iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 20/01/2026

We had an old vacuum cleaner battery, and several old mobile phones and portable recharger batteries, which you cannot simply throw out in the trash. I took them to Totsuka ward office 9th floor and deposited them in the recycling receptacle. cogley.jp/posts/01KFCZ3XQXJYW6ZZ982…

A white hall at a Japanese ward office, with recycling signs, posters, and collection boxes.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 07/01/2026

My staff made a blog about a point I got confused when I first started using M365. See our post on the Tech It Easy Blog.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 07/09/2025

Visited Osaka Expo 2025 on 6 Sept with 220,000 others. It was hot and crowded but ultimately a good time thanks to A’s planning and a little luck.

A group of people walks through a corridor with a striking wooden lattice structure, casting intricate shadows from the sunlight.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 25/06/2025

Did you know you can add your Japan My Number card to your Apple Wallet? You can, using your MyNaPortal app. 🧐

A digital interface displays options for adding driver's licenses and ID cards from Japan and several U.S. states on a mobile device.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 24/06/2025

I use git and git clients daily, and a recent one I really like is the fast and featureful fork. It’s available for MacOS or Windows, and “just works”. ⋔⌨️⋔

A computer screen displays a version control interface with a list of commits and selected commit details, including the author and a message.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 31/03/2025

When our tree flowers and I start hearing uguisu calls, I always feel spring has come. 🌸

A dog wearing a harness is lying on the floor indoors, looking outside through a window at a blossoming tree and residential buildings.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 22/03/2025

Saw Wicked on Broadway a few years ago with A, and now we saw the IMAX movie. Theater buffs will like that It’s chock full of cameos of the original stage performers and even the writers. Casting and performances were on point, with lots of humor. 💚🩷

A promotional display for "Wicked" showcases characters in a fantastical landscape, including the main characters of a green witch and a woman in a pink dress with a mystical backdrop.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 23/02/2025

Learned about our local evac center’s “Hamakko Toilet” at today’s event. It’s a sewage pipe you fill with pool water at one end, set toilets above opened man holes, and periodically flush by opening a big valve at the other end. 🚽🚽

A sign provides instructions for using emergency toilets in Japanese during disasters.

A person in a hard hat and safety vest is using a tool to open a manhole cover on a sidewalk, while another person wearing a mask observes nearby.

A person is reaching towards an open portable toilet with blue walls and handrails.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 23/02/2025

Had a local disaster prevention event today. A civil servant / volunteer fireman said we should not assume Yokohama city will prepare enough food or supplies, and that we need to ready our own. A sobering thought! 🧯🚒

A signboard at a school serving as an evacuation area provides information about earthquake-resistant water supply in Japanese.

A concrete emergency water dispensing station with three metal faucets and a sign, located outdoors near a tree and fenced area, at a disaster evacuation center in Yokohama Japan.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 20/02/2025

If you do any system admin and use the terminal, starship.rs is a really easy value add. For instance if you’re in a vps that just has bash installed, running the starship installer gets you a decent prompt in 10 sec.

A terminal window displays a Git status check showing a clean working tree on branch "main" with Starship prompt information and prompts.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 19/02/2025

Web-toolbox.dev is an excellent & convenient bilingual English/Japanese site for web devs by K (thanks!), with various tools for generation, encoding, SEO, text. 🛠️

A website displaying a Base64 encoding tool is shown with Chinese text being converted to Base64 format.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 16/02/2025

Our dog goes to daycare with a big unit of a black lab, whose human is French, so I decided to compile a French dog command list, with Japanese and English, to try to communicate next time we meet. Assis! 🐾

A black labrador and a Shiba Inu are lying on the floor next to each other.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 14/02/2025

Happy Valentine’s Day 😍 special chocolate from Blue Cacao!

A box of assorted chocolates is placed beside a dark gift bag labeled "BLUE CACAO."

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 31/01/2025

Went to Kanda Daimyojin shrine to receive New Year blessings for my firm eSolia. You fill a fill a form, tell what blessings you want (we chose business success and employee health), wear a special sash around your neck, and attend a 15 min ceremony. Let’s go! ⛩️🙏🏻

A group of people walk towards a Tokyo shrine's traditional torii gate adorned with banners at a bustling street entrance.

A gilded and ornate portable shrine is displayed in a glass-fronted case on a sunny street.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 14/01/2025

Apple’s Image Playground (that I just got access to) would not make a fire-breathing Shiba for me, but it did set a Shiba’s tail on fire. 😜

A digital illustration features a Shiba Inu dog surrounded by humorous, fire-related captions on a screen interface with various creative icon suggestions at the bottom.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 11/01/2025

This no, the others yes!

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 11/01/2025

At Unitora in Senkyaku-Banrai (Toyosu, Shijomae), before we go to TeamLab Planets. It was sooo good. 🍣

A dish featuring slices of raw fish and uni is served with cups of green tea, soy sauce, and a glass of beer on a table.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 07/01/2025

For my birthday (59! what?!) I got this Kanazawa-ya U-shaped pillow with wool stuffing. Ordered during their New Year sale, it came with a nice case (expected) and extra stuffing and a handkerchief to boot (a bonus!). It’s great! 😴 #金澤屋

A Kanazawa-ya pillow, a package containing a pillow-case, and a sealed bag of white wool stuffing material are laid out on a cushioned surface.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 01/01/2025

Happy New Year one and all. Hope it’s a good one for you! In Japan, we have osechi like in these photos. 🎍🇯🇵

A beautifully arranged multi-tiered Japanese osechi meal with various traditional New Year foods is displayed on a table.

A Japanese new year’s “osechi” meal is elegantly presented, featuring a variety of dishes including soup, sushi, tempura, and assorted side items on a textured placemat.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 10/12/2024

If you need a logo designed, consider asking Lucie Baratte, founder of Logology. They have a catalog of ready-made logos, and can design custom ones as well. We love what they did for eSolia’s 25th anniversary refresh! 🥰

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 10/12/2024

I like the Monokai Pro VS Code theme enough to have paid for it, and my eyes are thanking me. Good stuff from Wimer Hazenberg, and you can read about its interesting history here! 👨🏼‍💻

A code editor window displays JavaScript code using the Monokai Pro theme for VS Code, with a file explorer sidebar against a scenic landscape background.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 09/12/2024

I for one am just glad I could find that one uuid I had forgot about, containing ‘beefcade’. 😂

A webpage titled "Every UUID Dot Com" displays a list of UUIDs with one containing beefcade highlighted and some navigation elements.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 08/12/2024

If you code in JavaScript like so many devs do, join me in signing Ryan Dahl’s open letter to Oracle, to relinquish the JavaScript trademark. Please read and sign (with GitHub) here. 🧐📝

A webpage displays a message about a trademark issue with a list of names and icons showing supporters.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 05/12/2024

If you code Typescript with Deno, which you should since its tooling makes life easy, you might take advantage of ‘dvm’ or Deno Version Manager. It allows you to install and track multiple deno versions, and easily switch between. 🤩

A terminal help screen for "dvm" (Deno Version Manager) displays usage instructions, options, subcommands, and examples for managing multiple active Deno versions.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 04/12/2024

Deno’s fetch uses a rust library that won’t connect to servers with older TLS or cipher suites, so I worked around it in Lume by pulling a json file using the venerable curl, then manipulating that as I needed. Details in this gist. ⛑️

Code snippet highlighting use of filter and map

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 01/12/2024

I did myself a favor and subscribed to polypane.app by Kilian Valkhof, which is just an outstanding and multifaceted tool for web dev! 🎛️

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 01/12/2024

Do you know about CUBE CSS, a thoughtful approach to CSS and website design authored by @bell.bz? I think this approach is great because it leverages CSS’s basic nature (and doesn’t fight it), and probably, makes it a little easier to work in a cross-disciplinary team. 👏🏻

An article explains CUBE CSS, emphasizing its scalability and built-in capabilities, alongside its advantages like SEM and the Cascade.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 29/11/2024

Unlearning old, bad CSS habits and replacing them with shiny new ones, with Andy Bell’s Complete CSS course. He said it took a year to produce, and you can tell. It’s outstanding. 🤩

The Complete CSS website page showcases text about building a stunning website and includes a section titled "BLOOM BARISTA ACADEMY" with navigation links.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 28/11/2024

CleanShot is fantastic & featureful screenshot software for Mac, which has the basics, but also annotation, cloud storage, capture history, screen recording, OCR and more. If you share any instructional content, you’ll want to check it out.

CleanShot X's website highlights its screen capturing software for Mac with a clear call-to-action and promotional offers. The image is annotated to show CleanShot's annotation features.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 26/11/2024

Reading about the lovely next-gen programmer font “Monaspace” on GithubNext, also found a cool fork of it, Moralerspace, that merges in Japanese “IBM Plex Sans JP” and a nerd font. Nihongo looks good, and the “nerd” symbols mean tricky Terminal prompts will display as well. 😎

A section of Vento static site generator template code contains metadata and layout structure, with comments in both English and Japanese.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 25/11/2024

Maru the Shiba turned 4 today, how time flies! He got some fresh tennis balls, a Winner Trophy chew toy, his favorite chicken burger (shaped like a 4) and whipped yogurt meal, and lots of love. He never wolfs his food, always carefully inspecting and taking small bites. 🐕🥳

A Shiba dog wearing a bandana is eating a 4-shaped chicken burger from a yellow plate on a wooden floor in a living room setting, on his 4th birthday.

A Shiba dog wearing a birthday bandana and party hat sits beside a winner's trophy on a wooden floor.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 23/11/2024

I tried adding the other day and it picked it up.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 18/11/2024

Went with friend Dave to see the Drum Corps Japan Championship at Carlos Ghohn Memorial Stadium 😅 as he calls it (aka Nissan Stadium), and it was a fantastic long day of great performances. Even the really small corps were excellent, employing creative solutions to their size challenges. 🎼

A photograph of promotional material for a snare drum and an event titled "DCJ 2024 ALL JAPAN CHAMPIONSHIPS," featuring a champagne glass and a ticket.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 08/11/2024

Bluesky’s “AT Protocol” for identity is cool. I set up my handle as @cogley.jp in one easy step using a TXT record in DNS. Slick! 😎

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 08/11/2024

Lately we're building websites in the fantastic @lumeland.bsky.social by oscarotero.com, and using its companion CMS to make editing easier for users. The CMS runs on Deno Deploy, or in a VPS like those from Digital Ocean and the latter provides an awesome live preview capability. 🚀

A screenshot of Lume CMS, a content management system interface showing fields for editing a page, including title, description, language, and draft settings with an option to upload an image and input text content.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 08/11/2024

We installed a physical security system in May. After telling the client yesterday during a conversation about extended warranty that “security panels don’t really break very often”, of course THIS AM the security panel is failing and we are scrambling. From my lips to God’s ears?! 🚨

From Scott Webb on Unsplash. Two surveillance cameras are mounted on a gray concrete wall with visible wiring.

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Rick Cogley @cogley.jp · 07/11/2024

Maru the Shiba was “helping” Akko read the paper this AM. Cuteness overload every day. 🐕

A person is sitting on the floor reading a newspaper beside a dog lying down on top of the paper, while a television nearby shows a basketball game.

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