A week ago, I did a nice long bicycle ride in the mountains north of Kyoto (route and data). Manseki Kanemitsu and I tagged along with Joshua Levine on a route that he does often.

It totaled out at 131km (81 miles), making it my longest ride so far.

The route took us up the mountain toward Hanase Pass (花背峠), a 500m (1,650') climb that holds a special place in my heart as my first real mountain climb, and every time I've done it since I've done it faster than the previous time.

That would not happen this time, as [...]

My birthday was in April, so in the "Happy Birthday To Me" spirit, I'll consider anything interesting I've acquired in the last few months a birthday present to myself. Much of it is related to cycling, which I've been getting into.

Anyway, here are some mini reviews on some of the stuff, in case others' find any of it useful...

Apple iPhone 6+

My old iPhone 4s was feeling old. I replaced the battery in March, but it still couldn't hold a charge, so I thought it was a good time to upgrade. The 6+ has been really useful on [...]

It's been three months to the day since I posted "Photo-Development Challenge: Inspire Me and Others With Your Artistic Interpretation", and I'm mortified that it's only the second set of results that I'm finally getting around to sharing (the first having been "Hillside Temple Buildings" 2½ months ago). In retrospect, it was irresponsible of me to post the challenge right before a long family vacation. Sorry.

In any case, to recap what's going on, I posted some raw photos and asked others to develop them to their taste, and here I'll share what those different interpretations looked like.

First, today's [...]

I had a fun outing this morning on a temple tour led by Joshua Levine, who wanted to lead a test tour in preparation for offering tours by bicycle as part of his "cycle cafe" NORU, scheduled to open near the Kitano Tenmangu Shrine at the end of the month.

Unlike the cafe whose target demographic is cyclists, the tours merely use bicycle as a means to move around freely, so they're cute highly-adjustable easy-to-ride little bikes. Riders ranged from 153cm to 192cm (5'0 ~ 6'2) and we all had a great fit. The bikes were surprisingly easy to ride.

I'm surprised that no one seems to make bifocal sunglasses for use in reading a phone or tablet screen. I'd think that this would be a popular product among the technically-savvy over-40 crowd.

I've been trying this pair of bifocal sunglasses for a few weeks, and while they may be great to read a book with, they're literally worse than nothing when it comes to reading my iPhone screen because the reading-glasses part is also shaded. The darkness of the screen makes it less readable than the poorness of my eyesight.

My ideal sunglasses would be clear and unpolarized for [...]
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