What I'm up to - December 2025

Here is my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media.

What I did in November

Just got back from a holiday in Tokyo and Hakone. I explored Ametora, noodles (tsukumen, breakfast soba), jazz (kissas + live), coffee (Leaves, Glitch and Onibus are favorites), and infrastructure (Shinkansen + pervasive public bathrooms)
Stopped over in Vancouver for transition days, enjoying Revolver coffee and a seaplane flight.
Published Introducing Workshop, Disaster recovery, and Snail mail. Also, my old article Craft in the Digital Era had renewed popularity last month.
Got back into fiction by reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on the plane.
Tried a Eugenoides coffee for the firsts time (very good!)

Podcasts: Found this podcast episode by Cal Newport to be thought-provoking - it explores why women are leaving tech, dispels return-to-office generally by comparing higher participation in in-person medical jobs, and highlights a study showing that unpredictability is the root cause (loose working hours, plus ad-hoc communication + tasks outside working hours).
Articles: "Collaboration sucks". Bankers Rounding. "Otaku".
Apps: Tablelog is the best way to find restaurants in Japan - even better than Michelin Guide.
Quote: “I’ve come to feel that a café or restaurant banning phones themselves (never mind laptops; phones always strike me as the real vibe-killer (but of course, dingdongs rocking video calls in cafés will forever be the ultimate boss of sanity)) would provide some kind of utility to the world, would self-select for a certain kind of customer craving shared silence from the algorithms, from the news, from the din of endless horror and outrage.” - Craig Mod in No Phones in the Tendon Shop.