• The Week #144

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    • This week was farming week at work. Farming is what we call maintenance and smaller improvements (as opposed to mining, which is building out big new chunks of functionality). Before farming week, each team spends some time with our energy specialists watching them and talking with them about how they use the respective parts of our product, getting ideas for things that could be improved / farmed. Then we spend farming week finishing as many of them as possible. With the entire team working on it for a week, there is a marked improvement in the software in a short period of time.
    • We started advertising around town. I haven't seen them personally yet, but this is our ad at Ikebukuro station (a major transit hub in Tokyo). Exciting times!
      It says "Now is the time to review your power company"
    • Leo's been getting too tall for his 12" bicycle he's been borrowing from his cousin for the past couple of years. The weather was nice, so we decided to walk to the bicycle store to see if there was any 16" bicycles that he liked. Of course, the first bicycle we see is a 16" Mario Kart bike – so you know we weren't leaving the store without it. Thankfully it was his size.

      He rode it home, his first time along one of the busier roads to the big park near our house. Immediately another boy, who was on a pink (presumably) hand-me-down  saw it and started to get jealous. The kid said something and Leo quipped back to him something along the lines of "well you should've bought it first". Both Yumi and I reprimanded Leo and explained why you can just say things like that. Leo has difficulty just ignoring what kids say.

      The boy kept riding fast and  cutting it really close barely missing Leo a number of times. When the kid decided to kamikaze directly towards all 3 of us is when we decided it was time to leave. I might buy some AirTags and put one inside the frame, just in case it grows legs.
    • I watched the new Tetris movie from Apple and really enjoyed it. It reminded me how much I used to play Tetris on my NES when I was younger. It's such a good game.
    • Ryuichi Sakamoto passed away. He was a fantastic musician, leader of techno-pop, and formed the group Yellow Magic Orchestra. I've listened to this version of Rydeen at the Greek Theater from 1979 more times than I can count.
    • Last but not least, the former president got indicted.  Freakin' finally.

  • The Week #143

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    • 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. 
      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 the coffee table lego 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.

  • The Week #142

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    • 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 – 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.

  • The Week #141

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    • All around good guy Japanese astronaut and  Koichi Wakata returned from a visit to the ISS. He's now (or maybe even was prior to this as well?) the Japanese person with the most time in space. Top story of the morning news was that he was coming back...but the evening news didn't seem to cover that he made it back safely? That seems like like it would still warrant top story in the evening...or at least a mention somewhere in the top 10? Nada.
    • When we visited New York in 2016, we saw Matilda at the Shubert Theatre. Since then, I wanted to watch it one more time. On the train this week I saw adverts for Matilda...odd...and it turns out they performing it as well! In Tokyo it seems to only be for a couple of months. We bought tickets for early April.

      I've shown Leo both the English version of "Naughty" and the Japanese version. He loves them. Both songs are great and an anthem to live by: If something's not right, sometimes you gotta put it right.
    • In employer related news this week, Octopus Energy announced €1 Billion Investment in French Green Energy Market and New European Tech Hub in Paris. Nothing to do with me, but I do love working for a company that's driving actual change in the energy system. Something's not right (burning dinosaur juice causing climate change) and we're trying to put it right (electrify all the things with wind, solar, and storage).
    • On Sunday we had a small birthday celebration for baaba and my nephew who's birthdays are both in March. We got to re-use some of the Mario themed birthday goods we brought back from America, which was a hit with the kids.
    • My  back / leg are almost back to normal. I reckon another visit or two and I'll be as good as new. You really don't appreciate not hurting with most steps until you've been having a slight pain with every step for a month.

  • The Week #140

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    • Spring is on its way and it couldn't have come soon enough. Especially after getting so many warm mid-20's days in Texas. My inner-Dutchman is be proud that the tulips we planted are coming up. They're my favorite and for 3 years in a row I said "I'll plant some next year" and thanks to Yumi, we actually did. I'm looking forward to seeing them bloom.
    • Leo came home from school on Tuesday early with a small fever and not feeling so well. Naturally when I go to pick him up, he's fine and bouncing around. He wasn't sick, but with spring in the air, he has allergies now. The next day we took him to the doctor and they confirmed this and gave us some allergy meds/eyedrops for Leo to drink twice a day.
    • While back from school, he played a bit more switch than usual. He somehow discovered the e-store and downloaded the demo of Kirby. I haven't played much Kirby in my time, but it's a lot of fun. It also supports two-player mode, so we can play cooperatively. I wish more games had a cooperative story mode (I used to play Quake-2 pretty often in cooperative mode back in the day).
    • With Spring means the end of school year and the start of a new. Next year Leo will be in his final year of pre-school, which means it's time to start preparing for a year from now: elementary school.

      We went and looked at randoseru, the traditional Japanese leather backpack that kids use throughout elementary school. It used to be there was only two colors: black and red. Now days there's heaps of colors, though mostly for girls. I wish I could find it to link to it, but there's an episode of Japanology Plus about school satchels that goes into the history and how they're made and is really interesting.

      Why are we looking now, a year before he needs it? Basically they're all handmade and you need to order it about a year in advance. They're also quite expensive. The bags we were looking at ranged from $500 - $1,000 dollars.

      The $1,000 backpack. One day I hope I'm adult enough to use something this nice.

      We decided to buy from was Tsuchiya Randoseru in Kamakura, where Leo's cousin bought from, so we know it's a quality product. We decided on one of the less-expensive ones in a nice olivey-green that looks great on Leo. Thankfully it's one of the few options remaining for boys 😀.
    • On Monday had a bit of a meltdown before going to pre-school. We have a car, but try to use it as little as possible. It's a 7 minute walk / 3 minute bike ride to his school and he refused to sit on his seat my bike and instead take the car. I told him no, the weather is nice are taking the bike or we could walk. He had a meltdown and in the end I carried him while he's crying and screaming the entire way to school.

      He's 5 years old now, this isn't acceptable behavior, so he lost his switch privledges for the night. Which he didn't realize until he got home from school where he promptly had another meltdown for 30 minutes. 

      There's a number of behavioral changes I'd like to address with Leo and habits I'd like him to form. Getting upset / fighting about them isn't fun and isn't solving them. You catch more bees with honey than with vinegar.

      I'm thinking about creating a chart with various changes / things that Leo needs to do. e.g. go to school without fighting / having a meltdown, putting his bento box in the kitchen when he gets home from school, going to swimming with a smile (he's not a fan of the current teacher), trying to eat new foods, quitting the switch when his time is up etc...

      Each time he does the desired change he gets a gold star to stick on the chart. When he collects enough stars total he gets Kirby. And to maintain access to Kirby, he will need continue those practices. My hope is that they'll become habit along the way and life becomes less stressful.
    • Recommended podcast this week is The Beanpod Podcast. It's life updates from @tbeanpod on twitter (and @tbeanpod@famichiki.jp, but he doesn't seem to post there 😭 mastodon needs his Ishikawa vibes). He often includes a song he wrote himself and sings them while playing guitar. A great listen while walking the dog.

  • The Week #139

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    • I submitted my resignation...to the employer of record we've been using in Japan as the Japanese Kraken Tech legal entity is ready for employees. Day-to-day, in practice nothing changes for me, except a different company is making my salary deposit each month and I'll get a different insurance card. But it will be nice to officially/legally be an employee of the company I've been working at for the past (almost) 18 months.
    • I went for my annual health check. I probably mention this every year, but I am really like the process itself. Basically over the course of about 45 minutes I visit a bunch of stations, each with multiple nurses ready to process the next person in the queue. They're all tests that you're just not going to do, but give you a good baseline of your health (stool, urine, blood, hearing, vision, heart rhythm, and chest x-ray). You can even add extras if you have different concerns that need monitoring. At the end you sit with a doctor who shows you your results and talks through them and compares them with last year.

      This year my blood pressure was down from just above the limit (2 years running!) to completely normal. Also I didn't get hit with slightly elevated cholesterol numbers, either, which makes me happy. The only downer was, though surprising, was that I gained a kilo, putting me at 76.0.
    • Perhaps related I went from a strong December / January running to a grand total of 1 time in February. I took my running stuff with me to the US, but it didn't feel safe to run – too many big cars driving by at 60kmh and no real path. Then with Jet lag and the back tweak...let's aim for getting back into the groove next month. I need to make more badges.
    • I finished off my prep for filing my Japanese taxes, I think. Most of it is just documenting my foreign account transactions and the exchange rate of that day so I can report it yen. I always put it off because I don't like working with excel, especially in my free time, but when I'm done I always like looking at the results with everything nice and neat.

  • The Week #138

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    • We flew back to Japan and we're all happy to be home. By day 10 in America, we had spent the entire time going full-throttle meeting people, going places, and doing things and we were all tired and ready to get back into our regular routine again.
    • Before the flight I bought the extra Mario Kart levels to give us something new to do on the plane. I really like this "expansion pack" model with Mario Kart. For ¥2,500 we get new 48 new courses to play and they're delivered over the next year or so. Half the price of a new game and we regularly get new content without needing to buy new games.
    • The flight was mostly uneventful. The main mishap was that despite me updating my reservation via the app to include kids meals and Asian Vegetarian meals for the adults, none of them got saved. And as we were coming America, this means there's no rice dishes and nothing that Leo would eat. He survived on half of the bagel he didn't eat for his breakfast and some random bread / butter we could scrounge up.

      What was annoying was that the staff didn't apologize for their system messing up and instead told me to check with the ground staff next time. I shouldn't need to do that? And I've asked this before, but why aren't children's reservations set to automatically include a kids meal?
    • Once we landed in Japan everyone exhausted. But since this is a fully-developed country (and Japan at that) we were able to send our luggage to our house via kuroneko (Japanese fedex), to be delivered the next morning and enjoy a nice rail trip on the Narita Express to Totsuka. Leo ate the food he missed most, a salmon onigiri before falling asleep.

      Once in Totsuka, we took a taxi home, brushed our teeth, and collapsed in bed – almost exactly 24 hours after we started the journey from the hotel.
    • And speaking of Salmon Onigiri, Leo missed them so much he had them the next day (Sunday) for breakfast as well. And some for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on Monday. Onigiri is Leo's life force.
    • I subscribed to a new blog brr.fyi. It is chronicling life in Antarctica through the winter. I've only read a few posts so far, but it's well written and is quite thought provoking – seeing what it takes to keep humans alive in such harsh conditions.

  • The Week #137

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    • Leo turned 5 years old. We had a birthday party a couple days early with the entire family at Coffee Grounds in Buda, Texas, just south of Austin. This was the first time we've had the entire family (all of my brothers and their kids) together in the same room in at least 6 years and it probably won't happen again for a very long time.

      The day itself, Leo got a bit overwhelmed with all of the people and wasn't feeling very well. He slept half of the afternoon and we woke him when it was time for cake – you can't cut the cake when the main person isn't in there.
      Leo's homemade box cake

      The entire party was Mario themed and we had a lot of Mario decorations up in the house.
      Licensed goods? Who knows.

      Presents wise Leo scored – 5 years worth of presents. He got Lego Luigi, Lego Mario, Lego Luigi's Mansion, a Tanuki suit, and more. I have no idea how we're going to get all of it back to Japan.
    • We went to the Children's museum with my mom and we had a lot of fun. They had this pneumatic tube  display where you could put in a ball and it would flow through the airways and come out of a given location. It had two valves you could adjust that would change the flow of the air and hence the location it would pop out at. I think we probably spent 30 minutes on that one display.
    • We hung out with my younger brother Jacob at The Domain. The domain is privately-owned high density residential/retail/office area in Austin. Effectively it's like the owner of a mall bought a huge chunk of land and started playing sim-city, trying to recreate what would normally occur "naturally". It was trying to become a "second downtown". When we lived in Austin, a decade ago now, we lived in phase one. I'm amazed about how much it's changed – it's gotten so much bigger.  There's more to do.

      Mostly we sat and drank a cola at this burger place because they had a playscape inside their shop.  This is the rub, because it's (the domain) are all privately owned, there are no parks or other such amenities you'd expect if it was a regular neighborhood. Instead, everyone's collecting rent and everything costs money. But, at least it's (mostly) walkable.
    • We also went to San Marcos, a bit further south of Austin, where Yumi and I (and Sophie🐶) met. The entire college campus area has been re-developed and I'm not a huge fan. The new shiny buildings with heaps of different restaurants are nice, but it's lost the charm and character of yore. I should've known it was going to happen when our little hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint, El Charro (which was next to a used tire store), was replaced with some place selling fancy mixed cocktails. College towns should be a bit dirty, no?

      Valentino's, the pizza place in the square is a good example. "In the old days" the store was classic 80's / 90's pizzeria. Walk in and it's a bit dark, there's some arcade games, and a random selection of hair bands are playing. When you placed your order you could feel a little bit of disdain and instead of a number you get a playing card. That's all gone. Now it's bright and airy. There's a proper bar, not just "pint or pitcher" for beer. And full wait staff. It feels wrong.

      Making dough in the front, not back in the kitchen.


      But, most critically, the pizza – the pizza hasn't changed. They still make the dough in house and it still crisps up just so. Maybe not all change is bad.

  • The Week #136

    • We traveled to Texas. This was Leo's first flight and his first time to America. It's also my first time visiting the US in 6 years, since we moved back to Japan. Leo did good on the flight. When the flight attendant came about, Leo was able to say he wanted chicken. Ordering stuff as a kid can be scary and he did great.
    • It's been good coming back and visiting America. I missed seeing such a large skies like you see in Texas. Going outside this time of year is great: it's about 23 during the day and there's no mosquitos. This same area during summer though is not as great as it's 40+ and you get eaten alive by the mossies.
      Water front views

      We've been able to introduce Leo to all of his cousins and all of his uncles . Mission accomplished.
    •  Driving everywhere is a drag, though. Not because I'm not a fan of driving, but just how inefficient (resources and time). i.e. getting everybody loaded up into the car just to literally drive across the street because there's no other way.
    • Visiting Space Center Houston with Leo was a lot of fun. We did the red tour, which takes you to the ISS training facility and to rocket park where they have a Saturn V rocket. The other tour takes you to Mission Control and rocket park and way back they were a single 3-stop tour.
      Saturn V Rocket

      Over the years I've done this tour at least a half-dozen times. As I've gotten older visiting the campus inspires me. There's just something about visiting the inside of the large campus, and people doing research, each advancing human knowledge in their own respective fields that is inspiring. I imagine there's an alternate timeline where I also worked inside those buildings. 
    • Afterwards we visited my wife's old workplace and Leo got to meet Akihiko Hoshide, one of the Japanese astronauts. Leo was happy to meet him because he's seen him on TV in Pitogora Switch (youtube). I was surprised that Leo didn't get shy and try to hide behind me. In fact he (Leo) talked quite a bit, mostly about Mario though.

  • The Week #135

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    • Leo had a badge test at swimming. Last time he had a test, we missed half of the lessons for various reasons and he failed. He's been trying really hard since then. During practice directly before the test Eno-chan, the teacher, was praising him...and he passed! He's now an official owner of a a Jellyfish badge 🎉. With this we could move him from the weekend class to weekdays class, so we'll now have 1 weekend day free, again.
    • I had my first "viral toot" on Mastodon. It was about Ivory, the mastodon client from Tapbots, and also how I like how on this version of social media, we give cash to the people hosting and making the tools instead of data-mining privacy-invading advertising driven platforms.
    • I put de-Turboing (and HTMXifing) the admin of Tanzawa on hold for a while. It's turning out to be a bigger chunk of work that doesn't lend itself to my usual 30 minutes -> hour in the mornings here and there development style. I also wanted to build make other tweaks to my blog that feel more important (recent photos on the homepage (✅), plugins need some re-working in a fly.io world, generating blogs from runs, better indieweb (or activity pub?) support, etc...).
    • I generated my first cumulative megawatt hour (1,000 kWh) with my solar panels. I'm really looking forward to spring and summer when I can generate them at a much quicker rate.
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