I just implemented auto-translations of my English notes using the DeepL API and now I can’t think of anything interesting to write! 😅

I have given my site a small overhaul, adding fediverse commentary, switching out an ever growing and ugly category cloud with a list of breweries we’ve visited here and manually updated the Japanese side of the site to bring it up to date..

As a result I have written a working script to query the DeepL API for auto-translate of short form messages.. I just need to scale the mountain that is the micropub server in order to integrate it.

I will start with only notes, and the process will be that when a new note is posted via micropub a duplicate Japane Hugo template will also be created and the content will be sent to the DeepL API for translation..

Eventually, I’d like to add photo posts but this will require translation of the alt tags too which is slightly more complex than I fancy for the initial phase.

I don’t blog often but long form posts will remain manually translated.

Today is a day of enigma unravelling as I try to find a suitable power and frequency converter to allow me to buy the fermentation control chillers that I want for our brewery.. there are 4 key requirements..

1. It must be able to convert the frequency from 60Hz to 50Hz
2. It must be able to step the power up from 100v to 230v
3. It must have the capacity to run 3 chillers (eventually) continuously, supplying each with 1380 watts
4. It must be able to handle up to 30 A output.. I am a little unclear on whether this is per cooler.

Finding sites selling transformers and sharing all of this information is challenging.. and most of the time they only satisfy 2 of the 4 requirements.. anyway, I’m not yet frustrated! 🙂

Made my 4th or 5th stew of the season and they are getting pretty good! Really fresh vegetables from the Kochi Sunday Market and the Kochi Organic Market contributed to a very colourful and tasty dish.

Lacking vegan convenience foods has really upped my cooking game!

I see a number of folk are using mastodon as a static blog commenting tool and I might have to look into that and see if it would work with the GoToSocial api (I think it would).. pretty sure that my syndication scripts already pull the relevant post URIs and would be easy enough to deploy as a replacement for cactus comments.

Not sure exactly when this will happen but I am intrigued..

At a local event today, just enjoying some craft beer from my friend’s brewery and faced with an encouraging choice of vegan food (3 stalls!), when a lady walks up to me and introduces herself.

She knows who I am and seemingly all about me. It turns out this lady is the head of the prefectural government department in charge of bolstering tourism related businesses in the area. Not only that but she is very excited with regards to our plans.. this is a very good sign.

We received some advice on how we might best position ourselves for some prefectural funding..

Good craft beer, vegan food and funding advice are all rare in these parts on their own.. in combination must be unheard of.

Sometimes the non-availability of ingredients that I took for granted in Scotland, in this corner of rural Japan is a shade frustrating.. 3 supermarkets on a hunt for sun-dried tomatoes and this far empty handed.. I didn’t even try the supermarket in our village as it is only stocked with Japanese staples.

Both of my girls are currently into Lego.. as was/am I.. but neither are ready for a star wars introduction.. I hope this phase doesn’t pass by the time they are.. there is no way I can justify these prices just for me..

Sampled 4 beers tonight, 3 shared with my wife.. 2 non-IPA Japanese craft beers from recommended breweries, a Guinness and a low alcohol (<0.5%) IPA from somewhere in America..

.. the low alcohol beer was by some margin my favourite of the 4.. we have 2 other low alc beers from the same brewery and 6 more (4 varieties) from a Scottish brewer (though they appear to have been brewed in Belgium)..

Legitimate research and off to a better start than expected.

I am really loving Baldur’s Gate 3. I mean I am taking a very long time to progress because I am creating a whole abundance of character builds and having a blast. Only near the start of Act 2 with my main campaign so still lots of adventuring to do.

The last time I played a similar game was probably Icewind Dale which I remember playing with my old flat mate @lesault@infosec.exchange over LAN but I don’t recall how far into that game we got.

If I was in Scotland I would definitely be trying to get my gaming friends into a regular multiplayer game but not something that I could see working from Japan. I do know a few gamers here though so will try to see if there is any interest.