{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "Michael Camilleri", "home_page_url": "https://updates.inqk.net/", "feed_url": "https://updates.inqk.net/feed.json", "description": "I live in Tokyo. I'm from Sydney. I speak in declarative sentences. Sometimes.", "icon": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg", "expired": false, "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "items": [ { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1710806760.html", "title": "Weeknotes #218", "content_text": "Last week, I meant to write about a picture book I’ve been trying to track down for ages. Australia has a number of well-regarded children’s illustrated books but I’ve always been sad not to see mention of a book about sunburn that I remembered reading as a child. The problem was that while I could still remember some of the illustrations, I had no such luck trying to rustle up the title or the author from my memory. Now that I’m paying (at least for the moment) to access the fancier versions of ChatGPT and Google Gemini, I hoped this might be something with which they’d be able to assist. No such luck. Although they came up with a handful of answers, none were remotely close. I feel ashamed to say that I neglected all this time to ask my sister, a librarian. When I did finally reach out to her, it was after asking my mother and my grandfather to no avail. To make the insult all the worse, she was able to tell me the answer within an hour. So much for my vaunted Google-fu. The book is Don’t Get Burnt! by Jack Bedson and Peter Gouldthorpe.Unfortunately, the book is clearly not remembered by many as fondly as by me and it is now out of print. I did spend the frankly quite ridiculous sum of $72.70 (with postage) to order it from eBay. It arrived at my parents and while it’s not in mint condition, I was relieved to see that it is in very good nick. I don’t know if any of the kids will respond to it the way that I did but Mum will bring it over on her next visit and we’ll see.Rowan was asking about going to the zoo for some reason and so I took him and John to Ueno Zoo on Sunday. In classic me fashion, I didn’t bother to investigate how much the tickets were in advance and I was pleasantly shocked to discover on lining up that I had to pay only ¥600 and John and Rowan were free! I still grouse about the $132.84 that I spent on the tickets the last time we visited Taronga Zoo. While Taronga is unquestionably a nicer park, I couldn’t say the delta is ten-fold.‘Grouse’ is one of those words I actively avoided saying as a child growing up in rural New South Wales. I can’t remember now if the most common sense in which it was used was grumble or as an indication of excellence.There’s a bug (if that’s the right word) in Apple Music (née iTunes) where if you have an album in your library with metadata that doesn’t match Apple’s metadata, it will get very confused when you view it and show things like the same song twice. The only solution I’ve found to this is to delete the album from your library, wait some indeterminate amount of time and then add it back. If you’ve waited long enough, the album will show up correctly; if you’ve haven’t, it won’t and you have to go through the same song and dance again. Other people must have this problem but I’ve rarely seen anyone mention it so maybe it’s just me.It might only be me (to a first approximation) because I spent an embarrassing amount of time in the 2000s adding metadata to my music and I can only imagine a very few people doing this. It really compounds the frustration that the ‘solution’ is to delete the problematic album (thereby losing all the work). It also makes me wonder what I could have achieved if I’d spent this time more (as it turns out) productively. Are there similar mistakes I’m making now? Time I’m spending on projects that will add little benefit in the long run?Linking to two covers in a row isn’t very adventurous but I’ve got no choice. Abigail Lapell’s 2023 cover of ‘Blinding Lights’ (Apple Music) has been on so consistently that it would be disingenuous to link to anything else this week.", "content_html": "
Last week, I meant to write about a picture book I’ve been trying to track down for ages. Australia has a number of well-regarded children’s illustrated books but I’ve always been sad not to see mention of a book about sunburn that I remembered reading as a child. The problem was that while I could still remember some of the illustrations, I had no such luck trying to rustle up the title or the author from my memory. Now that I’m paying (at least for the moment) to access the fancier versions of ChatGPT and Google Gemini, I hoped this might be something with which they’d be able to assist. No such luck. Although they came up with a handful of answers, none were remotely close. I feel ashamed to say that I neglected all this time to ask my sister, a librarian. When I did finally reach out to her, it was after asking my mother and my grandfather to no avail. To make the insult all the worse, she was able to tell me the answer within an hour. So much for my vaunted Google-fu. The book is Don’t Get Burnt! by Jack Bedson and Peter Gouldthorpe.
Unfortunately, the book is clearly not remembered by many as fondly as by me and it is now out of print. I did spend the frankly quite ridiculous sum of $72.70 (with postage) to order it from eBay. It arrived at my parents and while it’s not in mint condition, I was relieved to see that it is in very good nick. I don’t know if any of the kids will respond to it the way that I did but Mum will bring it over on her next visit and we’ll see.
Rowan was asking about going to the zoo for some reason and so I took him and John to Ueno Zoo on Sunday. In classic me fashion, I didn’t bother to investigate how much the tickets were in advance and I was pleasantly shocked to discover on lining up that I had to pay only ¥600 and John and Rowan were free! I still grouse about the $132.84 that I spent on the tickets the last time we visited Taronga Zoo. While Taronga is unquestionably a nicer park, I couldn’t say the delta is ten-fold.
‘Grouse’ is one of those words I actively avoided saying as a child growing up in rural New South Wales. I can’t remember now if the most common sense in which it was used was grumble or as an indication of excellence.
There’s a bug (if that’s the right word) in Apple Music (née iTunes) where if you have an album in your library with metadata that doesn’t match Apple’s metadata, it will get very confused when you view it and show things like the same song twice. The only solution I’ve found to this is to delete the album from your library, wait some indeterminate amount of time and then add it back. If you’ve waited long enough, the album will show up correctly; if you’ve haven’t, it won’t and you have to go through the same song and dance again. Other people must have this problem but I’ve rarely seen anyone mention it so maybe it’s just me.
It might only be me (to a first approximation) because I spent an embarrassing amount of time in the 2000s adding metadata to my music and I can only imagine a very few people doing this. It really compounds the frustration that the ‘solution’ is to delete the problematic album (thereby losing all the work). It also makes me wonder what I could have achieved if I’d spent this time more (as it turns out) productively. Are there similar mistakes I’m making now? Time I’m spending on projects that will add little benefit in the long run?
Linking to two covers in a row isn’t very adventurous but I’ve got no choice. Abigail Lapell’s 2023 cover of ‘Blinding Lights’ (Apple Music) has been on so consistently that it would be disingenuous to link to anything else this week.
After upgrading to iOS 17.4, Siri (which I have set to Australian English) will now switch to Japanese to read out iMessages that are in Japanese. This is really cool but seemingly restricted to iMessage for some reason. I really hope this works in all apps as part of iOS 18.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1710288420.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-03-13T09:07:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-03-13T09:07:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1710251640.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this about Tenet but one way you could invert Daniel Craig’s James Bond movies would be to make a spy film about a black, American secret agent whose sidekick is a white, British secret agent.", "content_html": "I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this about Tenet but one way you could invert Daniel Craig’s James Bond movies would be to make a spy film about a black, American secret agent whose sidekick is a white, British secret agent.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1710251640.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-03-12T22:54:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-03-12T22:54:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1710218460.html", "title": "Weeknotes #217", "content_text": "I’m sick. It feels like the kids have rotated through a variety of colds over the past couple of weeks and while I’d hoped my immune system would provide sufficient protection, my luck has run out. So far, it’s just been a head cold and with any luck my body will fight it off successfully over the next couple of days.The diet is not going well. I had hoped that the ‘AI’ assistance in FoodNoms would allow me to avoid laboriously looking up the details of the food I’m eating but it hasn’t really worked out that way. I still want to track everything accurately but doing that is such a pain that I find myself writing down less and less of what I’m eating. Of course, I realise that’s not the real issue: I want to eat the foods I like (which are often unhealthy) and I don’t have the willpower to stop myself a lot of the time.On the plus side, the Japanese study has gone better. I don’t know if I’m improving all that much but I remain hopeful that the sheer consistency of it will produce something over the next few months. Sadly, the focus on Japanese has come at the expense of programming. I was working on a JavaScript project but I haven’t opened the Safari Tab Group I set aside for it in more than two weeks.The thought behind the renewed focus on Japanese was that I’m not happy with the ‘product’ of the attention I’ve spent over the past few years. This is admittedly an evergreen theme for me. Well, it’s on the basis of similar logic that I decided to move the Ivory and Bluesky apps off my primary Home Screen and impose more discipline on my web browsing. Anything I come across that I want to read, I add to Safari’s Reading List. Throughout the week, I read when I feel like it and then every Monday morning, I delete everything and start fresh. It’s admittedly a bit indirect but the goal is to actually increase the amount of time I spend reading books. The thought if that if reading on the web is more deliberate, it’ll help me open the Kindle app instead.It isn’t all self-improvement. I played a little more of Jedi: Fallen Order with John and finally have made it off Kashyyyk. The game only started crashing there so hopefully that means the end of that.I started using Signal now that they’ve finally added usernames. You do still have a phone number associated with your account (which I don’t like) but you can at least hide it from the people with which you communicate. Mostly this has been to Eugenia’s benefit. Apparently, I was only the iMessage user with which she was communicating regularly.Apple has introduced a new playlist called ‘Heavy Rotation’ (MacRumors). When I checked in with Brandon about it, he wasn’t impressed but I wonder if that not because of ‘how’ he listens to music. I think that tends to be more album-oriented than not and in my brief experience with the playlist it doesn’t work well if you do that.I will say that the playlist does seem to be updating inconsistently. Supposedly it refreshes every 24 hours but I’ve seen longer delays than that and I’ve also seen songs I know I’ve listened to repeatedly over the past few days not appear for a while. Like Boyce Avenue’s cover of ‘Radioactive’ (Apple Music).", "content_html": "I’m sick. It feels like the kids have rotated through a variety of colds over the past couple of weeks and while I’d hoped my immune system would provide sufficient protection, my luck has run out. So far, it’s just been a head cold and with any luck my body will fight it off successfully over the next couple of days.
The diet is not going well. I had hoped that the ‘AI’ assistance in FoodNoms would allow me to avoid laboriously looking up the details of the food I’m eating but it hasn’t really worked out that way. I still want to track everything accurately but doing that is such a pain that I find myself writing down less and less of what I’m eating. Of course, I realise that’s not the real issue: I want to eat the foods I like (which are often unhealthy) and I don’t have the willpower to stop myself a lot of the time.
On the plus side, the Japanese study has gone better. I don’t know if I’m improving all that much but I remain hopeful that the sheer consistency of it will produce something over the next few months. Sadly, the focus on Japanese has come at the expense of programming. I was working on a JavaScript project but I haven’t opened the Safari Tab Group I set aside for it in more than two weeks.
The thought behind the renewed focus on Japanese was that I’m not happy with the ‘product’ of the attention I’ve spent over the past few years. This is admittedly an evergreen theme for me. Well, it’s on the basis of similar logic that I decided to move the Ivory and Bluesky apps off my primary Home Screen and impose more discipline on my web browsing. Anything I come across that I want to read, I add to Safari’s Reading List. Throughout the week, I read when I feel like it and then every Monday morning, I delete everything and start fresh. It’s admittedly a bit indirect but the goal is to actually increase the amount of time I spend reading books. The thought if that if reading on the web is more deliberate, it’ll help me open the Kindle app instead.
It isn’t all self-improvement. I played a little more of Jedi: Fallen Order with John and finally have made it off Kashyyyk. The game only started crashing there so hopefully that means the end of that.
I started using Signal now that they’ve finally added usernames. You do still have a phone number associated with your account (which I don’t like) but you can at least hide it from the people with which you communicate. Mostly this has been to Eugenia’s benefit. Apparently, I was only the iMessage user with which she was communicating regularly.
Apple has introduced a new playlist called ‘Heavy Rotation’ (MacRumors). When I checked in with Brandon about it, he wasn’t impressed but I wonder if that not because of ‘how’ he listens to music. I think that tends to be more album-oriented than not and in my brief experience with the playlist it doesn’t work well if you do that.
I will say that the playlist does seem to be updating inconsistently. Supposedly it refreshes every 24 hours but I’ve seen longer delays than that and I’ve also seen songs I know I’ve listened to repeatedly over the past few days not appear for a while. Like Boyce Avenue’s cover of ‘Radioactive’ (Apple Music).
I remain of the opinion that the EU’s Digital Markets Act should have required OS gatekeepers to permit sideloading of apps notarised by the OS owner. I understand this comes with trade-offs but those trade-offs are better than the status quo.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1709771760.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-03-07T09:36:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-03-07T09:36:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1709696220.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’ve recently got back into doing the NYT’s Spelling Bee after some time away and I’m surprised how bad they are at making shareable messages for when you get to Genius. Don’t the same people work on this that work on Wordle and Connections?", "content_html": "I’ve recently got back into doing the NYT’s Spelling Bee after some time away and I’m surprised how bad they are at making shareable messages for when you get to Genius. Don’t the same people work on this that work on Wordle and Connections?
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1709696220.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-03-06T12:37:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-03-06T12:37:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1709617200.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’ve been trying to remember a picture book from the 80s that I read in Australia as a child. My sister finally worked out what it was: Don’t Get Burnt! by Jack Bedson and Peter Gouldthorpe.", "content_html": "I’ve been trying to remember a picture book from the 80s that I read in Australia as a child. My sister finally worked out what it was: Don’t Get Burnt! by Jack Bedson and Peter Gouldthorpe.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1709617200.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-03-05T14:40:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-03-05T14:40:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1709518320.html", "title": "Weeknotes #216", "content_text": "I mucked around with Google Gemini for a bit, trying to get it to design a logo for Pondent. If I tried to ask it directly to draw a logo for me, it would refuse but if I first asked it to come up with some logo ideas and then draw some of those, it was happy to do so. I was pleasantly surprised by one of the results and decided to see whether things were better with Gemini Advanced (which is the ‘paid’ version). The result was fine but it doesn’t seem at the moment much of an improvement over the free version. Fortunately, I’m on a 2-month free trial so I can wait and see whether this is an going service for which I want to pay actual money. I do very much wish Google had a dedicated app for it on the phone rather than hiding it away behind a tab in the Google app.Of course, once I’d broken the seal on paying for one AI service, I then signed up for OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4. I appreciated not having to finesse it to generate images but I didn’t like its results as much as Gemini’s. OpenAI doesn’t have a trial (or at least I didn’t discover it), so I’ve given Sam Altman $20 of my hard-earned cash right up front. Don’t spend it all at once, Sam.Due to a scheduling conflict, I didn’t end up seeing the doctor at all in February for my post-operation check-up and then when I did see her on Friday (i.e. in March), she told me she’s happy with my progress and that I don’t need to return until August. I do still need to organise my sessions at the hair removal clinic (which I should have been doing from January and yet, here we are in March, and I still haven’t begun them).Emma had a playdate on Sunday with one of her classmates from Yoyogi Chapters, a girl who’s grown up in both the U.S. and Japan. Both of the other girl’s parents came and it was nice to compare notes on raising bilingual and bicultural children. I found it especially interesting to talk to the mother who herself grew up bilingually. She did suggest that to be fully proficient in two languages you will need to put in a large amount of ongoing effort (which is beyond what Eri and I are doing at the moment).Freddie deBoer had an essay about the New York Times last week where he quipped that the Times ‘[stays] alive and solvent by selling people Boggle-but-for-sophisticates’. I believe the phrase for this occasion is ‘I felt seen’.I’ve been trying not to get stuck in a Cat Stevens song and so have done my best to set aside time to let John watch me play Jedi: Fallen Order (one of his favourite things to do at the moment). Unfortunately, the game keeps crashing on the Steam Deck. I’ve tried various fixes but all to no avail. So that’s how I found myself spending a silly amount of time last night trying to set up Xbox Cloud Gaming on the Deck before I stopped myself—I don’t need another subscription. For not the first time, I wished I’d instead shown him me playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild like James had the brains to do.I had a girlfriend in the early 2000s whose mother had a couple of CDs of chill-out music put out under the ‘Café del Mar’ brand (Wikipedia). I’ve found that compilations like these are where the streaming era is really disappointing. Apple Music has newer albums but none of of the collections I remember. People of course have assembled playlists that are basically what you’re looking for but it’s often not quite right: the tracklist isn’t the same or there’s a remix that isn’t on the service you’re using. It’s an inadequate replacement but I’ve been making do with the Ibiza Chill Essentials playlist (Apple Music).", "content_html": "I mucked around with Google Gemini for a bit, trying to get it to design a logo for Pondent. If I tried to ask it directly to draw a logo for me, it would refuse but if I first asked it to come up with some logo ideas and then draw some of those, it was happy to do so. I was pleasantly surprised by one of the results and decided to see whether things were better with Gemini Advanced (which is the ‘paid’ version). The result was fine but it doesn’t seem at the moment much of an improvement over the free version. Fortunately, I’m on a 2-month free trial so I can wait and see whether this is an going service for which I want to pay actual money. I do very much wish Google had a dedicated app for it on the phone rather than hiding it away behind a tab in the Google app.
Of course, once I’d broken the seal on paying for one AI service, I then signed up for OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4. I appreciated not having to finesse it to generate images but I didn’t like its results as much as Gemini’s. OpenAI doesn’t have a trial (or at least I didn’t discover it), so I’ve given Sam Altman $20 of my hard-earned cash right up front. Don’t spend it all at once, Sam.
Due to a scheduling conflict, I didn’t end up seeing the doctor at all in February for my post-operation check-up and then when I did see her on Friday (i.e. in March), she told me she’s happy with my progress and that I don’t need to return until August. I do still need to organise my sessions at the hair removal clinic (which I should have been doing from January and yet, here we are in March, and I still haven’t begun them).
Emma had a playdate on Sunday with one of her classmates from Yoyogi Chapters, a girl who’s grown up in both the U.S. and Japan. Both of the other girl’s parents came and it was nice to compare notes on raising bilingual and bicultural children. I found it especially interesting to talk to the mother who herself grew up bilingually. She did suggest that to be fully proficient in two languages you will need to put in a large amount of ongoing effort (which is beyond what Eri and I are doing at the moment).
Freddie deBoer had an essay about the New York Times last week where he quipped that the Times ‘[stays] alive and solvent by selling people Boggle-but-for-sophisticates’. I believe the phrase for this occasion is ‘I felt seen’.
I’ve been trying not to get stuck in a Cat Stevens song and so have done my best to set aside time to let John watch me play Jedi: Fallen Order (one of his favourite things to do at the moment). Unfortunately, the game keeps crashing on the Steam Deck. I’ve tried various fixes but all to no avail. So that’s how I found myself spending a silly amount of time last night trying to set up Xbox Cloud Gaming on the Deck before I stopped myself—I don’t need another subscription. For not the first time, I wished I’d instead shown him me playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild like James had the brains to do.
I had a girlfriend in the early 2000s whose mother had a couple of CDs of chill-out music put out under the ‘Café del Mar’ brand (Wikipedia). I’ve found that compilations like these are where the streaming era is really disappointing. Apple Music has newer albums but none of of the collections I remember. People of course have assembled playlists that are basically what you’re looking for but it’s often not quite right: the tracklist isn’t the same or there’s a remix that isn’t on the service you’re using. It’s an inadequate replacement but I’ve been making do with the Ibiza Chill Essentials playlist (Apple Music).
So I’ve finally started using Signal and now have to work out if I want to run the Electron app on my Mac or just go without messaging there.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1709477940.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-03-03T23:59:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-03-03T23:59:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708982460.html", "title": "Weeknotes #215", "content_text": "Emma turned eight. We had another small ‘party’ at home where we had some cake and she opened her presents. I was about to write that I felt bad about her not having a proper party after Eugenia sent me some photos showing the preparation for her daughter’s birthday (which is a couple of days after Emma’s) before checking and confirming, yes, I did indeed write basically the same thing last year. Look forward to similar feelings of guilt and shame in another 12 months! (Admittedly, not strong enough feelings to have me try to organise a party.)I lost my Wordle streak again. I was close to 100 when the streak ended but still a long way off my maximum streak of 294. How on Earth did I manage that?Friday was the Emperor’s Birthday and although the weather was pretty awful, I took Rowan out in the afternoon to briefly catch a train from the Tobu Ikebukuro Line. He’s still very much obsessed with trains and every Saturday when we travel through Ikebukuro on the way to Yoyogi Chapters he asks about the Tobu station that you can see from the Yamanote Line platform.Speaking of Yoyogi Chapters, I don’t know if we’ll make it a regular thing but after the class this week, we cut across Shinjuku Gyoen and went the Mos Burger that’s on the ninth floor of the Yotsuya Kumin Center. I don’t think many people realise it’s there which makes it a rare restaurant in the area that’s not packed on a Saturday at lunchtime. And yet with a terrific view down on Shinjuku Gyoen (Tabelog, Foursquare), it’s quite a nice place to have lunch.I’ve forgotten in the details but in the late 2000s, I remember commenting to a colleague at work that YouTube could do a better job moderating content but that doing so would greatly reduce their profits (perhaps to the point where they barely operated at cost). I was reminded of this when reading Dan Luu’s recent post about ‘diseconomies’ of scale:I’m not saying that Meta or Google should do this, just that whenever someone at big tech company says something like “these systems have to be fully automated because no one could afford to operate manual systems at our scale”, what’s really being said is more along the lines of “we would not be able to generate as many billions a year in profit if we hired enough competent people to manually review cases our system should flag as ambiguous, so we settle for what we can get without compromising profits”. One can defend that choice, but it is a choice.I mentioned last week that I’d been mostly successful at maintaining my goal of studying at least 45 minutes of Japanese a day. However, I realised looking back over this year’s weeknotes that I’d never properly introduced that goal. In so many words, I’m trying to see what kind of improvement regularly studying Japanese for 45 minutes a day makes. There’s no goal beyond that (at least not at this stage) and there’s no set form. As noted last week, a lot of my time has merely been reviewing existing my flashcards in Kanshudo but I’m hoping that as I more deeply learn those (and so need less time to complete regular review), I’ll move on to newer material.I’m a little ashamed how frequently we watch movies from the Cars franchise in this house. After watching Cars 3 for the umpteenth time, I added ‘Ride’ by ZZ Ward to my library (Apple Music).", "content_html": "Emma turned eight. We had another small ‘party’ at home where we had some cake and she opened her presents. I was about to write that I felt bad about her not having a proper party after Eugenia sent me some photos showing the preparation for her daughter’s birthday (which is a couple of days after Emma’s) before checking and confirming, yes, I did indeed write basically the same thing last year. Look forward to similar feelings of guilt and shame in another 12 months! (Admittedly, not strong enough feelings to have me try to organise a party.)
I lost my Wordle streak again. I was close to 100 when the streak ended but still a long way off my maximum streak of 294. How on Earth did I manage that?
Friday was the Emperor’s Birthday and although the weather was pretty awful, I took Rowan out in the afternoon to briefly catch a train from the Tobu Ikebukuro Line. He’s still very much obsessed with trains and every Saturday when we travel through Ikebukuro on the way to Yoyogi Chapters he asks about the Tobu station that you can see from the Yamanote Line platform.
Speaking of Yoyogi Chapters, I don’t know if we’ll make it a regular thing but after the class this week, we cut across Shinjuku Gyoen and went the Mos Burger that’s on the ninth floor of the Yotsuya Kumin Center. I don’t think many people realise it’s there which makes it a rare restaurant in the area that’s not packed on a Saturday at lunchtime. And yet with a terrific view down on Shinjuku Gyoen (Tabelog, Foursquare), it’s quite a nice place to have lunch.
I’ve forgotten in the details but in the late 2000s, I remember commenting to a colleague at work that YouTube could do a better job moderating content but that doing so would greatly reduce their profits (perhaps to the point where they barely operated at cost). I was reminded of this when reading Dan Luu’s recent post about ‘diseconomies’ of scale:
I’m not saying that Meta or Google should do this, just that whenever someone at big tech company says something like “these systems have to be fully automated because no one could afford to operate manual systems at our scale”, what’s really being said is more along the lines of “we would not be able to generate as many billions a year in profit if we hired enough competent people to manually review cases our system should flag as ambiguous, so we settle for what we can get without compromising profits”. One can defend that choice, but it is a choice.
I mentioned last week that I’d been mostly successful at maintaining my goal of studying at least 45 minutes of Japanese a day. However, I realised looking back over this year’s weeknotes that I’d never properly introduced that goal. In so many words, I’m trying to see what kind of improvement regularly studying Japanese for 45 minutes a day makes. There’s no goal beyond that (at least not at this stage) and there’s no set form. As noted last week, a lot of my time has merely been reviewing existing my flashcards in Kanshudo but I’m hoping that as I more deeply learn those (and so need less time to complete regular review), I’ll move on to newer material.
I’m a little ashamed how frequently we watch movies from the Cars franchise in this house. After watching Cars 3 for the umpteenth time, I added ‘Ride’ by ZZ Ward to my library (Apple Music).
So if you’re using an iPad with an external keyboard and you tab away from Mail, Mail will reset the focus to the message list when you tab back. I don’t know if this is Mail’s fault or iPadOS’s but I’m tempted to blame iPadOS.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708640760.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-23T07:26:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-23T07:26:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708502520.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Allow me to be the 5,467th person to point out how silly it is that Apple Music’s Replay feature kicks you over to Safari.", "content_html": "Allow me to be the 5,467th person to point out how silly it is that Apple Music’s Replay feature kicks you over to Safari.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708502520.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-21T17:02:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-21T17:02:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708474260.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’ve been using computers for a little over 30 years and I don’t think I’m ever going to remember that Excel hijacks the scroll wheel as long as it’s the active window.", "content_html": "I’ve been using computers for a little over 30 years and I don’t think I’m ever going to remember that Excel hijacks the scroll wheel as long as it’s the active window.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708474260.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-21T09:11:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-21T09:11:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708394700.html", "title": "", "content_text": "And then I was back to one Linode.", "content_html": "And then I was back to one Linode.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708394700.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-20T11:05:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-20T11:05:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708392660.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Chris Eidhof and Nicholas Christowitz’s SwiftUI Field Guide is excellent. I wish SwiftUI were open source so work like this didn’t have to be reverse-engineered from scratch.", "content_html": "Chris Eidhof and Nicholas Christowitz’s SwiftUI Field Guide is excellent. I wish SwiftUI were open source so work like this didn’t have to be reverse-engineered from scratch.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708392660.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-20T10:31:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-20T10:31:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708392000.html", "title": "Weeknotes #214", "content_text": "We went to Disneyland on Sunday! It wasn’t really apropos anything—I suppose if you wanted to squint you could say it was for Emma’s birthday. Really I saw on the Friday news that the weather was meant to be unseasonably warm on Sunday, was surprised to discover there were tickets readily available for Sunday, quickly discussed it with Eri and then booked. I was also fortunate to find a car available for all of Sunday and we were all set. The weather was indeed good and the overall experience was fun. I say overall, though, because John had a lot more difficulty handling some of the rides than I anticipated (Star Tours, the Western River Railway, the Castle Carousel) and Rowan wanted to go everywhere I did. All of that meant that while I had imagined being able to go on some of the rides together with Emma and John (like Star Tours), instead, I ended up mostly babysitting John and Rowan while Eri and Emma went on things. Still, it’s Disneyland. I do think this might be the last time we go as a family; at least until John and Rowan are a bit older.It was an action-packed weekend all round because on Saturday, we took the kids to Tokyo Station after Emma’s Yoyogi Chapters class (John’s class wasn’t on). Rowan’s still deeply fascinated by trains so this meant that all up we rode on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, the Yamanote Line, the Sobu Line and the Chuo Line. On top of that, we went up to the garden on the roof of the Kitte Building and saw a number of shinkansen pulling in and out.I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’d bought an iPad (8th Generation) for Emma and John so that the iPad Mini they use could be handed down to Rowan. I particularly called out being concerned about the 32GB capacity. I was right to be. It felt like every day I needed to offload an app so that Emma could install something, or John had more space or I could upgrade the system. And then on top of that, the iPad didn’t run as smoothly as the iPad Mini does (maybe a result of needing to push around a larger number of pixels on the screen?). Despite being just outside the two-week return period, a very kind person on the English Apple support line allowed me to initiate a refund. With that done, I then bought a new (!) iPad (9th Generation), this time with 64GB of storage. This model cost ¥49,800, a significant increase over the ¥38,800 price of the refurbished model I returned. You win again, Apple, I guess.Jon Stewart returned to the Daily Show. The New York Times has a good write-up.I’ve mostly kept up the 45 minutes of Japanese study a day but I’m not doing much more than catching up on my flashcard vocabulary. Hopefully as the cards move through the SRS algorithm, I’ll have less to review and more time to spend doing study that feels more productive.Generally speaking, I find music analysis YouTuber Charles Cornell’s high energy personality a little too high energy for my liking. But as someone who has always been curious about why the producers of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies went away from Klaus Badelt when he (apparently) wrote the iconic score for the first soundtrack, I forgave the all-caps ‘INSANE’ in this video’s title exploring that story.The ‘He’s a Pirate’ piece is what’s being analysed in the above video but I’ve always preferred ‘One Last Shot’ (Apple Music).", "content_html": "We went to Disneyland on Sunday! It wasn’t really apropos anything—I suppose if you wanted to squint you could say it was for Emma’s birthday. Really I saw on the Friday news that the weather was meant to be unseasonably warm on Sunday, was surprised to discover there were tickets readily available for Sunday, quickly discussed it with Eri and then booked. I was also fortunate to find a car available for all of Sunday and we were all set. The weather was indeed good and the overall experience was fun. I say overall, though, because John had a lot more difficulty handling some of the rides than I anticipated (Star Tours, the Western River Railway, the Castle Carousel) and Rowan wanted to go everywhere I did. All of that meant that while I had imagined being able to go on some of the rides together with Emma and John (like Star Tours), instead, I ended up mostly babysitting John and Rowan while Eri and Emma went on things. Still, it’s Disneyland. I do think this might be the last time we go as a family; at least until John and Rowan are a bit older.
It was an action-packed weekend all round because on Saturday, we took the kids to Tokyo Station after Emma’s Yoyogi Chapters class (John’s class wasn’t on). Rowan’s still deeply fascinated by trains so this meant that all up we rode on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, the Yamanote Line, the Sobu Line and the Chuo Line. On top of that, we went up to the garden on the roof of the Kitte Building and saw a number of shinkansen pulling in and out.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’d bought an iPad (8th Generation) for Emma and John so that the iPad Mini they use could be handed down to Rowan. I particularly called out being concerned about the 32GB capacity. I was right to be. It felt like every day I needed to offload an app so that Emma could install something, or John had more space or I could upgrade the system. And then on top of that, the iPad didn’t run as smoothly as the iPad Mini does (maybe a result of needing to push around a larger number of pixels on the screen?). Despite being just outside the two-week return period, a very kind person on the English Apple support line allowed me to initiate a refund. With that done, I then bought a new (!) iPad (9th Generation), this time with 64GB of storage. This model cost ¥49,800, a significant increase over the ¥38,800 price of the refurbished model I returned. You win again, Apple, I guess.
Jon Stewart returned to the Daily Show. The New York Times has a good write-up.
I’ve mostly kept up the 45 minutes of Japanese study a day but I’m not doing much more than catching up on my flashcard vocabulary. Hopefully as the cards move through the SRS algorithm, I’ll have less to review and more time to spend doing study that feels more productive.
Generally speaking, I find music analysis YouTuber Charles Cornell’s high energy personality a little too high energy for my liking. But as someone who has always been curious about why the producers of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies went away from Klaus Badelt when he (apparently) wrote the iconic score for the first soundtrack, I forgave the all-caps ‘INSANE’ in this video’s title exploring that story.
The ‘He’s a Pirate’ piece is what’s being analysed in the above video but I’ve always preferred ‘One Last Shot’ (Apple Music).
Has anyone worked out when iMessage will show previews of Bluesky posts and when it won’t? There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708329240.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-19T16:54:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-19T16:54:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708076580.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Why doesn’t Safari have a shortcut that allows you to open a URL in a Tab Group?", "content_html": "Why doesn’t Safari have a shortcut that allows you to open a URL in a Tab Group?
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1708076580.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-16T18:43:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-16T18:43:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707896760.html", "title": "", "content_text": "The YouTube app on iOS just asked what problems I’d encountered on the front page. I eagerly selected ‘Other’, hoping it would ask for details and I could say ‘Never show me YouTube Shorts!’ Alas, as soon as I clicked ‘Submit’, the questionnaire closed itself. Cowards!", "content_html": "The YouTube app on iOS just asked what problems I’d encountered on the front page. I eagerly selected ‘Other’, hoping it would ask for details and I could say ‘Never show me YouTube Shorts!’ Alas, as soon as I clicked ‘Submit’, the questionnaire closed itself. Cowards!
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707896760.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-14T16:46:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-14T16:46:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707872280.html", "title": "", "content_text": "Saw people sharing the news from early January that Twilio is shutting down the desktop version of Authy. Minimalist is a fantastic password manager for Apple platforms that can on login put the relevant 2FA token on your clipboard via its Safari extension.", "content_html": "Saw people sharing the news from early January that Twilio is shutting down the desktop version of Authy. Minimalist is a fantastic password manager for Apple platforms that can on login put the relevant 2FA token on your clipboard via its Safari extension.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707872280.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-14T09:58:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-14T09:58:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707836040.html", "title": "Weeknotes #213", "content_text": "It snowed last Monday (NHK World)! I probably should have encouraged the kids to try and build a snowman or something but they ducked out to the backyard for a bit and that was it. I enjoyed a walk through the falling snow to lunch at Mos Burger.King Charles was diagnosed with (some form of) cancer (BBC).Bluesky opened to the general public on Tuesday (TechCrunch). I’ve had an account since July 2023 but never really got into it, preferring instead to spend most of my time on Mastodon. I’m not sure why being generally available felt so significant but it prompted me to (1) work out how to use my inqk.net domain as part of my handle and (2) add cross-posting support to this blog. This means that if you’re like Brandon, you now need never follow me on Mastodon again! All the posts will be on Bluesky, too. I’m still not that optimistic about its prospects (not least because of Threads) but I remain a fan of the AT Protocol and hope it succeeds.Emma had another observation day at her school and so we didn’t attend Yoyogi Chapter this weekend. That ended up working out all right, though, because it enabled us to visit Ferdinando and his family in the afternoon. Rowan wasn’t terrible but he wasn’t able to play with either of Ferdinando’s younger children which was a bit of a shame. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see them again soon and that’ll given Rowan another opportunity.Back in January, I mentioned that I’d tried to get back into Japanese study as the new year began but it hadn’t stuck. This week, I tried a new tack: I create a ‘habit’ for it in Awesome Habits. So far things have been progressing well enough. Rather than worry too much about any particular long-term ‘goal’, I’m just trying to spend 45 minutes a day studying. I figure if I can do that every day for a year, I’ll have gotten… somewhere.Since I’m less concerned with what I’m studying and more concerned with that I’m studying, I’m allowing myself to count episodes of Japanese dramas. That’s got me back into My Dear Exes (Netflix). I was sure that I’d mentioned watching this during my stay in the hospital last year but a search of my weeknote archives indicates that’s not the case. I’d forgotten how much I love the show and think it’s one of the best written Japanese dramas I’ve ever seen. Unlike a lot of Japanese TV that is on Netflix, it has English subtitles. If you’re looking for a 10-episode series that’s a bit different, I highly recommend checking it out.Things continue to be a bit fallow in the video essay department but I did enjoy this CTI Summit keynote that Cliff Stoll delivered back in 2017. I somehow wasn’t familiar with Stoll (Wikipedia) but he is very much what you would picture if someone said ‘eccentric physicist’. Indeed, he plays the part of absent-minded researcher so well, I initially assumed it was a bit.Triple J’s Hottest 100 of 2023 was announced at the end of January and I spent a chunk of my music listening this week dipping in and out of the playlist (Apple Music). Check it out if you too want to pretend you’re still young and hip.", "content_html": "It snowed last Monday (NHK World)! I probably should have encouraged the kids to try and build a snowman or something but they ducked out to the backyard for a bit and that was it. I enjoyed a walk through the falling snow to lunch at Mos Burger.
King Charles was diagnosed with (some form of) cancer (BBC).
Bluesky opened to the general public on Tuesday (TechCrunch). I’ve had an account since July 2023 but never really got into it, preferring instead to spend most of my time on Mastodon. I’m not sure why being generally available felt so significant but it prompted me to (1) work out how to use my inqk.net domain as part of my handle and (2) add cross-posting support to this blog. This means that if you’re like Brandon, you now need never follow me on Mastodon again! All the posts will be on Bluesky, too. I’m still not that optimistic about its prospects (not least because of Threads) but I remain a fan of the AT Protocol and hope it succeeds.
Emma had another observation day at her school and so we didn’t attend Yoyogi Chapter this weekend. That ended up working out all right, though, because it enabled us to visit Ferdinando and his family in the afternoon. Rowan wasn’t terrible but he wasn’t able to play with either of Ferdinando’s younger children which was a bit of a shame. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see them again soon and that’ll given Rowan another opportunity.
Back in January, I mentioned that I’d tried to get back into Japanese study as the new year began but it hadn’t stuck. This week, I tried a new tack: I create a ‘habit’ for it in Awesome Habits. So far things have been progressing well enough. Rather than worry too much about any particular long-term ‘goal’, I’m just trying to spend 45 minutes a day studying. I figure if I can do that every day for a year, I’ll have gotten… somewhere.
Since I’m less concerned with what I’m studying and more concerned with that I’m studying, I’m allowing myself to count episodes of Japanese dramas. That’s got me back into My Dear Exes (Netflix). I was sure that I’d mentioned watching this during my stay in the hospital last year but a search of my weeknote archives indicates that’s not the case. I’d forgotten how much I love the show and think it’s one of the best written Japanese dramas I’ve ever seen. Unlike a lot of Japanese TV that is on Netflix, it has English subtitles. If you’re looking for a 10-episode series that’s a bit different, I highly recommend checking it out.
Things continue to be a bit fallow in the video essay department but I did enjoy this CTI Summit keynote that Cliff Stoll delivered back in 2017. I somehow wasn’t familiar with Stoll (Wikipedia) but he is very much what you would picture if someone said ‘eccentric physicist’. Indeed, he plays the part of absent-minded researcher so well, I initially assumed it was a bit.
Triple J’s Hottest 100 of 2023 was announced at the end of January and I spent a chunk of my music listening this week dipping in and out of the playlist (Apple Music). Check it out if you too want to pretend you’re still young and hip.
I’m not sure anything better sums up the Amazon Prime Video app on the Apple TV than the fact the launch screen image isn’t at the correct resolution.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707532380.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-10T11:33:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-10T11:33:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707518460.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’ve been listening to an embarrassing amount of ‘Boy’s a liar’.", "content_html": "I’ve been listening to an embarrassing amount of ‘Boy’s a liar’.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707518460.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-10T07:41:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-10T07:41:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707479640.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I wanted to measure the amount of time I spend studying Japanese every day so I spent $15 on a timer app only to discover that the excellent Awesome Habits includes a far better timer.", "content_html": "I wanted to measure the amount of time I spend studying Japanese every day so I spent $15 on a timer app only to discover that the excellent Awesome Habits includes a far better timer.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707479640.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-09T20:54:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-09T20:54:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707380460.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’ve added rudimentary support for cross-posting from my blog to Bluesky!", "content_html": "I’ve added rudimentary support for cross-posting from my blog to Bluesky!
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707380460.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-08T17:21:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-08T17:21:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707365280.html", "title": "", "content_text": "It’s cool that developers can make alternative front-ends to Apple Music on iOS. I want that but for Apple TV+.", "content_html": "It’s cool that developers can make alternative front-ends to Apple Music on iOS. I want that but for Apple TV+.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707365280.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-08T13:08:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-08T13:08:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707187620.html", "title": "", "content_text": "You know what’s noticeably improved on the Internet in the last 10 years? DNS propagation speeds. Maybe this is just a consequence of using Cloudflare as my DNS provider but changes seem to ripple out within a handful of minutes.", "content_html": "You know what’s noticeably improved on the Internet in the last 10 years? DNS propagation speeds. Maybe this is just a consequence of using Cloudflare as my DNS provider but changes seem to ripple out within a handful of minutes.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707187620.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-02-06T11:47:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-02-06T11:47:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1707181500.html", "title": "Weeknotes #212", "content_text": "Eri and Rowan both had fevers over the weekend and seemed to be suffering from the what-is-it-because-it-doesn’t-seem-to-be-the-flu-or-covid malady that’s been circulating this winter. When I was a child, I called every respiratory illness more serious than a basic cold the ‘flu’ and maybe in a post-COVID world that’s what I’ll need to do again.Rowan has finally started saying his own name. He still prefers to refer to himself in the third person as ‘Baby’ but whereas previously I couldn’t get him to even say ‘Rowan’, he has started using it if I claw it out of him.Speaking of finallies (finallys?), I finally watched Oppenheimer. It has an opening date in Japan now (29 March) but I didn’t want to wait another two months and even if I did, I’m not sure I could set aside the three-hour running time. Like every Nolan movie (other than Memento), I’m sure I’ll need to see it a couple of times before I ultimately settle on an opinion. Having seen it once, I found the relentless pace of the first half of the movie to be exhausting. This is a consistent issue I have with Nolan’s films, though, and something I find less of a problem on subsequent viewings.The Apple Vision Pro began arriving in customer hands and I’ve been gobbling up the coverage. If you’re remotely interested, you’ve almost certainly seen it but Joanna Stern had my favourite review (YouTube). It was so good I showed parts of it to Eri over dinner one night. Was I trying to convince her this will be a worthwhile use of our money when it eventually comes out in Japan? Not consciously but my unconscious is a dangerous entity and not to be trusted.Unless you’re the one person who subscribes to my newsletter, you downloaded this from the Linode I set up last year that runs Void Linux. I put aside a bit of time over the past week to configure the web server and other programs that the other Linode is running. So far, so good.I mentioned last week that I’d started paying for FoodNoms again. I’m not sure it’s really making that much of a difference but I will say that I’m enjoying the ‘Ask AI’ feature where you can ask a large language model for the nutritional details of a meal. This alleviates the worst part of calorie counting: the pain of data entry. Of course this assumes it’s accurate and large language models aren’t exactly known for their infallibility. What I should do is a thorough comparison of some foods for which I know the nutritional details and check its overall accuracy. This sounds like exactly the kind of work I want to avoid, though. Fortunately, FoodNoms allows you to record entries with a margin of error and I’ll probably just stick to doing that instead.I liked Phil Edwards’ 14-minute video on the history of the famous Earthrise photograph if you’re looking for something short and educational (YouTube).I’ve forgotten how I came across it but I added Igor Levit’s Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte to my music library this week and if you find yourself in the mood for some calming classical pieces for piano, this hit the spot for me (Apple Music).", "content_html": "Eri and Rowan both had fevers over the weekend and seemed to be suffering from the what-is-it-because-it-doesn’t-seem-to-be-the-flu-or-covid malady that’s been circulating this winter. When I was a child, I called every respiratory illness more serious than a basic cold the ‘flu’ and maybe in a post-COVID world that’s what I’ll need to do again.
Rowan has finally started saying his own name. He still prefers to refer to himself in the third person as ‘Baby’ but whereas previously I couldn’t get him to even say ‘Rowan’, he has started using it if I claw it out of him.
Speaking of finallies (finallys?), I finally watched Oppenheimer. It has an opening date in Japan now (29 March) but I didn’t want to wait another two months and even if I did, I’m not sure I could set aside the three-hour running time. Like every Nolan movie (other than Memento), I’m sure I’ll need to see it a couple of times before I ultimately settle on an opinion. Having seen it once, I found the relentless pace of the first half of the movie to be exhausting. This is a consistent issue I have with Nolan’s films, though, and something I find less of a problem on subsequent viewings.
The Apple Vision Pro began arriving in customer hands and I’ve been gobbling up the coverage. If you’re remotely interested, you’ve almost certainly seen it but Joanna Stern had my favourite review (YouTube). It was so good I showed parts of it to Eri over dinner one night. Was I trying to convince her this will be a worthwhile use of our money when it eventually comes out in Japan? Not consciously but my unconscious is a dangerous entity and not to be trusted.
Unless you’re the one person who subscribes to my newsletter, you downloaded this from the Linode I set up last year that runs Void Linux. I put aside a bit of time over the past week to configure the web server and other programs that the other Linode is running. So far, so good.
I mentioned last week that I’d started paying for FoodNoms again. I’m not sure it’s really making that much of a difference but I will say that I’m enjoying the ‘Ask AI’ feature where you can ask a large language model for the nutritional details of a meal. This alleviates the worst part of calorie counting: the pain of data entry. Of course this assumes it’s accurate and large language models aren’t exactly known for their infallibility. What I should do is a thorough comparison of some foods for which I know the nutritional details and check its overall accuracy. This sounds like exactly the kind of work I want to avoid, though. Fortunately, FoodNoms allows you to record entries with a margin of error and I’ll probably just stick to doing that instead.
I liked Phil Edwards’ 14-minute video on the history of the famous Earthrise photograph if you’re looking for something short and educational (YouTube).
I’ve forgotten how I came across it but I added Igor Levit’s Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte to my music library this week and if you find yourself in the mood for some calming classical pieces for piano, this hit the spot for me (Apple Music).
Simon and Garfunkel but Paul’s surname is Wacks and Art’s surname is Wayne.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1706612880.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-01-30T20:08:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-01-30T20:08:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1706604480.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I am unreasonably amused by @tom’s line ‘Well, that’s exactly what someone who’s in the socket of Big Eye would say’ in his most recent weeknotes.", "content_html": "I am unreasonably amused by @tom’s line ‘Well, that’s exactly what someone who’s in the socket of Big Eye would say’ in his most recent weeknotes.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1706604480.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-01-30T17:48:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-01-30T17:48:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1706585400.html", "title": "Weeknotes #211", "content_text": "We took Rowan to Yoyogi Chapters for the first time on Saturday. The usual playgroup instructor was away so it wasn’t the same as it typically would be—and he’s not actually enrolled so I’m not sure how much he’ll be allowed to participate—but he seemed comfortable enough. As long as the weather is fine, we’ll take him again this week and see how it goes.Google finally stopped supporting the version of the YouTube app I was running on Rowan’s ancient iPad Mini (2nd Generation) (purchased in 2013!). Unfortunately, because the kids use YouTube through a child account, the website also didn’t work. I’d been considering an iPad upgrade for the kids for more than a year and when I saw that an iPad (8th Generation) was available refurbished from Apple for ¥38,800, I leapt on it. Emma and John now have that and Rowan has their iPad Mini (5th Generation). I’m a little concerned the ‘new’ iPad only has 32GB for storage and that won’t be enough (I’ve already had to offload apps so that I could update iPadOS) but hopefully that won’t prove a common occurrence.Two weeks ago I lamented my weight increase to 77kg and this past week, it broke through 78. That prompted me to see again if calorie counting might help. I paid for a year of FoodNoms+ and will see how it goes.I cancelled my NBA League Pass subscription. I barely watch any games so maybe I’ll just be the type of fan who subscribes during the play-offs? The final straw was deciding to try to watch more of the TV and film that’s on my ever growing watch list.Fresh off that decision, I forced myself through the second season of Loki. I exaggerate a little—this isn’t Kenobi—but it certainly didn’t grab me the way the first season did. Joshua Rivera nailed the problem precisely:The TVA, in other words, was an excuse for Loki’s characters to do interesting things and meet interesting people. It is not, by itself, a reason to tune in. Yet Loki season 2 is all about that, spinning a story centered on the integrity of the TVA, its purpose, its creator, and the philosophical quandary of free will vs. determination that its existence continually exacerbates. This is Loki’s second season in a nutshell: Its writers are overly concerned about the mechanics of the MCU, and the MCU as an abstraction, not the characters and stories within it.In contrast to Loki, I ripped through all three seasons of Slow Horses. It’s as good as everyone says. I gather there’s a sense that the second season wasn’t as good as the first but watching them back to back to back in the space of a week, I thought all three were excellent. This is my favourite show since Westworld and I can’t wait for season 4.One of the biggest surprises of Slow Horses was discovering in the credits that the theme song, ‘Strange Game’, was co-written by Mick Jagger (Apple Music). I recognised the voice but didn’t recall the song and thought at first that it was an obscure track from the Rolling Stones long discography. Nope. Jagger wrote it with the series composer, Daniel Pemberton, specifically for the show. I guess that’s what Apple money can buy you.", "content_html": "We took Rowan to Yoyogi Chapters for the first time on Saturday. The usual playgroup instructor was away so it wasn’t the same as it typically would be—and he’s not actually enrolled so I’m not sure how much he’ll be allowed to participate—but he seemed comfortable enough. As long as the weather is fine, we’ll take him again this week and see how it goes.
Google finally stopped supporting the version of the YouTube app I was running on Rowan’s ancient iPad Mini (2nd Generation) (purchased in 2013!). Unfortunately, because the kids use YouTube through a child account, the website also didn’t work. I’d been considering an iPad upgrade for the kids for more than a year and when I saw that an iPad (8th Generation) was available refurbished from Apple for ¥38,800, I leapt on it. Emma and John now have that and Rowan has their iPad Mini (5th Generation). I’m a little concerned the ‘new’ iPad only has 32GB for storage and that won’t be enough (I’ve already had to offload apps so that I could update iPadOS) but hopefully that won’t prove a common occurrence.
Two weeks ago I lamented my weight increase to 77kg and this past week, it broke through 78. That prompted me to see again if calorie counting might help. I paid for a year of FoodNoms+ and will see how it goes.
I cancelled my NBA League Pass subscription. I barely watch any games so maybe I’ll just be the type of fan who subscribes during the play-offs? The final straw was deciding to try to watch more of the TV and film that’s on my ever growing watch list.
Fresh off that decision, I forced myself through the second season of Loki. I exaggerate a little—this isn’t Kenobi—but it certainly didn’t grab me the way the first season did. Joshua Rivera nailed the problem precisely:
The TVA, in other words, was an excuse for Loki’s characters to do interesting things and meet interesting people. It is not, by itself, a reason to tune in. Yet Loki season 2 is all about that, spinning a story centered on the integrity of the TVA, its purpose, its creator, and the philosophical quandary of free will vs. determination that its existence continually exacerbates. This is Loki’s second season in a nutshell: Its writers are overly concerned about the mechanics of the MCU, and the MCU as an abstraction, not the characters and stories within it.
In contrast to Loki, I ripped through all three seasons of Slow Horses. It’s as good as everyone says. I gather there’s a sense that the second season wasn’t as good as the first but watching them back to back to back in the space of a week, I thought all three were excellent. This is my favourite show since Westworld and I can’t wait for season 4.
One of the biggest surprises of Slow Horses was discovering in the credits that the theme song, ‘Strange Game’, was co-written by Mick Jagger (Apple Music). I recognised the voice but didn’t recall the song and thought at first that it was an obscure track from the Rolling Stones long discography. Nope. Jagger wrote it with the series composer, Daniel Pemberton, specifically for the show. I guess that’s what Apple money can buy you.
YouTube has stopped allowing iPads running iOS 12 from accessing the site via its app. And if you have a kids account, it won’t work via Safari either. The future sucks.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1706182800.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-01-25T20:40:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-01-25T20:40:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1706157420.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I’ve given up trying to work out why my LG monitor connected to an M1 Mac Mini intermittently wakes from sleep. I think it might be a combination of Bluetooth and something to do with notifications but it’s easier simply to turn off the monitor when I’m finished with it.", "content_html": "I’ve given up trying to work out why my LG monitor connected to an M1 Mac Mini intermittently wakes from sleep. I think it might be a combination of Bluetooth and something to do with notifications but it’s easier simply to turn off the monitor when I’m finished with it.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1706157420.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-01-25T13:37:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-01-25T13:37:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1706018520.html", "title": "Weeknotes #210", "content_text": "I neglected to mention in last week’s weeknotes that Rowan suddenly started stuttering upon our return to Japan. Eri has spoken about it with a doctor and the best guess at the moment is that it was caused by the stress/shock of the Japan to Australia to Japan transition over the holiday. Its severity seems to wax and wane so hopefully it’s nothing too serious and will go away over time.Speaking of things I meant to mention in previous editions, John has started swimming. He goes at the same time on Sunday morning as Emma but is in a different class. I was worried he might hate it (as he did with the ice skating) but fortunately that hasn’t been the case.I did remember to mention two weeks ago that Emma had been invited to attend an English lesson aimed at bilingual children. That was on Saturday and it went similarly well. John also came along and although there’s only space for him in a playgroup that’s aimed at younger kids, I figure it’s better than nothing.I won 10 games in a row in Rocket League for the first time. It all culminated in an incredibly tense tenth game where we scored an equaliser with the clock at 0 after the player I had partied up with passed me the ball in the dying moments and I bicycle kicked it into the goal. We then scored first in overtime to win. A part of me feels like it’s silly to spend so much time in a game that came out almost ten years ago and then I have experiences like this and I keep coming back.I can’t imagine this information is of any use to anyone but in the incredibly unlikely case that it is, I wish I’d known months ago that the ‘View > Toolbar > Stats Only’ submenu in the Mac version of iA Writer is also a toggle. In other words, you can switch between showing a toolbar with formatting controls and a toolbar showing statistics, by clicking on the text ‘Stats Only’.I had one of my periodic bouts of ‘I should use IRC more’. As ludicrous as it is, I still pay for an IRCCloud subscription and so could just use IRC that way. But these bouts are really bouts of ‘I should use IRC more like I’m an elite hacker from the 90s’ and so typically involve me trying to install a client on one of my Raspberry Pis. Since they’re both now running Void, I thought I’d explore whether that opens up any new possibilities. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The best option still looks like weechat and while it does seem fine, I realised when I’d got it set up that I never find IRC that engaging. Until next bout.After four (I think four) unrelated people all mentioned to me unprompted that they’d recently watched Slow Horses (Apple TV+), I decided to give it a shot. Everyone was correct and I ripped through the 6-episode first season. I will say that I was mildly distracted from time to time by how much Jack Lowden’s River feels like the younger brother of Simon Pegg’s Benji in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Did anyone else think this?I wish I could see explicitly what Apple Music thinks I’m interested in. Somehow it neglected to tell me that Marian Hill released an album in April 2022, why can’t we just pretend? (Apple Music). It hasn’t grabbed me yet as much as Act One or Unusual but if you’re into lo-fi beats, you might want to give it a whirl. Upgrade that to a definite recommendation if three other people mention it unprompted over the next month.", "content_html": "I neglected to mention in last week’s weeknotes that Rowan suddenly started stuttering upon our return to Japan. Eri has spoken about it with a doctor and the best guess at the moment is that it was caused by the stress/shock of the Japan to Australia to Japan transition over the holiday. Its severity seems to wax and wane so hopefully it’s nothing too serious and will go away over time.
Speaking of things I meant to mention in previous editions, John has started swimming. He goes at the same time on Sunday morning as Emma but is in a different class. I was worried he might hate it (as he did with the ice skating) but fortunately that hasn’t been the case.
I did remember to mention two weeks ago that Emma had been invited to attend an English lesson aimed at bilingual children. That was on Saturday and it went similarly well. John also came along and although there’s only space for him in a playgroup that’s aimed at younger kids, I figure it’s better than nothing.
I won 10 games in a row in Rocket League for the first time. It all culminated in an incredibly tense tenth game where we scored an equaliser with the clock at 0 after the player I had partied up with passed me the ball in the dying moments and I bicycle kicked it into the goal. We then scored first in overtime to win. A part of me feels like it’s silly to spend so much time in a game that came out almost ten years ago and then I have experiences like this and I keep coming back.
I can’t imagine this information is of any use to anyone but in the incredibly unlikely case that it is, I wish I’d known months ago that the ‘View > Toolbar > Stats Only’ submenu in the Mac version of iA Writer is also a toggle. In other words, you can switch between showing a toolbar with formatting controls and a toolbar showing statistics, by clicking on the text ‘Stats Only’.
I had one of my periodic bouts of ‘I should use IRC more’. As ludicrous as it is, I still pay for an IRCCloud subscription and so could just use IRC that way. But these bouts are really bouts of ‘I should use IRC more like I’m an elite hacker from the 90s’ and so typically involve me trying to install a client on one of my Raspberry Pis. Since they’re both now running Void, I thought I’d explore whether that opens up any new possibilities. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The best option still looks like weechat and while it does seem fine, I realised when I’d got it set up that I never find IRC that engaging. Until next bout.
After four (I think four) unrelated people all mentioned to me unprompted that they’d recently watched Slow Horses (Apple TV+), I decided to give it a shot. Everyone was correct and I ripped through the 6-episode first season. I will say that I was mildly distracted from time to time by how much Jack Lowden’s River feels like the younger brother of Simon Pegg’s Benji in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Did anyone else think this?
I wish I could see explicitly what Apple Music thinks I’m interested in. Somehow it neglected to tell me that Marian Hill released an album in April 2022, why can’t we just pretend? (Apple Music). It hasn’t grabbed me yet as much as Act One or Unusual but if you’re into lo-fi beats, you might want to give it a whirl. Upgrade that to a definite recommendation if three other people mention it unprompted over the next month.
I understand what Apple was going for with animated album covers in the iOS version of the Music app but I wish they’d instead gone simpler: let you tap on the album cover to see a ‘full res’ version you can pan around in and explore.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1705810620.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-01-21T13:17:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-01-21T13:17:00+09:00" }, { "id": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1705508220.html", "title": "", "content_text": "I wish there was a way to tell Amazon I use Fastmail and so can you please list the products in the receipt you e-mail me because no one is going to data mine it.", "content_html": "I wish there was a way to tell Amazon I use Fastmail and so can you please list the products in the receipt you e-mail me because no one is going to data mine it.
", "url": "https://updates.inqk.net/post/1705508220.html", "author": { "name": "Michael Camilleri", "url": "https://inqk.net/", "avatar": "https://micro.blog/pyrmont/avatar.jpg" }, "date_published": "2024-01-18T01:17:00+09:00", "date_modified": "2024-01-18T01:17:00+09:00" }] }