Doubtfully Daily Matigo

The new house appears to be a little more than half done, and this is certainly exciting. What's also exciting is the CAT6 cabling that'll run to every room in the home, making WiFi optional and not at all a requirement. This is something I've been looking forward to in a home for well over 20 years and it's nice to see it come to fruition.

Some of the other nice things about this place:

• there's a big, open kitchen
• the living room is wide open and bright
• there's an ethernet port in every room
• there's a dedicated work space for Nozomi and I to enjoy during the week when I'm working remotely
• the neighbour homes aren't physically connected!

That last one is particularly nice.

Hopefully the home will be 100% completed by mid-March, and the city can send their inspectors a little bit later to give the building a passing grade. Once it's done, then we can move into the house and turn it into a home. Exciting times, indeed!

Burning the candle at both ends is rarely sustainable and I'm wondering if this is the cause for the recent lack of focus I've been experiencing. Regardless of where I am or what I'm doing, the mind will wander mid-process which can result in emails being left unattended, code being half-written, and conversations being tuned out of. As one can imagine, this isn't cool. Is the lack of focus a different kind of burn-out, or is it just a result of getting older?

A moving company recently came to give us a quote on how much it would cost to move from our apartment to the new house. Suffice it to say, the way the moving company went about assembling the quote was … scammy. The prices changed based on the brand of our possessions, and they went up again when the sales person learned we were moving to a house rather than another apartment.

Just because this is (hopefully) the last time I will move in my lifetime does not mean I'll tolerate being fleeced by a fool on commission.

Stereotypes infuriate me as they're often incomplete or inaccurate representations of a small group of people that later gets applied to everyone with a similar background. Stereotypes are neither helpful nor informative, and often lead to preconceived prejudices against people we've never met simply because the perpetuators of that stereotype are ignorant of the world. Laura Brehaut recently wrote an article in Canada's National Post newspaper on coffee culture in Japan that is both misleading and factually wrong. Anyone who spends more than a day outside of the tourist hotspots would know that 90% of this article is complete balderdash … but there's the rub; most people reading this article have never been to Japan and will likely never make the trek. As a result, this country will appear as a twisted joke of a nation populated by sexual deviants who pay exorbitant sums of money for artisanal cups of coffee.

Given the amount of misinformation that is found online, articles like this need to stop. Stereotypes and prejudices often lead to breakdowns of communication and closing of minds. This is the polar opposite of what news organisations with readerships measuring in the millions should be doing with their privilege.

Larry Elliot wants to drum up fear via The Guardian, claiming that "robots will take our jobs!". He's not the first to do this, and he sure as heck won't be the last. Heck, people have been saying the very same thing for over two centuries. Yet here we are, with billions of more people on the planet than in 1808, and most of us who want work have it. There's no denying that automation and robotics will put a lot of people out of work in the coming decades, but we need to look at this in context. Are these the jobs we want to honestly save? Or are these jobs the things that people generally don't want to do but end up performing because there's nothing better?

People are incredibly creative and versatile. It's time we — as a global community — begin treating each other as such. There's a lot of meaningful work to be done, and a lot of new work to be found. The easy stuff's been done. Let's move on to something more worthy of our attention.

An episode of Doubtfully Daily Matigo was published every day for the month of January, and that means that the first milestone has been reached. Now the hard part of maintaining the momentum comes.

Some Podcasts I referenced in this episode:

• Show Me Your Mic ⇠ Long Gone
• Eat This Podcast ⇠ An Excellent Show
• Phoneboy Speaks ⇠ On Hiatus

While walking home from the train station after a day trip to Tokyo, I rambled into the microphone about an upcoming trip to the east coast of America, possible career paths, and generally positive changes in perception after a week of wondering if I would still have a job with the employer at this time next year. While nothing has yet been carved in stone, I'm feeling much better about what the near future has in store. Hopefully this feeling is not unfounded.

Over the last few weeks I've been working on an application to reduce some of the friction people face when recording quick podcasts that do not require a great deal of post-editing. As one would expect, the tool would work with the infrastructure I've already built into 10C, and it would give people the option to share links on the main social networks that I'm aware of. The question is whether there's a market for this given how many other similar services have failed in the past.

If nothing else, I hope that this can be a piece of software that will make my creation and distribution of this show a heck of a lot easier than it currently is.

It's that time of year again when the heel on my right shoe is in desperate need of repair or replacement. Unfortunately, shoes are not designed to be easily repaired in 2018. They need to be replaced, often because of damage to one area of the shoe. This is incredibly wasteful and, looking at the heels of shoes worn by other men in the area, a common problem that should be solved with better products. How hard would it be to develop a new pair of shoes that have heels that can be replaced with minimal effort and cost?

In addition to this idea, I also explain my frustration with umbrellas and the desire to build a better one. Problem is, I likely will not create a new shoe or umbrella. I have neither the expertise nor resources to make either happen.

The temperature in the city reached a high of 3˚C today and is expected to sit at 0˚ or below for the rest of the week with occasional bouts of snow. Very rarely does the weather in this part of the country get so chilly. So, while out with Nozomi, I picked up two hot drinks at a nearby vending machine. One for me, and one for Hideki; the homeless man who lives under a bridge near my home.

Unfortunately, he wasn't around to receive the gift and he hasn't been seen in the neighbourhood for days. Hopefully he's somewhere warm.