-
It snowed in Tokyo! It was only on Thursday but we had a decent amount fall. Emma and John were very excited about going and building a snowman but I was worried about them being out in the cold and—if I’m being completely honest—eager to avoid going outside so we settled for just watching it.
-
I visited one of the apartments we’re considering on Saturday. It was nice and I could definitely imagine us living there. We’re not sure whether a bicycle-parking space is available but even without that sorted out we’ve expressed interest and will wait to hear back.
-
Emma and I went to to a nearby park on the weekend to do more bicycle practice. There was a very small hill there that she was able to ride down and, because of the light cover of grass, topple onto without any fear. It still feels like we’re a long way away from her being able to balance and pedal but some progress was made. I got a little down remembering that I have to do this with two more kids.
-
The number of detected COVID-19 cases continued to climb (NHK). The numbers aren’t anywhere near the levels being seen in Western countries but how much of that is due to better precautions (e.g. masks and air filtration) and how much of that is due to a fundamentally different testing strategy I’m unsure. Emma goes back to school next week so we’ll see what, if anything, that brings. I’m still not sure what’s happening with booster shots. They’re coming but when and whether the move will complicate things (vaccines are handled at a council level in Japan and we’ll be moving council areas) I also don’t know.
-
I added a feature to Jeep that will set up the files for a new Janet project. Separately, the PR I submitted to Janet that added redefinable bindings was accepted but was later simplified and made less customisable. That was a bit of a disappointment given all the time I put into it but I can understand why the maintainer took the approach that he did.
-
If you’re interested in tech, you’ve probably seen someone linking to Moxie Marlinspike’s post about web3. It’s as good as everyone says and helps solidify my view that while distributed ledger technology is interesting, it’s not likely to lead to the privacy and data sovereignty benefits that its proponents tout.
-
I’m not sure if you can non-ironically link to a TED talk video in 2022 but I thought this talk on stories by the economist Tyler Cowen was very good.
-
I finally (finally!) finished The Beatles: Get Back. The confrontation near the very end of the documentary that I paused midway through turned out to amount to nothing especially awkward. I wrote in my Letterboxd review that it might be my favourite documentary of all time. I think that crown still belongs to The Fog of War but it’s close.
-
I was familiar with Debussy’s ‘Clair de lune’ but wasn’t aware it came from a suite of pieces. There are a lot of renditions of Suite Bergamasque but I quite liked the recent one by Nikolai Lugansky (Apple Music).
