Andrew Shuttleworth Web HQ

Grand Cru Chocolate

Ever heard chocolate or cocoa spoken about in the same way as fine wines or religion? If not visit Domori and try to get hold of some of their products. Delicious!

If you are in Tokyo you can get it at Tanaya-ya liquor store. To get there take a left from Mejiro Station (Yamanote Line) exit and it is less than 1 minute on foot. It's the place that supposedly also has the biggest selction of foreign beers in Tokyo.

Sumi (Charcoal)

I realized sumi was getting popular here in Japan, but never realized all the amazong uses. SumiWorld gives a good concise overview. Sounds like a miracle product. Will have to get some in. Because it is light it is also a good gift to send to friends and relatives overseas.

Recently Consumed Beer

I read about a shop in Mejiro which stocks lots of overseas beers, paid it a visit and bought myself a few bottles of real ale for Christmas. Two of them gone already. I thought I'd start a list of recently consumed beer here.

One from today was Traquair Jocobite Ale

BlogChalking

Not sure whether this is really going to be useful, but it sounded cool and forward. BlogChalk aims to link together blogs from people based in the same geographic zone. It mentioned something about the collaborative web on the site. I guess I'm getting more into the experimental stage with my blog now. Expect to see more :-)

By the way - when I started this blog I said I would only continue if it had some value. I think it does have value to have a presence on the web. It's also good to have a base to try out and talk about new web tools. I guess basically it is a good anchor for following what you are interested in, especially if your working life is not really your passion.

Oh. Almost forgot. The reason for this entry was one optional step in getting BlogChalk set up. They suggest you post some text on your blog to help with indexing. Here it goes:

This is my new blogchalk:
Japan, Kanagawa, Yokohama, Nagatsuta, English, Japanese, Andrew, Male, 26-30, Pocket & Tablet PCs, Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing. :)

Personal Brain and other to do items

I'm always on the look out for new software and tools to help with information management and stumbled accross Personal Brain today. After just having worked through the getting started wizard it seems to work using a Mind Map like concept linking key topics, files, web pages and people. It is hidden in the background while you work on your computer and can be easily activated by clicking the on screen icon. Files and URLs can then easily be added and the navigation seems very slick. There's a 30 day free trial. If it really works for me I'll post more here.

I'm also taking advantage of the New Year break to try out FranklinCovey PlanPlus and Tablet Planner, Getting Things Done Outlook Plug In (although it doesn't work fully with Outlook 2003 yet). I also installed WikiWriter and WikiPad so will be giving these a try. And I want to install a wiki for the Pocket PC FAQ and forums for Pocket PC Japan. Mmm. I think I really need some help managing my To Do list :-)

Spam - Say no more

Is it true the spam problem is getting worse? I never used to have big problems and followed most of the guidelines to avoid spam but it started getting worse earlier this year. I switched on the automatic filter on my server first medium, the stronger. From May this year 17,902 spam were detected. Not only that more an more were getting through the filter - perhaps near 200 per day recently. MailWasher worked okay but didn't learn by itself. Outlook 2003 with it spam filter picked up a few more but that didn't really help. I just installed a plug-in called 'Outlook Spam filter which looks very promising, and it works with IMAP mail. It got rid of almost all spam mails. A few legitimate ones as well, but it is very easy to add these to a friends list. Best of all it is learning. I've been looking for something like that for a while - I don't want to waste any more time on spam.

Export Web Page Tables to Excel

Not sure when this feature appeared in MS Office, but I noticed an Export to Excel entry on my context (right click) menu in IE recently. It seems to just appear when you click on a table ... and it works very well. A simple idea but very useful if you want to get web page data into a more manageable format.

(I'm using Excel 2003 but I it could also be a feature in Office XP).

My Old Home Page Profile Text

Just for archiving's sake, I'm posting the text I had on my old, static home page for quite a while up here using the date it was last updated.

Welcome to my web headquarters. If you didn't come here intentionally, then you've found Andrew Shuttleworth, the one born and brought up in Rishton, Blackburn, Lancashire, North West England, who spent four years of university life at the beautiful University of Stirling and is currently living in Yokohama, Japan. If you are looking for a different Andrew Shuttleworth try here. This web site is mainly static but is a launching points for any other sites I happen to be running at the time. These currently are:

• Shut Up! - My online brain dump or blog, for what is happening and what I'm thinking on a day to day basis.
• Pocket PC Japan - News and views related to Pocket PC PDAs and Japan/Japanese
• Tablet PC Experience - Views from a Tablet PC user with high expectations

Drop me an email or instant message (currently rarely in use) if you want to get in touch.

If you feel like buying me a present, here are my wish lists:
Amazon.com Wish List

Now for some content and links (although you'll get much more up-to-date information if you check the blog above):

About my Pocket PC PDA

One of my interests and favorite tools is my Pocket PC PDA. I'm currently using a new Toshiba e550G - one of the most powerful PDAs on the market. The real advantage of a device like this is that it allows you to efficiently keep a large amount of up-to-date information in a pocketable device. The main applications I use are the calendar/diary, address book, note application and e-book reader. It's also very useful if I need to read my e-mail and don't have my laptop with me. How much you would use a PDA really depends on your lifestyle though including factors such as how much you use computers, how much access you have to computers and how much you need access to your computer data and the internet when you don't have access. As mobile phones continue to develop they will also be sufficient to fill this gap for some people. There are many more things you can do with a PDA such a surf the internet (albeit in a reduced format), watch streaming or saved video content, listen to music, record voice notes, play games, view maps, work with spreadsheets and databases, send instant messages, give business presentations and use most other types of applications that you would find on a normal desktop computer. There are innumerable accessories you can buy for PDAs to assist with all this including memory cards to increase the amount you can store, communication cards so that you can access the internet almost wherever you are and keyboards for when you really need to input data as fast as you would on a normal PC.

If you are interested in Pocket PCs and their use in Japan or with Japanese visit another web site I maintain called Pocket PC Japan. There is also a discussion group linked from there.

Mobile and Wireless Internet Access

Wireless was a big buzzword in 2001 and both developments are extremely useful and have helped integrate the internet into the lives of many people. I use a P-in [email protected] 64k modem for wireless internet access with my PDA and laptop. Also I make a lot of use of my P503i mobile phone which is always close by, is 'instant on', has batteries which will easily last out the whole day and can be operated with one hand. With i-mode internet access and i-appli Java capability I can do anything from checking train timetable and route information; get maps, read e-mail and the latest news, look up words in online dictionaries, play games, get restaurant discount coupons, find the nearest Starbucks, look up any online data from my PIM (MS Outlook) which is synched using FusionOne, find the best prices for computer related items at www.kakaku.com, go shopping (e.g. for books at Amazon Japan), do online banking and last but not least even karaoke. It's most useful when you are crammed into a packed train where it isn't even practical to use a PDA or perhaps when you are carrying a bag and only have one hand to control and hold a device.

More IT and Computing

Here some of the current IT products, services and technologies I'm using and feel are really worth mentioning. This web site is hosted at by www.pair.com. Recommended by a few people at the Tokyo PC Users Group (see below) I'm very happy with their good value service. They also allow IMAP access to their mail boxes which is a great bonus. IMAP means your mail is stored on their server so if you access your mail from multiple computers you are always accessing the same store and don't have to worry about something being saved on your 'other' computer when you really need access to it now and on this computer. You can also access the same mail using different email applications without having to import or export.

This page was maintained using a text editor, but since I got my hands on MS FrontPage I've been using that. Everyone recommends Macromedia Dreamweaver and whenever I have enough spare cash I hope to buy a copy.

Tokyo PC Users Group

The Tokyo PC User Group is really an online and offline community of people in Tokyo, Japan and worldwide connected in some way or other by, you've guessed it, Tokyo and PCs. It's a great example of how people can work together to share knowledge and help each other out.

The Localization Industry

For nearly four years I worked in the 'localization' industry. Localization refers to modifying a product for a different 'locale' or cultural area. It's a relatively immature industry, constantly changing especially with the effect of the internet. IThere are a lot of people really committed to the industry. While I was involved I helped add links to the globalization section of the Open Directory and this is now a useful starting reference point.

Photographs

If really have to see some photos, check out Guam and ski trip in Nagano. I've lots more but I've decided not to put them all online at the moment. I've also experimented with digital video but am not happy with the quality of the videos after they are reduced to a size suitable for the internet so they are not uploaded yet either. I'm sure in the not so distant future we'll be able to transfer gigabytes of data over the internet without a second thought.

That's all for the moment. This page is constantly being updated, so hope you get chance to check back again some time. In the meantime, all e-mail (except spam) is welcome and I try to reply to all I receive.