• The Week #107

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    • With the rapid rise in cases of covid in Japan, it's only natural that it hits close to home. Someone in Leo's pre-school got it, so his week ended early and we're back to doing the random closures of school that we did in spring.

      Leo had a 39 degree fever on Wednesday night, so it's possible he got it as well. We tested him, but it came back negative, so maybe it was something else.
    • Europe is having a heatwave reaching temperatures not forecasted to occur until 2050. That combined with a single man (a "Democrat", no less) blocking US federal climate action has made it a rough week. We've got to get off fossil fuels...
    • I made an inquiry to the guys that are installing our solar, as they also do electrification work, to see about what it would cost to get an IH hob and water heater installed at the same time as our panels. My guess is probably 5 - 6k.
    • We have a trip planned for the end of the month with my sister-in-law and Leo's cousin's to a nearby resort hotel for a night. It has a nice pool and I didn't have any swimming trunks, so I bought some.

      I bought a new pair of Quicksilver trunks. Seeing all of the surf brands reminded me of growing up in Huntington Beach. Being a beach town in California, most everyone wore Quicksilver, Billabong, Roxy, or other surf brands. I never wore any of their clothes as it was too expensive for us (though I did have a sweet Rip Curl backpack for a couple of years). Though I haven't thought about these things in 20 years, being able buy the things we couldn't afford growing up without thinking much about it makes me feel incredibly fortunate.
    • I made a new Health plugin for Tanzawa. It's most immediate goal is to provide a way for me to track my weight / and mental health without any fuss. Why not use some app on my phone? There's a couple of reasons and regular readers of my blog can guess:

      1. My data would be locked into some application or service that I'd have no control over.
      2. The interface would likely require more taps and swipes to record 2 small data points. ( Inputting it directly into Apple Health requires like 7 taps and heaps of scrolling)
      3. The data collected would almost certainly be sold off to big tech for additional profiling.
      4. Health can start to becoming the bones of my future Strava / health-related integrations.

      The most important part though is that it's not public in any way, unless I want it to be. My hope is that I'll be able to find trends and course-correct easier. Things like: "Hey, you've had 3 days in a row feeling sad. Maybe you should talk about it?", or "You're down 2kg over this time last month, great job!", or, conversely, "You're up 2kg since the last month. Are you stress eating?".

      I can't emphasize enough how much having a platform like Tanzawa, which allows me to quickly and easily add forms / data to a database without  thinking about design (just match what I already have), or where I'm going to host it (already hosted), or any of the faff with a new project (✅), is so empowering. It makes it possible to go from idea to running in production in a day.

  • The Week #106

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    • The news of the week is Abe assassination. Unbelievable. I'm certain this will be dominating the news cycle for the months to come here in Japan. Such a needless loss of life.
    • After a nice lull in cases, the past couple of weeks, Covid cases have been on an upward trend, and are indeed doubling week over week. I think we've finally got the new omnicron variant here taking over. For whatever reason, people seem to be less worried about it this time around...perhaps pandemic fatigue? Or maybe as hospital numbers haven't really changed?
    • Leo saw his first movie in theaters. We went to tsujido to watch the latest Anpanman movie, and he did great. The theater had cushions for the kids to use that raises their seats up by about 4cm. Leo carried it to his seat and out of the theater, refusing my help. He didn't get up or talk the entire movie. Swarm tells me it's my first movie in theaters in 5 years.
    • The battery on my laptop is degrading much quicker than I had anticipated it would. The battery life had felt much shorter recently and indeed, CoconutBattery says it's at 93% of it's capacity. I imagine that's normal for a better that's 2 years old, but it's only been in used for less than 18 months 150-ish cycles. People on twitter tell me that that's pretty good...I just felt like it would have been 95% or 96%?
    • In Garden news, We planted a basil plant and a blueberry bush! The basil is giving off positive vibes next to the tomatoes. I have no idea how the blueberry bush is going to turn out, but having a bush makes it feel like we're eventually going to start putting plants into the ground, instead of planters, sometime. 

      About a month ago I tried a jalapeno from my plant and it still tasted like a bell pepper. This week I tried another one. Foolishly I took a big bite thinking "it's probably bell peppery". Boy was I wrong. The milk did nothing to soothe. My theory for the spiciness is that nacho channels his rage at the heat of summer directly into the chilis. Like solar panels, but instead of electricity we get spice.

  • The Week #105

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    •  After finishing Digital Minimalism, I've been skimming it again to write some notes, internalize the lessons, and start creating a plan to introduce the ideas properly into my life. It made me realize there are a few areas where I believe something or want to do something, but I'm not: consistently reducing meat intake, hitting my running goals, reducing my scroll time...and it was kind of depressing.

      "Prioritize demanding activity rather than passive consumption", it sounds easy but it's hard. Finding something to fill those gaps (hours per day!) that isn't just fiddling on my computer is difficult. It's so much easier to just sit and scroll instead of going for a run, or fiddling in the garden. Easier still when it's 35 degrees outside so it's miserable.

      One of the suggestions is to make the activities both scheduled and social, so it fulfills more of our social needs as humans. I'm having trouble finding these types of groups/clubs at a quick search...but it would be nice to find a group so I can create more connections in my local community.
    • On the way to the office on Friday and cousin facetimed me while I was on the train. Rather than just texting him back and continuing the conversation via Messages (low-bandwidth), I decided to apply some of the lessons in Digital Minimalism and you know...talk to people (high-bandwidth)...with my voice (ugh, I know, right?) . We Facetimed while I was walking to the office. I'm not usually one to talk on the video phone in public, but it was a lot of fun to catch up. A good way to spend 10 minutes in the roasting summer heat.
    • After work on Friday we had a welcome party for members from the UK who have been waiting to get into Japan for the past 18 months. We went to Vector brewing in Shinjuku. 3 hours all you can drink craft beer + 8? different dishes. The star was wonderful beer butt chicken (DDG it) which really good. I felt like there was too much meat overall . i.e. The only dish without any meat was the pickled veg at the start, even the salad had roast beef or the potato salad was mixed with tuna. Either way, the food was delicious, beer even better, and company even better still. Can't complain.
    • I've long been against getting an internet connected speaker in my house. Something about having an internet connected mic in my house just seems too ripe for abuse. Yes, my watch, phone, and computer are all technically similar, but the speakers are the only ones that are explicitly designed internet connected mics, not just a by-product of software.

      Which is to say, we decided to get a HomePod Mini. My hope is that we can use it for playing music from Apple Music without turning on the TV. Less "Baby bus" and more Jack Johnson, Ryan Adams, David Bowie. Should've had this revelation a week ago, as apparently Apple's adjusted all prices up ~25% in Japan to account for the weak yen 🤣😭.

  • The Week #104

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    • This post marks 2 years of doing "The Week" 🎉.  As things "open up" (they were never closed) and life returns to normal, I'm finding it difficult to remember to write these posts. But once I do sit down and write them, I am grateful I took some time to reflect on the week.
    • The Rainy season ended this week in Tokyo – 2 - 3 weeks early than it should've and we didn't even get much rain (I feel). It's been hitting over 35C in Yokohama, which is mid-summer temperatures. Hopefully we'll get some good summer rains to help cool things down. As a kid, I used to like summer, but any more I mostly dread it. How much hotter is it going to be this year because we continue to dig stuff out of the ground and burn it?
    • America continues its backwards slide with Roe vs Wade being overturned. We all knew it was coming after the leak, but it's still shocking and disappointing. The Democrat's response to this has also been fairly tone-deaf...reading a poem? Singing "God Bless America"?...and tell us to effectively vote harder? We did. We do. Give is details for how you're going to codify this into law. We can't rely on this court, full of people who lied under oath to secure their seat, to make impartial decisions. The only politician that I see communicating effectively about this is AOC.
    • I played a bit with Fly.io in an attempt to get Tanzawa deployable without running your own server. I couldn't get it running as I kept getting "Command not found" errors, when fly ran the container. This is confusing as the command exists when I run the container locally...another one for next week, perhaps.
    • I found this song by CHOUJI - 奮闘中 (funtou-chu (hard at work)) and I really like it. I used to listen to a lot of J-hiphop/J-reggae when I was in college. I should do more of that. 

  • The Week #103

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    • Regular readers of this blog know that despite me owning a car,  I'm not a fan of them. As such, I try to use my car as little as possible. 

      Each time I drive it, I know I'm making climate change worse and I add another car to the streets, which make the streets, no matter how careful I drive, a more hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists. I sometimes wonder if I had an EV instead of a fossil fuel burning car that I'd be more willing to use my car (but this would result in a worse environment for not-cars (and arguably cars, too...)).

      But I digress. This week I filled up my car with gas. The last time I did this was February 12th of this year. 4.5 months ago. I'm getting awfully close territory of the gasoline in my car going bad. Makes me happy but also a bit sad (such a waste of money buying a car I don't use...which also makes it difficult to argue to replace it with something electric).
    • Leo's swimming class this week had some survival swimming training this week. Survival in the sense of "what happens when you fall in the water wearing your clothes", so they don't panic. They also practiced using improvised floating devices, in our case an empty 2L pet bottle.
    • Sunday was Father's Day. We went out to Minatomirai in Yokohama and just hung about. Leo played in the water features in front of the art museum and MarkIs. There's signs that say not to, but everyone does it. I think it's just a liability thing. I saw a number of kids slip and fall, a few hit their head and after a cry get back at it. Leo was wearing water so he didn't have any issues with slippage.

      We also rode a few rides at the Cosomo World across from Queen's east. I've never seen / ridden a merry-go-round with 2 stories on it. The ride was quite short (only 2 minutes?), but it takes around 5 minutes for the staff to get everybody on / temperature checked etc... All good fun.
    • Nacho, my jalapeño plant, is absolutely thriving. Really looking forward to having fresh jalapeños. Depending on the number and when they're ready, I may also make some jalapeño poppers (cream cheese stuffed jalapeños) on the grill (my mom sent me a stand used for grilling them shaped like an armadillo years ago in shipment of stuff, thinking it was mine (it wasn't). That stand is currently keeping my compost elevated off the ground).
      Jalapeõs!

  • 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. 

  • The Week #101

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    • I spent most of this week recovering from jet lag, trying to get back into groove of regular life. After managing to go two weeks without catching the 'rona,  it's all finally caught up with me and I caught a small cold.
    • I finally got around to doing my US taxes this year. Thankfully Americans abroad have a 2-month delayed due-date. Doing my taxes is always hugely stressful. Not because they're complicated, but because the software I was using (TurboTax) isn't designed for Americans abroad, you've got to do all of the conversions from JPY to USD yourself. Which also means finding/picking an exchange rate etc..

      This year I found and used ExpatFile.tax, and wow is it a breath of fresh air. I'm able to put in what I earned in JPY and it handles all of the conversions for me. It seems pretty intelligent about FEIE (Foreign Earned Income Exclusion – where the first $100k or so of income is tax free, but means you can't use tax advantaged things like Roth IRAs etc...) and the FTC (Foreign Tax Credit).

      I've always used FEIE because it's "easier". This year after reading their blog post Why the FTC is better than the FEIE, I was prepared to use FTC..and as a bonus there was a Covid child tax credit I'd be able to use if I did, so I'd actually get a $1000 return this go around. But alas, after inputting my wife's income (as she's still a tax resident), they suggested I use FEIE, as per usual. Maybe next year...I'm almost looking forward to doing them next year. Almost.
    • This post on installing a payphone in your house brought back a lot of youthful memories and how often we used payphones back then. He installs a Pacific Bell phone, the same as I used, so it's hits all of the nostalgia points. Most of the time when I used payphones though, it was just me calling my dad collect and in the space for the name saying "DadI'mAtTheMallPickMeUp" as 2 second gap to say your name. Not Phreaking, but still workin' the system.
    •  Digital Minimalism is proving to be a quick read and enjoyable read. I want to finish the book before I do the 30-day "detox", but the idea of being intentional about when and why we use technology is really resonating with me.

      Particularly about this idea that we let tools and services into our life because they promise some benefit: news,  and so forth. And while they do provide that benefit some of the time, most of the time we use it, it's just mindless usage and time sinks. The actual cost in time/attention for that little benefit is not in our favor.

      This really sounds like me and Twitter. Wake up, scroll to see what the other gaijin are up to in Japan, repeat. It's not focused and it's a huge time sink preventing me from doing things I'd actually like to be doing. Perhaps I can find a way to collect these people into a list and use my RSS reader to catch up on the gossip once a week?
    • If it's not possible, that might even be a nice micro-service. Create a RSS feed that's updated weekly with the tweets (no replies?) of a handful of accounts. This way it acts as a firewall between you and social media.

  • The Week #100

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    • I made it to 100 consecutive weeks "The Week"! The last ~5 weeks or so, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it 100 weeks in a row, but I have. I've done a bit more thinking since last week, and I think I'll continue doing these roundups for a while longer / foreseeable future.
    • I'm back in Japan and it's good to be home. London is great, I wouldn't mind living there for a year or two someday. But your own bed in your own home? Nothing beats it. I will, however, miss the easy access to shawarma and falafel.

      I'll also miss working with the rest of the team in London. We'll still be working together, remotely of course, but it's a good group of people. Getting work done is the main reason for the trip, but building these team relationships in person are another, just as important reason, for having trips like these.

      Expect a London roundup post later this week as a cap-off to the London trip.
    • I meant to include this last week, but forgot. Last week saw the launch of a new tube line, the Elizabeth line, in London. As that doesn't happen everyday, I started searching around and I found this great YouTuber, Geoff Marshall, who makes great videos about all things trains in the U.K. Very good channel and if you like public transport, I highly recommend it.

      I was planning to take the Elizabeth line to Heathrow, but I found out that it's not running on Sundays yet. 
    • After taking Tanzawa trips through the paces these past 2-weeks, I think I'm quite happy with how it worked out. The main pain-point is that when I checkin with Swarm, I use swarm to also post to Twitter. However, that tweet url isn't associated with the post automatically, so I have to manually lookup the tweet url, add it to syndication urls, and then tell brid.gy to "discover" posts.

      For a single checkin every now and again, it's a fine workflow. But for an actual trip, it's a hassle. First, I need to build in some native syndication into Tanzawa (not just to Twitter, but wherever).  Once that's finished, then I can set my checkins to automatically syndicate to Twitter and post my backfed Swarm checkins to Twitter via my blog.

      Third, I think I want to add push notifications to LINE or Telegram when I get webmentions on my blog, so I can tell when the checkin has been backfed or if I get comments via micro.blog etc..

  • The Week #99

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    • This week marked over 1 week in London. We accomplished the main goal of the trip last week – and we didn't even bring down production 🎉. I knew we would meet the goal without any issues, but it was huge relief because sometimes you "know" something then an unknown unknown crops up and you're left scrambling.
    • One of the recurring thoughts I have about London is just how diverse it is. Going down the street there's people speaking every language of every ethnicity, you name it. Compared with Tokyo, even pre-Covid, it's nowhere near as diverse. ( I mean, Japan is kinda know for being quite insular, so it shouldn't be a surprise). I must say I'm really enjoying the easy access to meat wrapped in some kind of flat bread with veg and sauce. Sometimes I want an onigiri...but I'd usually rather have a falafel.
    • At the Tate this weekend I saw the tower of incomprehension, a tower of old and new radios, all tuned to a different frequency playing at the same time. No two visits are ever the same. I uploaded a short video on YouTube.  It made me think of the media and social media and how there's so much coming at you...you can't understand a thing. It all gets jumbled together and is just noise. And when I compare that to my blog, where I get a webmention here or an email there, how much of a calmer experience it is....and yet we still post and add to the noise.
    • Coming up on 100 weeks doing the week and I find myself questioning if I'll continue after I hit 100. Part of me thinks, yes I should continue writing these weekly roundups because they give me an opportunity to reflect on the week every week. The other part of me has been having trouble writing posts...remembering at the last minute and rushing something out. I guess I must continue until week #104, so I hit 2 years.

  • The Week #98

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    • The main event of the week this week is that I'm not in Japan. I flew to London for work for 2 weeks. It's my first time to the UK and my first time leaving Japan since I arrived in Jan 2017. 
    • One thing you notice as someone new to a city is the smell. For example, New York smells like trash. Houston smells like "god knows what but it's probably going to give me cancer so don't breathe too deeply" because of the refineries. London has a particular smell that I can't quite identify. It's almost kind of a sweet smell (mixed with occasional whiffs of trash). Maybe it's the smell of the common cleaners used in the shops/offices? Maybe it's the covid in the air (🤪)? Hopefully I can identify it before I get used to it (or before I lose my sense of smell 🥁).
    • One thing that stands out to me about London, compared to Tokyo, is how many cyclists you see. From bike messengers to people commuting via Boris bikes, to cargo bikes. And I love it.Heaps of people ride their bikes in Tokyo, too, but it feels like it's a higher percentage, at least where I'm at in Bloomsbury. I love seeing the cargo bikes. My favorite (and first!) sighting was a cargo bike in a separated bike lane along the Thames.
    • I made some progress in documenting how to run Tanzawa in a production environment on the plane. Considering I had most of the commands written down already in the packer scripts, it still took longer than I expected.
    • I'm seeing some gaps in my trip functionality that I want to fix, but maybe once I get back to Japan. I'd like to be able to link to a specific post in a trip, sometimes. This way I can share not just the post or not just the trip, but the full context of the post in the trip. This could be done (probably) by including some a id attribute in the markup, I presume.

      The other bit, and more complex, is I think it would be nice change the zoom of the map as you scroll down automatically. So when you're at the top, it shows the full zoomed out map. Then as you scroll down it zooms in to to whichever posts are visible.
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