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Rowan’s condition worsened over the week to the point where Eri took him to hospital. They did some tests and said that he has respiratory syncytial virus which seems to be abbreviated to RSV in English but which in Japan is typically referred to as RS virus. Things improved such that, by Sunday, the doctors were saying he was past the worst of it. Unfortunately, he’s still there which means Eri is still there and it’s just me, Emma and John at home.
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Fortunately, Monday is a public holiday so I don’t have to juggle work and the kids. Unfortunately, the weather is still disgustingly hot and/or wet and so the kids have barely left the house over the past two weeks or so.
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Now that we know that Emma’s initial infection was RSV and not just a cold, the fact it keeps lingering around in her and John makes more sense. My body has finally succumbed too and I now have a pretty raspy throat.
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I’m a little ashamed at how my Japanese study has ground to a halt again. I don’t really know what to do. The easy answer is to say that given the circumstances, I just don’t have the time but that’s not strictly true. I can make time for things that I want to do (Rocket League mostly, programming occasionally) so the real problem is simply motivating myself. Is it just my imagination or did my self-discipline use to be better than it is now?
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Last week I was quite proud of listening to all the podcasts in my queue and the obvious solution to that was to add more podcasts! So far I’ve subscribed to four new ones: (1) Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs; (2) The Array Cast; (3) Astral Codex Ten Podcast; and (4) CoRecursive. We’ll see how many of those stick around.
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In spite of myself, I watched the fourth quarter of the bronze medal game between Australia and Slovenia in the men’s basketball on Saturday. As unrealistic as it is, I’m typically disappointed when Australians win a silver or bronze medal but in this case, after so many fourth place finishes, it was great to see Australia finally win an Olympic medal—especially so while Patty Mills is still there.
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We bought one of those fancy Dyson fans (specifically the TP03) and while I’m not sure it’s worth its price, I’ve appreciated having a fan I can use in these muggy Japanese evenings to get a bit of air flow. In addition to blowing and (supposedly) purifying air, it has a pretty decent iPhone app that it uses to tell you information (such as the current temperature and air quality). I wanted to access that information via the HomePod and while the Dyson doesn’t have HomeKit support, you can use Homebridge to get the devices talking to each other. It took a little bit of fiddling with the Raspberry Pi, but I’m pleased to report that I got it working via this plugin! But for the fact that we almost always want to be running the air conditioner continuously, I have thought about getting some sort of accessory that would allow it to be voice-controlled.
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I generally prefer acoustic versions of songs but surely everyone agrees that Ed Sheeran’s ‘Bad Habits’ (Apple Music) works better in its acoustic form, right?
