Aaron insisted that while I was in Matsue, I visit its renowned sunset spot in a park along the eastern shore of Lake Shinji.
I'm not a huge sunrise/sunset person, but what else was I going to be doing at 7:12pm on a Thursday? So I walked down and checked it out:
It was very pretty. If you're a fan of the life-giving fusion power generator that is Sol, you'd probably dig this view.
The first overnight stop on my tour of the north side of Honshu was Matsue. As its castle is among a handful of original castles to survive in Japan (similar to my adopted hometown of Hikone), I felt obligated to drop in and scope out the joint.
And I'm glad I did! Seriously, this is one of the most beautiful and well-maintained castles I've visited in Japan. Really glad I came.
During our visit to Zamami Island with Aaron earlier this week, a young woman approached us and asked if we spoke English. (This is exceedingly rare. In 20 years of traveling to Japan, I don't think anyone has ever assumed I speak anything but English.) She proceeded to ask Aaron if he'd take her group's picture, so I snapped this photo of him obliging:
Later in the day I mentioned having taken a picture of him taking the picture and he responded, "oh yeah, I took a selfie!"
So I zoomed:
And then I enhanced:
Yep. Sure as shit, there's Aaron taking a selfie with this girl's camera.
XOXO is back for one last festival this August. Having always wanted to attend, I was about to buy a ticket when I thought to click through to the COVID policy mentioned in their announcement e-mail:
All XOXO participants are required to wear a high-quality mask at all times while inside Washington High (including Revolution Hall, Show Bar, and all common areas inside the venue), the reserved area for Park Pass holders in the tent, as well as at any festival event on our schedule where masks are required.
I knew XOXO was frequented by hipsters, so I'll grant that an all-N95-all-the-time policy in late-2024 is decidedly vintage.
Park Pass holders will have access to reserved seating in the tent at Washington High Park, a large, shaded, well-ventilated space for viewing the simulcast of our main stage programming. Park Pass holders are required to wear a high-quality mask at all times while in the reserved seating area.
Even outdoors, too? Pass.
It feels to me like wifi SSID passwords shouldn't be masked-by-default with asterisks or whatever. Whoever the hell is going to shoulder surf you typing in your wifi password is probably somebody you'd want to give the password to.
So Aaron and I spent a couple days touring Okinawa after RubyKaigi 2024 wrapped. In particular, we were both eager to escape the urban environments of Naha on the main island, so we hopped on the fastest ferry out of town, the Queen Zamami (whose reservation website evokes some real Angelfire nostalgia).
Once you get there, you probably want to rent a bike or an electronic scooter (referred to as kickboards here) to get around the island, because the island's a bit too large to comfortably walk around—especially on a warm day in direct sunlight. To the east and west are beautiful beaches—though we both preferred the tranquil blue waters of Furuzami beach. On every corner of the island, there sits an observation deck (希望台) atop the nearest mountain, and they offer some truly breathtaking views.
Speaking of, here are some of those views:
I also cut a quick one-minute video of the island, for your audiovisual enjoyment:
Anyway, if you're ever on Okinawa's main island, you really should save a day to ferry out and back to Zamami. Definitely worth seeing. 🏝️
The XZ Utils backdoor taught me to be cautious about handing over maintenance of
open source to others, but now what the hell am I to do with OSS I don't want?
States should pass safe haven laws that allow developers to swaddle their code
in a basket and leave it at a fire station without fear of repercussion.
Extremely impressed @tenderlove and I managed to spend a day at the beach—even swimming—with zero supplies or preparation and the next day I can't find a single grain of sand in my shoes or my bag. S Rank
Incidentally, Becky and I just visited Matsuyama for the first time a bit over a week ago, so I was surprised (and delighted!) when RubyKaigi's head organizer Akira Matsuda announced that next year's event will be held in Matsuyama from April 16-18, 2025.
If you've never been, Matsuyama resides in Ehime prefecture, which is on the island of Shikoku, just southwest of Japan's main island. It has one of the most cherished castles in the country atop a mountain at the center of the city and which is accessible by a continuously running cable car. It's also home to Dōgo onsen, which is considered to be the oldest hot springs bath in the country (and one of several inspirations for Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away). Additionally, it's famous for its massive and varied mikan (Japanese clementine oranges) crop—Becky and I got to sample a smattering of varieties from a store that had dozens of local citrus juices on tap, via cute little faucets.
Getting to Matsuyama isn't so bad either. From Osaka, it's about 3.5 hours by train, and a special rapid "Shiokaze" train service runs to Matsuyama from Okayama, making it an easy transfer from the Sanyo Shinkansen.
If you've ever wanted to visit a hot springs resort, or get a glimpse of daily life in a more remote Japanese city than the most well-known tourist destinations, I hope I'll see you next year!
[Translator's note: yama means mountain]
I'm going to take a stab at recording a podcast from Japan now that RubyKaigi has finished. If you have any curiosities about what's coming up in Ruby 3.4 or questions about the conference, email them! podcast@searls.co
My biggest takeaway from this has nothing to do with the content of the alleged group chat, it's that even billions of dollars won't buy you a better user experience than the junky interface of WhatsApp. Shame. theverge.com/2024/5/16/24158393/billionaires-urged-nyc-mayor-to-sic-police-on-columbia-encampment
Just booked a flight from Okinawa to Fukuoka on Peach airlines. $53, all-in, including aisle an aisle seat.
Could get used to this. #円安
PSA: if you're using Rails+Hotwire, Turbo's so-fast-it-feels-like-magic ability to update sections of the DOM downgrades Capybara's all method from "likely to regret this" to "definite footgun" when used in system tests.
IME, Turbo Streams updates the DOM so fast that elements found with Capybara's all are extremely likely to be stale by the time you iterate and interact with them. After several days of fighting intermittent CI failures, I had to banish all in favor of find in all my tests.
Preparing for the first night of RubyKaigi in my traditional way: debugging a
flaky Capybara/Selenium test which has nothing to do with Ruby and everything to
do with JavaScript. 👍
Had a surprisingly hard time finding a coin laundry in Okinawa this morning. First one I went to only had dryers, which was a first. 💨
We had a brief stop in Kagoshima, so we took full advantage to get ourselves some Kurobuta (黒豚) pork. The pork is like "black angus" in that despite having "black" in the name, it is still the just-barely-cooked-enough-to-be-safe pink color we know and love.
I was genuinely confused when so many people were excited for the Rabbit R1 device, because they said that it worked by hostile screen-scraping of Android apps in the cloud to order Uber, Door Dash, etc.
Had anyone who preordered this thing ever tried automating even a basic web site with Selenium?
This place had a ludicrous happy hour deal, essentially boiling down to $2 whisky highballs and lemon sours, sub-$2 for five grilled homemade gyoza, and just a wee bit over $2 for a draft beer.
Naturally they were as good as any gyoza I've had in my life.
Here is my Tabelog check-in
I've done a lot of castles in Japan, but after the 2016 earthquake, I really had no idea what to expect from Kumamoto-jo. The degree to which the restoration project has seemingly made the castle more accessible to the general public is really impressive.
You can tell something is up when you walk the massive sky bridge from the castle town to the structure itself. When you enter the castle, the amount of modern infrastructure present—from steel beams supporting the stonework to drywall and air conditioning—is a little overwhelming. All-in-all, it's a really cool 2-3 hour diversion, but prepare for a lot of walking!
