Once you start using a note-taking application, you cannot live without it. These tools are so much more convenient than text editors when you just want to take or retrieve a few notes: You do not have to worry about when and where to save files (this is handled by the application itself), you do not have to find and open files in order to see your notes (as you would have to do with a normal text editor), the application is smaller, launching and responding faster than a full-blown editor, and has very streamlined operations for searching and updating notes.

So far, I have been using jNotes (the name is a little confusing, as it is not written in Java, has nothing to do with Japan, and there are also several other programs with the same name). jNotes manages multiple notes using tabs. The only essential feature it lacks is Undo, which is quite strange as Undo functionality on Mac OS X is provided by the operating system and thus comes for free (even PerlPad has it).

Today, I switched to Notational Velocity. It does Undo, it has an auto-completing search box instead of tabs, encrypts everything with IDEA (Are you paranoid enough? It does make sense, actually, if you store passwords with it), supports System Services, and can come to the front on a single and configurable keystroke.

Both applications are freeware.

Contrary to prior announcements, there are prints of House of Flying Daggers with English subtitles being shown in Tokyo. Yimou Zhang's (Hero, The Road Home) latest movie has received a lot of extremely bad reviews, mostly from Chinese people, but I agree with most of the Western viewers that it is a great film.

It stars Andy Lau and the Japanese/Taiwanese Takeshi Kaneshiro as two police officers in ancient China who are ordered to find and arrest the new leader of a group of rebels called the House of Flying Daggers. Their plan is for Kaneshiro to go undercover, free the recently captured blind daughter (Zhang Ziyi, currently China's hottest actress, star of Hero, Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, and The Road Home) of the old leader from prison, win her trust, and led her lead them to the rebels' secret hideout. As it turns out, the undercover officer is not the only one with a hidden identity and a secret mission.

8 points

We are leaving for Bangkok later today. Because a lot of people had the same idea there were not many flights available and we got some pretty unfortunate ones: Leave Sunday afternoon, arrive in Bangkok at midnight, return flight leaving Bangkok at 6 am. In addition to that, because I do not want to miss my Japanese language course on Saturday, I am returning on Friday while Cissy stays until Sunday.

The BBC Weather Centre forecasts thundery showers for the whole week (with temperatures in the thirties nonetheless).

A British movie set in a not-too-distant dystopian future, where humanity is divided into those that live inside metropolitan areas in relative prosperity under the control of a global regime, and those that are exiled to the outside. In order to move around, people need special visa issued by a global entity called Sphinx. Sphinx knows what is best for everyone, and who resists it is exiled or has his memory erased. Tim Robbins plays an investigator sent to Shanghai to find out how fake permits can be produced and leave the local Sphinx branch. Using an empathy virus that allows him to read minds, he quickly finds the culprit, but instead of turning her in, he starts an affair that turns out to be illegal in an unexpected way.

If you liked Gattaca, you will want to see Gattaca again.

6 points

Being more intelligent (and maybe arrogant) than other people, cats only do what they feel like doing and cannot be forced to do anything else. This is a problem for Yuri Kuklachev, who created the world's only cat theatre (not counting tiger shows) and turned it into one of Moscow's favourite weekend attractions. The show is in Tokyo this week and we went to see it yesterday. It was entertaining, but the cats have not really been doing much. One of them did a handstand on its front paws (twice!), but most of the time they are just walking across the stage, holding on to objects that are being tossed around, or sitting decoratively in the background, leaving the juggling, clownery and illusions to the four human and the four canine performers.

I applied for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test in December today. It is unlikely that I will be ready for it by then, though. I had trouble even to fill out the application form...

I sometimes (and at the moment) have a subscription to my favourite German-language newspaper which is apparently shipped to me by individual airmail, resulting in a rather hefty price, about three days delay (I am today reading the Tuesday issue), and a questionable ecological effect. So I am quite interested in a print-on-demand project that they announced today (well, last Tuesday): Using technology developed by the South African company Ince, the paper is sent in digital form to South Africa, where it can be printed and distributed locally. On the same day. Cheaper. I wonder if they plan to introduce a similar system in Japan.