Problems with the new ESTA

The US has just deployed a new weapon against those evil foreigners who hate our freedoms so much. Now we’re going to keep all you terrorists out by making it too annoying to enter the country.

Enter the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). In a nutshell, almost all non-US citizens from visa-waiver countries (including Japan) have to register online before entering the US. You can read all about the details elsewhere.

I took a look at the Japanese version of the website and noticed some very large holes in the implementation.

• The translation is confusing and broken in parts. There were sentences that just cut off halfway through.

• Due to the details of Japanese text input on computers, you have to specifically tell users to enter single-byte characters in text forms, and actually enforce the this requirement with proper input validation because many people don’t really understand the difference. This is unless, of course, you’re prepared to handle double-byte alphanumerics on the back end. (Example: ABC123 is single-byte, ＡＢＣ１２３ is double-byte. More info on Wikipedia.)

  Anyway, the form tells you to enter your info in the Latin alphabet (rōmaji), but nowhere does it specify single-byte. I wanted to test the form to see how well it coped with double-byte characters, but I didn’t want the DHS knocking down my door in the middle of the night.

• The website is not designed with mobile access in mind (or so I assume; I couldn’t even connect to the site on my AU phone). Many, many Japanese people don’t have PCs, and do all their internet activities on their mobile phones with very limited browsers.
• The website does no geo sniffing and ignores preferred language settings, defaulting to English and throwing up a giant legalese JavaScript popup. Talk about unfriendly.

Ultimately I suspect that people will end up leaving all this bullshit to travel agents, and very few people will personally deal with the system on any level (unless that’s not allowed for some reason).

Even if they fix the above problems, I think that this is yet another highly unnecessary act of security theater that will accomplish nothing but to annoy people, waste tax dollars, and serve as another potential vector for personal information to be lost or stolen.

USA! USA! USA!

Unthinkable! Unconscionable!

I’ve officially gone off my nut—I’m drinking English Breakfast Tea… at dinner!

[Shocked gasps leap from the mouths of every decent, God-fearing Christian in the ball room. Someone's monocle falls to the floor, shattering]

What next, bacon and eggs for lunch? Does my brazen disregard for common culinary customs know no end?!

Won’t somebody think of the children??

Today’s Million Dollar Idea

Are you ready? Here it is:

YouTuber. The site where you upload photos of potatoes and shit, and people vote for them. Or something like that.

I’m still working out the kinks leading up to the IPO, but here’s a rough example:

My potatoes

Share	Favorite	Add to Recipes	Flag

Comments & Responses

Someguy718 (5 minutes ago)

thaz totlaly l4me, gaywad

Now I’ll just sit back and wait for either Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo! to buy me out. Hell yes.

NYPD Nude

There are a lot of dumb laws on the books in the US, and you sometimes hear about them in humor columns in newspapers and whatnot. But this is the first time I’ve seen them so thoroughly compiled in one place.

Let’s take a look at what laws I’ve been guilty of breaking in my home, the great state of Minnesota.

• Sleeping nude? Check.
• Oral sex? Check.
• Driving a red car down Lake Street? Maybe.
• All bathtubs must have feet? Check.

If those things are wrong, I don’t want to be right. Now I just gotta get some ducks and chickens and it’s off to Wisconsin for me.

Color mii impressed

I’ve been making the most of my youth, living in the moment, sipping of the heady dew that is existence… playing video games.

I picked up Zelda: Twilight Princess when I got my Wii in April and promptly logged 45 hours or so, but never bothered finishing it. Until two weeks ago, that is, when I decided to lay down an ultimatum: No more buying video games until I finish the ones I have.

So I returned to Zelda, in a complete daze as to what the hell I was doing. Where is this dungeon? Who am I killing now? I need to find the Legendary Sword of what? How do I attack again? Oh right you shake this… oh wait no, that makes you fall of the edge into a bottomless pit.

In fits and starts I picked up where I left off, only to discover… horror of horrors! Graphical glitches left and right ruining my immersive game experience. There were white flecks appearing randomly all over the screen, technically known as “polygon tearing”. Apparently my Wii was a lemon, as this is apparently indicative of a bad video card.

So off it went for repair, with shipping paid by Nintendo. I sent it on Monday, got a confirmation email on Wednesday, and had a brand-new Wii back on Friday. Excellent customer service, Nintendo Japan! The only annoying part was having to re-download one-by-one (for free, of course) all of the Virtual Console games I had purchased.

Wii remote condom

On top of that, Nintendo recently began offering free Wii remote condoms because apparently some idiots can’t manage to keep their remotes from flying into the TV or their siblings’ brains while playing. I got mine yesterday, and while I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to buy these things, I suppose they’re nice to have. Remember kids: Always use protection.

Edit: Whoa, whoa! Hold the presses! I’ve just discovered that Nintendo is part of the vast, liberal, pro-gay, anti-God, evil pinko tree-hugger conspiracy that is threatening to molest your children and damn your mortal soul to an eternity of torment. No more video games for me, ever.

Delusions of nothing in particular

For about an hour after running my brain is severely deprived of oxygen. During that time I’m not just sweating profusely; I’m also doing my part to increase the entropy of the universe by letting my mind wander. Today’s gem was this:

A burly but kindly pro football player named Steve is reading to a group of small children sitting on the floor before him.

Steve

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider, which sat down beside her,
and frightened Miss Muffet away.

Pan across the children’s rapt faces. Then cut to Steve smashing the book down on a flaming charcoal grill.

Steve (angrily)

That’ll teach the [censored] to eat curds and whey!

Cut to thick, sizzling steak on the grill.

Announcer

Beef. It’s what’s for dinner™.

Brought to you by Burnable Garbage and the USDA Beef Council.

The Proposal

As promised, here’s a translation of one of my blog posts from mixi. It’s a true story, and is honestly the best thing that happened to me over the last year, which is profoundly sad.

This isn’t an exaggeration or a lie. Last Friday I was actually proposed to.

Since last year I’ve making the rounds at the local elementary schools teaching English. Recently I added daycare centers to the mix, and on Friday I had my first visit to the Ikata Daycare Center.

There I met a cute little four year old girl. In the middle of the playground, countless children swarmed about me. One of them grabbed my hand and said “Mr. A, let’s get married!” with a big smile on her face.

I was shocked speechless for a second, then asked, “How old are you?”

“I’m four!”

“Ok, we can get married in 20 years.”

She thought about this for a moment. “I’ll be five soon. When I turn five can we get married?”

“Haha, ok, let’s do that.”

One of the older boys was nearby listening in. Upon hearing this he scrunched up his face in shock and disgust. “What!? But, then, you’d have to kiss her!”

Right, like that’s the biggest problem with this situation…

I see her in the morning as I walk to work sometimes. She waves frantically with a big smile, and I can hear her scream my name from inside the car as they go by.

That’s me: A hit with the ladies, age 2 to 9.

Ouch.

M was talking about how computer-assisted art often ends up nicer than pieces made with traditional methods.

Me

but what about the simple elegance of painstakingly handcrafted ink-on-pulp that far outstrips the cold precision of dehumanizing technology in the ability to convey natural, organic emotion?

M

Are we role playing?

Am I you?

Me

i put on my robe and wizard hat…

M

I don’t want to be you.

Ouch.

A mean, median, and mode sense of humor

I was talking with M today and made a funny. But really all I did was regurgitate a Simpsons quote, and I felt bad so I admitted so.

M

That’s ok. Humor isn’t about creativity. It’s about remembering lots of jokes and recycling them at appropriate times. And making sure you don’t tell the same one to the same person too many times.

Me

So really, humor is just data retention.

M

Yes. Statistically speaking, you should be hilarious.

That’s me: Statistically speaking, I should be hilarious.

Penny Arcade Remix: The Revenge

I was in a panic to come up with something interesting for a high school English class, so I decided to try to replicate the classic Penny Arcade Remix. It didn’t go that well in class, with all the kids just kind of scratching their heads trying to think of something funny to write. But I did come up with some examples in Japanese that everyone seemed to enjoy. Click the thumbnails for the full images.

今日は高校訪問があって、授業で何しようかと悩んでいたら、傑作としか言いようのない Penny Arcade Remix を再現しようと思いついた。いたって簡単だ―主にゲーム業界をネタにする有名なオンラインコミックス Penny Arcade の台詞をぜんぶ消して、生徒に適当な英語の台詞を入れてもらう。けれど、何を書けば面白いのかわからないまま終わってしまったので、 Remix のように生徒の出来を見せることはできない。なので、僕が例として作った日本語のやつを公開しよう。

Gabe gets Tycho's birthday wrong.

Tycho discovers that the principal of the high school also loves DJ OZMA, the musical artist now infamous in Japan for performing in the Kōhaku Music Contest on New Year's Eve with dancers in naked-looking bodysuits.

Tycho grates on Gabe's nerves when he tries to reenact manzai comic flavor-of-the-month Taka And Toshi's famous "ōbeika" routine.

Originals: 1, 2, 3.