TIL you can (re)set a sleep timer with Siri. Listening to a podcast while falling asleep and my timer paused playback before I nodded off. Clicked the AirPod stem to resume playback and said:
“Siri set a sleep timer for 15 minutes”
This actually worked! I’ve been getting up and tapping my device like an idiot all these years.
So far, I've visited 35 of Japan's 47 prefectures.
I've been joking with my Japanese friends that I'm closing in on having visited every single prefecture for a little while now, and since I have a penchant for exaggerating, I was actually curious: how many have I actually been to?
Thankfully, because iPhone has been equipped with a GPS for so long, all my photos from our 2009 trip onward are location tagged, so I was pleased to find it was pretty easy to figure this out with Apple's Photos app.
Here are the ground rules:
| 都道府県 | Prefecture | Visited? | 1st visit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 北海道 | Hokkaido | ❌ | |
| 青森県 | Aomori | ✅ | 2024 |
| 岩手県 | Iwate | ✅ | 2019 |
| 宮城県 | Miyagi | ✅ | 2019 |
| 秋田県 | Akita | ✅ | 2024 |
| 山形県 | Yamagata | ❌ | |
| 福島県 | Fukushima | ❌ | |
| 茨城県 | Ibaraki | ❌ | |
| 栃木県 | Tochigi | ❌ | |
| 群馬県 | Gunma | ❌ | |
| 埼玉県 | Saitama | ❌ | |
| 千葉県 | Chiba | ✅ | 2015 |
| 東京都 | Tokyo | ✅ | 2005 |
| 神奈川県 | Kanagawa | ✅ | 2005 |
| 新潟県 | Niigata | ✅ | 2024 |
| 富山県 | Toyama | ✅ | 2024 |
| 石川県 | Ishikawa | ✅ | 2023 |
| 福井県 | Fukui | ❌ | |
| 山梨県 | Yamanashi | ✅ | 2024 |
| 長野県 | Nagano | ✅ | 2009 |
| 岐阜県 | Gifu | ✅ | 2005 |
| 静岡県 | Shizuoka | ✅ | 2023 |
| 愛知県 | Aichi | ✅ | 2009 |
| 三重県 | Mie | ✅ | 2019 |
| 滋賀県 | Shiga | ✅ | 2005 |
| 京都府 | Kyoto | ✅ | 2005 |
| 大阪府 | Osaka | ✅ | 2005 |
| 兵庫県 | Hyogo | ✅ | 2005 |
| 奈良県 | Nara | ✅ | 2005 |
| 和歌山県 | Wakayama | ✅ | 2019 |
| 鳥取県 | Tottori | ✅ | 2024 |
| 島根県 | Shimane | ✅ | 2024 |
| 岡山県 | Okayama | ✅ | 2024 |
| 広島県 | Hiroshima | ✅ | 2012 |
| 山口県 | Yamaguchi | ✅ | 2019 |
| 徳島県 | Tokushima | ❌ | |
| 香川県 | Kagawa | ✅ | 2020 |
| 愛媛県 | Ehime | ✅ | 2024 |
| 高知県 | Kochi | ❌ | |
| 福岡県 | Fukuoka | ✅ | 2009 |
| 佐賀県 | Saga | ❌ | |
| 長崎県 | Nagasaki | ✅ | 2024 |
| 熊本県 | Kumamoto | ✅ | 2023 |
| 大分県 | Oita | ✅ | 2024 |
| 宮崎県 | Miyazaki | ❌ | |
| 鹿児島県 | Kagoshima | ✅ | 2023 |
| 沖縄県 | Okinawa | ✅ | 2024 |
Working through this list, I was surprised by how many places I'd visited for a day trip or passed through without so much as staying the night. (Apparently 11 years passed between my first Kobe trip and my first overnight stay?) This exercise also made it clear to me that having a mission like my 2024 Nihonkai Tour is a great way to string together multiple short visits while still retaining a strong impression of each place.
Anyway, now I've definitely got some ideas for where I ought to visit in 2025! 🌄
One thing I love about Japan are all the obscure Metal Gear Solid spin-offs that we never saw stateside.
Want to know the only thing worse than worrying a lot? Being really good at worrying.
Most people's worries never come to pass. But when I worry about something, the odds are extraordinarily good it will go exactly as terribly as I feared.
My brother gives me shit because I use my real name on Reddit, but in my mind it's more like I'm playing Reddit with permadeath enabled.
In Japan, it's common for bars to have a dice game with rules like:
I "lost" with both of these 1L whisky-fruit highballs. I sure don't feel like a loser, though.
A non-zero number of people assume rotary clubs are full of nerds who are really into assessing the authenticity of signing important documents for some reason.
One of the best parts of all these ridiculous side quests I accept is that I never run out of new situations to figure out. This week: how to iron my shirt and press my pants from a Japanese business hotel the day before a meeting.
Thankfully, we have YouTube
Of course, models vary between companies and I actually had to follow this less entertaining video to get figure out what to do with a standing "Twinbird" press (apparently the #1 seller in pants presses):
When I was young and learning how to do my own laundry, I remember always thinking “permanent press” sounded like too much of a commitment.
I'm going away on a trip for an unexpectedly long time, and you'll never guess why! (You might guess why.) Anyway, here's something to remember me by.
If you've ever been worried about whether something you cared about would work out okay, email podcast@searls.co and tell me about it so that I can share your story with a bunch of strangers on the Internet.
Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube.
References available upon request:
I saw this promoted post in my Reddit feed and thought, "huh, maybe WaPo is trying to entice new readers with ads pairing gift links to articles and targeted demographics that might engage with them."
LOL, no. You click anywhere on this and you instantly get hit with a paywall.
Who is this for? Current subscribers that don't read the Washington Post? People who planned to subscribe and forgot?
Absolute idiocy.
One of my favorite things about OpenAI is when they A/B test ChatGPT responses and the computer arrives at two identical responses, but still insist you tell them which answer was better.
I'm feeling the response on the right, personally.
TIL you can create a new rails app inside the current directory without creating a new one! For example, to build out a rails app around them:
$ rails new .
The app module will be named after the current working directory.
I really hope that for the next Vision hardware release, Apple makes the light shield (functionally) optional. The original is so much more productive and pleasant when you remove the light shield and retain your (human) peripheral vision and airflow over your face’s skin.
Been “vibe coding” (ugh) all afternoon, and 3 hours into my agent building an agentic REPL (I know), it decided to just remove all human-facing output because it figured out how to read underlying logs I don’t have (apparent) access to.
Was like that scene in Her when the AI just decides to peace out and go do its own thing. Welp.
The pope’s death today is absolutely tremendous news for VOD rentals for Conclave. Great movie!
Searching for real estate in Japan has been a humorous lesson in the differences of how we market things here. You’d think of all countries, Japanese developers might be sensitive to promotional images that make their brand-new condo building appear to be radioactive. ☢️
Your favorite podcast about nothing continues to find things to talk about.
Whatever you do, DO NOT e-mail me at podcast@searls.co or else I will read it on air and tell everyone how smart you sound and how good you look.
Video of this edition of the show is up on YouTube.
Links to follow:
As an angry old man, I'm always eager to shit on whatever "the kids" are excited about, and this month that's been the phrase "vibe coding". But today I was feeling a vibe myself, and decided to delay recording of v35 of Breaking Change and just do my first-ever vibe coding session on camera instead.
The only rule: AI only. I didn't touch a line of code in the editor window. That's right, after over 2 years of using GitHub Copilot, I got to be copilot for once. 😎
Stuff you'll learn in this 90-minute video:
Oh, and if you're an AI skeptic, you might appreciate that this screencast has ZERO cuts. It's one continuous unedited vibe party, and you're invited.
Don't have 90 minutes? Check the chapters—most of the real action happens in 30 minutes in the middle. But I hope you'll pour a beverage and sit down and vibe with me for this one. ☮️
