• This week was my first week at Octopus (well technically, Kraken Technologies). I think it went well. Co-workers are nice, too. I added a small new feature that got merged and released into production. As I've started wrapping my head around the code base, I've also been able to do code reviews and leave helpful feedback. 
  
  The only issue that I have is that since it's all new and I'm jazzed about problem we're trying to solve is it's hard for me to "turn off" after work sometimes. I'm sure that'll solve itself after I get used to it all.
  
  One thing that's impressed me is the extent to which the conventions are documented/ referred to/enforced. Without having them written down (in this case in a series of markdown documents in a git repo) and enforced via linting, it would be much harder to build a code base at such a pace (~50 deploys a day) in a consistent and maintainable manner.
  
  It's only been a week, but I know I made the right decision to join Octopus.
• As I mentioned last week, Leo started back at school. With my current scheduling wanting a few hours of overlap with the UK, I switched from pickup duties to drop-off duties a few days a week. The first two times Leo had a meltdown and cried and was clingy. The last time (on Friday), I think Leo was just tired and mostly went off to school without a big scene.
• There was a large earthquake Thursday night. It was was a 6.1. It shook our house pretty well. Nothing fell over...except some of Leo's legos. We (Yumi) did finally get some things to secure the fridge to the wall.
• We made two trips to the beach. Saturday's visit was completely unplanned. While doing our monthly "loop" around Yokohama/Fujisawa on the Subway / JR / Shonan Monorail / Enoden / Odakyu line, we arrived at Enoshima before anything opened. When I started walking to Enoshima island itself. Midway down I look over and saw a guy walking (I can only assume) his pet monkey! Was about the size of Leo. As we got closer to the water Leo asked if I bought his blue water shoes (I didn't). He promised not to cry when his feet get dirty so we went and played just the two of us for 45 minutes. He did great.
  
  The next day after being really good while we listened a solar panel sales pitch, he asked politely, like he knew it was a big ask, if all 3 of us could go to the beach. So we went to a different beach (on the other side of Enoshima)! Taking the car to the beach makes it easier to carry everything, but it's not much, if any faster than the trains. I think this is the first time we've all gone to the beach and all gotten in the water to some degree.
  
  I finally broke down and bought a 3-person tent so we can have some good shade for the next time.

Paged Out! is a free experimental (one article == one page) technical magazine about programming (especially programming tricks!), hacking, security hacking, retro computers, modern computers, electronics, demoscene, and other similar topics.

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• I had my first day at first day at Octopus Energy.  Initially I was in rushing about as I still needed to do some initial setup so I could use my muscle memory again: move the dock to the left, auto hide it, remap caps to control, swap spotlight and language input changing shortcuts ( ctrl-space <--> cmd-space), pairing my magic trackpad, and so forth.
  
  We used gather, this J-RPG-esque video conferencing website for a chat with my new co-workers. Amazing the number of takes on video chat these days. 
  
  After that I mostly spent of the day reading docs and getting the project up and running locally. There was also a global meeting with the engineering team where I got to introduce myself to everyone.
  
  Working in English left me less mentally taxed at the end of the day, something I must have stopped noticing. I'm a bit afraid that my Japanese will deteriorate. Without a doubt this is the largest project I've worked to date and I know I'm going to learn a lot.
• Covid cases returned to double digits in Tokyo for the first time since last November. Kanagawa was down to 51. Cause for optimism. Let's hope this trend continues 🙏🏻.
• Leo's return to school was delayed as a super typhoon grazed Yokohama on it's way past Japan. No damage, just a lot of rain and a bit of wind. Though my bicycle cover did manage to blow away. ( Update: Found it down at the end of the street and halfway up a hill).
• Love seeing Weekly blog posts picking up momentum on the IndieWeb.
  Saturday: Maquie publishes thingsThisWeek.
  Monday: Michael publishes Weeknotes and James publishes Weeknotes
  Tuesday: I publish The Week.
  Soon we'll have a weekly roundup for each day of the week.
• I started (re)-watching The Lone Gunmen (a 13 episode spinoff from the X-Files). I don't think I've seen it properly since it aired on TV 20(!) years ago. It's a bit corny, but pushes a good message about computing, freedom, and surveillance/privacy. In the opening scene Langly is at a launch party for the Optium 4, a new super fast CPU that (secretly) has a modem embedded in it to "upload your files to the internet, and your credit history, and your tax bracket, and your social security number".
  
  While we don't quite have chips designed / hidden to invade our privacy (yet) we are uploading everything and other data that we previously considered extremely confidential is readily accessible to advertisers – and sometimes we even supply it. Amazing that this issue was raised on prime-time TV. How the times has changed.
  
  

Urban transportation is central to the effort to slow climate change. It can’t be done by just switching to electric cars. Several cities are starting to electrify mass transit.

“It has become a reasonable position to advocate for less space for cars,” said Felix Creutzig, a transportation specialist at the Mercator Research Center in Berlin. “Ten years ago, it was not even allowed to be said. But now you can say it.”

But even after that era, as search engines started to become a reliable and powerful way to navigate the wealth of content on the growing Web, links still dominated our exploration. Following a link from a resource that was linked to by somebody you know carried the weight of a “web of trust”, and you’d quickly come to learn whose links were consistently valuable and on what subjects. They also provided a sense of community and interconnectivity that paralleled the organic, chaotic networks of acquaintances people form out in the real world.
[...]
The net result is that Internet users use fewer different websites today than they did 20 years ago, and spend most of their “Web” time in app versions of websites [..] Truly exploring the Web now requires extra effort, like exercising an underused muscle.