• The Week #105

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    •  After finishing Digital Minimalism, I've been skimming it again to write some notes, internalize the lessons, and start creating a plan to introduce the ideas properly into my life. It made me realize there are a few areas where I believe something or want to do something, but I'm not: consistently reducing meat intake, hitting my running goals, reducing my scroll time...and it was kind of depressing.

      "Prioritize demanding activity rather than passive consumption", it sounds easy but it's hard. Finding something to fill those gaps (hours per day!) that isn't just fiddling on my computer is difficult. It's so much easier to just sit and scroll instead of going for a run, or fiddling in the garden. Easier still when it's 35 degrees outside so it's miserable.

      One of the suggestions is to make the activities both scheduled and social, so it fulfills more of our social needs as humans. I'm having trouble finding these types of groups/clubs at a quick search...but it would be nice to find a group so I can create more connections in my local community.
    • On the way to the office on Friday and cousin facetimed me while I was on the train. Rather than just texting him back and continuing the conversation via Messages (low-bandwidth), I decided to apply some of the lessons in Digital Minimalism and you know...talk to people (high-bandwidth)...with my voice (ugh, I know, right?) . We Facetimed while I was walking to the office. I'm not usually one to talk on the video phone in public, but it was a lot of fun to catch up. A good way to spend 10 minutes in the roasting summer heat.
    • After work on Friday we had a welcome party for members from the UK who have been waiting to get into Japan for the past 18 months. We went to Vector brewing in Shinjuku. 3 hours all you can drink craft beer + 8? different dishes. The star was wonderful beer butt chicken (DDG it) which really good. I felt like there was too much meat overall . i.e. The only dish without any meat was the pickled veg at the start, even the salad had roast beef or the potato salad was mixed with tuna. Either way, the food was delicious, beer even better, and company even better still. Can't complain.
    • I've long been against getting an internet connected speaker in my house. Something about having an internet connected mic in my house just seems too ripe for abuse. Yes, my watch, phone, and computer are all technically similar, but the speakers are the only ones that are explicitly designed internet connected mics, not just a by-product of software.

      Which is to say, we decided to get a HomePod Mini. My hope is that we can use it for playing music from Apple Music without turning on the TV. Less "Baby bus" and more Jack Johnson, Ryan Adams, David Bowie. Should've had this revelation a week ago, as apparently Apple's adjusted all prices up ~25% in Japan to account for the weak yen 🤣😭.
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    Trees cooling things down.


    This is my favorite street in my neighborhood.  Lovely trees on both sides make it walkable in this heat wave. Juxtaposed with the cars burning fossil fuel that are making the problem worse.

  • Checkin to Vector Beer

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    in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
    Welcome party. Vector brewing MilkShake IPA 🍺

  • Checkin to Doutor Coffee Shop (ドトールコーヒーショップ)

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    in Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
    My usual Tully’s started opening at 10 instead of 7am.

  • The Week #104

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    • This post marks 2 years of doing "The Week" 🎉.  As things "open up" (they were never closed) and life returns to normal, I'm finding it difficult to remember to write these posts. But once I do sit down and write them, I am grateful I took some time to reflect on the week.
    • The Rainy season ended this week in Tokyo – 2 - 3 weeks early than it should've and we didn't even get much rain (I feel). It's been hitting over 35C in Yokohama, which is mid-summer temperatures. Hopefully we'll get some good summer rains to help cool things down. As a kid, I used to like summer, but any more I mostly dread it. How much hotter is it going to be this year because we continue to dig stuff out of the ground and burn it?
    • America continues its backwards slide with Roe vs Wade being overturned. We all knew it was coming after the leak, but it's still shocking and disappointing. The Democrat's response to this has also been fairly tone-deaf...reading a poem? Singing "God Bless America"?...and tell us to effectively vote harder? We did. We do. Give is details for how you're going to codify this into law. We can't rely on this court, full of people who lied under oath to secure their seat, to make impartial decisions. The only politician that I see communicating effectively about this is AOC.
    • I played a bit with Fly.io in an attempt to get Tanzawa deployable without running your own server. I couldn't get it running as I kept getting "Command not found" errors, when fly ran the container. This is confusing as the command exists when I run the container locally...another one for next week, perhaps.
    • I found this song by CHOUJI - 奮闘中 (funtou-chu (hard at work)) and I really like it. I used to listen to a lot of J-hiphop/J-reggae when I was in college. I should do more of that. 

  • Checkin to Nanosh

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    in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
    Green tea something or another.
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    I keep thinking about old projects in the Gnome2 days, when I used desktop Linux and how much fun desktop computing used to be. Everything was open – either by choice via open standards or by force e.g. reverse engineering messenger clients, which then allowed the data to be local and open. You to do cool things like Beagle (and really Nat's Dashboard app before that).

    Dashboard (right) pickuped the context of your current activity and showed you handy information.

    These days everything seems to be closed and or web-based. Your data is only accessible via apis that you don't control. And with the rise of mobile, we've grown to expect our data to be accessible everywhere...but really, how many times have you been hard press because you couldn't access a random file at a random place at a random time?

    Has this expectation has does us more harm than good?

    Often these services sell themselves as a way to simplify. Simply put all of your data into a magic directory and it will be made available everywhere. But how many people actually manage to do this? On your Mac, a lot of apps automatically save data for you, and chances are it's not in one of those magic directories.

    So now you're left with a false sense of security and an increased complexity of trying to remember where your files are. Not to mention they could be deleted at anytime by someone/algorithm in a random organization e.g. Dropbox/Google closing your accounts.

    Maybe it's just nostalgia and rose tinted glasses...but maybe it's not.

  • The Week #103

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    • Regular readers of this blog know that despite me owning a car,  I'm not a fan of them. As such, I try to use my car as little as possible. 

      Each time I drive it, I know I'm making climate change worse and I add another car to the streets, which make the streets, no matter how careful I drive, a more hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists. I sometimes wonder if I had an EV instead of a fossil fuel burning car that I'd be more willing to use my car (but this would result in a worse environment for not-cars (and arguably cars, too...)).

      But I digress. This week I filled up my car with gas. The last time I did this was February 12th of this year. 4.5 months ago. I'm getting awfully close territory of the gasoline in my car going bad. Makes me happy but also a bit sad (such a waste of money buying a car I don't use...which also makes it difficult to argue to replace it with something electric).
    • Leo's swimming class this week had some survival swimming training this week. Survival in the sense of "what happens when you fall in the water wearing your clothes", so they don't panic. They also practiced using improvised floating devices, in our case an empty 2L pet bottle.
    • Sunday was Father's Day. We went out to Minatomirai in Yokohama and just hung about. Leo played in the water features in front of the art museum and MarkIs. There's signs that say not to, but everyone does it. I think it's just a liability thing. I saw a number of kids slip and fall, a few hit their head and after a cry get back at it. Leo was wearing water so he didn't have any issues with slippage.

      We also rode a few rides at the Cosomo World across from Queen's east. I've never seen / ridden a merry-go-round with 2 stories on it. The ride was quite short (only 2 minutes?), but it takes around 5 minutes for the staff to get everybody on / temperature checked etc... All good fun.
    • Nacho, my jalapeño plant, is absolutely thriving. Really looking forward to having fresh jalapeños. Depending on the number and when they're ready, I may also make some jalapeño poppers (cream cheese stuffed jalapeños) on the grill (my mom sent me a stand used for grilling them shaped like an armadillo years ago in shipment of stuff, thinking it was mine (it wasn't). That stand is currently keeping my compost elevated off the ground).
      Jalapeõs!

  • Checkin to コスモワールド メリーゴーランド

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    in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
    Merry-go-rounding in his Tube shirt.

  • Checkin to 美術の広場 噴水

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    in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
    The signs say to not play here, but there’s no way you have fountains like this and _not_ have kids playing.
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