We have been considering moving away from DnD as we wrap up our current campaign. Started reading this as one of the candidates The Wildsea: RPG by Felix Isaacs πŸ“š#ttrpg

Monthly newsletter is out. This month’s message is short since there are so many links to photos of plum blossoms and castles and Tokyo!

buttondown.email/chadkoh/a…

Had this Korean roast today. Nice and light. Very smooth to drink! Had it at a small weekly pop-up. The owner travels lots and brings back all sorts of beans which he serves. Just spent 3 months in Sri Lanka, India & Nepal and has some assorted beans from there too. β˜•οΈ

Cup of coffee in front of a small bag of coffee with Korean writing on it

Networking our networks

The HN Tokyo Meetup. As one Kansai person told me: β€œI can tell it’s a meetup for people who are into frameworks.” Last week I went up to Tokyo on my annual pilgrimage to meet with old friends and make new connections. I timed my trip to coincide with the monthly Hacker News Tokyo Meetup. These social events regularly see a hundred or so hackers, entrepreneurs, and tech enthusiasts of all kinds come out to drink and be merry.

Continue reading β†’

Blue sky at the train station. Today in Osaka was warm with a perfect sky. Spring is coming! 🌱🌼🌸

The sign for Sakuranomiya Station with deep blue  cloudless sky above

Osaka Castle from Genpachi Bridge. In a couple of weeks all those trees will be pink with cherry blossoms 🌸🌸🌸

Photo from a bridge going over a river. Below are trees lining the river bank. They are bare with no leaves or blossoms…  yet. In the far distance is Osaka Castle

"we all can't be Buddhas"

I am posting this publicly so that I can reference it in links going forward. There might be a more common way to express this sentiment, this is just the way that I often do in conversation. It is something I came up with in discussing intentional communities with my wife a while back. Oftentimes, communities will tear themselves apart simply over battles over who is β€œpure” enough to belong. We see this political infighting in all sorts of communities at all sorts of scales.

Continue reading β†’

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 倧

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! 🀘πŸ₯³

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 πŸš… 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.

Continue reading β†’

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. πŸ₯°

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