• The Week #58

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    • Delta continues its rise in Japan. I don't have much to add beyond "wow, politicians are daft". Ignoring citizens when they overwhelmingly didn't support the Olympics continuing, holding the Olympics, then telling citizens to just forget about traveling home for the holidays...I understand the request (and agree with it), but people aren't going to listen. It's like throwing a giant house party, then the next day, hungover, telling the rest of the neighborhood they can't throw parties – you've lost moral authority to make such requests.
    • It's been raining non-stop for what feels like a week. Areas in Kyushu have gotten a meter of rain in a couple of days. The constant rain has saturated the ground and there's mudslide warnings in much in the mountains. How saturated you ask? Water is coming up from the ground where it shouldn't.  While the 19 - 22 degree days have been a break from the usual 33 degree summer days, I think I'm ready for some blue skies.
    • Last week was Leo's "summer vacation" from school. We didn't go much of anywhere, but Leo got to play with his cousins almost everyday as they were at the grandparent's house nearby. I know he's growing up because he declared that he's not going to school and his still on vacation. 🤣
    • I started working on Tanzawa again for the first time in what feels like ages. Which is funny as just a couple of weeks ago I said I wasn't going to work on it for a month. Tanzawa Trips is one of the "tent pole" features I had in my mind when I first decided to build a blogging system and I'm happy to finally be starting it.

  • The Week #57

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    • Both Yumi and I got our second dose of Pfizer in Shin-Yokohama. Talk about a huge weight being lifted off your shoulders. Now everyone we meet with semi-regularly (Yumi's parents) are vaccinated, I can relax a bit more. My day-after effects included general lethargy and a 38.9 degree temperature. I wonder when kids will be eligible to get the vaccine...
    • I put in my notice at my current job at BeProud, my employer of over 4 years. In October I'll be joining the Kraken team at Octopus Energy as they expand to Japan. It was a difficult decision, but I'm really looking forward to my new role. I'll went into more info in my Why I'm Joining Octopus Energy post.
    • The IPCC report came out and it's a doozy. Things will get worse for the next 30 years. We've got a lot of work to do.
    • The Olympics ended – and (apparently, I wasn't watching) they cut coverage right when the head of the IOC started talking because a typhoon made landfall in Fukuoka. Classic snub, even if it wasn't meant to be.
    • I'll have about 3 weeks of vacation between jobs, so I'm starting to think about what I'll do. Since we're fully vaccinated, I'd like to make a small trip to another prefecture. Maybe a trip to Izu? Karuizawa?
    • I know I'll spend some time on Tanzawa, getting it documented and easier to deploy. Ideally I want a button where you can click and spin up a server on DigitalOcean (via Docker?) and some method for allowing you to update your Docker container for new releases.

  • The Week #56

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    • Covid cases are through the roof in Tokyo. We've hit over 1,000 cases per day in Kanagawa.. Tokyo and surrounding prefectures have entered into a proper state of emergency (ineffective since we've been in one or quasi-in-one since December). And yet the Olympics carries on. 
    • We rebuilt the terrace fencing outside our sliding glass door and added some snap together flooring. It feels a lot more homey and it should make it easier to pop outside being able to step on something besides little rocks.
      Rebuilt Terrace fencing
    • We looked at vacuum cleaners. There’s nothing broken with our current Panasonic, it’s just heavy , corded (which is never quite long enough and gets caught on everything), and one of those with hose, so you’re constantly carrying the vacuum and the wand (which means it’s hard to move things out of the way). I think we’ve settled on a Dyson as it’s got a replaceable battery. I've started getting ads on Twitter for them, so in another week I should get a discount. 🤞🏻

  • The Week #55

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    • The Olympics started this week. I'm not actively trying to watch them ( mostly as I don't care about the Olympics in general, but also because I think holding them without herd immunity and with un-vaccinated athletes in a pandemic is incredibly selfish and irresponsible). Problem is: they're on every channel all the time. And I must admit I enjoyed watching the mountain bike race.
    • But because of the Olympics some holidays moved around making this week a 4-day weekend. Unfortunately they didn't move the holidays until a few months into the year, so all calendars are printed with the wrong dates for the holidays.
    • We took a short train ride to Odawara to visit our prefecture's natural history museum. The stars of the museum are a bunch of dinosaur fossils all put on display. Because of the pandemic you can only enter with a reservation and it was great. Outside was a blue skies and 33 degrees and hot. Inside was cool and dark and just a few families. A great escape from the heat.

      Leo's reaction when first seeing the dinosaurs was great – "Wooow...sugoi~". I’m pleased he expressed himself in English before Japanese. I was afraid he might be afraid of towering dinos but thankfully that wasn't the case.
    • We got to ride the Odakyu Hakone Touzan Line, which is marked by the red trains, which Leo thoroughly enjoyed.
      Odakyu Hakone Touzan Line


      On the way there and back we also saw some 3-car One-man trains on the Gotenba line.I love the white face combined with the silver body. Wikepedia tells me, the Gotenba line, which connects Kozu and Namazu in Shizouka, used to be the Tokaido line, until they could route through the Hakone moutains in 1934. At which point it got renamed to the Gotenba line and the Tokaido.

      Gotenba Line.


    • I got a haircut. First time in the longest time and well overdue. I always like the result of getting a haircut, but hate the process, so I avoid them for as long as possible, pandemic or not. Thankfully the place I go to now gives us a card and they write down our preference on the card, so I never have to remember how to describe how to cut my hair, which is an issue even in English.

  • The Week #54

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    • A couple weeks ago I was lamenting about having to cancel our trip to Atami. However, instead of going to Atami we were able to get our first vaccine shot! Our vouchers came and we were able to make an appointment at a clinic in Shin-Yokohama, with some good timing. It's funny how life works out like that.
    • Since getting my shot, I can't help but think about life 6 weeks from now when I'm fully vaccinated. There's still a pandemic going on and the delta variant, while it (probably) won't put me in the hospital, is something I'd like to avoid. So despite being vaccinated, I don't think it will change too much. Of course Leo's too young to be vaccinated and I don't want to needlessly get him sick just because Dad wants to travel. But man do I think about getting on a bullet train with Leo... 
    • Speaking of being sick, Leo spent the week off pre-school being sick. He had a fever (off and on) for a couple of days and a cough / runny nose. This is the first time he's gotten sick since starting pre-school. But it wasn't just Leo. The same virus had 40 kids home from school(!). It was probably the RS Virus that's having a boom-year this year.
    • Our garden is growing. Basil is happy and doing it's thing. Each mini-tomato plant is producing fruit, but they're all still green. Corn is pollinated and growing a few cobs. Bean production has slowed down a bit and the red / orange bell peppers haven't started producing fruit yet. I imagine the bell peppers are waiting for it to get hot and it just started to get hot hot outside. We've also moved the bell peppers so it gets both a southern and western exposure, rather than just a southern exposure. Hopefully that does the trick. 
    • I launched a new feature in Tanzawa to allow me to make private and unlisted posts. My motivation was two-fold: 1) I wanted to improve the interface around post-status and 2) I wanted to be able to write posts (mostly replies) on my blog without necessarily cluttering up my main feed. I don't know how much I'll use either of them yet, but I'm excited to see how my habits might change with these new capabilities.

  • The Week #53

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    • This week I’m mostly writing in a retrospective, rather than bit-by-bit throughout the week. It’s proving harder than I had anticipated.
    • Blake shared a link to fireworks adverts from a Japanese company in the 1880’s in the US.  I love the colors so much. Ads of this period are always interesting. Humans haven’t changed as much as we’d like to think.
    • Leo got sick for the first time in as long as I can remember. It just a cough, but we decided to pull him from pre-school for a day so he could visit the doctor and not spread it to other kids. His cough woke up him a couple of times at night, which in turn woke me up, so I'll need a bit more coffee to power through the day.
    • We went to Afternoon Tea in Fujisawa for the first time in ages with Leo for tea (well, I always get coffee/iced coffee). I was totally surprised how well Leo did. He managed to wait patiently for 20 minutes (!) while we waited for a table. He also waited patiently for our scones to come. Achievement unlocked?!
    • I built a little robot out of paper-straws with Leo (well, really he just watched). It was from a little kit made for elementary school students. His name is aru-kun after the Japanese for walk "aruku".
      Arukun

  • The Week #52

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    • One year of The Week without missing a single post 🎉. Creating this weekly post got me back into blogging regularly again and gave me an opportunity each week to reflect on life. Initially I thought I'd reference previous posts more, but in practice I don't. One year ago I had just gotten my Apple Watching, helping me start my 4:30-ish wake ups,  just grokking micropub, and running into issues with Wordpress. Now I still wake up at 4:30 (mostly naturally), wrote a micropub server, and ditched Wordpress for a custom blogging engine. What a year.

      If you're trying to start a blog or you have a blog and want to blog regularly, I can't recommend a weekly roundup enough. Keeping the format a simple bullet list makes it easier to write as you don't need a fancy narrative or worry about how to connect the points. You can just write.
    • We booked a weekend trip to Atami for before the Olympics later this month. But with the huge landslide that happened, I don't think we can feel good relaxing when there's search and rescue happening a kilometer away. Hopefully we can reschedule it for a later date.
    • In Covid-19 news this week, Kanagawa prefecture has finally rolled out it's "cancel-waiting" notification system via LINE this week. The idea is when there's a cancellation for a vaccine appointment, they'll contact people who've registered with the system and you can take the appointment with your phone. It helps reduce vaccine wastage.
    • Meanwhile in Edokawa-ku in Tokyo, they delayed sending out the vaccine voucher to foreign residents by an entire week because "we needed to prepare translations". It boggles my mind. Foreigner residents can read Japanese, too? Even if we can't we can figure it out for a week while you prepare documents? 

      Note this also was true for older residents who should already have their vouchers,  but don't because they're not Japanese. If this wasn't for a life saving shot weeks before a massive international sporting event, I'd be a bit more understanding.
    • I fixed a few bugs with Tanzawa and have been getting some good issues opened in the repository that's helping me find issues in my (lack) of documentation. I'm starting to think I need to make a more "formal" documentation, but not quite sure what to use / where to host it yet. The "default" for the Python community is readthedocs (and thereby Sphinx?), but I have yet to look into how to set that all up.
    • I got completely caught up on Trying, a good sitcom about a couple in the UK trying to adopt a child. It's a really good show. And I enjoy the main character's accent. AppleTV+ may not have the quantity of shows that Netflix does, but you can count on quality.

  • The Week #51

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    • A Roller coaster? The Great Crash in 1929? I keep trying to find the right way to describe this week, but I can't. Most everything that was under my control went well. Those that weren't, less so.
    • Japan is handling vaccine distribution in a very measured way. There's basically 3 groups of people getting vaccines right now: the elderly, those with pre-existing conditions, and those that work for large companies. If you are none of those, tough luck. To get a vaccine outside of working for a major company, you need a voucher. My voucher is supposed to come sometime next month, but I won't be able to get an appointment until mid-August at the earliest. Which will have me fully vaccinated my October-ish? Maybe?

      When I posted  that I found a clinic that would give a vaccine to anyone, even without a vaccine I couldn't believe it. I could get fully vaccinated before the Olympics and take back 3 months of 2021. I had an appointment for 30th.

      But then I saw reports that the health authorities found out and told them to start canceling reservations for people outside from outside of the ward. Existing reservations seemed to be fine for a couple of days. Then the health authorities dropped the hammer on them and they've been forced to turn away everything without a voucher and everyone from outside the ward.

      And just like that. Poof. My hope for getting vaccinated this summer vanished. Gutted. Who knows, maybe once I get my golden ticket in a couple of weeks  I'll find a clinic that'll let me get vaccinated earlier. 

      Silver lining is that I found out I'll get turned away at the door before taking the day off work and making an hour-ish trip train ride into Ikebukuro. I also won't ended up being unable to get a second shot or have to make a trip to Ikebukuro to get a stamp on my voucher so I can get a second shot.
    • I joined Leo for his first field trip to Kodomo no kuni ( Kid country?) Check the link, they got all sorts of slides, trains, and so forth. We watched the cows, ran up and down a big hill, and Leo bounced on a white bouncing dome. I definitely want to go back when it's cooler and when we're not with a huge group. I expanded my checkin to a proper blog post, which is something I want to do more often.
    • The issue of Web+DB Press that I wrote an article for is finally release for sale. I haven't gained any new followers or gotten mentions, so I assume people aren't running into any issues following along.
    • Another work update – I was the guest this week on BPZM, an internal company podcast(?) / show. It was fun to shoot the breeze in Japanese. One thing I'd like to get better at is off-the-cuff explanations of things in Japanese without having to stop and think. The largest issue ( I think) is I think of how to explain in, then have to reverse the order of some of the explanation for it work in Japanese and I derail my train of thought.
    • I'm trying to focus less on each day and more on the week. I'm not sure if it's helping, but I did manage to run twice this week. Compared to the previous weeks (months) of 0 runs, it's a vast improvement. Yay me.

  • The Week #50

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    • It was Father's Day this week. I made chicken fajitas for the family and they were a hit. I was also able to talk with both of my dads (father/step-father) for about 2 hours total. It feels like it's been ages since I've been able to focus and talk with them. I always say I should do it more often, but for some reason, I don't.
    • I got the physical copy of Web+DB Press that includes my article on getting started with GraphQL and Django. It took a lot of work to edit the piece down to 8 pages, but in the end I believe we were able to whittle away the weaker parts of the article and I could say everything I wanted. Seeing your name in print never gets old.
    • Pete opened the first issue on Tanzawa not opened by me asking some questions. It made me realize that I should add screenshots and talk about Tanzawa supporting Micropub/Indieauth/Webmentions so you can post with whatever client you'd like.
    • I find myself wanting to use Email more. I don't really use it – in fact I can count the number of emails I've sent at work in the 4+ years I've been there: 0. Everything happens via Slack or some web interface. I wonder if there isn't a way for me to handle more of async tasks via email to standardize my workflows better?
    • Jacob (who seems to make a weekly appearance on this column) told me about this podcast where they asked the question "What if the newscycle was 100 years – what would the story be?".  Think, you get to ignore the politics of the day, what's the big story? Their answer was that it would likely be the doubling of the average human lifespan.

      This got me thinking – so much of our life seems to get lost in the daily battles. Often enough that we lose sight of the bigger trends over the weeks, years, decades. Does focusing on too small of a timescale make it difficult to achieve your goals? Would focusing purely on getting things right for the week/year/decade make each day more successful, on average?

      I think it might. We tell ourselves we need to do X everyday (run, eat better, whatever). But we slip up one day and beat ourselves up. Rather than focusing on the 5 days we were successful that week, we dwell on that time we messed up. It all gets you demotivated. I'll have to experiment with reframing things to longer timescapes over the coming weeks and see how it turns out.

  • The Week #49

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    • This week's been a good week. A tiring week, but a good week, so I'll dive right in.
    • I realized that Tanzawa was never going to be "good enough" or "finished enough" for me to release it. It's the first project I've made public in a very long time. The last big project I worked on was Kwoosh, a project management app I was building with my mate Jacob around 4 or 5 years ago. Making it public is a huge relief, not just because "it's out there", but it will force me to document and follow proper development workflows (no more committing directly on main 🙃)
    • The article I wrote for Web+DB Press has been officially announced in the upcoming issue. It's an 8-page introduction on using graphene-django to build GraphQL APIs with Django. It's my second time having my writing published in Japanese, but the first time being credited by name. It was also much easier to write in Japanese this time about, as I've had the past 4 years read/writing Japanese everyday at work.
    • My father-in-law's appointment for his first shot got moved up to the 22nd of this month and my mother-in-law got an appointment for the first week of next month. Super happy they'll be vaccinated soon. 
    • Yokohama, feeling pressure from Kawasaki is going to start sending vaccination vouchers out to people under 65 starting mid-June (so...this week?)!  I think it might be a bit tight to get fully vaccinated before the Olympics, but maybe I'll be able to get my first shot and a bit of time for my immune system to do its thing before then. I remain optimistic.
    • Thanks for FindADocJp.org, I was able to find a clinic nearby in Totsuka that's doing reservations for people, regardless of age/vaccination voucher to get left-over shots in the case of cancellations. We had started building a sheet on the HN Tokyo Slack for this kind of information, but open forms on 'net let more people participate. Hats off to @TheYokohamaLife for building it.
    • Leo's going through a papa-phase been sticking to me like glue from the moment he wakes until he goes to sleep. I'm happy to spend time with him, as I know this won't last forever, but boy is it tiring.
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