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by JamesMy house is now putting green electrons into the gridΒ (when itβs not using or storing them) πβ‘οΈ. Kinda cloudy today, though.
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The Week #120
by James- What a week. PyCon JP was held over the weekend and Kraken had a booth. I've been help coordinate and did the final setup of the booth before day-1 and it was a lot of fun. Besides working the booth, telling people about Kraken, what we do, and that we're hiring, I also got to chat with a number of former co-workers. I also got to meet an old teammate that I'd never met in person before, though we worked together for about a year.
A co-worker and me workin the booth - On Saturday we went camping for the first time with some friends in Nishi-Tanzawa. This too was heaps of fun and I look forward to going again.Β We had a bit of bad luck with our location because it was mostly covered in rocks. I learned two very important lessons with this trip: the pegs and hammer included aren't worth the plastic they're made of and sometimes you need to muscle things together.
The river along the campsite
The plastic pegs and hammer issue was mostly (I believe) a bad luck of the draw for location. It was non-stop rocks so everywhere I'd try to put the peg I'd get rock. Eventually I found it worked better to dig a bit, clear the rocks and continue. Was it the "right" thing? Not sure, but it worked. So next on my list things to buy for camping is some proper steel pegs and a heavy / fat hammer for getting them into the ground.Β I also learned that Workman, a store that specializes in work-wear and such in Japan, also has camping gear. Coleman steel pegs were about Β₯400 each last I saw them, and they're about Β₯100 from workman. Doable. ( I just checked their site and they have some that you can screw into the ground....seems very convenient,Β but I'm not bringing my drill-gun β feels like cheating.)
The other lesson was that, when building the dome of our tents that you're not going to break it when bending the dome to get the roof in place. I think we maybe bought too much tent (a 2-dome tent), but I reckon we're going to always want to some kind of shade to hang out in when we're not sleeping, so it saves us from building 2 different things.
The mountains and river were beautiful. Definitely looking forward to a second trip, maybe in spring. - A year after starting our initial quote requests and 7 months after signing a contract, we finally got our solar and battery installed! As of this writing it's still not 100% finished β everything is installed, but I think there's still a bit of work to do around the breakers.
When we discussed the layout of the panels, they'd said that the panels would come to the very edge of the roof β and they weren't lying. This is only possible because Sharp makes non-rectangular panels. I'll make a separate post my panels when they're all hooked up and running.Panels right to the edge of the roof
- What a week. PyCon JP was held over the weekend and Kraken had a booth. I've been help coordinate and did the final setup of the booth before day-1 and it was a lot of fun. Besides working the booth, telling people about Kraken, what we do, and that we're hiring, I also got to chat with a number of former co-workers. I also got to meet an old teammate that I'd never met in person before, though we worked together for about a year.
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Checkin to Wellcamp Nishi Tanzawa (γ¦γ§γ«γγ£γ³γθ₯ΏδΈΉζ²’)
Camping with the family for the first time. ποΈ -
by JamesI originally learned about Nude Foods in this video about shopping plastic free. I wish we had one here in Yokohama. So. Much. Plastic.
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The Week #119
by James- This week was Leo's "play day" (what they call undoukai/field day in pre-school). This year I had to help set things up a bit as a "dad volunteer", but truth be told, we didn't do much, we just help hang the banners that spread across the field.
When Leo woke up that day he told Mom that he's going to do his best. And when he didn't win, he looked to us and said "I did my best!", with a look of confidence on his face. During the x meter dash he didn't get discouraged and walk halfway through like last year. Instead, he just look ahead and ran. The dance that his class performed was also really good and he nailed it.
The tug of war was a nail biter as his class was at a natural disadvantage because they ere down a man. Each of the 4 teams got two rounds. His class lost the first round. After a long struggle in the second round, it looked like they were going to loose the second round too, but then they got a second wind and tugged their way to victory and 3rd place over-all.
Being down a man also affected the relay (oldest class only) because the kid that was out was in the top grade, so another kid in had to run twices. Their teacher picked the kid in soccer club who is really fast and they came out on top!
Another week and I am privileged to say I'm super proud of Leo and his effort on sports day β even if he didn't win, he did his best and had a positive attitude throughout. - James made a release of indieweb-utils v0.3.1. I helped do some code review for it and rearranged the docs a bit. Hats off to James on his hard work on the project!
- We're releasing a thing at work next week, so I started playing with it a bit as an excuse to fiddle with Rich, a python library for "rich text and beautiful formatting in the terminal", as I've been meaning to for a while.
I like the library a lot so far. I need to fiddle more so I can figure out how to make it interactive, if it's possible. Like ncurses, but less 90's. So what did I make? I made a little program that, when given a date range will fetch your usage and do some calculations.September usage
This is all in python, so I think it might be fun to integrate into my blog somehow. Maybe a chart of monthly electric usage? Or my daily usage (for the previous day) an arrow indicating if it was up, down, or the same? What do you think?
- This week was Leo's "play day" (what they call undoukai/field day in pre-school). This year I had to help set things up a bit as a "dad volunteer", but truth be told, we didn't do much, we just help hang the banners that spread across the field.
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by JamesMade some overnight white bread. Itβs singing to me right out of the oven. ππ₯
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by JamesNot that Iβll be posting after each run, but I Β did an easy 30 minutes this morning. Fuji looked fabulous in the pink morning sky. πββοΈ
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by JamesIt's been a month since I've done any "proper" rides and even longer since I've run.Β But I like the idea of becoming one of those people that runs everyday rain or shine. I think the "secret" isn't motivation, because motivation comes and goes, but rather building a routine. Running x times per week means you can adjust to a different day and then miss it. Daily might be a better way to build the habit.
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Checkin to Single O Hamacho
Coffee and some reading before work. -
The Week #118
by James- I turned 37 years old. Last week at our friend's house we celebrated two birthdays with a larger cake, so on the actual day-of, we opted for individual slices. I took the day after off (so Leo would be in school until mid-afternoon) and we made a quick trip to Kamakura. Yumi bought me a nice new long sleeve shirt from Patagonia and I bought myself a beanie for winter. I bought some bread next door of Patagonia and it turned out to be legit sourdough, I haven't had that in years. Finally we got lunch at Oxymoron, this great curry place which has huge lines on the weekends, and not so much on a random Thursday.
- We got an email from our solar installers and they got everything, so we're ready for install on October 17th and 18th. Unfortunately it's past "prime time" for the year in terms of generating electricity, but it should still help us save quite a bit of money as the fuel adjustment costs continue to increase.
- It looks like this past weekend was the last warm weekend of the year, so we went to the beach to play in the water. Usually it's just me and Leo making unplanned trips by subway-train-monorail, but this time all 3 of us by car. The beach is so much better (as a quasi-local) without the beach houses up.
- I'm experimenting with putting my phone in monochrome to reduce its desirability. I must say, I think I like it more in monochrome as the entire experience is so much more calm. I can't say for certain if it will be a long-term change, but so far I really like it.Β
