Working on my first patent

I've been charged with the design of some new optical systems based on geometry and varied materials to improve the brightness of light emitting devices. One of the great things about doing simulation work is that I can create 3D models, change materials and configurations faster than it would take the people fabricating the devices to create and test the devices built, because semiconductor fabrication is tough work.

Meaning that I can likely iterate through far more designs and variations than the processing people can go through in the same amount of time, probably by factor of x5 ~ x10 easy.

As a result of the work I am currently doing, I've been able to write a library that allows me to quickly generate 3D models, simulate them and analize the data faster than the guy that taught me to use the software (and has about 2 years up on me in experience using the simulation program). We tried to bring in another guy from a different department to do simulation work, but after 6 months of work, he eventually burned out... but I digress...

Now after getting out of the clean-room and having reasonable amounts of time to spend thinking and analyzing information, I have already found ways of increading output of our devices between 20%~50% with out standard models and I have identified a possible way of pushing that up to the 60%-90% range with some designs.While I am at it, I figured that it would be very cool to put out a patent to have something under my name.

Applying for patents is an expensive process with fees for the application and additional fees to maintain the patent over it's period. As an individual, it might be prohivitive to do this kind of stuff, but if you're working for a large corporation that can do this, why not?

Unfortunately, the patent review process takes approximately 3 years to go through, but I figured that the earlier I get started, the better. I just need to get it through the internal review process and find time to talk to the legal department here... this is going to be interesting.

So many thing to learn, so little time

One good thing about moving out from where I live now is that I value time much more compared to what I used to previously. Meaning that despite having less time, I am aiming to do more with it.

The current things I have on the chopping block are the following:

1. Take and pass the level 1 CFA exam in the winter
2. Work out 5 out of 7 days during the week for at least 30 mins
3. Pick up emacs (for text editing and programming)
4. Learn Ruby on Rails to understand how to develop web applications
5. Dedicate atleast 30 mins/day to learning Japanese for the JLPT exam in the winter

Time is incredibly scarce right now and I am pretty much at the point of even using small smidgens of time at work to help myself accomplish these goals. Just glad that I can make time to do things at work instead of doing some manual labour job.

Living with the commute and etc

It's been about a month and a few weeks since making the move from the company dorms. I pay a higher rent now but having my own place where I can invite people over is nice. I now live about 20 minutes outside of Tokyo, instead of 1 hour. The trade off, however, is that it now takes me an hour to get to work instead of the 10 minutes I used to spend before. The time delta of 50 minutes times 2 is actually quite significant. The slate has an article on commuting entitled "your commute is killing you," explaining that the further away you live, the more your health, social life, productivity and marriage suffers. Fairly obvious stuff, considering that you have less time to do everything else. 2 hours out of 16 waking hours spent on commuting is more than a 10% of productive time, which is painful.

On the flip side however, I do enjoy living closer to Tokyo and it has made getting out into the city on the weekends far more convenient instead of the 1 hour ride if I wanted to get out there. I can spend more time with friends compared to what I used to be able to do before. Just as important, however, is my ability to network with people in Tokyo will improve as Tokyo is far more accessible to me.

What I'll be looking forward to doing over the course of the next year is to get acquainted with the hacker community in Tokyo, hopefully find some intelligent, driven people to work on some projects and bounce around ideas. I've already found the Tokyo Hacker space where they do meet ups and work on projects and also a Tokyo Startup Weekend event which happened last week. Unfortunately I wasn't aware about it and it ended just a few weeks ago but I'll be looking to become more involved with the entrepreneurial communities here to find cool people to do stuff with.

I've been meeting lots of people recently, but there aren't a lot of people that are interested in doing business or have a business like mind so I'll be spending this year searching for entrepreneurial communities.

Am alive, just been busy moving

Completed the move to the new place just last month. Will have some more details about it in a bit. Been quite busy getting the furniture and unpacked. Normal semi regular posting will resume in a bit.

Financial wealth vs physical wealth

Been reading about the commodity bubble and crash of 2008. It is interesting to try to understand how the motion of money that causes the commodity bubble. At first, I was thinking that money can move into a commodity class (as in be stored) but in reality, someone is exchanging a commodity for that money, which breaks that model. I wanted to model a change in price as a function of the amount of money that goes into an equity, but that doesn't seem to be the case. What basically happens is that the money is exchanged for a commodity or equity and the transaction ends there.

The value associated with an equity is the result of it's instantaneous trading price and there is a disconnect when the value of the equity is tied directly into the "real" money supply and the physical commodity.

Assume a closed system of $1 billion dollars and 100,000,000 tonnes of copper:

• Let the price of copper be $10/tonne, the total value of this market is $2 Billion
• Let the price of copper be $30/tonne, the total value of this market is $4 Billion

Just because the price of copper was more expensive in the second case at $30/tonne vs $10/tonne does not necessairly mean that one economy is more "rich" when the amount of physical resources remain the same. I would be much happier to if I (and others could) a good $100,000 house versus a terrible $500,000 bad (top of the line) one.

I think that there is a gap if the measurement of "wealth" is "money."

The balance of living in a one room apartment

Another 3 days to move into the apartment and packing is underway. The number of belongings are less than expected; I regret not haggling with the moving company for an even cheaper price. I looked up the weather this weekend and there is a 50% chance of rain. I've never had to move in the rain before and it will be interesting to see how the moving company deals with it.

I did some more research last weekend and found out that renting a truck for a day was 8000 yen compared to the moving fee of 40,000 yen that I am paying. The only catch is though my driver’s license in Japan allows me to drive stick shift, I have little experience at it (perhaps 2~3 times). I would be interested in renting a manual car and learning stick because saving 30,000 yen for a single day's work is worth the effort.

I spent the last weekend looking at furniture for the new room as it will be a much bigger compared to what I have now. I can fit a sofa, bed, a desk and my weight training machine and the question is, do I really want to buy so many things? One of the things that I really liked about living light on belongings is that it is easy for move around (though I haven't been taking advantage of that).

Though it has been tempting to buy furniture in advance and have everything arrive on the same day, I have decided that it would be better to live in an empty space first to get a feel for the room before loading it up with stuff; I would rather have bought things to realize that it doesn't fit in well with the room. I'll be pretty happy with moving as it'll be really nice to be able to invite friends over.

On preparing to move

There are hidden costs (and benefits) to everything. I've been living in the company dorms for the past 3 years and by virtue of the age limit I am moving out by the end of the week to my own place. Leaving is a blessing because despite the savings in rent ($200 monthly), I probably have incurred plenty of social costs by living in the dorms. As a result of living in the company dorms, I am far away from Tokyo and can't invite guests over because of the building rules. As a result, I only see friends when invited to an event or when I host something elsewhere.

One part to living is the social aspects of living is knowing people and being able to do things/interact with them. The living conditions up until now have prevented me from doing as much as I would like to have done. Though in retrospect, I did end up doing more traveling around Japan from the savings from really cheap rent.

I have managed to find an apartment just outside of Tokyo, a brand new building and I will be the first tenant into my apartment. It is a fairly spacious 1 room apartment with an insulated floor and I have managed to select a corner room, where to one side is a wall shared with the outside and the other wall is shared with an elevator, meaning that I have free reign to play music and watch movies as loud as I would like and am incredibly happy about this.

I face one other dilemma; in that the room is really spacious and I would like to buy some nice furniture go into where I live. The problem I fear is having too many large belongings that eventually tie me down to a place.

The best solution I can come up with so far is to make more money to make the costs of buying the furniture insignificant to my income, making what I buy "disposable."

 

The post earthquake situation in Tokyo

For the large part, life in Tokyo has largely returned to normal. There are still some noticeable after effects of the earthquake still lingering in the city however. Since the shutdown of the Fukushima reactors, the entire Kanto region (the region surrounding Tokyo) is running at reduced power capacity and the entire region has managed to cut power consumption by at least 25% since the earthquake, alleviating the need for rolling blackouts through the region.

A link to the power charts for the Kanto region is provided here. The blue dotted line represent's last year's power consumption, the small blue bar is the total peak power available and the pinkish line represents yesterday's power consumption and the blue bars represents power consumption for the for the current day.

It's rather fascinating to see how much more power people and companies are able to cut and still maintain fairly "normal" operation. I doubt that you will see this level of power consumption elsewhere in the world however, as the attention to detail and the character to voluntarily reduce consumption is the same with other countries. The above graph could be a representation of the amount of "disposable power" Japan has.

In more detail, office buildings have reduced power to lighting, reduced the number of elevators and escalators operating. The trains have turned off the air conditioning and turned off lights inside the cabins during the days (it gets incredibly dark when going through short tunnels and really shaded regions). I expect power consumption to slowly rise as industrial regions will slowly rise as companies start brining more equipment and facilities online.

We have yet to determine if the power shortages will continue through the summer as one additional power plant is scheduled (since before the earthquake) to be taken offline for inspection through the summer, possibly bringing back the blackouts. There have been talks through the news that this might be not necessary as we have been seeing unprecedented levels of power conservation.

Supermarkets are currently short on food products as the shelves for certain products are either empty or only half full; coupling that with the current dim lightning resulting from power conservation, it presents a rather dreary atmosphere. The supermarkets are short on certain vegetables, milk, soy bean products and bottled water (which were quickly snapped up because of fears of water contamination).

The schedule for the current project that I am working on is being pushed back by about 6 months (and we are really rushing it at this rate). I expect that much production in Japan be significantly reduced and research delayed. Since the currency jump after the earthquake, I have decided to move some of my funds out of yen and into other currencies as I expect the yen to weaken throughout the year. Already in less than a month, the yen has dropped significantly.

I expect the earthquake will send slow shockwaves throughout many technology companies throughout the world as Japan produces many high tech components in many electronic devices. This might be an opportunity for other emerging market players to pick up the slack for reduced production from Japan. Right now, this probably is a very big opportunity for other Asian countries like Korea and China to play technological catch up with Japan. I expect competition to be fierce once Japan gets back on its feet.

Macbook

So I managed to get my hands on a macbook recently and started learning how to use it. There are obvious differences when it comes to using one of these machines compared to a Windows or Linux machine. One thing that drives me up the wall is that I still haven't figured out how folder navigation works other than double clicking on icons to open them; the standard "hitting enter" on files or folders doesn't work here.

There are other notable differences; for example, the function (F1~F12 keys) are actually mapped primairly to notebook functions (like screen brightness, volume control and etc) and you have to use a function key to activate their "normal" behaviors (ie function-F5 for refresh). There are, of course more things that I need to get used to, like how applications are installed and removed (things work slightly differently compared to usual Linux machines) so it'll take some time to figure those things out.

I still remember my first venture into the linux world after buying the first version of the EEE-PC. It took a good week of tinkering to really figure out how to do software installation and figure out what packages I needed for things like multi-lingual support (I also ended up killing the OS a few times by deleting the wrong things too). I suspect that I'll probably fall through similar pitfalls while learning how to use the mac.

One thing that I do like about using the mac, however is the polished multimedia editing tools, which are leaps and bounds superior compared to the open source alternatives. I guess when it comes to software that you pay for, it is what you get.

Interms of the interface, I like it because it has a cleaner look compared to the usual windows interface and the applications look pretty good. Still haven't had a lot of time to tinker with things but will be looking forward to playing around with the computer some more when I have time. After pretty much graduating from playing games on Windows, there really isn't much of a reason to stick around to a single platform anymore.

The effects of radiation being felt in Tokyo

A friend of mine posted that the "air tasted like metal," though unaware of it, those are signs of elevated radiation. The government had reported elevated levels (though not physically damaging [yeah right?]) of radiation in Tokyo this afternoon. Work has been cancelled for tomorrow and the day after so I am making plans to relocate out of Tokyo for at least until this weekend.

CNN's coverage of the Earthquate is crapy

I generally abhor news reporting just because they always focus on disaster, scandal and damage all the time. Maybe it is an American thing, but for the first time in a long while, I am currently at a friend's house watching the news with a Japanese news feed and CNN's news feed side by side. And I have to say, I am in awe of how shoddy CNN's reporting is. Nothing but the same clips of the Fukushima explosion over and over again, exceptionally dumbed down explanation (read, elementary level?) explanation of a nuclear power plant and more. I am surprised that they do not have any bilingual reporters translating and reporting on the direct press conferences from the Japanese government.

Though the Japanese news stations, through do replay some clips of the damage out here, I am far more aware of the evacuation process and the condition of people around the Sendai area; which I think is far more important compared to just talking about the "massive damage" from the earthquake.

News organizations have too much power over the way people form their opinions about the world and I don't think they are good enough to handle that kind of responsibility.

Backing up data as a precaution

Going to be leaving the home for a bit to meet up with some family. Decided to backup some critical data to the cloud, just incase I won't be able to return. In disaster, the internet is incredibly handy.

More info from a friend in Sendai

More people are coming online on Facebook reporting that they are ok. Seems like shelters are taking care of people there. One friend was able to cook several days worth of food. My friend reports that there is no power or electricity. Seems like power is up and down depending on location.

People tweeting real time on the news

Been watching the news online and there is an integrated tweet feed. Most tweets are pretty useless and I wish there was a way to block them.

Note to self: look at sources of reliable and unreliable tweets.

From the Sendai City webpage

For those that are interested. Sendai city home page is up:

http://www.city.sendai.jp/

-Bus service is intermittent in some places, operational in others
-Hospitals accepting patients in severe conditions
-People are recommended to stay home
-Natural gas service is intermittent
-People without water can have access through sources at schools
-Garbage collection not in service

Hitting the supermarket in the morning was smart

The super markets and convienance stores were busy today. People have been stocking up on food since the quake. I now have about 1 weeks worth of food cooked and prepared. Other friends have mentioned that some stores are empty of food that can be immediately consumed.

Japanese reporters on radiation levels and evacuation distances

Looks like the reporters are seeding panic by wondering if the evacuations distances are sufficient. They are worried about the government covering up information and if the evacuation distances are sufficient. Exceptionally pissed off at the talking heads that they aren't doing any research.

I wish there was some kind of market to force them into a bet... where I can bet against them.

Sendai Status via Twitter

For those that know Japanese:

Via Tetu on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mahhya94/status/46425985838620672

青葉区五橋の姉と連絡つきました。13：22現在 避難はしていない様子。街中は建物もそんなに壊れてないと。 30分前13時ごろ電気復旧。水も復旧

Translation:

Go in touch with sister in Aobaku-Itsutsubashi. As of 13:22 does not seem to be evacuated. Buildings do not seem to be that damaged. At about 13:00, power restored, water running

Via Tetu on twitter: http://twitter.com/tetumemo/status/46476055724298240

【追加情報仙台市の友人から】仙台市役所前のみ電力供給あり、取引先の会社へ避難中。　長町南から長町駅、商店街付近は建物の倒壊は無いものの道路がうねり、交通が困難

Translation:

(Further information from friend in Sendai)Power only available in front of city hall, taken refuge in company building. At south Naga-machi, objects on streets not from fallen buildings on streets. Traffic is hard.

I've heard further reports that water isn't running in some areas...

Fukushima Nuclear plant explosion:

Calculations on the radiation levels:
Current reported dosage levels @ 1000*normal.
Normal radiation dosage @ 2.4 mSv/year
need 1~2 Sv dosage to start to feel nausea or vomiting -> time to that occurs is about 5 ~10 months assuming that you are *at* the power plant.

Dosage levels will probably drop in an inverse squared power law away from the power plant. Meaning we've got plenty of time to react.

Sources:

Radiation rate @ 1000 x normal: http://bit.ly/eGht2S
Radiation poisoning levels: http://bit.ly/bRheP6

Quake notes

Random news articles:

• Fukushima Evacuation
• Japanese Strict Building codes
• Quake warning system

News Streams:

• TBS TV
• NHK TV
• Al Jazerra