and then I came across this. Absolutely bizzare. Since when was that film a comedy!?

… and the weather has been just as crap!! In fact, as I type this, its pissing down outside.

Doesn’t seem to have harmed the veggies though, and we’ve managed to crow some courgettes which were very tasty. Next year, once the big green house is assembled, hopefully our attempt at Japanese pumpkins will go a lot better.
Our home cabbages seem to have grown more, and one of them proved to be rather good when we had some お好み焼き (Okonomiyaki).

Anyway, the news…

Just who is running Japan at the moment

Well, nobody it seems, or all the bods in the back, smoke filled rooms. After the relative stability of the Koizumi years, it seems like Japan is back to normal with yet another PM resigning in short succession.
Taro Aso looks like a favourite to take over, and indeed he may well have been waiting patiently for his chance thinking he wouldn’t have lasted long if he’d been the immediate successor after Koizumi. Who knows.

Chrome

Hmm, a rather interesting development in the internet browser space… with Google launching Chrome. HTML content is rendered using WebKit, which is same as Safari (the web browser that comes with Mac OS X, and can be installed on Windows too (I personally don’t like it running on Windows, I normally use Firefox on that platform).
At the moment, Chrome only runs on Windows, but it will be built for Linux and Mac OS X as well.

There’s a set of cartoons (Very ‘Heroes’ style if you ask me), going into some of the techy details.

It’s an interesting move, and has already caused a lot of chat and speculation on various message boards and websites I read.
Initial thoughts are that it is VERY quick at rendering content and running ‘Web 2.0′ type sites. Some people report that running Chrome using VMWare Fusion or Parallels, as Windows Virtual Machines inside Mac OS X, still results in a faster web browser than the native Safari!
Other people though are getting concerned about Google turning in the next ‘big brother’, and displacing Microsoft as the next big nasty corporation. Some people have pointed out this particular clause in the End User License Agreement when you install…

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”

One thing though, the Chrome project is open source, which means any really dodgy looking code, attempting to do anything sinister would be pretty much spotted by plenty of geeks who would then rant about it pretty damn quickly.

Google Update

Well, it looks like Google has changed it’s EULA now. Good!
Links here, here and here.