Following up on this post, I’ve just completed and released my very first Wordpress plugin, designed to allow bloggers to quickly and easily generate Wordpress photo galleries from any Facebook album they can access. Continue reading »

As many of you no doubt know, the JLPT – Japanese Language Proficiency Test – is pretty much the internationally recognized measure of Japanese language ability for nonnative speakers. Something like the TOEFL for students of English. It’s a four-level test, where level 4 is beginner and level 1 is “native.”*

What you may not yet know is that last year, Japan’s Ministry of Education announced that they’d be completely revising the the test in 2010.** Since its format has remained pretty much unchanged since 1984, this means that more than 20 years of accumulated textbooks, practice exams, and study materials are suddenly about to become obsolete. Or at least slightly less relevant. Continue reading »

Throughout all the various additions and revisions to this website over the years, I’ve built up quite a pile of custom code – in the form of Wordpress plugins, widgets, templates, and sometimes as standalone libraries. For ages I’ve thought of releasing some of these as free plugins, so others could take advantage of what I’d written… Continue reading »

I’ve written several posts now about Matt Harding, a YouTube phenomenon who became famous as the result of a simple video that shows him dancing goofily at various spots around the world. This video became so popular that it’s since turned into a full-time career; Matt is now a published author, and stars in more than a handful of major TV commercials.

A few months back I read an interview that struck me as particularly interesting. It touches briefly on the human perceptions of distance, of tribal boundaries, and of how we understand (or don’t understand) the scope of the international world we now live in. As someone who tries to experience as much as possible of the diversity this world has to offer, I found his observations particularly insightful… Continue reading »