michael lambe's scrapbook

Take a look at this page. Notice anything missing? Any glaring spaces? Gaping holes?

The ads have gone. And not by choice. Yesterday I received a mail from Google Adsense that read like this:

Hello Michael Lambe,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we have decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realise the inconvenience that this may cause you and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions that we
have taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more
information by visiting

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_GB.

Yours sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

So that was a bit upsetting. Not just because of the lack of information as to why my humble sites are such a threat but well…you see the timing couldn’t be worse. For months now the adsense program has been producing very little because my blog at Deep Kyoto simply isn’t getting enough visitors (you need A LOT). However, from February excerpts from my blog are going to be published monthly in Kyoto Visitors Guide (readership 15,000) so I was expecting something of a surge of interest and along with it some actual income. With only a couple days to go, suddenly the source of said projected income is denied me.

Now you can appeal this decision, so I did immediately – in a panic (never the best way to do things) but having done so I received no confirmation email from adsense that they received my appeal. When this happens you are supposed to resend your appeal – perhaps you haven’t written your email address correctly? So I did. Double checked my email address.

Nothing.

I wonder if they got it? I don’t want to send too many appeals – there’s a danger of annoying them by being overly spammer-like. But anyway I learned on this site that only 1% (ONE PER CENT!) of appeals actually succeed. The likely reason for the disabling of my account is illegitimate ad-clicks (i.e. someone deliberately clicking on all the ads in order to gain ad revenue – or to deliberately get me blacklisted from the adsense system)… and the onus is on me to prove I or someone connected to me am not responsible. Very difficult to prove really… So it doesn’t look good. Of course there are alternatives to adsense but I feel like someone summarily expelled from school or dishonourably discharged from the army… DISHONOURED. I want another chance to prove myself and clear my good name. So I shall wait another 24 hours and then appeal again in a less panicky sort of way. Ho hum.

And if that falls on deaf ears (blind eyes?)… you may be seeing a new ad-system on these pages soon.

Update: Haven’t found a good alternative yet but until I do, I shall fill the space with pro bono ads like the one below.

What’s been happening? My job-hunting continues… Last night’s music event with Yamahara-san and Yoshida Koichi at Zac Baran was  a blast (a video will be posted later)… And it was nice to meet a couple of Deep Kyoto readers there, Xavier and Patrick… I finally watched the new James Bond Quantum of Solace a while back and thought it  a tad disappointing (all action, no plot)… People from magazines have been contacting me about Deep Kyoto…  Here are some links I need to get rid of…

Before the movie comes out, why not read Neil Gaiman’s Coraline for free? I did and I rather liked it.

Another little piece of childhood gone: Tony Hart passed away last week.

A wonderful set of photographs of the Obama Inauguration.

A fascinating piece from the FT on Obama’s oratorical techniques.

Ridiculously cute (but venomous) Hispaniolan solenodon.

Nothing is new: Chemical warfare in the 3rd century AD. Gosh!

Real life boys from Brazil.

Benjamin Button is Forrest Gump (click & scroll down a bit for the enlightening video).

You know you should but you never will: 1000 novels everyone should read.

And I’m halfway through watching this on Megavideo right now and wishing I’d seen it in the cinema. Wonderful stuff:

Hurray!

Umm huh!
You wouldn’t forget him either if you
had met him where I met him
Talkin’ about desolation!
Desolation is a railroad station ‘roun’ about 2:00 am on a weeknight
When you walk into desolation like that
and suddenly, from nowhere comes a
warm song, you aren’t about to forget it.

Betty H. Neals (From Introduction to Theme for the Eulipions)

The other night I had a dream like this: a jazz band playing in a smoky old bar and one guy in particular playing sax and he is hitting all these sweet sounds,  and it’s soooo good, because of all the joy and the heartbreak in it and just being happy to be alive, him just happy to play it and me just happy to hear… How wonderful if I could sing or play like that I thought as I woke up tangled in bedclothes.

Then tonight, back in reality,  I’m on my way home from work, and I have this really strong urge to pop into Lush Life for a bit. I haven’t been there for ages. Not since Randy Weston was here. So I order a beer and the guy there puts on a Rahsaan Roland Kirk record and I hear the voice of Betty H. Neals talking about the Eulipions:

Listen!
Listen to his tune. Call’s it his “Duty Free Gift” for the traveller.
Like I said
This is the first time I’ve seen him at an airport.
I know he moves along the piers.
Calls himself a “Journey Agent”, a “Eulipian”.
Say his friends, the poets, the artists, the musicians are the journey agents too…

Betty H. Neals (From Introduction to Theme for the Eulipions)

Well, that got me interested. Who is this Betty H. Neals, I wondered, and who are these Eulipions? (And I still do, because I can’t find anything on her on the interwebs…) But back in Lush Life, the saxaphone starts playing, and I am looking out the window at the young people returning bicycles to the shop next door and they look like they’ve had a good day cycling round the city, even on a cold grey day like this, and I am thinking about how strange it is that I’m sitting here in a cafe in Kyoto, Japan, listening to old jazz records, and how weirdly normal that has become to me… What a strange and wonderful reality I’m living in I’m thinking… and then I think how really really strange it is that I heard this song before once, in a dream:

If there were so Sun,
You would have this Song
To give warmth and light
And to keep you strong.

I would make Love a Gas
Spinning ’round and ’round
And when meteors fall,
Love would reach the ground.

And this lady, and it is a lady mind you, is singing Betty H. Neal’s words like they are a hymn, all glorious and sonorous and spiritual. And despite myself I’m moved. So I ask for the album sleeve and I write every single last word down. And I’m glad I did too because you know what? You might find this in your dreams but it aint on Wikipedia.

If there was no Moon
To control the tides,
There would be these notes
As the sailors guide.

We would make Song the King.
Have all praises sung
Call the author of Love
A Eulipion.
(Betty H. Neals Theme for the Eulipions)

I have decided on a new place to live! Right in the heart of the city and convenient for – everywhere! I will be moving in late March and am very excited about it – hurrah! Here’s your chance to invest in some property too:

Message from Avaaz:

Gaza is dying — the battle has moved deep into its cities, jam-packed with 1.5 million civilians lacking food, medicine or water… But the global movement to end this war is building — as we spread the word the petition is at 430,000 signatures and rising, it has been delivered to top leaders at the EU, UN and Arab League, our US members are flooding their representatives with phone calls, and Avaaz members worldwide have donated over $120,000 to an ad campaign in key newspapers… The pressure is working — so we’re ratcheting it up with hard-hitting US ads pressing Barack Obama personally for an immediate change of tack, face-to-face petition deliveries to European leaders this week to get them to act, and working with Palestinians and Israelis to plan bold actions on the ground. But every one of these actions becomes stronger as more of us join the campaign. We need to reach 1 million signatures this week — thank you for signing the petition already, let’s all of us now take a moment to forward this email to all our friends and family so they can join us and be heard:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace

Voices for a ceasefire are finally being heard in the Israeli cabinet and media, Hamas is signalling it could accept a deal including Turkish forces and EU monitors, but the sides are too far apart to end this themselves.[3] That’s why action by world powers is critical to break the deadlock — and global citizens’ voices can make all the difference if we raise an unstoppable voice calling on incoming President Obama, the EU and Arab and Muslim states to guarantee a fair and lasting ceasefire…

…It’s amazing what we can do when hundreds of thousands of us come together arond the world — and if we raise our efforts to another level this week, we could help to finally end the Gaza horror. Follow the link below to take the first step by signing the petition, then spread the word so others can do the same:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace

I rented this on DVD last week. The Namesake is a lovely story about a Bengali couple from Calcutta who shortly after their  marriage, move to New York, to the “land of opportunity”. And then it’s a story about the family they raise there and the difficulties and the joys they face living between two cultures. And it’s about good people and how they value each other. And it’s also a very moving story about the importance of family. There is a trailer on the website but don’t watch it. It manages to give quite the wrong impression whilst also giving a little too much of the story away, so here’s a short clip which will give you a better feel:

The Namesake is available from Amazon JAPAN UK & USA

This is nice. The poem is from the 16th century.

Haiku from arjuno kecil on Vimeo.

Like a flower returning to it’s branch I go back to work tomorrow. Sheesh.

Happy New Year! Here are some pictures from the last party of 2008 at Joao, held on December 30th. I took some of these and Betty took some more and towards the end they get a bit blurry which pretty much reflects the state we were in by then anyway so… Ha ha, fun.

BubbleShare: Share photos – Find great Clip Art Images.

I spent New Year’s Eve at home eating foodage and watching telly (pretty much the traditional Japanese way of doing things) but stayed up all night so as to catch an early morning train, and then a couple of cable cars so as to see the first sunrise of 2009 from the top of Mount Hiei.  Here are all the happy young folk awaiting the sunrise:

And here is what we finally saw at 7:05 am:

It was too cloudy see anything unfortunately(that dark smudge in the top right being merely a blemish on my lens). Just a big bank of mist where Lake Biwa should be. However, it had snowed over night, so it was very pretty up there and I could take nice pictures like this if I held my camera upside down (to hide the blemish):

This frosty signal tower in the mist looked like something out of an SF movie:

mewby also took some nice pictures with mewby’s new camera. mewby’s new camera has “snow mode” hence the blue tint:

Thanks mewby!