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Checkin to Cycle Base Asahi (γ΅γ€γ―γ«γγΌγΉγγγ²)
New bike day. Mario kart bikes! -
by JamesThis post by Travis about his first time abroad in Japan 20 years ago really resonates with me. It reminds me so much of mine 16 years ago I thought I'd share a few photos from my Panasonic DMC-FX01.
Life along the Ikegami-line in Tokyo was fun Tokyo Tower Asakusa shopping arcade, I think. The ramen stand where I had my first bowl of ramen in Kurume, Fukuoka -
The Week #143
by James- The tulips we planted a couple of months ago are in early-bloom. I'm loving the splash of color to the front of the house. Leo's been getting into it as well, wanting to check them every morning.
- It's was rainy this past weekend, which threatens all of the cherry blossoms and (probably) killing the hanami-season. Writing this made me realize I haven't posted any photos of the sakura this year.Β
Cherry blossom tree near my house. You can see the pedals on the ground from the rain. - I went out for beer/lunch with some old co-workers/friends to a place called Mots Beer Party. The venue was small with just enough seating for 6 people along a bar. The owner cooks when you place the order directly in front of you and as it is space constrained, was interesting to see how he prepared all of the dishes. There was no gas range, but he did have two portable IH hobs side-by-side acting as a range (no venting / fan necessary!) One technique I think I'm going to borrow from him was using a camping hot-sandwich maker to cook veg / meat. Makes it easy to turn and gives nice grill marks without the grill.
- We rearranged the downstairs and I think we've got a winning layout. The layout's been a bit awkward since we got that 3-person sofa last autumn(?) as we never could keep the sofas facing each other (you want to face the TV when you're watching it / playing games, so we'd turn the small sofa 90 degrees). Also, inevitably the large sofa would slide back a few cm and make rub against the sliding door to enter the LDK.
We moved the TV back off of the tatami into it's original position, directly across from the large sofa. Then, we pulled the large sofa forward about 40 - 50cm to keep it off the wall and allow access to the plugs behind it. This surprising makes it feel more like a proper room. Lastly, we moved the small sofa on to the tatami, parallel with the tv, along with thecoffee tablelego table.
This created three different zones: 1, unchanged, with the dining table where we eat, 2, for relaxing and watching TV (with the bigger sofa), and 3, for Leo to play with his legos. The 3rd zone will also make a great reading area as well because there's good light in that corner of the house and it's relaxing in a showa kind of way on the tatami. When it's finished and looks presentable, I'll share a photo. - There's still some Twitter users that I'd like to follow but I don't want to login to Twitter to just for that. There's a great site called bird.makeup that essentially mirrors their tweets so you can follow them from Mastodon (likes and such don't propagate, which is fine). All you do is put their twitter handle @bird.makeup into the search and they show up like a regular account.
- My jam this week has been Japanese Breakfast. I really like this live recording from KEXP. I wonder if there's a Japanese equivalent of Japanese breakfast? American Asa-gohan? But seriously, wouldn't mind finding Japanese indie bands.
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by JamesSometimes I think I should run Linux and WindowMaker or some such on my aging Macbook. Get rid of the cloud stuff that "simplifies" things but really just adds more complexity. But also, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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Wonderful spring weather. Perfect for eating lunch outside.
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The Week #142
by James- One of the "mistakes" we made when buying our house in order to save some money, was to not get kitchen cabinets installed (everything is an "option" when buying a pre-built house). Instead we opted to re-use the cabinet we were using from our apartment and get a longer cabinet to put next to it for storage. It works and holds our dishes, but it's not enough. Because there's no storage on the walls, things tend to overflow.
I started researching getting some proper cabinets installed. So far I've mostly been looking at IKEA as the quality / pricing seems to be about right. They also have some software that will let you plan it out yourself (before visiting the stores proper). It's nothing we'll be doing in the next month or two, but perhaps later this year. - Leo's officially no longer a pink badge and in a couple of weeks he'll be a blue badge, the top class. Which also means: spring break started. We were planning to visit the aquarium a couple of weeks ago, but we didn't, so we went this week instead. It was packed. The pandemic is/was the worst, but it was nice how empty these kind of places were before.
After the aquarium we visited our favorite burger joint and then went to the beach and threw rocks into the ocean for an hour. It was a lot of fun. Also, Leo walked a lot more than he used to (though there was still plenty of time up on my shoulders β I gotta get it in while I still can). - Japan lived up to its robotification cred abroad when I went out to dinner at the local Jonathan's. For a while now ordering at Jonathan's is done via a tablet. ( Sidebar: A tablet whose camera turns on afterwards. I always put the menu in front of it we're done to block its view, but I reckon the mics are still on.). When our food came this human sized cat robot with 4 slots rolled up to our table with our food with blue flashing lights where our food was. After we unload it, it went back to the kitchen for its next load.
There might be a robot cat delivering your food
Using this robot and tablet ordering, they probably had about half of the staff in the front of the house as they usually would. In-fact, the only time we had to interact with a human was: when they picked up dirty dishes, delivery of dessert (I reckon ice cream needs to go to tables express), and to pay. But even paying, there was a self-checkout. As an introvert, this is a change I can get behind. - Greg Jackson, the CEO of Octopus, was interviewed at SXSW. I'm happy that full interview is up on YouTube, Working at Octopus, I know what we do / how it all fits together in terms of the energy transition. But there's always bits and bobs I didn't know
For instance, on-shore wind turbines must be painted white, so they blend in with the sky and such. Octopus has a "fan-club" (because wind turbines are effectively big fans) where people who live within a certain distance from an Octopus wind-turbine can get 20 - 50% off their electric when it's windy / really windy. To communicate this locally customers that the energy is cheap, they light them up green (for a period I reckon?), which I thought was pretty clever. - Media wise - I've been listening to Get On by Anuqram, not quite on repeat, but close enough. Ted Lasso S3 (the final season) came back and it's as good as ever. I also started watching Shrinking with Jason Segel and Harrison Ford. It's written (in part) by Roy fuckin' Kent and it's brilliant.
- One of the "mistakes" we made when buying our house in order to save some money, was to not get kitchen cabinets installed (everything is an "option" when buying a pre-built house). Instead we opted to re-use the cabinet we were using from our apartment and get a longer cabinet to put next to it for storage. It works and holds our dishes, but it's not enough. Because there's no storage on the walls, things tend to overflow.
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Checkin to Katase Higashihama Beach (ηη¬ζ±ζ΅ζ΅·ζ°΄ζ΅΄ε ΄)
Watching the wind surfers do their thing. ππ»ββοΈ -
Checkin to Dolphin Show Stadium (γ€γ«γ«γ·γ§γΌγΉγΏγΈγ’γ )
Watching the dolphin show. π¬ -
by JamesMaking some overnight white bread. Going to cut the dough in two and bake half in the morning and let the other half chill in the fridge a couple days and sour up a bit.
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Capturing magic
by JamesWhen I first started blogging again and then building Tanzawa (the custom CMS that powers my site) a couple years ago, I forwent adding comments. People (who knew) could comment on my blog using webmentions from their own blog, or if I was backfeeding them from a silo using brid.gy.
My thinking at the time was that people aren't going to read my blog anyways, those that do probably have their own IndieWeb blogs, and backfeeding will take care of the remainder. And I didn't want to deal with spam. I'm not sure all of that's true. ( I still don't want to deal with spam.)
I've been searching the magic that was blogging ~20 years ago. You'd write posts on your site and somehow, through the magic of the internet, people would find it and they'd leave a comment. Often their message included a link to their own site (as a field in the form, not in the comment β that'd just be spam). And you'd visit their site and leave a comment. And before you knew it, you had a new internet buddy in who knows where. I still keep in contact with some people I met this way (though via messaging apps).
The core enabler of this magic was that there was a no-fuss way to interact directly with the author of the blog you were reading. It didn't even require an account most of the time. Communities could form on any given site because of this one feature.Β
Maybe it's time I look into adding comments on the blog. I might capture a bit of magic.
