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Linux Tools for Learners
If you’re trying to learn *nix command line, whether you’re on a Mac, Linux, the Linux subsystem in Windows or something else, here’s a few pointers and tips that you might find useful:
In my opinion, don’t try to learn every command deeply, but rather learn the basics, take a while to get used to it, then circle back for more detail. Use man to learn what you need, when you need it.
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Japan Drivers License Ordeal
I finally got my proper Japan driver’s license, and what an ordeal it’s been. Fasten your seatbelts for this one and just note that you must convert, and cannot drive on an IDP for more than one year. Anyway, here goes:
The incident I’ve been in Japan since 1987 and did not drive for the first 4 or 5 years. I always have kept my US license current, and after getting married, got and started using an international license.
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Favorite Podcasts Trypod
Before COVID I used to walk to JR Totsuka station here in Yokohama, every day for my commute to Tokyo. It was a good opportunity to listen to a podcast, and I have several favorites from Mozilla, NPR, PRX, WYNC, CIR and others that I’ll share here. #trypod
Although there’s English news in Japan (I’ve paid so much in newspaper subscription fees for the last 34 years I’m practically an investor), I like radio, and Podcasts are a great radio-like way to keep up with what is going on outside our little archipelago.
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Shiba Maru Rebellion
Our dog “Maru”, a male Shiba, is going through a rebellious phase now at 11 months old. Our trainer told us Shibas especially go through a phase between 6 and 18 months where they seem to forget every bit of their training, won’t listen to commands, won’t eat, won’t crate, forget there they’re supposed to pee; all manner of fun stuff. Yep, it’s happening. He’s being extra difficult now, but there are still flashes of that obedient, cute little guy from, um, two weeks ago!
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Overly Precise Japan
A while back, the morning news in Japan did an unironic piece on “how much is too much reclining” in trains and planes. The result was, most people in Japan felt that 40.4 cm (15.90551 in) was the max they wanted someone in front of them to recline. In typical Japan News fashion, they measured distances and angles, and got a cute little girl to say when she felt uncomfortable when the man in front reclined.
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Trouble Comes Free
Of course there are people who live by creating trouble as their raison d’être, like Baron Munchausen. In my thinking, life dishes out trouble anyway and automatically, so why make it more difficult? It may be cliché to say, but better to be part of the solution, rather than the problem.
People who are constantly negative are as impractical in thought, as people who are constantly positive. People who make even more mistakes to compound the problem as the pressure mounts, then bail, are another good example.
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Praise for Discomfort
Thinking about motivation and how to motivate, I came to a conclusion that works for me. Praising someone for what they are already good at, is a waste of an interaction. The person being praised learns nothing, especially if you or others have said it before. The praiser misses a chance to make any sort of difference, and can fall into a rut of doing nothing to improve or better themselves.
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Got Japanese Humor?
I like comedy because laughter makes me feel better, while the heavy stuff comes for free. What about in Japan? Japan has some interesting comedy or “owarai” styles that are good to know for learners of Japanese. It might be really, really esoteric to those who don’t speak any Japanese, but if you’re trying to get from intermediate to advanced any language, you could do worse than to listen to, and learn some comedy in that language.
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Stop Tool Fiddling
Are you a project manager or, a manager of MS Project. That is, is your selected tool impeding you rather than helping you? The more time spent fiddling with your tool (an apt metaphor here), the less time you’re spending thinking and communicating about how people, things and money fit with your schedule and the goals you’re aiming to meet.
There may be projects that require a 5000-line Gantt chart, but even large projects I’ve managed have never needed one.
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Japan Banking Hell
The other day I had to do three bank transfers for my company, since my business partner who usually takes care of this, couldn’t. The bank tellers are really very polite, but it took three hours, and I can’t get away from the idea that they are also completely incompetent, albeit really politely.
The thing is, I had only the bank book and the hanko (stamp). If you have the cash card and PIN, it’s easy to do a bank transfer.
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Japan Murder Hornets
Robert on Strava says he “just takes the stings and calls it free Vespa”, which is funny, but Asian Giant Hornets (Vespa mandarinia) in Japan are no joke. Read on to find out why.
Sept and Oct is breeding season for the Japanese Hornet, which is when they get aggressive. In Japanese, these are called “oo-suzumebachi (オオスズメバチ)” meaning “great sparrow bee” because of their large size. You know you’re in trouble when they start clacking their mandibles.
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Hugo Vercel Deploy
A question on the Hugo support forum prompted me to try deploying the Hugo quickstart site with Ananke Theme, on Vercel. It was super simple and took only 10 min. Here’s what I did.
Hugo Quickstart First, just run through the quickstart steps in a local folder to get it basically working. I put my projects in $HOME/dev.
Connect to Vercel using their CLI command Assuming you have installed the vercel CLI command locally and have authenticated, you can connect your new Hugo project to your Vercel account by running vercel in the project folder.
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Postmarkapp Template Backup
The other day I wrote about using Postmark for sending out HTML emails. We wanted to have a way to backup our Postmark email templates automatically, so we coded a simple Github Actions workflow which is available on our Github.
There is about 10 minutes of setup for you to do, and it works well enough to backup your Postmark templates and server information on a schedule.
Basically, you need to:
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App Email Services
If you are hosting your app on a service like the recently-closed Webfaction, you might be getting shared space for your web pages or app, databases and email addresses that can be used for sending or receiving. However, many modern hosting environments such as Vercel , Netlify or others, don’t come with email capability and assume you’ll setup some service to handle the emails that are issued from your app, such as welcome messages, password resets and the like, or, inbound emails.
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Apple Mail Privacy
After updating to Apple’s iOS 15, amongst several privacy initiatives in iCloud+, you can enable “MPP” or Mail Privacy Protection, that has email marketers scrambling, up in arms because it blocks those 1px “beacon” images used to track your opens. It’s so easy to turn on.
Here’s where to look:
Settings, Mail, Privacy Protection, Protect Mail Activity ON
What it does it pre-fetch your email contents to a proxy, blocking the trackers email marketers typically use.
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Japan Suica Penguin
Japan Rail’s IC rail pass “Suica” is so named because it helps daily commuters pass through gates easily, i.e. in a “Sui-Sui” manner, since 2001. Penguins are skillful swimmers, passing in and around obstacles with ease, so that’s why the “Suica Penguin” was born. Its designer is the lovely Chiharu Sakazaki 坂崎千春, who modeled it after an Adélie penguin. Ironically, people shuffling towards escalators during rush hour, walk a lot like penguins.
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Waseda Wasesai Waseneko
2022 update: A blast from the past. We have been living in our new house for a month, and the three cats the neighbor who died had been feeding, are now visiting us in expectation. It made me think of this post.
At the Waseda University “Wasesai” festival on 4th Nov 2018, Akiko and I visited some club displays in the classrooms, to kill some time before our daughter’s concerts. One interesting one was the “Waseneko” circle. Here’s why it was cool:
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Japan Tourist Vandals
An idiot 19-year-old tourist from America was caught vandalizing store front shutters in Shibuya. Apparently this kid wanted to “make his mark” in Japan. What a wanker.
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Japan Secondhand Smoke
Well of course Japan isn’t going to live up to its Health Ministry’s promises to “ban indoor smoking” on the ramp up to the 2020 Olympics. Ah, I need to rant a little:
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Allan Holdsworth Dead
So sad: virtuoso guitarist Allan Holdsworth unexpectedly died at 70 on 16th April 2017, and I wager he’s in heaven jamming with Coltrane, maybe having a nice brew after, with a perfect head.
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Obey Or Else
By now you’ve probably heard about the awful treatment by United Airlines of a man who refused to give up his seat. It was frankly brutal.
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Universal CJK Typeface
Holy serif! Google and Adobe have released “Noto Serif CJK” aka “Source Han Serif”, part of an ambitious and important project to design a set of typefaces to cover the world’s languages.
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Kigo Seasonal Symbols
Foreign residents often hear that “only Japan has four seasons” and while that is of course not true, Japan does take its seasons seriously, marking them with seasonal words called “kigo” 季語.
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Eldests First Job
Our oldest got her first full time job last year, and it finally started (things start in April in Japan). It’s a new chapter for her and for us.