• The Week #48

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    • The official covid numbers are going down and vaccination seems to be ramping up. I still don't have any idea when I'll be able to make an appointment for an appointment, but I found some clinics that don't want to waste any shots and will let anybody sign up for the cancellation wait list. The catch is that you may need be there in 2 hours. I signed up for the cancellation wait list at Caps Clinic in Musashikosugi ( full list here ). Those that are more centrally located can register at multiple locations to up their chances. 
    • The plants are growing like their supposed to. Compared from a couple weeks ago everything is absolutely massive.
      Future Tomatoes
    • I went to Patagonia in Kamakura to buy a light jacket to protect me from UV during the summer. The jacket itself is designed for fishing / being on the beach, so it should handle the humid Japanese summers.
    • Visiting Patagonia always inspires me to want to do better by the earth. Not just they products themselves and their messaging, but the films and propaganda they produce that aren't about their products are very well done.
    • We the Power: The Future of Energy is Community Owned is one such movie. It's about the fight in Europe to allow communities in generate their own electricity from their own rooftops and some of the challenges they face from the incumbents. And once the incumbents lose and start embracing renewables, they're trying again to take control back from communities, "just let us manage it".
    • This fight in many ways reminds me of computing and open-source. I love my Apple laptop and I've been on the Mac for coming up on 2 decades, but sometimes I feel like I'm selling my values short and should use something of, by, and for the community.
    • Tanzawa has a license. I've just got a couple more bugs to squash before I feel like I can open the repository.  Inspired by Patagonia, I think Tanzawa's marketing site is going to have a prominent propaganda section. Home. Download. Propaganda.

  • The Week #47

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    • In Covid-19 News this week, we're now consistently about 500k shots a day. Progress! And in even better news starting next month Covid-19 vaccines will be made available to all under 65 at the same time. I really, really hope this turns out to be true.
    • I hit 30 checkins at parks with Swarm. Pre-dad me would have never imagined the local park would be such a fixture of everyday-life.
    • I haven't worked much on Tanzawa this past week. I think it's from finishing two projects at work (one of which I can't wait to share later this month) and outside of work being busy with Leo from wake until I sleep. He's starting to wake up around 5:30-ish when the sun's fully up and I've been "sleeping in" from my usual 4:30 to 5:30. Then as soon as I finish work I'm either picking him up or he's ready to play or go to the park.
    • Leo's stayed the night at grandma's house giving me my first "me time" since my couple hours riding to and from Enoshima a month ago.  I spent it re-watching Long Way Up. What struck me re-watching it was how much I didn't remember from the early episodes and just how "vloggy" it is, in the best possible meaning. Are there any good travel blogs out there anymore? Either way, I'm sure they've mostly been on hold this past 18 months.
    • Thinking about travel blogging reminded me how much I wanted to travel long-term when I was in college. Reading books like Vagabonding, watching documentaries like A Map For Saturday and Walking the Camino, dreaming of being out in the world. In a sense I did when studied abroad for a year Japan in college. But now that I live here and fluent, it's just life, isn't it?
    • Speaking of life, we had a bit of a scare on the train. Recently Leo's wants to hold the overhead handles when we ride the trains. If there's not a seat, I let him as we can sanitize his hands when we get off the train. Today we were standing next to the door and so focused on him not holding the handles,  I didn't realize his hands were on the door. When the doors  opened his fingers slid into jam(!). Thankfully it only took a light tug to free them and he wasn't hurt. A good lesson for us both.

  • The Week #46

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    • I've started using Gluon when using Micro.blog. The client is so fluid and smooth. I also really like that it displays my figure tags inline properly.
    • Speaking of doing things properly, as a I ramp up for releasing a developer release of Tanzawa, I finally integrated a CI process into the repository. I also took the opportunity to fix the lint/typecheck errors that I'd let slide because I wasn’t running the suite manually.
    • Leo's been trying really hard for the past couple of weeks, but he's transitioned to being in undies full-time! Since he's been wanting to get the Ikea t-rex and complete the collection, to celebrate we took him to Ikea to find t-rex. When we were walking around the store he kept calling "t-reeeeeeeeex" looking for him.
    • In Japan Covid news this week they’ve finally approved Moderna and Az vaccines. Moderna is being used at the new Self Defense Force run mass inoculation sites in Tokyo, Osaka and other places as they ramp up. It has me feeling slightly positive that I may be able to get the vaccine this year. 
    •  The government has set a goal of having the elderly finished inoculation by the end of July. I don’t think they’re gonna make it because at least in Fujisawa, my father in law couldn’t get an appointment until August and my mother in law is still awaiting her voucher. Maybe this will change once more mass vaccination sites get running.

  • The Week #45

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    • I checked my DMs on twitter for the first time in a couple of months and I found a request to send me a DM from early March. I don't recall ever getting a notification. It was from a TV producer in Houston wanting to to a segment about my Airbot and @kuukihouston. C'est la Vie.
    • The tomato seeds have come out of the ground and the bell peppers have just started peaking out. I may yet eat some "free" veggies yet.
    • We got visited by a Japanese white gecko (yamori). They're known as protectors of the house and an omen of good luck. Good luck as he may be, he's not allowed in the in the house. Kicking him out of the entrance was a fun 3 minutes with a broom while Leo and Yumi watched.
    • Ever wondered how to trim trees next to high voltage power lines in the middle of the forest? If you answered "with 8 huge circular saws spinning from a helicopter", you'd be correct. How do I know? I watched Summer in the Finnish Lake District on Arte.tv. It (like most of the documentaries I watched on Arte.tv) was in German, but had English subs. 

      It makes senses sense that a machine as hardcore as this would come from Finland, after they, they do have the highest number of metal bands per capita. Recommended, if only to watch a helicopter with saws dangling from it trim trees next to high voltage power lines.

  • The Week #44

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    • This past Sunday was Mother's Day. A few weeks ago ( Week #38 ) when Leo and I went to Kamakura we dropped by the Ghibli shop. They have these great My Neighbor Totoro pots and for Mother's Day, you could order them with flowers. I couldn't order it in the shop with Leo (toddlers aren't the most patient people) and luckily I could order it online. It came early and is a great addition to the front of the house.
      Totoro welcoming visitors
    • Last week we planted some seeds in some containers and they've started sprouting! So far just the corn and the green beans have started popped out. I'm still skeptical that it'll all live long enough for me to actually eat, but for now I'm remaining positive.
      Green beans sprouting
    • I cycled to two new parks with Leo. I really love the range that a bike, especially an electric assist bike with all of the hills, gives you. The more I ride my bike, the less I'm convinced EVs are "the" solution for personal transport with regards to climate change. This isn't surprising for me, as I've never been a fan of cars in general.

      It's not the energy or space required to made and keep cars, it's that they encourage sprawl, dominate our neighborhoods and hog our resources. Self-driving EVs doesn't change that equation. Cities should be designed for people and cars tend to get first consideration when designing the streets. More people on bikes for more trips would make the streets safer and connect people with their neighbors.
    • The new Anthony Bourdain, World Travel, an Irreverent Guide, book arrived and I've started reading it. The parts that Tony wrote are in blue. Even though he died a couple years ago, I can hear in it in his voice when I read it. One day I hope that I can write half as good as he did.

  • The Week #43

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    • It’s our second Golden Week with a state of emergency. The numbers keep on going up. I wish they'd give half the consideration they're giving for the olympic athletes to the residents of Japan. We’re trying to keep close to the house as best we can.
    • That said, I am spending time on my bicycle. I peddled to Enoshima and back (about 35km round trip). I know I've been talking about my bike a lot recently, but it's been a revelation. Like many Americans I stopped riding my bike in high school. Not only as I got a license, but the the suburbs in Houston are so spread out / bike unfriendly (unless you want to get hit by a pick-up truck the size of an elephant) that people naturally stop. 
    • I made some good progress on Tanzawa so far as well. I've built and launched my file browser. It shouldn't be too difficult to hook this in to Trix (the editor I use to write posts) so you could insert an existing photo into a post without re-uploading it.
    • Leo's wearing undies during the day. He's had two accidents thus far, but he's getting better at it. Thankfully neither accident was in public nor over the tatami floors.

  • The Week #42

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    • Tokyo is entering another State of Emergency. I understand why their doing it, Kanagawa should probably also be declaring one. But these half-measures for the past year(!) and a glacial rollout of the vaccine, I feel like I'm getting close to the "pandemic wall".
    • I finished and submitted the first draft (to be published in June) of a magazine article I'm writing (Japanese) for an internal review at work. I always get a bit nervous before submitting these kinds of things, like they'll suddenly realize "wait a minute, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about". Getting your Japanese nitpicked and seeing grammar mistakes that you know you learned back in college is also humbling.
    • Hoshide-san successfully launched and made it the ISS. Always happy to see JAXA astronauts fly. 
    • I ordered the new Bourdain book – Word Travel: An Irreverent Guide. Although Bourdain has been dead a couple of years (something I still think about on occasion and get sad about the loss), this new book was a work in progress until just before he passed. Apparently he was slated to work on it for a couple of weeks that summer. Either way I think it fits exactly what I've been wanting to read: something not heavy, not work related (no tech/design), non-fiction, and something in English. Excited for it to arrive.

  • The Week #41

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    • I've migrated my blog from Wordpress to Tanzawa! I made the first commit to Tanzawa back during winter break with this idea of wanting a blog that was comprised of different micro-blogs, dead easy to use, and IndieWeb friendly. I finally finished all of the Wordpress importing code so I could move entire blog over. The import went smooth – the only issue I had was needing to increase my request Timeout settings while Tanzawa rewrote all of the content.

      It's still nowhere near finished and ready for the non-enthusiast, but it's getting closer and I cannot express how excited I am to finally be using it on my main site.
    • I am no longer head of the block. I had two last tasks: deliver the "power of attorney/proxy" sheets that give me (head of the block) authority to approve the next year's directors o the neighborhood association and then attend the meeting to exercise that right, ending my duties. 

      My neighbor across the street didn't include all of the signatures required on his proxy-approval form so I had to go collect them. After I collected it, we were going to take a family walk to the neighborhood association building to drop them off.

      I rang their door bell told them the wife came down and I told her what I needed and she invited me inside while she gets their seals. When I looked up her husband (late 60's) was standing there with a huge grin on his face. He motioned for me to come inside and sit on the sofa.

      He offered me a drink. Thinking I'd only be there a second and knowing that my wife would be outside momentarily I refuted. He asked again. I refuted. Finally he looks like a light bulb went off and just gets a wine glass and hands it to me. Can't refuse now.

      I hear my son yelling for me outside.  The wife invites them inside and much to my wife's surprise see's me drinking wine and enjoying cheese 🍷😁🧀.  

      We all had a good chat (mostly masked) before continuing on our walk. The opportunities for these meetings between neighbors are rare these days, especially with covid, but they are the foundation of building a community. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm really happy we found such a good neighborhood to call home here in Yokohama.
    • I've been thinking about audio quality as I'm on so many Zoom calls lately and saw this page comparing a bunch of microphones with audio-clips. Usually this type of content would be in a YouTube video or something. Being able to click different players to hear sample recordings is neat. I'm nowhere near deciding or actually purchasing a microphone, but it's still neat.

  • The Week #40

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    • For the past month I've been thinking about getting a bike. I wanted something with that wasn't a cruiser like our electric assist mama-chari. Something a bit more sporty but not a road bike...a cross bike. I found a nice blue and white Giant Escape for ¥35,000 (about $350) at a local used goods shop in Totsuka. It already had fenders on it too, as an added bonus.





    • Since the weather's been so nice (it is spring) we took our bikes for a long ride along Sakaigawa with our goal being Iida-farm. We took the scenic route, which was a bit longer at 12km. Iida-farm is a small dairy farm with an attached gelato shop that's popular with cyclists along Sakaigawa. Me and Leo shared a milk gelato and it was great.

    • My dad got his second shot of Pfizer and Japan has just started vaccinating the elderly. With a 4th wave apparently starting, I really wish they'd pick up the pace.

    • I haven't had as much time (or energy) for working on Tanzawa this past week. Part of it is I'm using/saving my energy for work as we're approaching a deadline. The other part of it is writing the Wordpress import code just isn't fun. I've got the import code written and working, I just need to run it through my posts to discover the edge cases I'm not handling and handle them. I think I'm fine leaving a proper polished UI for another day.

    • Jeff analyzed all the Airbot data for 2020 and submitted a PR to adjust the values so it tweets for the top 0.5% threshold. It already appears to be tweeting more! Certainly more than it has the past month (TCEQ blocked our scraper's ip address again – a simple snapshop and restore of the server on a new droplet and we're back in business).

  • The Week #39

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    • Another big week in the Van Dyne household. After 3 years (mostly by-choice) my wife is re-joining the workforce. The timing is mostly because Leo will be starting pre-school next week, so he'll be out of the house most days for the majority of the day. Japan has some different laws surrounding healthcare/social security/being able to be declared as a dependent for tax purpose requirements, where if you work more than x hours or earn more than y per year you can no longer be included on your spouses healthcare/social security, so she's staying within those bounds for now. Either way, exciting.

    • I watched The Trial of the Chicago 7 about anti-Vietnam war protestors charged with the intention to start riots at the 1968 DNC convention in Chicago. I've never seen Sacha Baron Cohen in a serious role before, usually he's Borat or Ali G for me. I didn't realize until the end it was an Aaron Sorkin movie – it's no wonder I liked it.

    • This year marks 100 years of public transit in Yokohama and the city has build a webpage celebrating those 100 years. It even looks like the next station down has some limited edition paper tickets "Dancing Cat" tickets. Fun!

    • I got a haircut and talking with my barber about the vaccine and she said she's hesitant to get it. I asked why and she mentioned Bill Gates funding the research, alluding to an ulterior motive. I wasn't quite sure how to handle it exactly, but tried to talk about his vaccine work before covid. She said "do you think this might be one of those rumors?", "Yes, absolutely.". I also told her about my dad and brother's experience getting the vaccine (uneventful, because it's safe and not filled with 5G ads for Windows).

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