Rant 980 / Indian Missiles Are OK; NK Ones Are Not.

Japan saw its largest trade deficit ever in 2011. That's what you get when your government tries to please the majority even when it's unfeasible in the long run. In this case, they were going for the votes in the agricultural industry for decades since even before Koizumi's time.

I think he tried to do something about it but it either failed and/or was too late.

You can't be a successful developed country and focus mainly on agriculture at the same time. To me it just doesn't make economic sense since farms by themselves are a rather inefficient use of good real estate and manpower.

Unfortunately it was either that or piss off the people in order to save them because relying solely on urban votes is just not enough in Japan.

As for all the other PMs after him, I don't see how anyone in that position can accomplish anything significant in just a single year.

I'm not trying to be negative about it, but if you can have 5 consecutive PMs leaving their positions after a year each, it's quite obvious that the terrible situation the country is in is close to unsalvageable. People don't just throw any moron up into the role of the PM, and with 5 of those, surely at least one of them must have been a decent one. If things are getting so bad that none of the PMs seems to be able to do their jobs, the problem may not lie in those men themselves but the entire infrastructure as a whole.


















My portable routers work!

Both were tested and one shall be kept as a backup.

These HAME brand MPR-A1 model routers are about as big as two thumbs and work as both external batteries and wireless routers for 3G USB modems.

It's pretty cheap, about US$22.70 and it's got a lousy battery life.

As an external battery, its capacity is only 1800mAh; as a router, it only lasts 4 hours of usage, or 10 hours of standby.

And that's what's printed on the box of the Chinese-made electronic product, which means it's even less in reality.

Still, as long as it lasts a few months it's going to be worth the money.

As far as I can tell it's quite easy to use. The USB 3G modem( mine's a Huawei E170 HSPA USB Stick) works immediately once it's plugged into the router without the need for any installation like it did with my computers, so I could just connect to the wireless network which contains the brand in its name using the default password printed on the label on the back of the router.

After that I only had to log on to the router's IP and change the network name and password. Didn't set it to hidden because when I plugged it into my PC via USB there was no popup telling me a new device was connected. If anything happens and I somehow can't connect to the router, I won't be able to access it via a wired connection. That would mean a reset to its factory settings.

I'm not sure if there's a way to improve its power efficiency but I've set it to N-only so hopefully that counts for something.

As for using it, I'm still waiting on my iPad casing which should arrive tomorrow. Once I get my casing, I'll be able to use my iPad with 3G without having a 3G SIM card or even the 3G function in the iPad at all.

Meanwhile, I'm still thinking of ways to keep it in my bag conveniently and protect it from heavy objects and moisture. I've once gotten water all the way into the bag during a particularly heavy storm despite all those layers and an umbrella, so I need to give it some armour of sorts.

Currently my best idea is to cut a piece of bubble wrap that DX uses for its postal packaging and stick it on the inside of two combined toilet roll tubes. I'll cover it with the brown tape I use to seal my boxes of goods the next time I go to the office, for extra waterproofing.

It looks ugly but it's supposed to stay in my bag permanently. I'll only have to slip the router/modem out to switch it on/off every time I use it.




















So apparently I've been brewing my coffee for too long and before that, I was using too little coffee beans.

Ever since I tried using the larger filters my bro's gf bought, my coffee's been far more awesome than I expected.

Back when I was using filters meant for a coffee cup and brewing two cup's worth of coffee, I was letting half the coffee sit for 5-10minutes while the first half is being filtered, sometimes even half an hour.

Worse is that the first half usually clogs the filter so I either have to rinse it or use a new one. Rinsing it means more water in my coffee while using a new one feels kind of wasteful.

I don't have the patience to stare at it every morning waiting for it to go through.

Now that I'm using filters meant for pots, I'm letting the entire batch through at one go, making my coffee less bitter.

It's not because I was scrimping on filters by buying smaller ones, but that I hadn't figured out a way to use it back when I first started brewing coffee. You can't just put a paper filter in a cup because paper softens and the filter collapses. With a large sieve holding the filter, it would go too deep into the cup and the filter would be soaking in the coffee once the cup is half full.

Now I'm using two sieves to do it (I don't have a coffee pot).

The first is a small one that's probably meant for fishing out tea leaves from tea.

The second is a large one meant for removing stuff from pots of liquids, maybe noodles or other food.

I just place the small one on my ceramic cup and the large one on top of that sieve, and then the coffee filter in the large sieve. This prevents the coffee from reaching the filter unless it's close to overflowing.