Tim get a faceful

Japan has been gaining a reputation for a few years as a place with consistently some of the deepest driest snow available. Winter monsoon storms from Siberia bring dump after dump after dump to the northern island of Hokkaido.

With an ailing economy and cheap long haul travel from the likes of Scandinavian Airlines, this powder paradise has opened up for Europeans. After snapping up a flight deal in summer 2012 a group of 5 of us set our sights on the land of the rising sun.

Craig gets his stabilisers out.

This is a simple guide / report on our trip there so if you are planning a similar trip this should give you some info which might be useful.

How to Get There

Japanese Temple

You need to get to Sapporo Chitose airport. There are some airlines which fly directly to Sapporo but we opted to fly into Tokyo with SAS then get an AirAsia internal flight up to Sapporo. This worked out relatively well but a delay with the AirAsia flight caused some stress. Do not eat the AirAsia airplane food!

Hire Car

Rocking the pimped out toyota vellfire

Probably the best way to get around Hokkaido is with a hire car. We went for a hire car for the half of the trip but I would recommend in retrospect having a hire car for the whole time, as the freedom is excellent and it immerses you more in the culture.

We booked a pimping Toyota Vellfire from Toyota Rent a Car

Out..

And in..

Places to ride

Niseko

Mt Yotei from Hirafu

Niseko United piste map

Look at 360niseko for daily snow reports, this also links to daily avalanche reports which are released at about 0730 each morning and are useful because the snow pack is changing a lot.

This is the largest and most famous resort in Hokkaido and well worth the visit. We stayed at niseko lodge when we were there. A relatively cheap backpackers hostel which is right next to the slopes. If you are looking for budget accomodation, this is the place.

Apres ski was relatively poor, but you dont go to Japan for the apres! Also, avoid this resort if you are allergic to Australians.

If the weather is ok, go through access gate 3 and climb to top of annapurri mountain. From here you can ski lines down the same aspect, or ride the backside bowl. (we didnt ride the backside but it might be amazing.) You need to get a bus back for this, so check that it is running.

There is a short avalanche course you can do which allows you to access a semi closed area in niseko village ski area. You get a bib and they let in 60 people a day.. we didnt get round to this but it comes highly recommended from some locals we spoke to.

The trees to the skier’s right in niseko annapurri resort are really fun.

Heelside slash

Mt Yotei is a volcano near Niseko which it is apparently possible to ride, 5 hours up 20 mins down. There is also a crater that you can also ride! Black diamond tours might be able to take you on a day trip if you are keen.

Rusutsu

Rusutsu piste map

Mark hits it fast

Quiet powder paradise.

Rusutsu, is amazing for snow and fun. Go to Mt Isola and East mountain, ride in the forest to the sides of the black runs. There are some short chairlifts that you can lap on. It would be best to go here after a snow fall when there is fresh snow and maybe niseko upper reaches are closed.

Ally gets deep in rusutsu

Asahidake

Asahidake piste map

Unsure about this one. Despite its glowing reviews on powderhounds we were slightly disappointed.

Mouse with adequate gear

We went there on a bad weather day which I dont think gave us a proper representation of the resort. If you just ride the resort below the single cable it is relatively flat and boring and doesnt suit snowboarders at all.

However it seems to me as if the cablecar is really just an access for backcountry travel and the potentially for long, untracked deep powder lines is large. We however found only wind affected snow in blizzarding cold conditions.

Kamui Ski Links

Kamui Piste Map

In terms of resort action, this was my favourite of the whole trip. This is an authentic Japanese resort for the Japanese and there are loads of people learning to ski using the same hire equipment from 20 years ago! Its amazing to see ski groups of 15-20 people having a great time on skis for the first time.

Generally the level of riding is not super high here which results in lots of untracked powder lines in the trees!

Styling it

Little gems for this place were skiers left of the main cable car (but remember to exit onto the first piste that you cross horizontally and dont be tempted to carry on.) and the back bowl from the top of the cable car. Warning this involves quite a bit of hiking to get out of and stop riding when you see the flourescent orange tapes. (unless you have skins!)

Sapporo Teine

sapporo teine piste map

OK night skiing, renowned but never properly explored properly by us. It was a nice experience to finally go night skiing in Japan and the trees to skiers right of the night skiing area made for a good time riding in the dark with massive headtorches.

Night skiing at Teine resort..

It did start to get a little dull so craig and I took to breaking rules to keep us entertained.

Smiles and waves

Kiroro Snow World

Kiroro Snow World Piste Map

Lots of untouched super deep lines possible here at Kiroro

Absolutely off the hook, recommended.

Kiroru is amazing. There is a big powder bowl under the main gondola (skiers right) which has a nice exit which mops you up and takes you back to this piste. There are also loads of ski touring opportunities so take your skins to this resort. We skinned up from the car park one day, but there are loads of lines higher up also. Consider hiring a guide here, but we didnt. The snow out of the resort was extremely deep and the same as the films you see of hokkaido riding.

This was the first resort and area where I really saw people using skins and skiing a long way off piste.

Wee windlip drop

We only managed to explore the right side of the area because the riding in the trees was so good and the powder so sweeeeet.

Love this shot

Above you can see some of the epic snow available on the island of Hokkaido.

One of my final face shots of the trip.

Finally

The Crew

I really enjoyed our trip to Japan with good friends and I hope to get the chance to visit it again one day. Craig put together a wee video with the snowboarding footage that we captured during the trip.

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion,
Has broken nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell-
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men
Gang aft agley,
An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e.
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

Productivity in General

Recently I have been increasing interested in productivity. Currently I spent a large proportion of the working day in front of a computer. The challenge has been to maximise the amount I get done but minimise the amount of time required to do this.

Enter Pomodoro

From http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

The basic unit of work in the Pomodoro Technique can be split in five simple steps:

• Choose a task to be accomplished
• Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
• Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
• Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
• Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break

The beauty of this is the simplicity of this compared to other productivity system. (GTD)

The key to success here is not getting distracted whilst working on the Pomodoro and respecting breaks, even if you are in ‘the zone’.

I currently use this timer for OSX.

For Linux and Windows fans there is this great air app that works as a pomodoro timer.

Small Improvements to Existing Habits

I have also found that making small incremental improvements to daily habits quite beneficial. The time savings on a daily basis are relatively small but these small savings really add up over time.

Examples

• Learning to properly touch type.
• Memorizing / printing out bus timetables for hassle free public transport.
• Finding annoying things which take time in your daily workflow and improving these processes. (eg. improving bash aliases to make your project workflow more powerful.)

Oauth lets us standardize limited access to personal banking data.

Accessing bank statements programmatically is a difficult problem. Finance tracking websites like mint involve typing in username / passwords for some US banks and most UK banks dont allow automatic export of statements at all.

UK building society Nationwide recently dropped structured formats from their online statements, offering only PDF! It is shocking that a bank would drop structured data output in favour of PDF in 2010.

Banks should implement OAuth to allow applications restricted access to their bank accounts. From here they should provide an API for accessing your statements in a structured format (json / xml). This in turn would drive innovation of mobile and web financial applications and this will drive more customers to the banks that provide these digital services.

This excerpt from oauth.net describes concept of limited access using OAuth,

Many luxury cars today come with a valet key. It is a special key you give the parking attendant and unlike your regular key, will not allow the car to drive more than a mile or two. Some valet keys will not open the trunk, while others will block access to your onboard cell phone address book. Regardless of what restrictions the valet key imposes, the idea is very clever. You give someone limited access to your car with a special key, while using your regular key to unlock everything.

Everyday new website offer services which tie together functionality from other sites. A photo lab printing your online photos, a social network using your address book to look for friends, and APIs to build your own desktop application version of a popular site. These are all great services – what is not so great about some of the implementations available today is their request for your username and password to the other site. When you agree to share your secret credentials, not only you expose your password to someone else (yes, that same password you also use for online banking), you also give them full access to do as they wish. They can do anything they wanted – even change your password and lock you out.

This is what OAuth does, it allows the you the User to grant access to your private resources on one site (which is called the Service Provider), to another site (called Consumer, not to be confused with you, the User). While OpenID is all about using a single identity to sign into many sites, OAuth is about giving access to your stuff without sharing your identity at all (or its secret parts).

As you authenticate with the bank during the OAuth process it allows existing login credentials to be used, so the addition of oauth to the internet banking suite would be an enhancement rather than a rewrite; Allowing the banks to use there existing internet banking login functionality.

This would bring banks and banking data up to speed with the current developments in technology. There looks to be an interesting development in the US which separates the internet offering from the web technology. Bank Simple could pave the way for a new direction in how we bank.

Traditional banks need to embrace this or risk getting left behind by a new generation of tech savvy online operations.

I have been using SVN a bit recently (euch after the power of git) and have been doing some merges using
FileMerge (opendiff) a utility which comes with the mac developer tools.

To make this play with SVN 1.5 or greater you have to use a wrapper to call the tool. There is an existing toolset written in shell script but they do not seem to work for me (1.6.9).

  #!/usr/bin/env ruby
 
  # A ruby wrapper
 
  unless ARGV.length == 5
    puts "Incorrect number of arguments"
    exit
  end
 
  left = ARGV[3]
  right = ARGV[4]
 
  `opendiff #{left} #{right} -merge #{right}`
  exit(0)

Slap this script somewhere and make it executable. Edit your .bash_profile to include the following:

  export SVN_MERGE='/path/to/svn_diff_wrapper.rb'

So when you get presented with the merge options press l and it should load filemerge for merging power.

flickr

Performance tools are a great help for testing your web application deployment setup. They not only let you judge how the performance of the application is but also catch errors. Nobody wants a web application which starts to spit out errors when put under load or worse, randomly!

HTTPERF is a gift from HP which is my favourite tool at the moment.

An example httperf usage is:

  httperf --num-conns=800 --rate=80 --timeout=5 --server=google.com --port=80 --uri=/

This hits the google homepage with 80 requests per second for 800 requests in total. This test will run for circa 10 seconds.

Results are as follows:

Total: connections 800 requests 800 replies 800 test-duration 10.252 s

Connection rate: 78.0 conn/s (12.8 ms/conn, <=25 concurrent connections)
Connection time [ms]: min 140.1 avg 237.1 max 771.7 median 240.5 stddev 40.5
Connection time [ms]: connect 111.2
Connection length [replies/conn]: 1.000

Request rate: 78.0 req/s (12.8 ms/req)
Request size [B]: 63.0

Reply rate [replies/s]: min 76.2 avg 77.9 max 79.6 stddev 2.4 (2 samples)
Reply time [ms]: response 125.9 transfer 0.0
Reply size [B]: header 280.0 content 219.0 footer 0.0 (total 499.0)
Reply status: 1xx=0 2xx=0 3xx=800 4xx=0 5xx=0

CPU time [s]: user 0.51 system 9.64 (user 5.0% system 94.1% total 99.0%)
Net I/O: 42.8 KB/s (0.4*10^6 bps)

Errors: total 0 client-timo 0 socket-timo 0 connrefused 0 connreset 0
Errors: fd-unavail 0 addrunavail 0 ftab-full 0 other 0

This line below is important:

Reply rate [replies/s]: min 76.2 avg 77.9 max 79.6 stddev 2.4 (2 samples)

It tells us that the avg requests per second is 77.9. There is a low standard deviation, which is good. If you have a high stddev you should be worried. Lastly, it has calculated this using 2 samples. You can increase the number of samples by increasing the num-conns, which will give you a more reliable dataset.

Watch out for the errors:

Errors: total 0 client-timo 0 socket-timo 0 connrefused 0 connreset 0
Errors: fd-unavail 0 addrunavail 0 ftab-full 0 other 0

Looking good, google is performing well on the error front. Obviously google.com handles more than 80 req/s! Now go away and performance test some of your sites!

There is some valuable further watching to be had. Episodes 15 and 16 mention httperf.

I am going to improve my knowledge / learn afresh the following 5 languages in the next few months.

• javascript
• curl
• c
• erlang
• c#

Javascript is used more and more nowadays, with powerful frameworks such as jquery and prototype and improved browser support. Internet users expect a rich internet experience nowadays and often this is made possible by a sprinkling of javascript. Whilst I have a fairly strong javascript knowledge, I would not consider myself to be accomplished. I will try and write a useful jquery plugin to further my knowledge.

Curl is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, TELNET, DICT, LDAP, LDAPS and FILE. curl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user+password authentication (Basic, Digest, NTLM, Negotiate, kerberos…), file transfer resume, proxy tunneling and a busload of other useful tricks. Command-line network tools interest me (wget is ace) so I want to learn curl as I don’t currently use it at all.

c is a low level compiled programming language. I used it for graphics programming at university but haven’t touched it since. I want to refesh my memory, maybe I will try writing a some c code which interfaces with a ruby script or something along these lines.

erlang is a general-purpose concurrent programming language and runtime system. The sequential subset of Erlang is a functional language, with strict evaluation, single assignment, and dynamic typing. For concurrency it follows the Actor model. It was designed by Ericsson to support distributed, fault-tolerant, soft-real-time, non-stop applications. The first version was developed by Joe Armstrong in 1986. It supports hot swapping so code can be changed without stopping a system. Erlang was originally a proprietary language within Ericsson, but was released as open source in 1998. (wikipedia)
Concurrency is deemed to become more important in the future, due to the current trend in processor design. Hence, I am interested to both write some concurrent code but also bend my mind around functional programming once and for all.

c# is deemed the java killer for the “I have a good job with a big company crew.”. I know an increasing number of developers that work in the .net platform. Rather than be ignorant and shout about how good the ruby platform is, I need to sample the delights of .net and specifically c# for myself. I will not however, call Scott Hanselman god.

Will keep you all updated on how I fare in these language related adventures.

Halvard found about 3kg of chanterels in storlidalen.

Dont you hate running out of stuff?

• Sitting on the toilet, dropping the kids off at the pool; the penny drops. No toilet paper!
• Wake up starving, put your favourite cereal (cheerios) in a bowl. No milk!
• Excited about another breakfast of champions, doh!

Im fed up of running out of things so have been developing a healthy? obsession with buying stuff in bulk. Its a good feeling when you know that you have enough supplies to eat beans on toast for another 10 days straight.

I recently redeveloped the orienteering news website nopesport This was done with the artistic touch of nonimage as it was back in 2003 when nopesport was an “overnight” success having been cooked up when both nonimage an I were out of work after university.

I have been working professionally as a web programmer of 4-5 years now, and not enough of this expertise had been used in the previous php based incarnation.

Workflow

A big part of developing a web application remotely is workflow. There are various tools that help oil the wheels in a distributed team.

• Project Management

You need to be able to discuss and document the situation with project management software. We used basecamp for this.

• Source Control

After graduating from svn school, like most rails heads I have moved to the distributed version control system git. Android is now using git as well along with a few other high profile projects. Its the best thing that I have learnt in 2008 re technology.

• Simple “One-click” Deployment

Capistrano and source control allow super slick deployments. After you have set it up, bring on the automation.

• Designer integration with source control

Having a designer that can code CSS, is a major asset. Having a designer that can code CSS and be integrated into the development workflow is a super special major asset.

• Bug documentation and fixing process

Having a standard way for bug reporting, and a slick fast process of fixing them is top class.

Design

I dont speak for nonimage here.. maybe he will do a guest post on the subject!! hint hint

We are sick to the stomach with shiny web 2.0 designs. They are out of date in my book and it is sad the number of designers who are still just graduating from the web 1.0 style of designing only to find themselves still behind after they update their skills.

We decided that typography was important (like a lot of designers and developers 2007-2008) and we wanted a dirty grunge design.

We had some conversations with the other guys who run the site day to day and do a sterling job. They added their input along the way. Generally though, we were essentially our own client which is a great situation to be in.