-
The Week #88
by- We made it through an entire week without any closures or Leo's school! ๐ย We were also notified on Saturday that it will be closed all next week ๐. 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! โ
byDonโt like filling up at 5 bucks a gallon?
Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โ
Stressed by all your time in a metal box?
Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โ
Want to stop the countless wars perpetratedย by petrostates?
Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โ
Want real energy independence and security?
Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โ
Want a healthier and more vibrant local community?
Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โ
One more time for those in the back!
Fuck the Oligarchs, Get off Gas! โ -
byI 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
by- We made it through an entire week without school closing due to Covid ๐. 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.
-
๐ Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
byFossil 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.- Tagged with
- renewables
- solar
- wind
- electricity
-
๐ The Revenge of the Hot Waterย Bottle
byImagine a personal heating system that works indoors as well as outdoors, can be taken anywhere, requires little energy, and is independent of any infrastructure. It exists โ and is hundreds of yearsย old.
Reminds me I should use my yutanpo more. But truth be told, Sophie always sleeps by me feet, so I already have a Sophie-tanpo. -
Checkin to BAKE CHEESE TART
Perhaps the best soft serve Iโve had in my life. No joke. -
TIL: How to change the Docker ENTRYPOINT with Packer
byI've been working on automating setup and deployment for Tanzawa. This necessitates setting up a python 3 with all of the requisite dependencies and then starting a webserver.
Initially I tried to set the run_command, but that's executed when you build the image, not when you run the image. The command used when running the image is controlled by the ENTRYPOINT, which is Docker specific.
You can change your ENTRYPOINT by adding it to the "changes" section of your Docker configuration in your packer .pkr.hcl configuration file.source "docker" "ubuntu" { image = "python:3" commit = true changes = [ "ENTRYPOINT [\"uwsgi --emperor /etc/uwsgi/vassals --uid www-data --gid www-data\"]" ] } -
๐ How we changed our roof and cut 1.5 tons of CO2e.
bySince Oct 01, 2021 we have saved 2,300 kwh, equivalent to 720 kg CO2e (assuming a 0.3g of CO2e per Kwh of heating gas). At current trend, we would save 5,200 kwh, equivalent to 1,600 kg CO2e until Apr 15, 2022. To put that number in perspective, a French emits about 9,000 kg of CO2e per year. Not bad for a roof.
Fascinating how much easier we can cut with upgrades to the house that reduce carbon and improve comfort. Beautiful roof, too. -
Checkin to ไป็ฐ้ๆฐดๅฐ
People playing violin, guitar, and mandolin, families playing. Beautiful day out. Perfect for celebrating the emperorโs birthday.