February was a good balance of outside and inside for me. I got some hiking, snowboarding and birding in, and I also spent time at home knitting and working on new features for Hardcover.
A hike to Akabokko
The one hiking post up on the blog this month is my hike to Akabokko in Ome city, on the western edge of Tokyo. This one was a great mid-winter hike, and super convenient as it starts and ends at a train station.
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Getting into knitting
I wanted to start getting more into arts and crafts, so I picked up knitting this month. Being a beginner at something can be really frustrating, and knitting was no exception. But knitting is rather forgiving since you can always undo your work. And even if you don’t have any artistic skill, as long as you can pull off a pattern you can create something that looks pretty good. So I think this was a good choice in a new hobby!
Looking at birds
Adding to my list of hobbies, I have also picked up birding. I already like walking, so I like how easily this integrates in with my life. The lightweight telephoto lens I already had for my Fujifilm makes it easy to get some good photos as well.
Of course, I like putting everything on my blog so I spun up a new birding page with a gallery of all the birds I have seen so far.
A new and improved Map
Also new on the blog this month is an overhaul of my Map page. I’ve added some new filters and fixed the design a little bit.
I think the common theme here is that I really seem to like collecting things? Whether it’s birds, hikes or locations.
Snowboarding in Muikamachi
My husband and I spent last weekend snowboarding in Muikamachi, a town in Niigata prefecture. I just about fell in love with this place - the snow was really pretty. Although I’m sure if I were to actually live here, the novelty would wear off pretty quickly and I’d realise how annoying snow really is.
Releasing Dashboard editing on Hardcover
And in amongst all the other things, I’m still trucking along on Hardcover and have been working on building out its customisable homepage, known as the Dashboard.
Up until now we showed the same set of widgets on the homepage to everyone, but I’ve now released the ability to edit widgets for our Supporter tier of users. So you can put your favourite list on your homepage, or even view your books in a calendar view.
I really enjoy the beta process - our Supporter users have a lot of good ideas, and it lets me get some quick feedback and lists of bugs to fix before we do a full rollout to everyone.
A busy March
March is a month that’s going to be quite hectic with some family/social commitments plus a short trip out to Australia, so I’m approaching it with a bit of trepidation. (I am a pretty big introvert).
I’m not too sure how much hiking I’ll be able to get in, but I like the idea of managing at least one hike a month, so I got that out of the way by doing it yesterday on the 1st! Which is why this newsletter is a little late coming to you on the 2nd.
And a big thank you to everyone that left a comment on my last newsletter. I’m always on the lookout for new blogs, so if you are writing one please send it my way and I’ll add it to my RSS feed.
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