While reviewing the draft, my friend Michael L. pointed out that while most websites are up all the time, some are not - for example, B&H Photo doesn't accept orders on Saturdays for religious reasons. So what if our software business had limited hours instead, like a physical-world store?

1. Tagged with
2. computing

• With the rapid rise in cases of covid in Japan, it's only natural that it hits close to home. Someone in Leo's pre-school got it, so his week ended early and we're back to doing the random closures of school that we did in spring.
  
  Leo had a 39 degree fever on Wednesday night, so it's possible he got it as well. We tested him, but it came back negative, so maybe it was something else.
• Europe is having a heatwave reaching temperatures not forecasted to occur until 2050. That combined with a single man (a "Democrat", no less) blocking US federal climate action has made it a rough week. We've got to get off fossil fuels...
• I made an inquiry to the guys that are installing our solar, as they also do electrification work, to see about what it would cost to get an IH hob and water heater installed at the same time as our panels. My guess is probably 5 - 6k.
• We have a trip planned for the end of the month with my sister-in-law and Leo's cousin's to a nearby resort hotel for a night. It has a nice pool and I didn't have any swimming trunks, so I bought some.
  
  I bought a new pair of Quicksilver trunks. Seeing all of the surf brands reminded me of growing up in Huntington Beach. Being a beach town in California, most everyone wore Quicksilver, Billabong, Roxy, or other surf brands. I never wore any of their clothes as it was too expensive for us (though I did have a sweet Rip Curl backpack for a couple of years). Though I haven't thought about these things in 20 years, being able buy the things we couldn't afford growing up without thinking much about it makes me feel incredibly fortunate.
• I made a new Health plugin for Tanzawa. It's most immediate goal is to provide a way for me to track my weight / and mental health without any fuss. Why not use some app on my phone? There's a couple of reasons and regular readers of my blog can guess:
  
  1. My data would be locked into some application or service that I'd have no control over.
  2. The interface would likely require more taps and swipes to record 2 small data points. ( Inputting it directly into Apple Health requires like 7 taps and heaps of scrolling)
  3. The data collected would almost certainly be sold off to big tech for additional profiling.
  4. Health can start to becoming the bones of my future Strava / health-related integrations.
  
  The most important part though is that it's not public in any way, unless I want it to be. My hope is that I'll be able to find trends and course-correct easier. Things like: "Hey, you've had 3 days in a row feeling sad. Maybe you should talk about it?", or "You're down 2kg over this time last month, great job!", or, conversely, "You're up 2kg since the last month. Are you stress eating?".
  
  I can't emphasize enough how much having a platform like Tanzawa, which allows me to quickly and easily add forms / data to a database without  thinking about design (just match what I already have), or where I'm going to host it (already hosted), or any of the faff with a new project (✅), is so empowering. It makes it possible to go from idea to running in production in a day.

Hold your children close tonight. Leave some water out for the birds. And make a plan to call your elected leaders to demand climate action, to rip out your fossil fuel furnace or to buy an e-bike. The climate crisis is getting worse, and Congress is one vote short of saving us. We’re going to have to save ourselves.

1. Tagged with
2. electrification
3. climate change
4. energy
5. politics

• The news of the week is Abe assassination. Unbelievable. I'm certain this will be dominating the news cycle for the months to come here in Japan. Such a needless loss of life.
• After a nice lull in cases, the past couple of weeks, Covid cases have been on an upward trend, and are indeed doubling week over week. I think we've finally got the new omnicron variant here taking over. For whatever reason, people seem to be less worried about it this time around...perhaps pandemic fatigue? Or maybe as hospital numbers haven't really changed?
• Leo saw his first movie in theaters. We went to tsujido to watch the latest Anpanman movie, and he did great. The theater had cushions for the kids to use that raises their seats up by about 4cm. Leo carried it to his seat and out of the theater, refusing my help. He didn't get up or talk the entire movie. Swarm tells me it's my first movie in theaters in 5 years.
• The battery on my laptop is degrading much quicker than I had anticipated it would. The battery life had felt much shorter recently and indeed, CoconutBattery says it's at 93% of it's capacity. I imagine that's normal for a better that's 2 years old, but it's only been in used for less than 18 months 150-ish cycles. People on twitter tell me that that's pretty good...I just felt like it would have been 95% or 96%?
• In Garden news, We planted a basil plant and a blueberry bush! The basil is giving off positive vibes next to the tomatoes. I have no idea how the blueberry bush is going to turn out, but having a bush makes it feel like we're eventually going to start putting plants into the ground, instead of planters, sometime. 
  
  About a month ago I tried a jalapeno from my plant and it still tasted like a bell pepper. This week I tried another one. Foolishly I took a big bite thinking "it's probably bell peppery". Boy was I wrong. The milk did nothing to soothe. My theory for the spiciness is that nacho channels his rage at the heat of summer directly into the chilis. Like solar panels, but instead of electricity we get spice.