Jim on Japan

This will save me some time. I can check on Lake Te Anau without flying back. https://www.youtube.com/@southlandapplive/live

Exploring using OpenDisplay on the Xteink X4 to plot hourly energy consumption over the past 4 days with data pulled from Octopus Energy Japan's API. Unfortunately, there seems to be a significant time lag between the smart meter readings and the data showing up in their GraphQL DB.

Drainspotting in Matsuyama, Ehime.

#Drainspotting Takamatsu, Kagawa

I got to meet #Banio, the #mascot of the Atagawa Tropical & Alligator Garden. It started in the 1950s growing bananas, but has added 17 different species of alligators. #japan

Our local railroad company organized an express train excursion to the Taiwan Lantern Festival in Atagawa, Shizuoka. There were lots of food booths, a taiko performance, and hundreds of lanterns.

The scent of grapes was nearly overpowering as I crossed the plaza this morning in Ito, Japan.

The threaded reply feature in Google Chat is incredibly frustrating, especially on Android. It is surprising there isn't a setting to turn off this "feature."

Well, THAT increase seems a bit excessive: Last year it was US$29.99/year for MiLB.tv, but this year it has doubled to US$59.99. Who have they hired for the San Jose Giants play-by-play?

My snowperson is learning to limbo in preparation for their dream vacation to Trinidad. (Over the weekend, Ito got its first significant snow in six years.)

A hard disk failed in a cheap (i.e. old) server at OVH Canada (Quebec). They were able to swap in a replacement within 45 minutes of my opening a ticket. RAID rebuild takes longer. Admittedly, the new drive is even older than the one it replaced, but I can live with that given their response time.

Walking along the Ito River on a cool and very quiet evening.

The Scratch Foundation is seeking donations and memberships to keep the Scratch programming environment free and flourishing. I'm a fan, so I've joined. www.scratchfoundation.org/home

Thank you, Phil O'Brien and Simon Morris, for the wacky and occasionally brilliant "Matinee Idle" that has livened up Kiwi summers for over 20 years. A fun way to be introduced to some "music" I would never have discovered. www.rnz.co.nz/life/culture...

There is something oddly satisfying about pointlessly wasting compute cycles to arrive at a vanity MeshCore node ID. gessaman.com/mc-keygen/

After 16+ years, the Open Education Resource Foundation is on the verge of closing as the current fiscal host pulls out. This has the potential to close WikiEducator which has been around even longer. oerfoundation.org/2025/12/13/t...

The feijoa season has arrived in Japan. This is the (first) bag we received from a farm near Osaka.

I was back in my old Kichijoji / Mitaka neighborhood and noticed there is a new vending machine offering gyoza, steamed buns, sesame balls, and more.

We do an evening around #LoRa devices and #Meshtastic on Friday. - What are Lora, how does Lora relate to WiFi - What's Meshtastic, will bring in some devices - I'll explain this BBS use case idea, how it works Location: Nov 21st, 7pm, Meeting room 202 at Jiyugaoka juku Center, Tokyo

It is November, and that means "Butt Sumo" (尻つみ祭り) time again at the local shrine here in Ito, #Japan. Contestants stand back-to-back on a raised dais and, at the signal, attempt to bump their opponent off. The winners are sometimes surprising.

Halloween 🎃 is appearing more and more in Japan.

Yesterday's silliness involved replacing the garish LENOVO BIOS logo on my old ThinkPad with the Tokyo Linux User Group emblem.

School kids have been practicing their drumming for the past two weeks for their ride in the float. Our community's dashi was hit by an elderly driver while making the rounds on Saturday, putting one neighbor in the hospital with broken ribs. We sat out most of Sunday's festivities.

It was festival weekend in Ito. More than a dozen illuminated floats with musicians are pulled and pushed around the neighborhood.

For the past 3 years, I've been using the Open Source SilverBullet PKMS to organize my notes in Markdown files. Its major feature is how programmable it is (first in JavaScript, now in Lua). SilverBullet's author is publishing a series of tutorials on YouTube.

The Tokyo Maker Faire 2025 is being held this weekend (04~05 October) at Tokyo Big Sight.

Wow, it's been years since I encountered a "you can only use this site with MSIE" alert... except now it is Safari or Chrome.

Congratulations to the San Jose Giants for sweeping the playoffs and taking home the California League championship! Now a two-month gap until the ABL season kicks off.

JG1GPY showed off a clever, compact multi-band antenna at the SOTA JP booth at the Japan Ham Fair this weekend. A switch allows selection of direct feed (for 1/4 wave on 40m, with trailing counterpoise) or through a 49:1 transformer for end-fed on higher bands.

This weekend is the Japan Ham Fair 2025 at Ariake GYM-EX (the 2020 Olympics Gymnastics venue). A chance for the big commercial vendors to show off previews of their new equipment and a flea market to allow users to recycle older gear. onjapan.net/2025/hamfair/

My SatNOGS station disappeared a few days ago. I get the RPi down from the pole, plug it in to the LAN and it is fine. It turned out the 2.4GHz radio had stopped on the crucial access point. (Everything else was on 5GHz, so I never noticed.)

I'm pleased that someone at Helsinki Airport was willing to have fun with their airport code.

PyCon JP is in Hiroshima, September 26 & 27 (Friday & Saturday): "Pieces of Python, Coming Together." The CfP is open for proposals in Japanese and English. pyconjp.blogspot.com/2025/05/pyco...

Tokyo Python is being reborn with a night of lightning talks on May 22nd in Roppongi. www.meetup.com/tokyopython/...

The Oregon State Open Source Lab (OSL) is desperately seeking funding. They provide hosting for many projects and build infrastructure for multiple architectures. Please consider donating: osuosl.org/blog/osl-fut...

Continuing my series of unusual post boxes, this penguin awaits your letters between the Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium and the Antarctic Museum/Research Ship Fuji.

NZART (The New Zealand Association of Radio Transmitters) is the only amateur radio organization I am a member of that still insists on publishing its magazine on paper. The March issue has just arrived. It still punches above its weight for a small organization, but I wish it were digital.

Ito is hosting a ramen festival for the next four weekends. Within a five-minute walk, I can try 28 different kinds of ramen from around Japan.

I managed to get my @washingtonpost.com Keyword score back under 7. (It is harder to work on the average time statistic, since this is a "second screen" game.)

A group of New Zealand ham radio operators has a VoIP interface to some of their digital voice reflectors. I have built a webapp that shows real-time Asterisk extension status using Go and SSE. github.com/DigitalVoice...

I updated my old ex-lease Lenovo X1 Thinkpad to Fedora Silverblue 42 without issue. Thanks to everyone that is making this so seamless.

The REAL baseball season starts tomorrow (technically, Friday night in the US). I am looking forward to another San Jose Giants winning season. www.milb.com/san-jose

A (modern) programmer may own the parking lot around the corner since it is 0-indexed.

It was a lovely but cool day for the vernal equinox at Jogasaki-Kaigan Station in Ito.

My Atari Portfolio hard disk adapter prototype. The only problem was that the hard disk's power consumption was higher than the computer's, but it was fun to play with.

My colleagues and our broadcasts, devoted to telling America’s story to the world — honestly, fairly and with an unwavering commitment to the truth​, are being silenced this weekend. open.substack.com/pub/newsguy/...

The JARL Ham Fair 2025 will return to Ariake GYM-EX (an Olympic venue repurposed into an exhibition hall) on August 23rd and 24th. www.jarl.org/Japanese/1_T...

Old rail car at Daiyuzan Station with a plaque celebrating Valentine's Day. The line will be 100 years old in October.

I enjoyed the food and folk dance at the Soga Plum Festival in Odawara, but the cold snap has delayed the blossoms so most areas still looked barren.

The Tokyo Linux User Group technical meeting this Saturday (2025-02-08 14:00)). Edmund Edgar will be giving a talk about ATProto, the protocol behind the Bluesky social network, and also a bit on how other open social networks (Fediverse, Nostr, Farcaster) are designed. tlug.jp/wiki/Meeting...