I've never seen the precipitation radar look quite this colorful. This is from a few minutes ago. I live at the black dot to the lower-right of center. Typhoon #19 ("Vongfong", though these kind of names are never used in Japan) is forecast to pass through Kyoto in five or six hours. A bit exciting.

Update: 70 minutes later, it's all the more impressive:

Now at 7:25 it's a field of red, and it's raining here, but it really doesn't seem that bad. Also, the wind, which was quite strong a few hours ago, seems to have died down considerably.

As I mentioned yesterday, with a typhoon expected to reach the main island of Japan on Monday, we make a quick Saturday/Sunday trip south to Hiroshima and Miyajima. The approaching typhoon made for an interesting sky, with a very high cloud ceiling, in different patterns.

Photos of the sky from the train window are pretty bland, but perhaps of interest to someone who has never been to Japan.

この間の土曜日、京都から宮島までの空景色。写真はつまらないですが、日本に来られてない方には面白いかも。

In the split second after we came out of a tunnel, the GPS unit was confused about the speed. It quickly returned to 300kph.

After a lunch (that will eventually be [...]

We popped down to Hiroshima this weekend, and spent the night in Miyajima, near the Itsukushima Shrine. A typhoon is coming, so last night's sunset was not too shabby.

厳島神社の鳥居、昨日の夕方。台風19号の影響で奇麗な夕焼けでした。今日、雨が始まる前に京都に戻りました。

The shrine is notable for being in a tidal plane with a huge difference between high and low tides (the difference yesterday morning was 3.41m -- more than 11 feet), so the look and feel of the area changes dramatically throughout the day. It's prettier when the water is up, but it's more interesting when the tide is out because you can walk around out past the gate.

Posts from [...]

It never ceases to amaze what one can find while putzing around the mountain fringes of Kyoto. I came across this today, and thought it might have potential as one of my "What am I?" quizzes. What is it?

This one is probably pretty easy, especially if you look at the image metadata.

It brings to mind this quiz from a couple of years ago. I still use this related photo from that quiz's answer post as the login-screen background for my Synology DS1511+ NAS unit; the ultra-industrial feel seems to work nicely as a login screen.

As always, I'll [...]

(Recent posts have been filled with fall colors, so for some balance, I'm dipping into my cherry-blossom archives)

For the last few years I've had a Synology DS1511+ NAS unit... an always-on "network drive" that sits in a closet at home that I can access on my home network from all my computers at home. I use it for local Time Machine backup, as well as a local CrashPlan repository for various backups. (I also use CrashPlan to keep backups offsite.)

The Synology unit has five drive bays, which I initially populated with 3TB Seagate Barracuda drives.

That was a [...]