Category: Misc

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One of the most interesting sites on the internet belongs to this Amazon staffer

It’s called “Dirona Around The World.” Never heard of it? Not surprising. It’s just some guy’s blog. Except that the guy in question is James Hamilton, a senior Amazon engineer who until recently lived full-time on a yacht — specifically a Nordhavn 52. Dirona is the scientific name for the Alabaster Nudibranch, an invertebrate indigenous to Puget Sound, a name befitting a huge nerd. Hamilton spends a lot of his time — when he isn’t solving problems like the AWS outage that took down millions of global websites recently — travelling around and having adventures. According to the blog, he and his wife have crossed both the Pacific and Indian oceans once, and have crossed the Atlantic ocean three times. Their longest voyage (because of course he tracks everything) was 3,600 nautical miles (nautical miles are different from land miles because they take into account the curvature of the earth, in case you were wondering) and the journey took close to a month. The Hamiltons have also written a book called Cruising the Secret Coast, which is about sailing through all the various bays and inlets of British Columbia’s Inside Passage.

There’s an interactive map on the front of Hamilton’s website that tracks his recent journeys, and recent blog posts include a trip to the Darlington nuclear generating station in Ontario. James, who was born in Victoria B.C., worked for IBM before he joined Amazon in 2009. And what did he do before he worked for IBM? He was a car mechanic who specialized in repairing high-end automobiles like Ferraris, Maseratis, Alfa Romeos and Lamborghinis. Hamilton is often compared to Jim Gray, the database pioneer and Turing Award winner, who ironically disappeared while sailing his yacht Tenacious near the Farallon Islands off San Francisco and whose body was never found. For about a decade or so, Hamilton and his wife lived on board the Dirona, which was docked at least some of the time in a harbour in Seattle near Amazon headquarters, but spent most of the time travelling. He often gives talks on both data-center infrastructure and how to live your life at sea. He holds over 200 patents in more than 20 countries.

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He thought his sentence was too light so he built his own prison

Hitoshi Imamura was a Japanese general who served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. He surrendered the Japanese forces in New Guinea and the southern Pacific Islands to Australian forces, representing the Allies, in September 1945, and was detained by the Australian Army, as he and troops under his command were accused of war crimes, including the execution of Allied prisoners of war. , and was subsequently convicted of war crimes. He was tried by an Australian military court at Rabaul on 1–16 May 1947 and convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for ten years. Imamura served his imprisonment at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo until he was released in 1954. He considered his imprisonment too light with respect to his responsibility for the crimes of his subordinates, so he had a replica of the prison built in his garden, and he stayed there until his death in 1968. (via Wikipedia)

Deep-fried pufferfish ovaries are a Japanese delicacy that can kill you

Want to try a unique delicacy that unless properly treated will kill you? It takes three years to make it right, so be warned. Ovaries of the Japanese pufferfish, called fugu, are pickled in salt and bran in Hakusan’s Mikawa district to eliminate toxic poison. It is anything but a quick process. Only 21 agencies in Ishikawa Prefecture have won permission to make pickled fugu ovary across Japan. Fifteen of them are individuals, meaning just six produce the specialty as companies. Spottyback pufferfish are sliced and trimmed during their May-June breeding season. Recovered ovaries are washed in groundwater and preserved with salt. Ovaries shrink in size over the course of a year, reducing the poison level to one-tenth of their former level. Bran is then applied to the bottoms of casks made of Japanese cedar wood, and ovaries are pickled in them. A sardine sauce is at times added over the course of two years. When the outside of the casks turns pinkish, that is a sign the contents are ready for eating. (via Asahi Shimbun)

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