Just watched DUNE for the first time since the theatre. I think I like it a lot more on the second watch. It is actually really well put together, quick pace… Just all the slomo and prophesying slow it down. Looking forward to seeing the second part in the next couple of weeks.

I haven’t been sick for quite a while. So I suppose I should not feel so betrayed, so wronged for being sick on this long weekend 😷 But it still sucks 😞

Back in the big 大

Inside Osaka Stations curved ceiling

The HN Tokyo hntokyo.io meetup last night. About a 100 people on the PARCO rooftop in Shibuya. Gorgeous view. Tons of new friends made. The startup scene in Japan is so different compared to when I struggled in 2009-2010. Lots of interesting projects and successes!

People gathered in bar restaurant under some decorative scaffoldingPeople listening to announcements, decorative scaffolding abovePeople giving announcements, decorative scaffolding above

Today I met @jamesvandyne in person! He showed me around his lovely office and then we went for a taco lunch 😏

We had a fun conversation about working in green tech, his CMS project Tanzawa, and all the cool innovation happening now on open social. The web is getting weird again! 🤘🥳

James and Chad pose with Constantine, a 1.5m tall pink octopus plushie that is the mascot of octopus energyTwo plates with three tacos each. One is all chicken tacos and one is shrimp. No octopus

On the Shinkansen 🚅 bound for Tokyo. Meeting some old friends and new over the next few days as I do my annual working holiday in the big city. I am taking this time to do some strategy work, and also to attend the Hacker News Tokyo meetup for the first time. HMU if you see me there!

Good time connecting with the wider community of devs in Osaka. We talked about all sorts of topics including using CoPilot in multilingual environments. Then had a good hour of networking before heading back to the station and off for drinks and more conversation meetu.ps/e/MRJGJ/1…

Photo from the upper floor of JR Osaka station out of the north exit.

Enjoying @emilydingwrites@mastodon.world latest newsletter #MovableWorlds The writing is evocative and the accompanying little clips & photos really set the mood. It just makes me want to sit down and write! I wish my newsletter could be so well crafted… movableworlds.co/p/finding…

The Heritage Foundations playbook for a Republican 2025 presidency will throw gas on the #ClimateCrisis turning everything including dishwasher cycles into a Culture War. Just scan the headers on this review of the 900 page document 🤯

heatmap.news/politics/…

Listening to this podcast talking about using profilers to not only carbon-optimize your site, but also Linux, and your house 🏡 pca.st/episode/6…

GitHub's Innovation Graph

Rest of World has a piece on the fastest-growing countries for software development featuring GitHub’s Innovation graph. I got a peek at this last year at the GitHub booth at the IGF2023 in Kyoto. One of my favs is Economy collaborators which represents international collaboration on projects. It is the sum of git pushes sent from one country to another. This is some real CIA Factbook or Atlas of Economic Complexity-like stuff but for software development.

A circular chart showing country arcs on the outside with connective bands to other countries

Had a call with a friend I knew from Kyoto. We went to China together in 2004. I saw him once in Oakland in 2013. We occasionally have catchup calls, but have not met in person in a long time. I have a few friends like this. They are all great and I am lucky to have them. 🥰

Blue sky in Osaka

(We are here to see the plum blossoms, but they are not quite ready yet)

Osaka castle against a cloudless sky

Leopard print 🐆 on the subway doors is 💯 🎯 Osaka

Osaka Metro subway car doors open revealing the interior. The doors on the other side have a leopard print design

Big day today: the keys 🔑 have been handed over! We moved to Osaka in October and put our Kyoto apartment up for sale. Sold in December, and the new people took possession today. An 18 year long chapter is now over.

Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, We have a long-time group doing the Strahd campaign… the DM commissioned cute voodoo dolls of our characters!! 😍😍😍 Amazing! #DnD

5 crocheted smiling dolls with armour and swords

I know people are hatin' on AI/LLMs but they’ve improved my ritual spellcasting efficiency significantly! 🧙‍♂️😜

Chad asks GPT how much salt to make a 50ft diameter ritual circle, and GPT returns a multi-step process concluding that You would need approximately 4.6 pounds of salt to make a 50-foot diameter ritual circle with a salt line that is 1/4 inch wide and 1/8 inch high. This estimate assumes a uniform distribution and density of the salt line around the entire circumference of the circle.

A wide-ranging and thought-provoking ep about crypto, AI, VCs, ZKs, quadratic funding, democracy, anarchism… Audrey drops the inspiring line “bridging polarity to plurality” 🎯

podcasts.apple.com/au/podcas…

🙏 🥰

daverupert.com/2024/02/a…

(Attached is a fuzzy photo of a server rack in a church alcove that I took at the Internet Archive more than a decade ago)

Server rack with blinky lights in a church alcove that probably housed some religious statue a long time ago

Started reading: Global Digital Data Governance: Polycentric Perspectives by Carolina Aguerre, Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn, Jan Aart Scholte 📚 #InternetGovernance