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James Van Dyne

Having a night / morning without kids in the house really allows you the space to do that thinking you've been meaning to do but just can't. (Thinking about my next rotation around the sun and what I want to do / who I want to become).

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James Van Dyne

25 Sep 2022 at 03:08

Checkin to Starbucks
Soy Pumpkin Spice Latte. Tis the season and all.

Location: Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
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James Van Dyne

25 Sep 2022 at 01:40

So happy that Japan is finally opening its borders, full visa waiver travel is back from Oct. 11th. Come take advantage of the ¥142/dollar exchange rate!

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James Van Dyne

22 Sep 2022 at 21:07

Checkin to Starbucks
They’ve started doing tasting notes at this Starbucks. Nice 🙌🏻

Location: Kanagawa, Japan
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James Van Dyne

22 Sep 2022 at 01:03

Decided to just run with the new homepage. So it is displaying images in statuses, but that's only as I'm not explicitly filtering them out. My site temporarily looks like an infinity mirror.

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James Van Dyne

21 Sep 2022 at 23:40

Been fiddling with a new homepage design for my site. Not showing images from my status/bookmark/reply posts...but I think I like it that way?

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James Van Dyne

21 Sep 2022 at 12:05

The Week #116

Nanmadol, the biggest typhoon/tropical storm since accurate recordings began made landfall in Japan. It's blowing sustained winds are 108 kilometers per hour (67 mph) and gusts up to 162 kilometers (100 miles) per hour. Nanmadol is actually over Yokohama/Tokyo as I write this. Usually typhoons pass quite quickly, but this storm seems like it's taking its time boating along at around 20kph. I enjoy a good storm less than I did when I was younger, perhaps because I'm responsible for handling any damage might occur.
We made reservations to go camping next month at Well Camp Nishi Tanzawa. We'd talked about it before, but neither of us went camping as a kid, so it's a bit daunting to get started. One of our friends from pre-school whose husband camps and is trying to get his family more into camping invited us, so we decided it's now or never. Getting the basics camping for a family is relatively expensive. I'm justifying it in my head in two ways: it's good preparation for disasters and each successive trip is quite affordable. Not to mention it gets us out into the Japanese mountains and countryside which is so beautiful.
I started on a redesign just the main page of my blog (and really for Tanzawa as a whole). Rather than just being a list of full blog posts, I'm going to make it more summary driven. I plan to remove the streams sidebar from the homepage, so I'll have the full horizontal area to use. Right now I'm thinking about a just a small feed at the top with my last 5 "status" posts (truncated and linked to the full post) at the top.

Other widgets I want, but I'm undecided where / how they'll look are:
- "Last seen at: ...", with a link to my latest checkin post
- A 4x4 widget with my recent photos (unsure if this should depend on proper Photo posts or just show the recently uploaded/public photos).
- A list of recent posts (non-status, things with titles).
- Maybe some kind of map with recent checkins.
- Would love to integrate weather or other real-time / stats data.

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James Van Dyne

19 Sep 2022 at 21:45