Tag: english

Shira to Baranco

Living in a city for most of the time it’s always surprising just how clear the sky can be and how bright the stars can be once you’re in nature. That struck me at Mti Mkubwa too, the first camp on Kilimanjaro. “Oh, so that’s why it’s called the Milky Way!”

We started the day with a dancing-singing introduction from the porters and guides. It felt like we were at leisure of time, in no rush whatsoever. We woke up “early” of course (compared to when I’d normally wake up) but only left well past eight.


Ocean @ Tokyo

The Ocean was one of the first “djent bands” in my library, so I was really happy when I heard that they will be playing live in Tokyo. It was also my first time visiting the famous Shimo-Kitazawa area and also ages since the last time I’d been to such a small venue.

I didn’t realize there would be four (!) other bands playing too, The Ocean had all my attention. Some of them were more experimental (reminding me of Deafhaven) while others less so, but to be honest after a while they just felt long.

But the wait was worth it, as The Ocean delivered magnificently. It was also fun to see the community culture centered around the venue. Reminded me a lot of the university music club.


Summer Sonic 2019

Once again Summer Sonic came up with a lineup that I couldn’t resist. Just look at that: Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Maximum the Hormone, Rancid, Man with a Mission, Babymetal and even Red Hot Chili Peppers? In one day? It was nothing short of intense.


Tanzawa

I’ve been thinking about climbing Tanzawa for a long time. It’s close to Tokyo and access is good. At the same time, depending on the route it can be exciting and long as well. The way I chose, starting from the Yabitsu pass, then going down towards Miyagase was both.


k3s

Having played around with the managed Kubernetes offerings of various cloud players (DO, AWS, GCP), I was wondering if it was possible to do this cheap. My site doesn’t have much traffic or anything complicated really, so running it off a $5 DO droplet is reasonable. Sadly managed Kubernetes offerings won’t come out so cheap. (Sure I could leech off the starting $300 GCP credit for a year then keep hopping accounts, but…)

Then I read about k3s. The people behind Rancher made it as a lightweight (but functionally complete) Kubernetes distro. Lightweight, they say… Just how light? (Imagine a weird maniac light in my eyes here.) Could I run it on a $5 droplet?


Garden

I think many people of my profession got recommended a certain article by Medium in their weekly digest. The launch-introduction post by Garden got my attention too. I’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with developing on Kubernetes, so every drop of information in that regard is much welcome.


Hotaka

One of the biggest challenges to Hotaka, at 3190m Japan’s third tallest mountain, is that the standard route (which is the only one really while there is snow) features a very long, almost 15km approach walk from Kamikochi along the Azusa river.


Aizu-koma

I went to climb Mt Aizu-koma, one of the 100 famous mountains of Japan, and one of the few that are relatively easily accessible from Tokyo but still have snow in June. And snow it had. The goal of the climb was to break in the double boots I got for Elbrus. I also added my training 10kg weight to my backpack, making it total near 20kg (a bit too much).


Toronto!

You know how surprised I was when I got the email from the Clojure/north organizers telling me that our talk proposal was accepted? (Hint: a lot.) Turns out they’d been looking for talks that aren’t so much experimentation and theory, but more working through the mud of reality. We’ve got that.


Filament

It’s hard to start new habits. I almost forgot to do this today.