For family, I have some big personal news.  I prefer not to say it publicly right now, but if you ask Mom, she can tell you what it is.  Otherwise, ask me in an e-mail directly.  I’ll update this in a couple of weeks when it’s safe to reveal this.

For everyone else: well, I’ve now moved to Amagasaki, back in Hyogo prefecture.  I no longer live in a “gaijin house”, but rather have a proper two bedroom semi-new apartment.  Got a good price on it, and of course I found out a few reasons later; I’ve known that it was close to both a highway (overpass) and a railroad, but I did not know that it was close enough to the highway for “earthquakes” to happen when a semi truck goes across it at night.  Also, in winter it is rather cold; Yukari keeps complaining about it.  I’m sure she’d rather I found a different place, but considering how much money I’ve put down on this one, I don’t see myself moving so soon.  But those weak points aside, it’s a fairly comfortable place, very roomy for a Japanese apartment, in a halfway decent neighborhood.  I no longer live in a slum, yay!!

Then, on the development front, J-Ben development has of course been on and off.  Since I’m on vacation from work, I’m planning to get at least a working beta of J-Ben 2 out within the next week.  I have the basic individual pieces working fairly well; I just need to hook them together properly.  The beta will not have all the same features as J-Ben 1, but it should be a much quicker program.

I also noticed just today that J-Ben 1 does not seem to want to compile on Ubuntu Karmic.  Seems that the Boost libraries are not being linked in properly, perhaps due to being in a different directory or something.  More reason to eliminate the Boost dependency and get everything going with the Python version.

That’s all for this time – take care everyone, and have a happy new year!