• Technically this was last week, but my term as head of the neighborhood has come to an end. Although I was part of the physical education group (the most event heavy group), we didn't have a single event due to covid. Being new to the neighborhood and not renting, I was hoping to use this year to get more involved in my community and to get to know my neighbors / let my neighbors get to know me. Next year I'm the backup head of the block, so maybe that's still possible, once the vaccine rolls out.


• Speaking of vaccines, my friends in the US and UK are starting to get their covid vaccinations. While we've had a fraction of the case load as them, I can't help but feel a bit jealous. We're still inoculating at a slower pace than I'd like to see, but in a month it's increased a hundred to topping topped 70k per day. It's at least going in the right direction.


• I've decided to get a bicycle and went to a couple of shops to check out used ones. One was a one of Japan's great second hand stores, where they have a bunch of "used" products that are like new. And the other was a shop that specializes in used bikes. The staff was friendly and answered my stupid questions. I'd wouldn't mind buying my bike from them, but they didn't have the one I want.

I don't know what it is - maybe just a lack of knowledge of bicycles in general, but I always hate going into bike shops. It's not a Japan thing, as I've noticed in US as well. I always feel some serious in-group/out-group energy. Just me?

• Sophie turned 9 years old – she's old enough now that she has to take medicine twice a day. Rather than making her a little doggie cake, kept up the tradition of singing happy birthday before giving her a bit of chicken and carrots. She always looks at as funny whenever we sing to her.


• I shipped locations in Tanzawa this week and started a new weekly round up style post on the development blog. Once I add support for checkins (backfed from Swarm) I've got the minimum viable blog for me to switch over full-time. Already I find myself wanting to author posts with Tanzawa instead of Wordpress.


• As for the migration – I've got two basic paths forward. 1) Turning my current site into a static site and use nginx to redirecting existing urls to the static site. 2) Parse the Wordpress XML file and import it into Tanzawa. Option 1 will "buy me time" to get the Wordpress import flow working. 2 is probably at least a week long project like locations were. I'll have to blog about possible workflows on the Tanzawa blog while I stew on the path forward.


• Jacob linked me to this new creator on youtube: Beau Miles. Specifically this great film of his called The Commute: Walking 90km to Work. It's refreshing to see someone talk about just how much cars remove us from our environment. The description about the video says more than I ever could.

Setting off with no food, water or shelter, I walked 90km to work a bunch of years ago to see if a stripped back adventure could give me the kind of buzz that far away, exotic, heavily planned expeditions have given me over the years. It did. Different, but familiar feelings of challenge and insight came through. When I was asked to give a lecture about adventuring at a new building at my university, I said ‘no worries, why don’t I walk to work and deliver the lecture as soon as I get there’? So I walked to work, again.

Go watch it. Now.Then follow up with his The Human Bean: 40 days on a tin-bean diet.

• The biggest thing to happen this week was Leo graduating from from the "higkari-gumi" at his pre-pre-school. I couldn't attend, but saw a small video. He was so proud of himself. He got a cool medal, a hat, and a certificate that we've framed. He starts pre-school full-time at the same school next month – he's so ready for it. My only concern is keeping his english ability when he's playing in Japanese all day. His output in English is already "behind" that of his Japanese (as expected, since we live in Japan) – I just hope it just doesn't regress.


• We're finally back down to double-digit covid cases in Kanagawa again. We haven't been in this range since probably November or December. We're not out of the woods yet, but starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. If only they could speed up the vaccinations here, they're off to a snail pace.


• In my entire life I've owned 3 suits. 2 suits I got when I first graduated from the Men's Warehouse and became way too big for me once I moved to Japan ( it's common for people to lose weight when they move to Japan because a combination of smaller portion sizes and taking trains/buses everywhere instead of driving). Those 2 suits fell apart almost immediately. The other suit I got as a replacement for my sister-in-law's wedding 11 or 12 years ago. The white shirt I bought with it was getting pretty gross so I went out and replaced them this week. I don't think I've ever owned this many dress shirts at a single time. Now I just need an occasion to wear them. (Even as a salaryman, I never wear a suit - even when going in to the office (which I haven't for over a year)).


• I'm starting to blog (even more) with Tanzawa. As it gets more feature complete it's easier for me to blog with it than it is Wordpress.


• Around a month ago I bought tanzawa.blog. It will be the home of the Tanzawa project (maybe hosting???) once it's ready for release general consumption. In the mean time, I've redirected tanzawa.blog to tanzawa.jamesvandyne.com

• I forget what I was searching for but I found this fantastic blog (in English) about trains in Japan called Tokyo Railway Labrinth. It has history of different trains and so much more. I love when I find a site where someone is just geeking out about their passion online.


• During the week some co-workers and I were discussing burgers. This gave me a craving for an avocado cheese burger from Kua`Aina. I recounted the story of how, even though in Japan you're supposed to have a nice light Japanese meal the day before the birth of your child, my wife was craving a burger and calories, so we went to the Enoshima Kuga`Aina before Leo was born. It was delicious as always. And since we got there right after they opened, not busy.


• I also visited the Fujiko Museum in Kawasaki over the weekend a.k.a. the Doraemon museum. I've never read the manga, but I have watched a couple of the movies (Leo's going through a mini-boom at the moment). It was pretty great, though I spent most of the time holding Leo watching this giant Rube Goldberg machine move a bunch of different balls across the room.


• I started working on replies in Tanzawa. Introducing Turbo to add some dynamism to admin interface. It's turned into a bigger rabbit hole than expected. I imagine most rails devs are familiar with the basics of Turbo (Links) but as a Django dev, things like Turbo aren't included, so there's a bit of a learning curve for me to implement it properly. That said - it's coming along.

• Covid numbers are down to numbers we haven't seen since November. The vaccine is approved and they've started inoculating people. The weather's warming up and early bloomer cherry blossoms are starting to bloom. I'm optimistic.


• Meanwhile in Texas, it's been the exact opposite with a huge cold front (thanks climate change!) and a deregulated energy industry decided to not invest in weatherizing their natural gas and coal plant despite regulators saying they should caused people to lose power/heat for days in freezing temperatures. Then the (republican) leadership goes and tries to blame the entire thing on the wind and solar farms in west Texas, when those were unaffected by the cold. Never elect a man to office who says government doesn't work, because they might win and prove it. Thankfully my family made it through unscathed (though hopefully they didn't get a $16,000 electricity bill like some did)


• I used to listen to a lot of Japanese music when I was younger. These days, not really. Mostly electronic/punk when I'm working and Josh Rouse when I'm not. Lucky Old Sun is a new (to me) Japanese group I found lately. You should give it a listen. I like the last track on this EP a lot, but they're all good.


• I went to Chigasaki Sagtoyama Park on my four day weekend. It was my second visit. There's this large slide that's above the trees and goes downhill with rollers on it. I usually ride down with Leo in my lap because he wants to ride it, but it's a bit scary for him. As it was a regular work-day and I took the day off the park was fairly empty. So I went down by myself. Take a ride down the best slide in the world.

At the bottom of the hill/slide there's a couple of big white bouncy mounds that the children like to jump and play on. There was an older (double (half)) kid who looked similar to Leo. Which Leo noticed and kept on copying what he was doing when jumping. It was too cute.

• Last week I had forgotten an interesting tidbit about my self-introduction presentation at work. During my presentation I introduced some of the apps I'd built for the Mac – ImageXY and Jisho. ImageXY was popular in Japan for its first couple of years and one of my co-workers actually used to use it all the time! First time I’ve met a random user of ImageXY!


• The covid vaccine was finally approved in Japan and they're starting to vaccinate doctors and nurses this week. Still no idea when I'll be able to get my prick, but I imagine it will be sometime this summer. Speaking of getting the shot, I found out my grandma got her second covid vaccine shot last Wednesday. Woohoo!


• I had my annual health check this week. As nobody is going in to the office, we are free to do our health check anywhere. I went to a a clinic In Minatomirai, as it was the closest to my house. The clinic itself was the top two floors of a high rise. We carried a little rfid card at each station and see a nurse/tech for the test, and finally a doctor briefly at the end to cover the results. Hope I can use this place next year too.


• There was a large earthquake off the cost of Fukushima. It was about a 4 where I live in Yokohama, certainly the strongest and longest quake I've felt in a while. It reminded me of 3/11 in someways as just when you think it was going to stop it just kept getting stronger. I was fast asleep when it started, but you can see my heart rate from my Apple Watch about when it hit.


• This week Leo turned 3. He has his official "chocolate debut" as he picked out a chocolate cake decorated like a panda. He must not have been impressed with the hype around chocolate as he only ate 2 bites.


• I watched this good documentary called Winter in Stockholm. I hadn't realized how much I miss watching documentaries like these randomly on TV.

• As I've been public blogging about 🏔Tanzawa I've had more people emailing me, responding to my posts, or DMing me directly about it than any past project. One of the things I still have difficulty talking about succinctly is the IndieWeb, Tanzawa, and how it all fits together. I think I may be getting better at it though.

This week I was explaining the building blocks of the IndieWeb to my internet buddy Frey. My explanation seemed to click as he's added rss to his blog and joined micro.blog!

• Despite people are moving around more than the state of emergency last year, it appears to be working. Covid numbers continue to drop in Japan. It seems like they're going to extend it until March 7th. They can always decide to end it early, but I hope they don't.


• Tanzawa has been online for almost a month. And looking back at that month it's really improved. Automatic efficient image loading, RSS, and webmentions... and my computer was even out for repair for one of those weeks. There's still a lot yet on the road map, so I need to just take it a day at a time.


• Leo's taken to my old dslr and we went out of shot photos of the Odakyu line for a bit over the weekend. I always forget how much fun it is to shoot with my dslr. The images are so crisp and the depth of field. Portrait mode on my phone is good - but the real deal is soo much better and soo much more satisfying.


• We started a new experiment at work. One day a month we stop client work and fully focus on things that are "important but not an emergency" – as those things tend to never become priority and hence never get done. We're split into different teams. Some are re-working our company Slackbot, others are getting better with frontend tech and so forth. I picked team UX, where we're trying to figure out how, as a company, we can also "do UX". This is perfect for me. I've been wanting to spread the passion for well designed software and forms within the company for years now, but I've never had the time to dedicate to it. This collaboration day finally gives me the opportunity.

• President Biden was finally sworn in to office, allowing me to breath a huge sigh of relief. His first actions have been exactly what I'd hoped he'd do (rejoining the Paris climate accords and the WHO, canceling Keystone XL pipeline etc...) and reversing some of the heinous things I'd forgotten about in the avalanche of bs that came out of the prior administration. I feel like I can watch the West Wing again and have it not feel like a cynical joke.


• Speaking of the West-Wing, I watched the the first press briefing from Jen Psaki and immediately was reminded ow C.J. Cregg from the show. Apparently I wasn't the only one and someone even wrote a column in the LA Times to please stop comparing the two (one being real, one being a fictional character).


• Covid numbers are finally going in the right direction. Yesterday was in the 600s in Tokyo down from 2000+ a couple of a weeks ago. There is a false sense of security in these numbers though as monday is always the lull of the week and due to the surge, they've stopped doing much (all?) contact tracing.


• I got my computer back from repair on Saturday. They replaced the battery, top case, and keyboard. It feels like a brand new machine with the new keyboard. The battery itself was manufactured in May of last year, so there shouldn't be much / any aging from it sitting in a warehouse. The only "issue", and I'm not certain it wasn't like this before, is the rubber seal around the edge of the display appears to have been damaged right where you'd usually unlatch the computer. I don't remember it feeling rough and worn down, but it's entirely likely I just didn't notice.


• I shipped RSS feeds and web mention support in Tanzawa. This now means that Tanzawa can participate in a distributed social web - rss feeds to sending data places and webmentions for receiving comments, likes, and so forth. Tanzawa still has a long ways to go before it's ready for general consumption, but I'm making slow and steady progress.