Several times recently I’ve had an email arrive in my inbox with an old timestamp. Since gmail shows emails in date order, I have to scroll through dozens of screens of emails to find the ‘new’ one and clear it. There is no obvious way to filter only unread emails.

After some searching, I found that you can do it by searching in gmail for: label:unread in:inbox

This works fine, but it’d be kind of nice if they just provided a button, though.

Over at my internet economics class blog, student posts have started appearing. For one of their coursework assignments, I asked each student to write a blog post describing and discussing the business model of an Internet-related business. They’re basically supposed to examine the revenue sources from an economic perspective, and relate back to the course content where possible. I gave each student a different due date spread over the semester, so a few posts by students will appear each day for the next few months.

Two major reasons why I haven’t blogged much in the past couple of months:

1. Living without broadband.

2. Moving from academia to the fast-paced world of consulting.

(1) has now been solved — we finally moved into our own apartment with good broadband. (2) is something that I need to adjust to a bit more. It seems like blogging requires a certain amount of free headspace for thinking about ideas and coming up with posts. With my work being so busy now, I seem to lack those resources. Hopefully I’ll get better at it over time.

I’m also sad that I’ve missed what’s been going on in the blogosphere recently. I have about 16 billion unread items in my rss reader. I’m thinking about just wiping the slate clean and starting afresh.

… You’re on your way to work on a beautiful morning under a clear blue sky with not a cloud in sight and you think, oh damn, I forgot to bring an umbrella.

Following my earlier post about small differences in Japan, here’s a few observations about New Zealand from the point of view of someone who’s lived in Japan for a while:

People are soooo talkative.

Everyone appears to move in slow motion. They sure drive fast though.

Lots of middle-aged women are working, especially in retail.

Everything is so big, and there’s so much empty space, it actually feels a little lonely.

Shop hours are ridiculous. No one is shopping at 9AM, so why bother to open? And closing at 5 or 6? That’s so inconvenient.

So many sounds of birds, and no crows.

I have to care about timetables. The train only comes once per 30 minutes …

There are not so many choices (varieties). Not sure if this is a good or bad thing though.