juliaplaysgroove has me convinced that any song can be improved by adding bass. This week I finally got around to making my site-search shortcut CLI tool more usable. I can use a shortcut to search specific sites instead of having to type stuff like site:forums.developer.nvidia.com into the search bar. I haven’t touched code in ages, and I’m glad to finally be back at it. I was reading a piece lately about Why it feels like everyone in the world is heading to Japan right now and would like to recommend not going to Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto (or rather, not staying there for too long)....

The Olympus AF-1 Twin gives off the vibe of a slightly austere older sibling – built to withstand all sorts of conditions (supposedly weatherproof), and not the type to give you a lot of choices. You get to choose between a 35mm or 70mm lens with the biaxial system (i.e. no zoom), and there are two separate buttons for flash and continuous/self-timer controls. I take note of this because some cameras have incredibly convoluted steps for disabling flash – the Fuji Zoom Cardia Super 115 requires you to press the flash button 6 times before you can take a photo without flash....

With this I have finally caught up with my weeknote backlog. I aspire to be like Nika who (1) has a very snazzy layout for weeknotes that’s styled like a calendar and (2) is very consistent. Fingers crossed that I actually do sit down on Sunday nights from now on. Accompanied someone who was serving as a witness to court (anticlimactic as the fella actually being prosecuted didn’t show up and somehow got hospitalised the night before trial)....

A picture speaks a thousand words, so this will be my longest post yet. This week covered my final 3 days in London and the long trip home. I have learnt that getting film hand-inspected when taking the Eurostar (St Pancras or Gare du Nord) or at Heathrow Airport is a real pain because they say it has to go through the machine as long as your film’s under ISO 800....

Week 24 comprised of many things but mainly the wonders of time with long-distance friends, IKEA hanging trays, quiet museums and watching a bunch of folks play petanque. Listened to a lot of brat. Over the past week and this one, I visited a few of my friends who are based in London/Paris. We rarely get to hang out in the easy and pointless way that most friendships are made as kids/students, so whatever time we have to pointlessly hang out, cook, and wander about is precious to me....

[updated 2 Jul with an additional photo] I got the Raynox ME-606 in a random Hard-Off junk section (more precisely, Hard-Off at Hirata in Matsumoto) for the princely sum of 300 yen, with no real guarantees about whether it would work. This was before I wisened up and started bringing my own batteries for thrifting cameras, so all I knew was that it had corroded battery contacts and a battery flap that wouldn’t shut....

It’s evidently been a while. I think I procrastinated a lot on weeknotes because I felt like I had nothing to say. Realised I practice a lot of unnecessary self-censorship. In the past few weeks I’ve started helping someone out with filing a claim with the Small Claims Tribunal (I’m basically someone’s Computer Guy because he doesn’t have access to a laptop and also is not fluent in English), and also finally updated my review of classes I took for a graduate certificate after much procrastinating (bit of a running theme)....

In 2023, I spent 6 weeks leading a section of about 14 people hailing from China, Brazil, Germany, India, Japan (and more countries!) as part of Code in Place, and got to experience the joy of seeing people write their first for-loops :) We met for an hour a week on Zoom, but my personal estimate for how much time I spent on Code in Place including preparation + writing weekly recaps was about 4-5 hours a week (including class time)....

Double bill this time, because I’ve been kind of tardy. Week 17 I took a silversmithing class with my university flatmate and got to interact with flux and solder in a non-electronics-related setting :) It was very calming to just focus on: annealing the metal marking out where to cut it sawing it and filing to ensure a smooth join actually joining it by applying flux, and then solder to the joint shaping it into a rounder shape by hammering it on the mandrel grinding the ring down to create a wavy shape polishing it (done!...

Spent a lot of the week marinating (I prefer this term over “ruminating”). I think I’m still adjusting to freedom - so much time gets taken up by the work week that its sudden absence creates a vacuum of sorts. I realise that I’m used to taking work given to me by third parties very seriously, but am suddenly at a loss when it comes to my own goals and projects… guess I’m actually not used to prioritising my own interests and taking myself seriously....