• Checkin to IKEA Restaurant & Cafe (IKEAใƒฌใ‚นใƒˆใƒฉใƒณ&ใ‚ซใƒ•ใ‚ง)

    in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
    Early lunch with Leo.
  • Been thinking of using Rich to make a lovely command line Micropub client. Must resist (for now).
  • Characters in your neighborhood

    When you first move somewhere new each face is a stranger. But over time you get know your neighbors and they're no longer strangers, but your neighbors. You become familiar with their routines. And some of those neighbors stand out a bit more than the others.

    Those neighbors have a particular quirk. They do something different. These neighbors, these... characters, are what make a neighborhood a neighborhood. And sometimes we're that character. But something is lost without their presence.ย  My neighborhood too, indeed, has a couple of characters worth sharing.

    One is a neighbor about 10 houses down. Like most older men in my neighborhood he's retired and I'd often see him come back from a walk when I 'm walking Sophie.

    But one day I noticed he looked to be slowly stalking a cat. Odd. And a few days later, stalking a cat... after a brief chat I realized he wasn't stalking the cat, but he "walks" his cat. The cat's not on a leash, but he kind of guides it up and down the street. My neighbor, the cat walker.

    Like many Japanese neighborhoods, mine has tori and little shrines spread throughout every so often. Each shrine has a kami. It's a holdover from when this was all farmland.ย 

    Which brings me to our next character. You can't miss him. I've seen him out running at various times. A running neighbor is nothing special, but this neighbor's route is particular. He runs from his house (I presume, I'm not sure where he lives) past each tori and to the local shrine.

    When he passes each tori he stops and bows to pay his respects. I probably wouldn't have noticed this routine or payed much attention but not for his attire. He runs in dark blue jeans and a white button down shirt.

    Who are some of the characters in your neighborhood?
  • Checkin to ใƒˆใƒซใ‚ณใƒฌใ‚นใƒˆใƒฉใƒณ ใƒใƒฃใƒณใ‚ซใƒค

    in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
    I missed this place. Glad theyโ€™ve made it through the pandemic.
  • Checkin to Shinjuku Park Tower (ๆ–ฐๅฎฟใƒ‘ใƒผใ‚ฏใ‚ฟใƒฏใƒผ)

    in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
    Trying Moderna this time. ๐Ÿ’‰๐Ÿ’‰๐Ÿ’‰
  • The Week #88

    • We made it through an entire week without any closures or Leo's school! ๐ŸŽ‰ย  We were also notified on Saturday that it will be closed all next week ๐Ÿ™ƒ. You win some you lose some, I guess. Most schools in our area aren't as cautious / having nearly as many closures as Leo's. You can complain, but it's probably the right thing to do, even if it is inconvenient.ย 
    • I did the legwork to proper organized al of my trades/dividends of my US accounts using the exchange rate of the day so I can report them the city and not be committing tax fraud. Getting it all organized into excel sheets has been a huge relief. For a while now I've know that I need to collect the data, but I never could what format or exactly what information would be required, so I just put it off.

      Thankfully there were some helpful posts on /r/JapanFinance that had a screenshot of a header of the document that they use to organize their trades, which was enough to get me over the hump. Now that I have the format decided upon, it should be much easier to update each year.

      As a bonus, because it's less than ยฅ200,000 (roughly 2k usd), I shouldn't need fuss with updating/finalizing my national returnย  and my "End of year adjustment" is enough. Probably. Will confirm when I visit the city tax department.
    • We celebrated baba's 78th(!) birthday! I can't imagine what it will be like to be 78, but I do hope it will be in the same manner as baba's birthday: with delicious sushi and all of the kids/grandkids.
    • At work I managed to get the second of two big PRs across the line for review. Two big features that will (eventually) be used worldwide. I felt a bit bad throwing not one, but two 1,000k+ line pull requests over the wall. But there's one critical difference that makes it possible: each commit matters and each commit in the PR is expected to tell part of the story of that PR.

      This means no commits like "fixed bugs" or "fixed bugs, for real this time". But rather you're expected to squash those bug fixes into the appropriate commit before asking for review. It makes for such a cleaner history.

      Sometimes you mess up and you commit things together that shouldn't be. And you have to rebase and split them apart. And it's a pain for a couple of a minutes. But thinking about your PR at that lower level helps you create higher quality code because you're forced to ask yourself "does this change make sense in isolation and how does this bit of fit into the grander scheme of this PR". And cleaning up your commits can also be incredibility therapeutic. That level of fit and finish that only the craftsperson sees and knows about.
  • Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โœŠ

    Donโ€™t like filling up at 5 bucks a gallon?

    Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โœŠ

    Stressed by all your time in a metal box?

    Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โœŠ

    Want to stop the countless wars perpetratedย  by petrostates?

    Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โœŠ

    Want real energy independence and security?

    Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โœŠ

    Want a healthier and more vibrant local community?

    Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โœŠ

    One more time for those in the back!

    Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โœŠ
  • I think I've just about got the Tanzawa uWSGI docker image about where I want it. The auto-configured server is getting close too. Getting close to being able to run Tanzawa with minimal technical skills.
  • The Week #87

    • We made it through an entire week without school closing due to Covid ๐ŸŽ‰. And indeed we are officially peaked as cases have been on the downward trend for what feels like a couple of weeks now (but you know how time is a lie in covid).
    • There was an event at Leo's pre-school where has on display some of the things they've made this year. It's fun to look at the work of students just a year or two older and see how much more capable they become.

      The coolest part was in the hall where the oldest students (due to become elementary school students in April) build interactive toys? games? with cardboard boxes collected by the families. Things I've never imagine making like castles, 3 washing machine boxes high, or a roller coaster, or a climbing wall. The biggest hit though was the hot springs, with water made of torn up newspaper. Why was it the biggest hit? Because you could take the newspaper and toss it at the teacher (and vice-versa!).
    • At Leo's birthday celebration earlier this month at school, when asked what he wanted to become when he's big he said "Shinji" (from Evagelion). When he got his haircut this week we asked the stylist to cut his hair, as requested, like Shinjis. He did a great job. They might start mistaking him for the real deal at school.
    • I signed up for the Vox Meat/Less newsletter course. I've been learning a lot and hope to start implementing the advice soon. "Vegan before 6pm" sounds doable most of the time.
    • We ran out of storage on our 200GB iCloud account. It's mostly photos. Upgrading to the next tier (2TB) would increase storage to $10/month. Since I got my AirpodPros a few months ago, I've been on a 6 month trial for Apple Music. While it annoys me sometimes, it's much better for music than cheapskating with YouTube. So I'd been mentally preparing myself for the 10/month cost to start paying for it.

      But adding on Apple Music to my current AppleTV+ /(presumably upgraded) iCloud storage would bring my total monthly cost to $25/month, for just me. For an extra $5 / month, I could get Apple One Premier, which willย  allow our entire family to access everything: AppleTV+, Apple Music, News+ (just as I had been thinking of subscribing to the New Yorker โ€“ it's on there!) and Fitness+.ย 

      Writing this all out has made me feel a bit better about signing up, but it's a big jump from $8/month total to almost 4x as much. I guess you don't become a trillion dollar company by giving this away for free.
  • ๐Ÿ”— Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

    Fossil fuels dominate the global power supply because until very recently electricity from fossil fuels was the cheapest. This has changed dramatically. In most places power from new renewables is now cheaper than new fossil fuels.
    Fascinating read.
    1. Tagged with
    2. renewables
    3. solar
    4. wind
    5. electricity
Previous 106 of 353 Next