Say Hello to Sora Sheetal

10:11pm, Monday 4th January, 2010
3.190 kg. 51 cm tall.

That’s the birth date and key stats of my little baby girl. It was a long wait and a lot of hard work from her mother Chiho, who I now have a new found respect for after seeing first hand what it takes to bring a new human being into the world.

Both Chiho and our little baby are doing great and should be joining me back home shortly. Meanwhile I have “Dad tasks” to do such as building baby beds. I think this is some kind of right of passage. Feeling up to the challenge though.

Before you ask, no, we have not chosen a name yet. We have a few names on the shortlist but will be waiting to decide for a few more days, so for now let her just be known as the new Sheetal. I will update this post when we decide.

UPDATE : We have named her Sora, which is the Japanese word for “sky”. In Japanese kanji we write her name with a single character, 空, which I think has a nice beautiful simplicity to it. The name is to match her hazel blue eyes and it just seemed like a good feel for her once we saw her face and got to know her the last few days. It is not a particularly common name and can be used for boys or girls generally.

Its great to be able to call her by name finally!

I don’t really have much more to say other than she is about the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and both me and Chiho are over-the-moon happy. She will be our half Japanese, half Australian wonder-child, we are both looking forward to the ride and I couldn’t have a better partner to do it with.

Let’s see how we go once the sleepless nights kick in.

Like any good parent of the new decade, I have already taken hundreds of photos and feel the urge to share them across multiple social platforms.

This post is a start, but still deciding how to do it without pushing the baby limit.

I have been enjoying a little personal re-boom (that boom that comes as an after the initial boom) on Star Wars humor and culture. It seems the initial malaise and disappointment with the prequels has given way to a wealth of fresh Star Wars humor on the internet and I have been enjoying some. We have moved past the days of Troops and Star Wars Kid and have a whole new crop to check out.

For people who never grew up on Star Wars, these will be kind of wasted on you, but for the rest of us who grew up on the teat of the Empire and the Rebellion, here are some of the good ones I have found recently :

1) Star Wars Hoodies

For the street-wise Star Wars fan, these special edition hoodies from Mark Echo seem to be what you should be looking for…

2) Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review

About 70 minutes of straight for the jugular criticism of the first film of the prequels, The Phantom Menace. These even have a nice sub plot tied in … and a dry, dry , dry sense of humor. Try the first part here and see how you go. All 7 parts are in the playlist embedded below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=765EDC49DF794526

3) Patton Oswalt -- At Midnight I Will Kill George Lucas With A Shovel

If you have your hatred for George Lucas built up from the Phantom Menace review, you are probably ready for a dose of Patton Oswalt. This dates back a year or so, but seems to be doing the rounds again.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDCjIjsZp_Y

4) Yoshitoku’s Darth Vader samurai display armour

Some of you probably already know that Darth Vader’s suit was originally designed based on traditional Samurai armour. We now that has come full circle, Japanese traditional doll maker, Yoshitoku, has made a special Star Wars edition of Darth Vader (and a Strom Trooper) and Samurai hybrid. The result has proved very popular and quickly sold out the limited edition collectors series. A few different versions were available at up to almost US$4000.

5) Tokyo Dance Trooper

Last but not least, the continuing adventures of Danny Choo as Tokyo Dance Trooper. Danny broke out his authentic looking Storm Trooper outfit for a few dance performances in public back in 2007 and has since turned it into a bit of a franchise, turning up at every even slightly tech or costume based event in Tokyo. The stunt never seems to cease to be fun and playful and get people smiling, so keep it up Danny.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=13xO12Up2UQ

check out the Youtube channel for more.

Did I miss anything? If you know any more cool Star Wars stuff made recently, let me know in the comments.

I surprised myself that I had never gone through the experience before since I have been working with Macs and other Apple products as my main computing devices for at least 6 years now. I guess it is because I am one of these people who thinks they know everything about computers so doesn’t need “help” from some young kid who just got his first job out of university at the Apple Store. In actual fact that is just the external face, behind close doors us know-it-all types need to do some frantic research to make sure we can come through on said promises of knowing-it-all.

Two things I learned from this experience of using the “Genius Bar” to get my problems solved :

1) Book Ahead

The Shibuya Apple Store serves not just the Shibuya area, but probably more like the whole west half of Tokyo, so especially if you try to go on the weekend, you are looking at waiting a long time or being asked to put down your name for the next available slot to get a “Genius” to speak to.

2) It is a great customer experience

If you were smart enough to book ahead and not be pre-frustrated by the long wait, the customer experience is very good.

In my case, I had an issue with the hardware on my iPhone. My touch screen stopped responding to touches on some areas. The “Genius” was able to work out that I was not pulling his leg and had a legit issue in about 30 seconds without me feeling like I was being accused of being a bad customer as I have had the feeling elsewhere from time to time. He checked that I had tried the obvious things like restoring the system without making me feel like an idiot, and within about 5 minutes he was transferring my USIM card into a new shiny iPhone.

The whole process took less than 10 minutes and was totally stress-less.

On the tail end, I still had to restore my phone from the backup when I got home, but this was not a big deal since the backup and restore process is very smooth… just takes 1 hour of waiting.

Last week, Tessa Sterkenburg, who I know through my writing for The Next Web, launched The Next Speaker, a business to manage and represent speakers talking about new media, technology, innovation or just motivational topics based in Holland.

I was very happy to have been one of the first speakers invited to join, and my focus is on asian new media and technology (specifically Japanese) and online branding. You can find my intro page on the site, but you will need to read Dutch for now (Tessa tells me there is an English version on the way as soon as everything is rolling).

The site is mainly promoting speakers within Holland, so I hope to be back in The Netherlands soon to pick up some speaking engagements through The Next Speaker. Before you ask, no, I don’t speak Dutch, but the good people of Holland seem to not mind me presenting in English, so I think I am safe.

My last speaking gig in Holland was in Utrecht earlier this year for the kickoff to the Dutch Game Jam, where my business partner and I together gave participants an entertaining presentation about Japanese gaming culture to prepare them for developing games for Japanese mobile phones. That was a ton of fun, so I am looking forward to being back again some time soon.

To book me as a speaker in Holland or the rest of Europe, please contact Tessa.

For Japan and the rest of the world, its probably better to contact me directly at :  mike [at] ultrasupernew [dot] com

Back on Wednesday 26th March it was the big 50th event for Pecha Kucha Night Tokyo and I was very happy to be invited by Mark Dytham to make one of the presentations. I gave a bit of a rundown on the Salaryman Sato campaign we put together last year. It was great to get a lot of people giving positive feedback and asking questions afterwards.

It has taken about four and a half years of monthly events to get to this point with Pecha Kucha Night Tokyo, and the event is really blooming in popularity and has spread to more than 110 cities around the world. Congratulations Mark and Astrid and the KDa Allstars on a big achievement! What many people don’t realize is that Tokyo is the birthplace of Pecha Kucha Night.

As you may also know, we at UltraSuperNew Inc. are developing the online presence for Pecha Kucha Night. The new platform was released in January and we are steadily rolling out new features. Most recently, we put the mailing system for the event notifications online, so everyone who is subscribed via the website should be receiving both global and city mails, depending on your preferences as the oprganisers for the respective events start to use the system. We also have added a more sophisticated system for tagging presenters for events, so now the archive of events will be much more accessible as we grow the system.

Get out to a Pecha Kucha Night near you.

See here proof and execution of concept a clear month before Kevin and Alex will grace the the city of Amsterdam. Although… who seems to be having more fun? : (