• The Week #149

    by
    • This week was Golden Week in Japan. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were all public holidays and so many people also took Monday / Tuesday off to get a full 9 days off in a row. I took Tuesday off as Leo's school was closed for a day off in-lieu for an event last Saturday.
    • I took advantage of that day off with Leo and we went to Minatomirai to watch Super Mario Brother's Movie. We arrived far too early to the theater as Leo couldn't wait at home. We killed some time by looking (and buying) some of the movie goods: a new bento box, some Mario themed iron-on patches,  and clear files and by grabbing lunch from the concession stand.

      Leo looooved the movie. The entire time he was smiling and giving me a thumbs up when there was a scene that he liked. After the credits there was an unhatched Yoshi egg...I wonder if there's going to be a Mario Brother's Movie 2 out next year or so. With it making over a billion (with a b) dollars worldwide so far, I wouldn't be surprised.
    • After the movie we went to Blue Bottle Coffee and played a bit in the fountains in front of the Yokohama Art Museum. At Blue Bottle I picked up their little free paper to take home. It's written in both English and Japanese and about coffee. I "scanned" it using the notes app on my iPhone to share it on my blog...which came through as a pdf.

      Not being able to share non-images on my blog caused me to work a bit on Tanzawa so I could at least upload and select a PDF. PDFs still don't quite display on my blog how I'd like (using the default trix "attachment" styles), but it's enough. Including something heavier weight like PDF.js to embed them seemed a bit much considering how rarely I'll be uploading PDFs on my site.

      Blue Bottle Studio.pdf 1.93 MB


      One benefit of this work was that I was able to dive into some of the original code from Tanzawa that was a bit crufty and clean it up. Working on Tanzawa isn't much different than gardening – you've got to weed / maintain things.
    • We played at a number of parks that we usually don't play at. One of the parks had a "log house", which is a city-run log house looking building that kids can play inside. There's rope nets going up the wall to climb to the second floor with rope net bridges. There's also a slide, a good selection of books, blocks, a basketball hoop, and some other play things.

      I mention this because the city did a really good job of designing the street in front of this park. Instead of the usual narrow 2-way road without any trees, they put it a one-way street with greenery on both sides, and curves in the road.
      Traffic calming street design

      Behind this park and the log house was actually a 400 panel 100kWh solar farm! I know this, not because I'm a huge nerd (bethatasitmay), but they had a nice placard at the service door that detailed this / the installer.
      110mWh solar array in Yokohama
    • My trusty 2014 Macbook Pro's battery started swelling, which I noticed as my computer would open itself after I'd close the lid. Perhaps it was just the hinges were loose and they finally reach the point where I needed to open it up and tighten them. Indeed, they were very loose (my computer's monitor would shake sometimes if I was typing vigorously enough) and tightening the screws did fix that, it did not fix my self-opening computer problem. Upon further inspection I can see a (very) small bend in the bottom of my laptop. 

      Which is to stay, after almost 8.5 years of loyal service it's time to get a replacement. While I've mentioned and have been tempted by the Framework laptop for it's serviceability, it's not available in Japan. I'm also not entirely sure of making a sudden, unplanned jump from macOS to desktop linux...especially after multiple decades on macOS.

      I've purchased an M2 Air with 512GB storage and 16GB of ram. It boggles my mind that it's exactly the same specs as I got almost a decade ago in my current computer. While I'm excited for a new computer, I'm also bummed I'm losing a loyal companion.

      That said, I'm happy that battery replacement in January 2021 got me another 2 and a bit years out of the machine. That brought my costs down to about $0.87 /day ( $2699 (before tax) / 3090 days). I would've loved to have gotten a solid 10 years out of it, but it wasn't in the cards this time.

  • The Week #148

    by
    • Thanks to an email from Colin, I realized it's been 2 years since I switched to using Tanzawa as the CMS for my website. I haven't had much inspiration to work on it lately, but having a site that works exactly as I'd like using the tech stack I'm most familiar with is comforting. I have a couple of smaller integrations I've been thinking about (stats from Sunbottle on my homepage) as well as some larger (re-work all of my posting UIs to have smaller, focused interfaces – why can select a location on a bookmark? Do I need to fill in the text areas for bookmarks? Why can't I just save the link and go? )
    • Speaking of Sunbottle, I generated my second megawatt hour of electricity.Right now as the sun is staying out a bit later and we don't require heating / air conditioning, my battery is lasting me through the night and into the morning. Today's coffee is brewed by yesterday's sunshine. When combined with a friend referral to Octopus Energy (which we split 🥰), I've only paid ¥2,500 for electric in the past 3 months (and that is offset by selling excess generation).
    • We went to MOS Cafe (the fancy version of MOS Burger) on Saturday as they are across from the beach and it was lunch time. We brought our dayshade quick-up tent as well so we could relax for a bit and enjoy the view. Unfortunately it was very, very windy on the beach. Against my better judgement, I still put the shade up (as I saw a couple others and some large rocks to anchor it down). We stayed only 20 minutes or so – just long enough for Leo to trip in the water and have a minor meltdown 😫. But the idea was nice – maybe when it's less windy.
      Only the surfers are out in the water
    • On Sundays, one of my neighbor's and their son, who is a year older than Leo, play outside in the field next to our house. Leo's taken to going out and joining them , so we all end up playing "baseball" or riding bikes/trikes and so forth. I'm glad that Leo's been able to make friends in the neighborhood 3 doors down, as they'll be going to the same school for 5 years together. I can already picture them getting up to many shenanigans together.
    • I watched this video from Kevin Smith, Trauma is Trauma, where he talks about his experience and mental health. It really resonated with me. Particularly the story about one of his traumas and (and what allowed him to make "the other guy" (the public persona of Kevin Smith)) when one of his teachers looked at him with disgust and commented on his gut. It reminded me of a similar comment to my from one of my uncles growing up and how much that hurt and how it echos in your head. How, years after losing a lot of weight, you still see yourself as the fat kid. Even today, every photo I see of myself, the first place I look as  not at my face, but at my stomach.

      I'm not certain if I realized it at the time, but my escape from this was my computer and the internet. Especially in the late 90's early 2000's – everything was text based, so it didn't matter how you looked, just what you knew. And so I got really good at computers and passable at programming.

      One thing he talked about in the video is how this escape comes to define you. The moment you wake up you turn on and start working. It doesn't seem bad because you're making things and people like it, and that's good, right? But what is there beyond that? Outside of one's work? That's something I'm going to work at and try to get better at doing – stuff besides computers and outside of work. Well worth a watch if you have 30 minutes.

  • The Week #147

    by
    • Last week I wrote about starting by walking instead of running. It worked. I closed all of my  rings for 7 days in a row! I've not noticed any real physical changes, but it's kept me positive. The main way I've been able to close them is a 2km walk in the afternoons. These walks have also given me good opportunity to think through work tasks without distraction (fidgeting to Slack), as an added bonus.
    • On the "lets close my rings" kick, I did a couple of body weight workouts on Apple Fitness+ and it reminded me how much I used to liked lifting weights. When I was working with a trainer, my favorites were the kettlebell. Kettlebells are nice as they're compact, only require one piece of equipment, and can be used to train your entire body.

      I looked at a local sports shop, but they didn't have any. Searching on Amazon, I couldn't quite decide. The reviews of the cheaper ones said they're welded together, so there's sharp(!) edges inside the handle. That'd be the absolute last thing you'd want when you swinging it / moving it about.

      Further searching around the internet I found Ito-gen, a small local manufacturer in a foundry town in Mie prefecture (check out their workshop). I ended up buying a 16kg bell from them via Amazon (they have their own store there). All of the reviews were great. I feel a bit bad for the delivery guy for when it's ready.
    • In an effort to read about something that's not tech or climate related, I bought 4 issues of Grow by Ginko. It's a magazine about "synthetic biology" and it's really good and bending my mind a bit. While it would be great if we could eat and only grow heirloom plants/vegetables, that's not always possible in a globally connected society. For example, the American chestnut tree got mostly wiped out because a fungus that was brought over to America on a Japanese chestnut tree. They've made an American chestnut tree that's resistant to the fungus by putting in a single gene from wheat, which will allow the American chestnut tree to survive and live on.

  • The Week #146

    by
    • For how off-again-on-again (mostly off) my running is, I sure do mention it a lot on The Week. I kinda feel obligated after spending all that time to make a Strava integration, only to use it for a month and just stop 😫. 

      I had this idea that perhaps changing my habits from never being a sports person to runner was a bit too far. A 30 minute run sounds like not a lot of time, but it's really an hour when you factor in changing, showing, and changing again. Going from "nothing" to hour+ of commitment per day is a drastic change.

      Instead I'm trying to just focus on becoming more active, make that habitual, then I can worry about running (or I can mix running in). A 20 - 30 minute walk doesn't require a change of clothes and takes exactly that long. For starters I'm trying to just close all of my rings consistently ( 12-hours stand/450kcal/30 minutes exercise). 

      I can already regularly close the 30 minutes exercise ring because of taking Sophie for a walk and using my bike  or walking most everywhere. It's the 450kcal ring everyday that's been elusive, even if just barely. This week I hit it 6 days and only missed the day it was raining heaps outside.
    • Speaking of 450kcals, we left a stick of butter on the table from breakfast before leaving for lunch on the weekend. While we were out, Sophie jumped up on the table and helped herself to the entire stick. I could tell immediately when we returned because instead of greeting us like she usually does, she was wheezing like a guy who overindulged pizza.
    • After overindulging on the butter, she wasn't feeling well. She went over to the tatami (why the tatami?!) and barfed buttery-vomit. We cleaned it up immediately, but the smell – it's taking a while to disappear. We might end up needing to replace that tatami. 

      Later that day she still wasn't feeling well (that's what happens when you eat a stick of butter(!)). She barfed a second time on Leo's bed (again with the barfing on soft, absorbent things). He doesn't use it, so we didn't have one of those protective sheets down, but boy do I wish we had. We cleaned it up immediately but it was already too late. It made it down into the mattress-foam. We took off the mattress cover and washed it and let it air dry outside, but it still smells. Air drying the mattress outside in the sun also seems to have not worked as much/quick as I'd hoped. It might slowly be getting better, or I'm just getting desensitized to it.

      I'm glad she's feeling better now, but what a mess.
    • While we were at lunch, we stopped by a vintage store. Inside they had a lot of cards from the early 90's: Ghostbusters (1984) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) with scenes from the movies on them. Having the cards immediately made Leo interested in watching these classics. 

      We watched Ghostbusters on Saturday night. Leo liked slimer and the marshmallow man at the end. Sunday night we watched the ninja turtles. He really likes that he's "in the movie" because of Leonardo. I had to repeat the two scenes where they say just "Leo" for him while he had the biggest of grins.

      I haven't watched TNMT since I was a kid, but I was surprised just how well those turtle costumes stood up. They don't look dated or clearly fake like CG would've. Good stuff.

  • The Week #145

    by
    • I took the day off on Wednesday and we saw Matilda in Shibuya. Leo's not used to long-ish train rides (40 minutes), so on the way there he was got a bit impatient on the way there. We got lunch at Ikea Shibuya (more on that later), then headed to the theater where we had to wait for another 40 minutes before the show started. We barely made it through the waiting periods without some meltdown.

      Once the show started, Leo was hooked. He watched the entire show (over 2 hours) almost without a peep. It was just as good as I remembered. The music from the show is on Apple Music – well worth a listen. My favorites are The Hammer and When I Grow Up.
    • My father-in-law came over and planted a flowering dogwood, the same tree that the US brought Japan in the 1912 - 15 exchange of flowers, to commemorate Leo's first trip to America. While Dad's healthy as can be, at 80, it makes me think a lot about the adage "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in". 
      My new backyard carbon sink
    • 3 years ago I bought a car, which means it was due for its first shaken, or car inspection. Car inspections in Japan are a much more thorough deal than they ever were in California or Texas. Inspection in Texas takes about an hour and costs $50 bucks. Shaken takes literally all day at a minimum or multiple days for slightly older cars and costs ¥85,000 ($635 currently) or more. 

      I probably could get it done for much less if I shopped around or did it myself (hah!), but getting it done at the dealer, along with all other maintenance, is the path of least resistance. They're also a known quantity. I have no idea how to judge smaller shops and to be sure I'm not being taken advantage of. 

      In the US, mechanics are famous for taking advantage of people's ignorance and doing work that doesn't need to be done for extra revenue. So in my head, the relationship between car owner and mechanic is always adversarial, regardless if that's the case here in Japan.

      The good news is that while my wallet is lighter, there weren't any issues with the car (7,000km over 3 years, I'd hope not) and its next shaken is in another 2 years.

  • The Week #144

    by
    • This week was farming week at work. Farming is what we call maintenance and smaller improvements (as opposed to mining, which is building out big new chunks of functionality). Before farming week, each team spends some time with our energy specialists watching them and talking with them about how they use the respective parts of our product, getting ideas for things that could be improved / farmed. Then we spend farming week finishing as many of them as possible. With the entire team working on it for a week, there is a marked improvement in the software in a short period of time.
    • We started advertising around town. I haven't seen them personally yet, but this is our ad at Ikebukuro station (a major transit hub in Tokyo). Exciting times!
      It says "Now is the time to review your power company"
    • Leo's been getting too tall for his 12" bicycle he's been borrowing from his cousin for the past couple of years. The weather was nice, so we decided to walk to the bicycle store to see if there was any 16" bicycles that he liked. Of course, the first bicycle we see is a 16" Mario Kart bike – so you know we weren't leaving the store without it. Thankfully it was his size.

      He rode it home, his first time along one of the busier roads to the big park near our house. Immediately another boy, who was on a pink (presumably) hand-me-down  saw it and started to get jealous. The kid said something and Leo quipped back to him something along the lines of "well you should've bought it first". Both Yumi and I reprimanded Leo and explained why you can just say things like that. Leo has difficulty just ignoring what kids say.

      The boy kept riding fast and  cutting it really close barely missing Leo a number of times. When the kid decided to kamikaze directly towards all 3 of us is when we decided it was time to leave. I might buy some AirTags and put one inside the frame, just in case it grows legs.
    • I watched the new Tetris movie from Apple and really enjoyed it. It reminded me how much I used to play Tetris on my NES when I was younger. It's such a good game.
    • Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away. He was a fantastic musician, leader of techno-pop, and formed the group Yellow Magic Orchestra. I've listened to this version of Rydeen at the Greek Theater from 1979 more times than I can count.
    • Last but not least, the former president got indicted.  Freakin' finally.

  • The Week #143

    by
    • The tulips we planted a couple of months ago are in early-bloom. I'm loving the splash of color to the front of the house. Leo's been getting into it as well, wanting to check them every morning.
    • It's was rainy this past weekend, which threatens all of the cherry blossoms and (probably) killing the hanami-season. Writing this made me realize I haven't posted any photos of the sakura this year. 
      Cherry blossom tree near my house. You can see the pedals on the ground from the rain.
    • I went out for beer/lunch with some old co-workers/friends to a place called Mots Beer Party. The venue was small with just enough seating for 6 people along a bar. The owner cooks when you place the order directly in front of you and as it is space constrained, was interesting to see how he prepared all of the dishes. There was no gas range, but he did have two portable IH hobs side-by-side acting as a range (no venting / fan necessary!) One technique I think I'm going to borrow from him was using a camping hot-sandwich maker to cook veg / meat. Makes it easy to turn and gives nice grill marks without the grill.
    • We rearranged the downstairs and I think we've got a winning layout. The layout's been a bit awkward since we got that 3-person sofa last autumn(?) as we never could keep the sofas facing each other (you want to face the TV when you're watching it / playing games, so we'd turn the small sofa 90 degrees). Also, inevitably the large sofa would slide back a few cm and make rub against the sliding door to enter the LDK.

      We moved the TV back off of the tatami into it's original position, directly across from the large sofa. Then, we pulled the large sofa forward about 40 - 50cm to keep it off the wall and allow access to the plugs behind it. This surprising makes it feel more like a proper room. Lastly, we moved the small sofa on to the tatami, parallel with the tv, along with the coffee table lego table.

      This created three different zones: 1, unchanged, with the dining table where we eat, 2, for relaxing and watching TV (with the bigger sofa), and 3, for Leo to play with his legos. The 3rd zone will also make a great reading area as well because there's good light in that corner of the house and it's relaxing in a showa kind of way on the tatami. When it's finished and looks presentable, I'll share a photo.
    • There's still some Twitter users that I'd like to follow but I don't want to login to Twitter to just for that. There's a great site called bird.makeup that essentially mirrors their tweets so you can follow them from Mastodon (likes and such don't propagate, which is fine). All you do is put their twitter handle @bird.makeup into the search and they show up like a regular account.
    • My jam this week has been Japanese Breakfast. I really like this live recording from KEXP. I wonder if there's a Japanese equivalent of Japanese breakfast? American Asa-gohan? But seriously, wouldn't mind finding Japanese indie bands.

  • The Week #142

    by
    • One of the "mistakes" we made when buying our house in order to save some money, was to not get kitchen cabinets installed (everything is an "option" when buying a pre-built house). Instead we opted to re-use the cabinet we were using from our apartment and get a longer cabinet to put next to it for storage. It works and holds our dishes, but it's not enough. Because there's no storage on the walls, things tend to overflow.

      I started researching getting some proper cabinets installed. So far I've mostly been looking at IKEA as the quality / pricing seems to be about right. They also have some software that will let you plan it out yourself (before visiting the stores proper). It's nothing we'll be doing in the next month or two, but perhaps later this year.
    • Leo's officially no longer a pink badge and in a couple of weeks he'll be a blue badge, the top class. Which also means: spring break started. We were planning to visit the aquarium a couple of weeks ago, but we didn't, so we went this week instead. It was packed. The pandemic is/was the worst, but it was nice how empty these kind of places were before.

      After the aquarium we visited our favorite burger joint and then went to the beach and threw rocks into the ocean for an hour. It was a lot of fun. Also, Leo walked a lot more than he used to (though there was still plenty of time up on my shoulders – I gotta get it in while I still can).
    • Japan lived up to its robotification cred abroad when I went out to dinner at the local Jonathan's. For a while now ordering at Jonathan's is done via a tablet. ( Sidebar: A tablet whose camera turns on afterwards. I always put the menu in front of it we're done to block its view, but I reckon the mics are still on.). When our food came this human sized cat robot with 4 slots rolled up to our table with our food with blue flashing lights where our food was. After we unload it, it went back to the kitchen for its next load.

      There might be a robot cat delivering your food

      Using this robot and tablet ordering, they probably had about half of the staff in the front of the house as they usually would. In-fact, the only time we had to interact with a human was: when they picked up dirty dishes, delivery of dessert (I reckon ice cream needs to go to tables express), and to pay. But even paying, there was a self-checkout. As an introvert, this is a change I can get behind.
    • Greg Jackson, the CEO of Octopus, was interviewed at SXSW. I'm happy that full interview is up on YouTube, Working at Octopus, I know what we do / how it all fits together in terms of the energy transition. But there's always bits and bobs I didn't know

      For instance, on-shore wind turbines must be painted white, so they blend in with the sky and such. Octopus has a "fan-club" (because wind turbines are effectively big fans) where people who live within a certain distance from an Octopus wind-turbine can get 20 - 50% off their electric when it's windy / really windy. To communicate this locally customers that the energy is cheap, they light them up green (for a period I reckon?), which I thought was pretty clever.
    • Media wise - I've been listening to Get On by Anuqram, not quite on repeat, but close enough. Ted Lasso S3 (the final season) came back and it's as good as ever. I also started watching Shrinking with Jason Segel and Harrison Ford. It's written (in part) by Roy fuckin' Kent and it's brilliant.

  • The Week #141

    by
    • All around good guy Japanese astronaut and  Koichi Wakata returned from a visit to the ISS. He's now (or maybe even was prior to this as well?) the Japanese person with the most time in space. Top story of the morning news was that he was coming back...but the evening news didn't seem to cover that he made it back safely? That seems like like it would still warrant top story in the evening...or at least a mention somewhere in the top 10? Nada.
    • When we visited New York in 2016, we saw Matilda at the Shubert Theatre. Since then, I wanted to watch it one more time. On the train this week I saw adverts for Matilda...odd...and it turns out they performing it as well! In Tokyo it seems to only be for a couple of months. We bought tickets for early April.

      I've shown Leo both the English version of "Naughty" and the Japanese version. He loves them. Both songs are great and an anthem to live by: If something's not right, sometimes you gotta put it right.
    • In employer related news this week, Octopus Energy announced €1 Billion Investment in French Green Energy Market and New European Tech Hub in Paris. Nothing to do with me, but I do love working for a company that's driving actual change in the energy system. Something's not right (burning dinosaur juice causing climate change) and we're trying to put it right (electrify all the things with wind, solar, and storage).
    • On Sunday we had a small birthday celebration for baaba and my nephew who's birthdays are both in March. We got to re-use some of the Mario themed birthday goods we brought back from America, which was a hit with the kids.
    • My  back / leg are almost back to normal. I reckon another visit or two and I'll be as good as new. You really don't appreciate not hurting with most steps until you've been having a slight pain with every step for a month.

  • The Week #140

    by
    • Spring is on its way and it couldn't have come soon enough. Especially after getting so many warm mid-20's days in Texas. My inner-Dutchman is be proud that the tulips we planted are coming up. They're my favorite and for 3 years in a row I said "I'll plant some next year" and thanks to Yumi, we actually did. I'm looking forward to seeing them bloom.
    • Leo came home from school on Tuesday early with a small fever and not feeling so well. Naturally when I go to pick him up, he's fine and bouncing around. He wasn't sick, but with spring in the air, he has allergies now. The next day we took him to the doctor and they confirmed this and gave us some allergy meds/eyedrops for Leo to drink twice a day.
    • While back from school, he played a bit more switch than usual. He somehow discovered the e-store and downloaded the demo of Kirby. I haven't played much Kirby in my time, but it's a lot of fun. It also supports two-player mode, so we can play cooperatively. I wish more games had a cooperative story mode (I used to play Quake-2 pretty often in cooperative mode back in the day).
    • With Spring means the end of school year and the start of a new. Next year Leo will be in his final year of pre-school, which means it's time to start preparing for a year from now: elementary school.

      We went and looked at randoseru, the traditional Japanese leather backpack that kids use throughout elementary school. It used to be there was only two colors: black and red. Now days there's heaps of colors, though mostly for girls. I wish I could find it to link to it, but there's an episode of Japanology Plus about school satchels that goes into the history and how they're made and is really interesting.

      Why are we looking now, a year before he needs it? Basically they're all handmade and you need to order it about a year in advance. They're also quite expensive. The bags we were looking at ranged from $500 - $1,000 dollars.

      The $1,000 backpack. One day I hope I'm adult enough to use something this nice.

      We decided to buy from was Tsuchiya Randoseru in Kamakura, where Leo's cousin bought from, so we know it's a quality product. We decided on one of the less-expensive ones in a nice olivey-green that looks great on Leo. Thankfully it's one of the few options remaining for boys 😀.
    • On Monday had a bit of a meltdown before going to pre-school. We have a car, but try to use it as little as possible. It's a 7 minute walk / 3 minute bike ride to his school and he refused to sit on his seat my bike and instead take the car. I told him no, the weather is nice are taking the bike or we could walk. He had a meltdown and in the end I carried him while he's crying and screaming the entire way to school.

      He's 5 years old now, this isn't acceptable behavior, so he lost his switch privledges for the night. Which he didn't realize until he got home from school where he promptly had another meltdown for 30 minutes. 

      There's a number of behavioral changes I'd like to address with Leo and habits I'd like him to form. Getting upset / fighting about them isn't fun and isn't solving them. You catch more bees with honey than with vinegar.

      I'm thinking about creating a chart with various changes / things that Leo needs to do. e.g. go to school without fighting / having a meltdown, putting his bento box in the kitchen when he gets home from school, going to swimming with a smile (he's not a fan of the current teacher), trying to eat new foods, quitting the switch when his time is up etc...

      Each time he does the desired change he gets a gold star to stick on the chart. When he collects enough stars total he gets Kirby. And to maintain access to Kirby, he will need continue those practices. My hope is that they'll become habit along the way and life becomes less stressful.
    • Recommended podcast this week is The Beanpod Podcast. It's life updates from @tbeanpod on twitter (and @tbeanpod@famichiki.jp, but he doesn't seem to post there 😭 mastodon needs his Ishikawa vibes). He often includes a song he wrote himself and sings them while playing guitar. A great listen while walking the dog.
Previous 6 of 20 Next