February 19, 2023

Weekender #101 — Picard and Ghibli Park

  • Birb watch: It’s the time of year when new mynah birds are entering the area, and Handsome and Matey mynah need to step it up to defend their “territory.” This week, two invader mynah attempted to join Handsome and Matey’s snack time. It did not go well for the invaders. This happened twice over the last few days, and I’ve also heard the sound of mynah squawking and warnings in the distance. I’m still hoping for a relatively peaceful spring season.

This week’s Link List

Machine Learning

Design

Mastodon

Software and hardware

  • MarkEdit for Markdown is a free, open-source, really simple and beautifully made Markdown editor for Mac. I kinda think of it as Text Edit, but exclusively for Markdown.

  • If you’ve been searching for a replacement for the macOS utility MacMediaKeyForwarder, give Reflex a try. Reflex takes control of your media keys, and directs them to the Music app (née iTunes) or Spotify.

  • I read about two OpenAI whisper projects this week: WAAS: Whisper as a Service (GUI and API for OpenAI Whisper) and a port of OpenAI’s Whisper model in C/C++ called whisper.cpp. I don’t have a use for these, so I haven’t tried them, but they seem cool.

Miscellaneous

  • Here’s another cool drum machine in your browser. via HackerNews.

  • I also heard through the grapevine that Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame is coming out with a new book! The Mysteries written by Watterson and illustrated by John Kascht will be released on October 10, 2023.

  • I’m not sure when this comic from The Oatmeal was published, but it reminded me that comics are a great medium for explaining complex subjects like “the backfire effect.” A must read!

  • The New York Times Magazine’s Sam Anderson wrote a great feature on his Visit to Ghibli Park. It’s packed with great tidbits about Hayao Miyazaki, an interview with his son Goro Miyazaki, and Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki. I particularly enjoyed reading how Ghibli’s P.R. team handled this story and the expectations you should have if you ever decide to visit:

    Months before, in my first meeting with Studio Ghibli’s P.R. team about a possible visit, I was told that the studio would be happy to work with me but had one serious concern. If The New York Times published an article about Ghibli Park, they said, it might make more people want to come visit. This struck them as a problem. Like many Ghibli products, Ghibli Park is impishly non-user-friendly. This is true for people in Japan, and even more so for international visitors. Consider, for instance, its location. Unlike Tokyo Disneyland or Universal Studios Japan (in Osaka), Ghibli Park is not located in a tourist hub. Instead, it sits on the outskirts of an unglamorous city called Nagoya, in a region famous for being the home of Toyota — basically, the Detroit of Japan. And the park is not even in Nagoya proper. From my hotel in the center of the city, it took me an hour, and three different trains, to reach Ghibli Park. The website suggests taking the train because the park has no dedicated parking lot.

    The website also does its best to lower expectations, declaring immediately, “There are no big attractions or rides in Ghibli Park.” The surrounding grounds are public and free to walk around, all day long. There are only three paid areas in Ghibli Park, and by theme-park standards the admission fees are laughably low: the equivalent of about $10 to $20 for each area. But tickets, at that time, were nearly impossible to get. There was a lottery system, and they were sold out for months in advance.

    • Ghibli Park opened their advanced reservations for international visitors on February 10th, 2023. While Japanese residents are able to make reservations to visit any part of Ghilbi Park, international visitors are only allowed to make reservations for Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse at this time.

Media consumption

  • I restarted my Paramount+ streaming account to watch the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard. The show is off to a great start! I enjoyed the premise of the story and especially liked the pacing of the first episode. Watching the end credits with the LCARS display is the icing on the cake for me. I’m hoping the series is able to keep this up for the rest of the season.

    • If you’re looking to restart your subscription to Paramount+, give the coupon code ATMIDNIGHT a try to get a free month of the service.

  • I had a chuckle reading through Rolling Stone’s list of 50 Genuinely Horrible Albums By Brilliant Artists. I was saddened to say that I’ve actually owned some of the albums on this list, but I do agree that they were stinkers.

  • The White Blinds latest album PRESHEATECHA! helped me through this week. This classic organ trio plays a mix of funk inspired soul-jazz. If you liked one of my previous picks, the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, you’ll probably love The White Blinds too. Listen on Bandcamp | Apple Music.

by Scott Yoshinaga

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