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by JamesBoyo wanted to stay home and play legos with me, rather than go to school. Not happening today, but I bought a classic set with almost 800 pcs so we can have enough parts. Will arrive tomorrow.
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The Week #173
by James- π We took the car to Tokyo to my sister-in-law's house. On the highway I can use the automatic driving features (pro pilot), so it keeps the lane and adjusts speed based on the distance of the car in front of me and so forth. It feels like it's slightly easier to turn on than my old car.
We left with 90% charge and by the time we go home we had 50% charge remaining, which is about what I was expecting. - π³ In Tokyo we went to Kinuta park and it was a lot of fun. I really do enjoy that park because not only is it huge with a lot of trees and paths through said trees, but it also has some little shops that sell fried rice / noodles, ice cream, frisbees, and coffee. Just don't get the ice coffee, it was pretty bad.
At the park we played some badminton. I thought I was bad at badminton because it was difficult to see the white birdy flying through the sky, so we bought some pink ones that would be easier to see and nope, didn't make a difference. I've come to accept that I'm just not a naturally gifted badminton player.
Mostly at the park I was in charge of watching the kids, which meant following them about, helping them keep balance on the balance beams and so forth. I also took my camera with me, and I should have started doing this 5 years ago when I bought the thing.Kinuta park - π¦ They're making progress turning the field next to my house into housing. They've dug some big holes in the ground and laid some concrete. They also hooked up the water mains to that area, which meant they had to cut into some of my land to connect the pipes.
When I bought my house, the road directly in front of my house was too narrow to meet current code for safety for having a houses on both sides of the street. So my parcel if land is split into two chunks: the large chunk where I live and I can do whatever I want that is zoned for 2-story residential...and the 20 - 30cm strip that is an offset that is zoned as common(?) use. i.e. I own it...but I can't really do anything with it as it's an extension of the road. Visually, it looks like a normal divide in the concrete.
They're running the water pipes directly in front of that land, but to connect to the pipe meant they had to dig into that common concrete...and now there's a nice square of asphalt in my otherwise uniform concrete offset.Β - π It's been getting quite cool overnight / in the morning. Recently it's been about 12C in the morning. As the afternoons have been a lovely 23 - 24, you've really got to dress in removable layers to keep comfortable. The humidity of summer is completely gone as well.
- π We took the car to Tokyo to my sister-in-law's house. On the highway I can use the automatic driving features (pro pilot), so it keeps the lane and adjusts speed based on the distance of the car in front of me and so forth. It feels like it's slightly easier to turn on than my old car.
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Use your point and shoot camera
by JamesI've started using my point and shoot camera when I'm out with the family. Not only are the photos sharper, but I can stay focused and more in the moment.
Using my camera made me realize a difference between blogging today and blogging back in the day.
Back in the day, your photos were stuck on your camera until you got home for the day. This forced you to wait until the end of the day to blog. You could collect your thoughts and write a good post.
Today, your camera (phone) is directly connected to your blogging platform (website, mastodon, instagram etc..), there's a temptation to live-blog everything all the time. We post immediately for the likes and reactions. Who can blame us, though? It's right there bundled in with your camera.
Maybe we should do that less. Maybe I should do that less.
Give your point and shoot camera another try. You'll notice the difference in quality and connectedness.My point and shoot. G7X Mark II. Bought used. -
Checkin to Kinuta Park (η §ε ¬ε)
Playing at the park with the cousins. Lovely autumn weather. π -
Forget your phone
by JamesWhen was the last time you left your phone at home? Or in the car? And how did it make you feel?
I went to dinner the other week with my family and I forgot my phone in the car. My first instinct was to get it...but this is Japan, not America, nobody is going to smash in my window to get a cellphone, so I left it. And I'm glad I did.
Maybe it was the warm light in the restaurant contrasting with the cool and clear autumn night, but, during dinner, I found I could relax and focus on conversation. After I finished eating when there's a lull in the conversation, there was no urge to cycle between the same 3 sites to check if anything had changed since the last time I checked 3 minutes ago.
It reminded me of when my wife and I were still dating and we'd grab a meal. We had phones and they were connected to the internet, but data was slow and expensive, the screens were tiny, there weren't push notifications from corporations selling their wares.Β
You could just be.
I think I'll forget my phone more often. -
by JamesLunch Run
Slow and easy4.2km
30.2min
24.4m climbed
149.8avg bpm
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The Week #172
by James- π One for last week, I have no idea how I forgot to document this. While driving back from the station we saw an old lady walking slowly along the left side of the road...suddenly collapse. We stopped the car and checked on her. She banged her head up against the wall and was bleeding. A couple minutes later her neighbor walked by and noticed the situation and ran to get her grand-daughter...I think she'll be ok. Not sure why she suddenly collapsed or slipped, perhaps it was because she was using an umbrella as a cane...
- π Two weeks in a row I've got to Mos burger...but this time I got the Yasai burger (which is basically a burger with lettuce / tomato / a sauce that's probably thousand island dressing). Thanks for the tip, Michael! Burgers with thousand island dressing remind me of my youth in California where it seems that most burger joints served burgers with thousand island. I can forsee many Yasai burgers (with a salad) in my future.
- π On a whim I made pizza for lunch over the weekend. Usually I try to make it with an overnight dough to get a bit extra flavor in the dough. This time I just went with a quick pizza dough recipe. One of the pizzas was round and baked in one of our t-falls (on top of some oven paper). The other, I took the wooden handle off my cast iron tamago-yaki skillet, put some olive oil in the bottom, and baked it. It turned out sooo good. With the quick dough recipe,Β it's almost as easy as delivery...and certainly better for you (though I wouldn't go as far to call it health food).Β
- β°οΈ I hacked a bit on Tanzawa. Since upgrading my Macbook I've been plagued by a local-dev incompatibility between versions of the Geo-libraries and Django...or something...this is the bug ticket. But it so I can't run database migrations. Running into these issues really hampers my motivation to work on Tanzawa. Even with these issues, I managed to make it so the svgs on my runs page are no longer generated dynamically and held in ram, but generated once and stored in the db. This should hopefully fix the out of memory server crashes I've been getting sporadically.Β
- π€§ I got a cold or something. I haven't been sick in forever. Thankfully just a bit of a sore throat and a sinus headache. But it ate up my entire weekend as it spread to all members of the household. Thankfully now as I write this (Tuesday 5:30am-ish) I feel 99% recovered.
- βοΈ It's been exactly 1 year since we got solar installed. I haven't run all of the numbers but we generated almost 4 megawatt hours (4007kWh)! We sold 1 megawatt in total over the past year. In total this past year solar saved us about 10-man, which is about what I was expecting.
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Checkin to Komeda's Coffee (γ³γ‘γηη²εΊ)
A bit of hacking on Tanzawa with an Americano. -
Checkin to Jonathan's (γΈγ§γγ΅γ³)
A rare nighttime visit to Johnathanβs. Miss their fried chicken sandwiches. -
The Week #171
by James- π This week had a 3-day weekend, thanks to Sports Day. That means we also had field day at Leo's pre-school.Β Like last year I helped hang the paintings that the kids painted above the field like flags. Blue badges had two blue-badge only events: a coordinated dance without the teachers also dancing to lead and a relay race.
Leo's been practicing the dance about once a day for the past while and he nailed it during the actual performance. For his lap around field during the relay he held his own and maintained his team's position. His team held on to the lead until the very last straight away where they got passed at the last second.
Looking back over the years of field day it's clear to see his growth as a little human. His first time running during the 30 yard dash (or whatever the length was) and he stopped running as soon as he knew he wasn't going to win and walked nonchalantly. This time, he ran his hardest the entire way, though he didn't win.
During the tug-of-war his class came in second place. And I could really see him putting in all of his strength and effort into the matches. I'm a proud papa. - π§βπ³ With the 3-day weekend we spent a lot of time at the in-laws house as the cousins in Tokyo came to visit. When everybody's in town, I like to cook for the family because I enjoy cooking (just hate the cleanup), and cooking for 8 people is a lot of work in addition to watching kids. I made lasanga for dinner one night and potofu soup with ham & cheese melts for lunch the next day.
- πΆ I watched the latest Beau video, a real treat about the making of the episode of How Other Dads Dad that Beau was on. Watching Beau take his kid out for adventures like that makes me want to take Leo out on more adventures. It also made me think about how often I fail to plug-in at Leo's level and just embrace being curious about the world because we got places to be or things that need doing. Both the video and the podcast are worth your time.
- π Speaking of watching things, Leo watched the final Lord of the Rings movie...by himself! I would have liked to watch it with him (as well as finish the 2nd!)....I'm almost certain he fast forwarded through all of the "boring" parts so he could get to the fighting and final scenes.Β
- π This week had a 3-day weekend, thanks to Sports Day. That means we also had field day at Leo's pre-school.Β Like last year I helped hang the paintings that the kids painted above the field like flags. Blue badges had two blue-badge only events: a coordinated dance without the teachers also dancing to lead and a relay race.
