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Back in 2008 I was lucky enough to find myself with three days to drive around California, starting near San Diego. California's a big place, though, so in the end I was only able to cover the south of the state: San Diego, LA, the desert around Palm Springs and the Laguna Mountains. San Francisco and Silicon Valley, both places I've wanted to visit for some time, were hours out of reach. This week, however, I found myself flying into the north of California for a press event in Silicon Valley, with time to take a brief look around.

The event itself was in Mountain View, CA, but at 3pm the day before I found myself down the road in Palo Alto. Any web nerd knows that Google's based in Mountain View, and Mac fans know that the temple of Steve can be found in Cupertino (on Infinite Loop, no less), but Palo Alto is home to the grandaddy of all Silicon Valley locations: the (previously Xerox) PARC, home of Ethernet, GUI systems and more. Sadly PARC is some way south of where I was, so with no car – more on that later – and with only a few hours I walked into the town instead.

The centre of Palo Alto is a nice place to kill a few sunny hours, but I'm not sure you'd want to be kicking around there for much longer without something to do. Besides the restaurants, chain shops and boutiques there's an old cinema:

and in the square down the road a young woman was singing while people browsed a market full of posh foodstuffs. Priuses abound, and a Tesla (license plate: NUCULER) was pulling up. In short, Palo Alto is pretty much every west-coast stereotype you could call to mind. The only thing that stood out to me was the amazing Methodist church:

Sadly I couldn't get a photo inside – a service was taking place – but it's quite lovely, with those tiny windows filled with stained glass picking out coloured spots to illuminate the cavernous interior. Heading out into suburbia you pass lawn signs showing support for green energy, and posh residences complete with landscaped gardens and flags up for sale:

and beyond that to the North, the freeway and then the bay. And that was it – a flying visit to Palo Alto in just a few hours before the jet-lag killed me and I had to sleep. Oh, but what's on TV in Palo Alto? Mainly this, looping every few minutes:

I'd vote for the guy. The next day was all work, reporting from a Symantec press event in Mountain View, but on the Friday I moved up to San Francisco – more on that here.

(UPDATE: Since making the Anki decks available I've also created an online tool for learning 64 basic Japanese verbs, which you can find here. If you're looking for flashcards to learn Hiragana, I've created a complete set of free interactive learning tools – find them here at learnhiragananow.com.)

When I first started studying Japanese I quickly found that one of the best techniques for learning vocabulary – or, in the very first few lessons, hiragana and katakana – is to use flashcards. I ended up printing huge numbers onto A4 card, laminating the sheets and then cutting them up – quite a lot of effort.

Several smartphones later, though, I've found that there are plenty of good learning tools – for the iPhone and iPod Touch I particularly like CodeFromTokyo's Japanese Dictionary, which has JLPT kanji decks with stroke order and the option to create vocabulary lists. What it's not so good for, though, is if you want to learn non-dictionary forms of verbs such as the ます and て forms.

Since moving to an Android smartphone, though, I've discovered Anki. It's a great open-source flashcard application for various platforms, including Windows and Android (I use Ankidroid). You can create custom decks on a PC, copy them to the phone's memory card and learn on the train, and it handles hiragana, katakana and kanji with no problems.

And so, having created some Anki decks for my own use, I thought I might as well share them online for anyone else who might find them useful. I'll add more to this page in future as I make them.

Basic Japanese Verbs 1

This deck has English verbs on one side, and the ます forms of Japanese verbs on the other in hiragana (no kanji). It covers most of the basic words used in the first half of Minna no Nihongo or Japanese for Busy People.

It includes かいます, あいます, かえります, かきます, ききます, いきます, のみます, よみます, あけます, しめます, たべます, みます, きます, します, つけます, けします, おしえます, とります, もってきます, いいます, みせます, とめます, まちます, まがります, かします, とどけます and もちます.

Click here to download this deck.

Basic Japanese Adjectives 1

This deck contains 20 or so basic い and な adjectives found in Japanese for Busy People 1. The front of the card is English, the back is Japanese in hiragana, in the form you might apply immediately before a noun (so たかい for い and きれいな for な adjectives).

It includes: あたらしい, おもしろい, きれいな, たかい, あまい, たのしい, いい, しんせつな, わるい, ちいさい, ちかい, ひまな, むずかしい, つまらない, おいしい, やさしい, べんりな, つめたい, とおい, おおきい, ゆうめいな, からい, さむい, にぎやかな,あつい, ふるい and やすい.

Click here to download this deck.

NEW: Travel verbs and nouns recap

This one's designed for Lesson 19 in JFBP1, and covers the verbs and nouns needed for describing travel plans. Verb cards are included in two forms: English to ーます form  and ーます form to ーて form.

Verbs included: のります、おります、でます、つきます、かかります、あるきます・

Also includes どうやって、どのぐらい and an assortment of travel nouns (でんしゃ、バス etc).

Click here to download this deck.

Spotted an error? Any questions, comments, or suggestions please drop me a line – details here.

Just down the road from Hither Green lies Kidbrooke, and what's left of the Ferrier Estate. Built in the 1960s-70s, it's now in the process of being "developed" – development, in this case, meaning knocking much of it down and starting again. Many of the buildings are now sitting empty, windows smashed out, Sky dishes aiming pointlessly up, wet curtains billowing in the wind. Plants are even beginning to grow into and over some blocks.

It's an interesting place. On one hand, its current state of delapidation is almost epic, and past residents have written of its numerous problems: crime, gangs, rats, water supply problems and ants (see comments here). The buildings, created from huge slabs of concrete, have not aged well, and have a depressingly monolithic look to rival the kind of Soviet housing you see in much of Eastern Europe.

But despite all that, take even a quick glance at what's left of the Ferrier Estate and you see what the GLC was aiming for when it constructed it. The huge low-rise blocks were to provide large quantities of much-needed social housing, set in landscaped grounds rather than rows of terraced blocks like those near Waterloo, and with communal spaces even above ground level courtesy of the walkways – a bit of classic modernism.

A huge boiler was to provide heat and hot water for all, and there were schools on-site. These pictures from the time show the estate as it was when newly constructed – it's unclear whether these were posed, but even if so you get the idea of what the GLC was aiming for.

And, of course, it all fell apart. The boiler system failed, the covered car park shown in the second photo above had to be removed for security reasons, and the open walkways were divided off. Now, 40 years on, the whole thing's about to be taken down.

With 20/20 hindsight it's easy to judge this kind of project harshly. It'll be interesting, though, to see what people are saying about the new, replacement housing that's due to be built after it's been up for 40 years – and if it even lasts that long.

The colour photos here were taken yesterday – more can be found in my Flickr set. The black-and-white photos were taken around the time the estate was built by the GLC Architects' Department, and are reproduced here from Iqbal Alam's excellent Flickr set, which also contains some excellent information about the Ferrier Estate and the GLC. These photos are presumably copyrighted, but it's unclear as to who owns those rights now.

A spam comment left on, and now removed from, my work blog:

Hello all I have a sweetheart. We profession closely in a large convention. She's self-restrained, cute and somewhat shy. So once she fell in love with this provoke from the department next door. He was an pc maven. And just imagine, he turned out to be so shy that even if she approached him with some job or just for jocularity , he would not ask her out because of his mousiness. Solution it was acknowledged that he liked her a lot too. We realized that if my sweetheart did not draw him somewhere, their connections would not last long 'cause anyway it is the man who is assumed to take the enterprise. Two months of dolor and she eventually evident to act. We got our pathway of affinity ready. First of all, we had to surge him somehow, stir him up so to say. For that besides purpose we decided to buy Levitra on the Internet since there was nothing else we could think of. We ferret for dosing levitra and found what we wanted. We got the package from the Internet store 2.6 weeks later. It was kinda embarrassing to buy it in the drugstore and here it was all covert. Just fantastic. Now all hopes for my sweetheart and pills. We turned two pills into crush. Then brought some hooch or hootch and waited till the weekend. Just a while ago the weekend, almost at the very end of the workday, we stirred the talc into one of the glasses with the alcohol and my sweetheart called the guy to help her with the computer. Everyone had by this time left and she was alone in the office. Stern he came up to her, she gave him some hooch or hootch with Levitra as if to thank him for the help with the computer. It was not long till the trick worked. As she told me afterwards, it had been romantic and at the same time so warm-blooded that she could not tell. The guy even proposed to her not long ago. So our plan had worked just fine. And did any of your friends or even you have amusing legend like this? Or maybe you found your dear half in some usual way as well?

Roughly translated: the author, and her female friend, purchased some drugs online then used them to spike an alcoholic beverage. The friend then called the object of her affections, who works in technical support, and gave him the dosed drink. They had sex, got engaged, and lived happily ever after. Aaaah. The whole thing reminds me of struggling through Malory's Morte D'Arthur at university – a ludicrous tale, written in something that's vaguely related to English but scattered with random items of vocabulary.

The blog comment is of course the result not of an imprisoned man hacking out craptastic Arthurian nonsense but of a sketchy automatic translation program – the kind that likes to insert the word fuck into innocuous sentences when changing Chinese text into English. But what happens if you push some already fairly incomprehensible English text (say, a chunk of the Morte D'Arthur) through an automated translation program? Brilliantly, the software inserts a cameo appearance from washed up poptart Britney Spears:

Then he saw to the relief of a castle Cleveland, He's a horse, trapped in all red, and himself in the same color. When Knight saw in this Red balin, he thought he should be Brother balin cause by his two <July 5> sword, but by his career Know that he is not a shield, in his view this is not his. And so they aventryd their spears and came to the marvellously fast together, They smote on the other side of the shield, but they and their Britney Of course, such a big, it exposed the decline of horse and man, they lay Whether in a swoon. But balin is bruised sore throat, and his fall Ma, because he tired of the travel. And Baran are: first, Rose, on foot and drew his sword, to the balin, he He has the right, but Baran smote balin first, and he He made the shields and smote him through the shields and tame him The helm. Then again balin smote him with the unhappy sword, and And almost cut his brother Baran, so they have fought Together with their respiratory failure.

This is presumably caused by Google's algorithm wrestling ineffectively with the words "their spears and their course", but it's still quite marvellous.

.. you're looking for what now? No, er, no. No, we don't have that.

This is of course entirely my fault, but surprising nonetheless – turns out I'm now fifth on Google for the aforementioned search term (you probably don't want to visit the four NSFW sites above me). And now by posting this I suppose I'm going to exacerbate the problem. Meh. Under these circumstances a 100% bounce rate might actually count as a good thing?

From Girlfriend in a Coma, 1998:

"You know, from what I've seen, at twenty you know you're not going to be a rock star … By twenty-five, you know you're not going to be a dentist or a professional … And by thirty, a darkness starts moving in – you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy or successful … by thirty-five you know, basically, what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life; you become resigned to your fate."

From The Gum Thief, 2007:

"By twenty-five you know you're never going to be a rock star, by thirty you know you're never going to be a dentist, and by forty there are maybe three things left that you can still be – and even then, that's only if you run as fast as you can to catch the train."

Thinking about it, the author turned 40 in 2001.

Incidentally, I'd thoroughly recommend the first book, which is one of the finest novels of the 1990s, if not the second, which is pretty good but not great.

From here:

*scribbles down notes* "Mobile Phone", huh. Right. Got it.

From one of those media alert emails:

Makes sense, I suppose. In other surprisingly specific publishing news, it turns out that there's an Essex Wedding magazine.

There's much joy to be had from the inanities posted to the BBC's Have Your Say website, but the wonders of user-submitted content go further. Amazon's reader reviews are particularly fine and, if you pick the right book, show up some disturbing truths about the commenters' views on society.

Take, for example, one Clancy-esque thriller about terrorism and the middle east. First, there's inadvertent social and media commentary:

"To me, if the bad guys don't get smacked down in the end, it's not a happy ending … I'm going to wait for [author] to get out of his contract before I try him again; when he finally has the time to write something imaginative and with a little more meat. Until then, though, I'll be sticking with Fox News."

then those with an inability to distinguish between neocon fantasy and reality:

"Spending time in [author's] books makes me want to believe that we actually have people like these out there doing the dirty work that, I suspect, must be done in a dangerous world."

"While the names are changed to protect the "innocent", so much of this book is a timely analysis of current events and a realistic approach to dealing with them."

"[author]'s bread and butter has always been delving deep into the intricacies Middle East politics and [title] excels in that department. Not only was the story and action top notch but it was a real education into the workings of the Iranian government."

.. and then dozens that are just terrifying:

"This is not a book for the squeamish. It is a gritty portrayal of the real world of today's War on Terror and how it is fought in the trenches. It asks and answers the key confounding questions of what is torture and does it work. "

"[protagonist], you see, is an real American. He recognizes that the United States is inherently good and that there are truly evil people in the world. … Anyone who cares about the United States will wish that [protagonist] was real … [he] doesn't care about the foolish laws that keep him from protecting the nation."

"How timely this book is. With liberal democrats insistent on protecting insurgents at Gitmo, undermining CIA, and dismantling protocols that will enable us to fight a non-uniformed, secret, undercover army, this book will give them a dose of reality."

Yikes.

From today's Guardian:
(Obama) "is the political equivalent of Facebook, another phenomenon that launched in 2004 that feels as though it has been around forever."
No, no he isn't. And it doesn't. For fuck's sake.