1995-01-17 05:46+09, fifteen years ago this morning, a major earthquake hit Kobe and a very large number of impressive structures designed and built by, serious, credentialed adults collapsed, killing over 6,000 people in a land obsessed with disaster preparedness. My friends who were there survived, the city has recovered well, but the impact it had on the local economy and Japan at large is still being felt today. As the old saying goes, earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do.

We were living in Menlo Park, California at the time, and I had just welcomed my first official partner, a former Apple Japan employee, to my consultancy, something I should have done six years earlier when Third Culture Enterprises began. The earthquake severely damaged his father’s business and he had to return to Japan immediately, ending our partnership. A year later we moved away from Silicon Valley to a suburb of Sacramento and within a year of that my primary Japanese consulting contract was canceled. Just as the worldwide web began to boom, my career went into a tailspin.

For a spoiled first-world 白人 with all the advantages of a good education, family and health, any blame for career setbacks rests with me. Today, considering the negative impact an earthquake on the other side of the globe had on my life, the trauma of those whose lives are at the epicenter of these catastrophes is unimaginable.

Architecture matters.

A couple of years old, but quite compelling visualizations of science research.

http://wbpaley.com/brad/mapOfScience/index.html

I particularly like the “Strength of Nations” poster they created, showing the difference in areas of scientific focus between several industrialized nations.

Publishers Like Time Inc.’s “Hulu for Magazines” Pitch. What Will Apple and Amazon Say?

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Nice examples from web designer Dave Shea of what can be accomplished with the new tap-to-focus/set-exposure feature of the improved iPhone 3GS camera.

Amazing compositing of old and new cityscape photos.

New Years Day up at beautiful Lake Nojiri. Photo shows Mt. Madarao above Sunakawa village as viewed from the NLA boathouse.

My friend and colleage Chris Gulker was just diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Chris is a veteran of the digital media industry and has been an invaluable friend and mentor to me since I joined Adobe last November. He’s one of the “good guys” in the industry that makes it much more of a joy than a job.

The New York Times reports on a nascent phenomenon of kids using a 17-kilohertz ring tone that adults can’t hear.

Somebody is bound to build a sensor for the teachers. Wonder what the dogs think?

I’m a third generation Norwegian-American born and raised in Japan. I’ve worked in the computer industry since the mid-’80s, currently as East Asia sales director for WoodWing Asia Pacific..