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Snow fell late Saturday night and we awoke to a layer a few centimetres thick covering the neighbourhood. Emma and John went out and had a snowball fight and Rowan and I made his first snowman. The eyes were mostly left to the imagination but I did procure an actual carrot for the nose which made it feel worthy of some kind of merit badge.
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The last time it snowed like this was when we were living in Mukodaichō. Adrien was staying with us and I viscerally remember he and I standing in the street trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to use a shovel to crack the ice into which the melted snow had frozen. As a result, I was determined this time to shovel it while it was still fresh. The problem was that we no longer had the shovel we’d had back then, so that meant I had to race off to the local gardening shop. Snow was lightly falling but I felt vindicated in going when I did once I saw they’d already sold out of their plastic shovels and only had a couple of metal ones left in stock. Shovelling fresh snow was indeed pretty straightforward and by the afternoon, we had a neatly shovelled section of the street outside our house.
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One of the disadvantages of living in Japan is that no television channels (over the air or cable) show cricket. One of the advantages of living in Japan is that this apparently means I can watch the T20 World Cup via the ICC’s website. That’s how I found myself at 1.20 in the morning watching the end of the India vs U.S. match. They don’t have replays and I keep falling asleep before the matches I care about are on but it’s at least something. I wonder if the Ashes were watchable this way.
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Last week, I wrote about trying to listen the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack from Baz Luhrmann. This made me wonder about the name ‘Baz’. In Australia, that would make you expect his actual name is Barry but it turns out it’s… Bazmark (?). According to Wikipedia, he was born Mark Anthony Luhrmann but got the nickname ‘Baz’ at school. While still in school, he changed his first name by deed poll to ‘Bazmark’.
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I got a Mac version of my to-do list app running and switched over to making the iOS version. I’ve found it rougher going so far. That might seem counterintuitive but I think it’s because I’m using gestures as the primary mode of interaction on the phone whereas I was satisfied with the Mac version relying on more traditional affordances like checkboxes and context menus. I’m also at something of a disadvantage in that I can’t pair my iPhone with the Mac so that I can send development builds to it. The reason is because the Lightning port on my ancient iPhone 14 Pro Max is broken and to ‘pair’ an iPhone and a Mac you need to make the initial connection via a cable.
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That problem might soon be solved, though, as Apple finally started selling refurbished iPhones 16. This is relevant because Eri has wanted to upgrade her even more ancient iPhone 13 Mini and so as soon as they were in stock, I pounced and bought her one of the iPhone 16 models. I’ve kept her old phone running for the last couple of days while we make sure everything has copied across but once it has, I plan to repurpose it as a development unit.
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I’m a few months late to this but Raye’s ‘Where is My Husband!’ is very groovy (Apple Music).
