Long CountdownNick Ramsay, blogging from Japan.

It’s just ticked over into March, which gets me one month closer to warmer weather. Actually we’ve had a pretty warm week anyway and I even splatted my first mosquito of the year. So what’s going on in the life of Nick Ramsay?

My Online Life
Most of my waking hours are spent on the internet, which is kind of ironic considering how rarely I update this blog now. The last few months have been crazy busy building Hotaru CMS, a fantastic Pligg alternative, and in any Pligg vs Hotaru CMS contest it would win hands down! Please excuse my blatant search engine tomfoolery, but it’s true! With its Wordpress-style themes, plugins and widgets, user-defined settings, individual user permissions, and barrage of anti-spam features, it really is the ants pants in completely free, open source social bookmarking scripts.

Permanent Residency
I had my permanent residency application approved which was a nice relief because renewing my spouse visa every few years was a bit of a chore, and as an added bonus, I could stay in Japan if Mami ever left me (although I’d be a miserable old sod if that ever happened). Other than that, I’m not aware of any perks of having eijuken except that I could get a mortgage, but I already did that without it.

Parenting
My back is killing me right now. Probably from picking up Rikuto too often without bending my knees, but it could be because of the shrimp-crab-aerobics I had to do today at one of his nursery school events. Finding the event hall was almost as challenging, even with Mami’s car navigation system that tells you to turn left 700 meters before you need to, which inevitably leads you down some very narrow Japanese back alleys.

Ricky’s English is coming along, but he doesn’t say much. He likes to correct my English by telling me the real word, i.e. the Japanese equivalent, so I’ve got my work cut out for me if I expect him to be an English-speaker. My big plan is to insist he does his homework alongside me in my office when the time comes. That way he’ll be a captured audience and will have no choice but to use English, if he wants help with his homework, that is! Saying that, his Japanese homework might be way over my head…

And that’ll do for this episode of Ramsay Ramblings! If you can’t get enough of my updates, I’m on Twitter and I blog about Hotaru here.

What’s going on?
It’s a pretty miserable day outside my window. Gray skies, light rain and a bit on the chilly side. Rikuto has gone to the hospital with his mum to get his flu jab, while I’m trying to fight off another cold.

Making magic
Most of my time is spent working on Hotaru CMS with some great lads from the U.S, Scotland, Italy and Japan. This is something I’ve thrown myself into over the last six months, and the closer the project gets to completion, the more people are seeing its potential and signing up to help out. With a bit of luck, we’ll have a release candidate ready by February and then I’ll port JapanSoc, and probably this blog, to Hotaru.

Riding the wave
Continuing the technology theme, Shibuya246 sent me an invite to try Google Wave. This is Google’s attempt to establish “waves” as the replacement for “email”, and I must say I’m impressed so far. It’s a bit hard to explain Wave, so if you’re curious, learn more here.

Keeping fit
I’ve been feeling quite old lately, so I made the rash decision to go for a jog – the first real exercise I’ve done for about five years, and boy, oh boy, do I regret it now! My body is aching and I’ve caught another cold. Screw exercise! It’s overrated

Told you so
I’m getting an uncontrollable urge to scream “Ha ha! Told you so!” with regards to the “Climategate” scandal, i.e. scientists colluding to fudge data in order to make a case for “man-made” global warming, and President Obama, who has continued the Iraq war, escalated the Afghanistan war, and started his own war in Pakistan. Oh, and he hasn’t closed Guantanamo Bay either. How much more will it take before people realize they’ve been duped by the establishment and mainstream media, not just on those issues, but also on the hard-to-stomach realities concerning the 9/11 attacks. Speaking of which, I’m off to Nagoya tomorrow to listen to a presentation on that very topic. How depressing, eh?

On a lighter note…
My wife is pleased that I’ve started washing the dishes. This is a major success in her efforts to make a housewife out of me (I already stay home while she goes to work!). Fair enough, “washing the dishes” in our house means filling the dishwasher and pressing the start button, but at least I’m trying!

Rikuto is also making efforts to keep the place tidy. Like most two-year-olds, he has a permanently runny nose, but we’ve trained him to use a tissue instead of letting it flow into his mouth. He takes a tissue, touches the end of his nose with it, wipes the rest on his sleeve and then throws the tissue in the bin. If we’re not watching, he repeats this every minute, emptying a box of tissues in a matter of hours!