Tag: technology

Sandwiches and work

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Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/100 sec, ISO2500
 Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！ Good evening!

Today’s weather was so warm and humid, but it felt nice to be outside. I went outside at lunch to buy some lunch at the food truck, and I was wearing a jacket even though it was in the 80s. I am not sure if my office is cold, but I feel like I am freezing while I work so I usually have a jacket on and then I just wore it outside and tried to warm up… and it helped for an hour or so, but then it was back to freezing. ❄️

Today’s photo is of a Vietnamese-style sandwich on a homemade baguette that Mariko made. It was super delicious, and the jalapeños were spicy! I love the heat. The hotter the better! 🔥

Well, tomorrow is Friday and I am looking forward to getting a lot done! I don’t have any meetings scheduled so I need to put my head down and crank out a lot of tasks. By the way, I am still using Toggl to track my work and that is going well. Once I got used to clicking on the task as soon as I start new work, it is second-nature now. I often switch between things, like I am gathering graphics files, and then I see an email come into my inbox. Before I check the mail, I click on the task in Toggl, and then check the email. When I am done with the email, I click on the task I was doing before that, then continue with the task. By doing this, I get a very accurate representation of where I spend most of my time. Yesterday, for instance, I spent 2h 36m responding to and writing email… which to me is astonishing. I would have never thought I spend so much time doing that! But I can’t argue with the data.

I guess I was getting overwhelmed with work for a while there, and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t seem to finish certain projects… I knew I was working hard, but I kept thinking that I was doing something wrong. But now I have the visibility into exactly where my time goes… and I can see that I simply have too many things on my plate right now. Although that is a problem, at least I can pinpoint what it is and not worry that I am doing something wrong. It’s a big step in improving my daily workload and estimating time!

Alright, it’s now getting late and I am going to read. Take care!

おやすみなさい！

– バロン Barron Fujimoto

Decorating

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Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.8, 1/100 sec, ISO2500
 Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！ Hello, how’s it going?

Today I finally received the stickers I ordered from Red Bubble. They were a couple days late because UPS delivered the envelope to the wrong local post office. But, I am happy with the quality of these stickers, although I wish they were a tiny bit smaller – mainly because they are a little too big to put on the inside wrist-rests next to the track-pad. For the outside, they are the perfect size though!

In the top photo you can see the cover stickers – the black and white band is SCANDAL, and the purple one is a drawing based on Morning Musume’s 『時空を超え 宇宙を超え』. I didn’t know that it was from Morning Musume until after I bought it, but I like the connection – they are one of my good friend’s favorite groups.

Below is a photo of the sticker that is on the bottom of the Chromebook. It’s Yui from K-ON! It looks like she got squished, so it’s perfect for underneath the laptop! Funny, isn’t it?

Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4.5, 1/100 sec, ISO3200
 Cedar Park, 2016

Anyways, I am having a lot of fun with my laptop. It’s great. I love it.

Well, it’s almost mid-week. Let’s have a good Wednesday!

おやすみなさい！

-B Barron Fujimoto

Short week

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Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/100 sec, ISO3200
 Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！ Hello!

It’s Thursday, the day before Good Friday. Tomorrow I have the day off from work because it is a holiday at my office! So, I will enjoy a day at home with my kids, who also have the day off from school. But, I have a lot of work to do, so I will probably spend a few hours on the laptop getting some things done. 💻

Today’s photos is of my Chromebook, which I am enjoying using. The nicest thing about this model is the keyboard. It is so easy to type on and I can really go fast. I never really had a good keyboard before and didn’t realize what a difference it could make! I just figured they were all the same and I would adapt. But this one is fantastic. I guess Google specifies the keyboard design for all Chromebooks and you can tell they did a lot of testing. I think the keys are spaced out nicely and the keypad travel is just about perfect.

The trackpad is also nice and responsive, a good size, and I have quickly gotten used to the multi-touch gestures. I am now using the two-finger scrolling on my work laptop too! The trackpad on Chromebooks only has one button, so if you want to “right-click”, you tap the trackpad with two fingers, and it will bring up the right-click menu. I got used to it in no time.

One thing I don’t like is that you cannot give your Chromebook a name. I like to name my devices after mythological characters, but I guess I can’t with this laptop. Apparently it would make the device less secure. I don’t know if that is true or not, but it’s a little bit of a bummer.

I do plan on adding some stickers to my Chromebook. I’ve ordered several from RedBubble and they are on their way. I’ve removed the Intel and Acer stickers from the wristpad that you can see in the photo above, so it’s all prepped for my otaku stickers!

Lastly, I put some gaffers tape over the webcam. I rarely use the camera but I am a bit paranoid of hackers turning on the camera remotely, or myself turning it on by accident. Anyways, the gaffers tape is easy to remove, and does not leave any gummy residue.

Ok, I think I am going to read a bit before I hit the sack. Talk again!

おやすみなさい！

-バロン Barron Fujimoto

Pizza time 🍕

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Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2.5, 1/125 sec, ISO5000
 Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！

Tonight Mariko made a small pizza as part of our dinner (along with pasta and salad). She is perfecting her pizza dough, and this evening’s pizza was baked in a cast-iron pan in the oven. It turned out great! Our only complaint was that there wasn’t enough of it. 🍴

I can’t wait to try more of the pizza she will make… she’s still experimenting, which is good news for us because all the pizzas she has made have been delicious.

In other news, today my new Chromebook arrived and I have been getting acquainted with it. In fact, I am typing this post using it. The keyboard on this Acer Chromebook 11 is wonderful. Super comfy and the keys are spaced just right. The trackpad is fantastic as well, and I love the multi-touch gestures, especially the three-finger swipe to switch between browser tabs. It’s a really cool effect! Early this evening, I tried out the webcam on a Google Hangouts call with my brother and it worked well. I think this laptop is going to work out just fine!

Right now it’s pretty vanilla-looking, but I have ordered some stickers to put on it, so I’ll take some photos of it for a later post. Speaking of looks, the Acer is not the sleekest machine out there. In fact I am a little disappointed… I thought it would have nicer curves. It’s kind of ugly… it reminds me of the original Kindle. The plastic is really cheap too! But you know, for $165, it’s a pretty great machine. Fast, quiet (no fan, so it’s silent), and the battery lasts about 10 hours.

But I’ll post a more comprehensive review about it later, because it’s now getting very late here! Take care!

おやすみなさい！

-B Barron Fujimoto

End of Spring Break

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Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/5, 1/15 sec, ISO3200
 Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは！ Good evening! How was your Sunday? It’s the end of Spring Break for the kids and that means that the week of sleeping late every morning is over. So, I am hoping that Koa goes to bed soon! (Bay is already in bed and his lights are off)

A couple days ago, the weather turned chilly again, which was a huge surprise to me. I thought we were already into Summer weather! Come to think of it, today is the first day of Spring. That’s great, because I don’t like Winter or the cold. Bring on the heat already!

Today I did a lot of research on new Chromebooks because the laptop I use to write this blog every evening has a hardware problem and is super-slow, and sometimes will just crash in the middle of whatever I am doing. Luckily WordPress does a pretty good job of auto-saving so I haven’t lost too much work. But the computer boots up so slowly that I think it is time for me to find a new laptop.

So… I decided on an Acer Chromebook 11 laptop. I want something that is simple, has good battery life, and a good keyboard. I don’t need a lot of horsepower since I will not be using it for any photo editing or gaming. Just WordPress, Netflix, YouTube and general browsing and the Chromebook should be perfect for those. Also, the price that I found was nice… just $165! That’s a $15 price drop from yesterday…

As you may know, I have been trying to simplify my life and declutter. This new laptop is so minimal, that I am really looking forward to using it! Just like my X100T makes me work within its limitations, I am wondering if the Chromebook will have a similar effect. We’ll see!

Today’s photo is of a new lens that Mariko bought for her camera. It’s the highly-regarded Fujinon 35mm F/2.0 WR lens. It’s really nice because the focus is fast and silent, the aperture ring feels great, and it’s a lot smaller than the 18-55mm zoom. Plus the image quality is excellent and it has a certain look to the images that Mariko really likes. It’s definitely a keeper lens!

Well, I better get to bed. It’s past my usual time!

おやすみなさい！ -B Barron Fujimoto