The Week #102

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  • While Leo was at swimming, I finished reading Digital Minimalism. There's too much (good) for me to say about it in this post. It certainly made me in the right frame of mind when reading technology is diminishing us (thanks Colin for the link), as  I was shaking my head in agreement the entire time.

    One of my main takeaways was to schedule on your calendar explicit time for  leisure. Too often we say we don't have time to do something, but we do, we just don't prepare for it. We often thing "great, I have an entire day to myself", then we don't plan what we're going to do, and end up just scrolling or binge watching one of the streaming services.

    The other  main idea was this leisure should be active. That doesn't mean it needs to be physical, reading literature is active as it requires you to think. While programming on Tanzawa technically fits the bill, I don't think it should count as active leisure as it's mostly the same as what I'm doing at work. Already this shift in mindset is helping me run more.
  • Speaking of Tanzawa, I gave a tech talk about Tanzawa and the IndieWeb at work. Unfortunately, I forgot to click the record button, so only members of the team that were there that day / in Japan could see it. Preparing the talk made me realize just how far it's come in the past year and a bit...The good news is it encouraged one teammate to resume her site some more and another co-worker is interested in using Tanzawa itself :)
  • There's this German beer chain that I'd been meaning to visit for the past 2.5 - 3 years, but you know, covid. I finally had a chance to go there for beers and sausage with a friend in Fujisawa. I also got to deliver some Marmite as a taste of home for my friend. He asked if I got a jar for myself to try it...but alas, I chickened out.
  • The Yen hit a 24-year low against the dollar at ¥135 per dollar. We keep thinking about a trip back to the US so Leo can meet his grandparents, but with flights being around $6,000 and the exchange rate what it is, it would easily cost $10k just for a week or so back... Hopefully the exchange rate sorts itself out to more regular ¥105 - ¥110 per dollar rates. If it decides to dip to ¥75 per dollar (the rate after 3/11 when my parents were visiting us) while we're in the US, I wouldn't mind, either. 
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