This post is my own opinion, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of the Social Web WG! We met in Lisbon, Portugal, during the last two days of the W3C's annual TPAC conference on the 22nd and 23rd of September. See also day 1 minutes and day 2 minutes. tl;dr It's crunch time, but we're on track. We have a selection of specifications which essentially cover creating content and then pinging people about it in various different ways. Many people in the group are using one or more of these specs to power their own personal online social stuff. There are so many more Social Web problems to solve, and we're just trying to dig some foundations and plant some posts in the ground to get everyone else started. Wednesday demos The first time the Social WG gathered last week was for an hour on Wednesday, to demo the products of all of our specs to the broader audience of TPAC attendees. We had a full house. Everything went smoothly, and our demos were fairly coherent. Aaron showed Micropub and Webmention working together in the context of posting a reply to his site (with Micropub), which automatically sent a Webmention to post he was replying to, and after a few seconds his reply showed up there (on the site of someone who isn't a WG member, and had implemented Webmention receiving independently). My site returns ActivityStreams 2.0 for everything when you request application/activity+json or application/ld+json, so I showed collections and individual objects at the commandline. Dumping a blob of JSON on the screen isn't a particularly compelling demo, but Chris was able to furnish me with a screenshot of his AS2 consumer, emacs-based, rendering one of my posts. Maybe you want to make an AS2 reader so you can design your own reading experience for my posts? Chris showed how he is able to create notes on his site using an emacs-based posting client, which prompts his server to send the message on to the inbox of anyone addressed, all using ActivityPub. Sarven showed dokieli; sharing an article with someone (automatically pulled from the contacts list in his profile) which sends an ActivityStreams Announce to their Inbox using LDN. Also annotating an article, whereby he could save the annotation in his own personal datastore (via LDP) and optionally send a copy to the AnnotationService provided by the publisher (using the Annotations protocol, plus send a notification to the publisher with LDN. What followed was some discussion of how we're planning to tackle spam and abuse. ActivityPub includes a mechanism for blocking another user; LDN encourages imposing constraints on one's inbox to filter what ends up there; and self-hosted or known/trusted hosts for you content can give you more control over what shows up where, but there's way more to be done here, and we're not close to tackling that yet. Wide review Guidance was recently issued that specifications should ask for horizontal review (review by other W3C groups) three months before going to Candidate Recommendation. We're obviously far too late for that, so we're doing the best we can with the time remaining. Horizontal review is part of 'wide review', which specifications must also demonstration before they can transition to CR. Wide review invovles having input and feedback from a variety of different sources outside of the Working Group, and even W3C. We can demonstrate this through issues raised on github, implementations reported to us, and feedback on public mailing lists. As such, if you're going to send any of us a message about any of our specs, please do so somewhere that is public! The public-socialweb list is archived by W3C, so that's a good one to CC if you don't want to raise an issue on github directly. Pointing out typos, requests for clarification, and pledges to implement are welcome too. The Security & Privacy groups provide a questionnaire to guide through common issues that might be flagged during review by those groups. We collectively decided to carry out this questionnaire and add it to the 'Security and Privacy Considerations' section of all of our specs. The Internationalisation (i18n) WG also provide a checklist to run through which helps them perform their review more quickly. Specs in CR ActivityStreams 2.0 (core and vocab), Webmention, and Micropub are currently in Candidate Recommendation (CR), which means we're actively soliciting implementations and accepting reports. They all have test suites in some stage of readiness, and the implementation report templates are provided in the respective repos, and designed largely around reporting which tests your implementation passes. Issues raised during CR which require substantive spec changes and may affect existing implementations require restarting the CR period (pushing back CR exit for a minimum of four weeks), so the earlier we hear about those the better. We went through issues raised on our CR specs to determine whether they result in normative changes, and for the most part they were editorial. Webmention dropped returning a human-readble message in response to a sender's POST request, because anything involving human-readable text opens internationalisation challenges. This message was primarily for developer debugging as it's unlikely to ever been seen by an end user, and it was optional anyway, really only mentioned as a possibility, so this was always at the implementations' discretion. Servers are expected to 'do HTTP properly' and send and honour Accept headers for language if they are sending human-readable responses, which doesn't need explicitly calling out in the Webmention spec. There was discussion of requiring a "backoff" strategy when trying to discover a Webmention endpoint. This also applies to LDN, and any other specs which requiring probing at webpages to determine if they accept whatever the discover-er is trying to send. The issue is that a sender may be triggered to attempt discovery multiple times on the same URL, or for different URLs on the same domain. There's a point at which they should stop trying if they fail, or risk the server being probed blocking them completely for an unreasonable amount of GET or HEAD requests. Webmention has added a suggestion to include a User-Agent header which mentions "webmention" with the initial discovery request, so that an unsuspecting target may at least have some idea of what all of these requests are about, and can act on more information than just assuming it's some kind of DOS attack. This isn't a requirement though, as implementations in JavaScript are unable to edit the User-Agent, and implementations that are part of some other system may already have a custom User-Agent that they can't or don't want to replace. Consequently I've added a section to Social Web Protocols to give additional general guidance about not making enemies when you're looking for endpoints, including honouring eg. Retry-After headers on the server. The biggest Micropub issue concerned the media type of the (very specific) JSON structure returned in the event of an error. The conclusion was not to do anything special now, but if there are future versions of Micropub which modify the structure, they will use a profile to indicate which version they are, so implementations encountering that error know how to interpret it. During our crossover meeting with the i18n WG we noticed that Micropub's dependency on Microformats2 means that it has no way to indicate content language. This is being worked on in mf2 though, and Micropub will get a note to indicate this, and any improvements to mf2 will be incorporated in Micropub by reference. This seems at first glance a bit fishy since we're only supposed to reference 'stable' external specs, but this was resolved earlier in the year by the various mf2 sub-specs documenting their change policy, and committing to clearly indicate which parts are 'stable' and how they are updated. ActivityStreams 2.0 has acquired a bunch of editorial comments since going to CR, and these have been addressed. There's a bigger question of how to manage (append-only) extensions after the close of the WG, and we settled on Proposal 2 in issue 370. I'll be writing this up in the (pending) human-readable namespace document shortly. Then there was an even bigger question of whether or not name is a required property for all objects and activities. At the time of the meeting it was required, but given some implementor experience - in particular with people adding dummy meaningless names to activities just to pass the validator - we revised this. The usefulness of a name for every entity is giving consumers something to display even if they don't understand any other properties. A drawback of developers adding auto-generated or dummy names is that a consumer can't tell the difference between this and an actually meaningful name, so it can't make a sensible decision on whether it can overwrite it with something more useful (eg. in a different language, or something particular to the application at the time). We decided to shift the burden of assigning names to unnamed entities from publishers to consumers, as consumers are more aware of the context in which the entity is being used or displayed. Publishers can of course assign a name, which should be consistently respected by consumers as they'll now have confidence the name was assigned deliberately. We still think there should be a name for Article type objects. So we resolved to switch to having two properties: one which is required, expected to be machine-generated, and can be replaced by consumers if they think they can do it better. one which is optional, expected to be human-generated and meaningful, and consumers should respect it. We haven't decided exactly what the names for these two properties are yet. Probably 2. is name and I like fallbackName for 1., but others up for discussion are title and label... but watch this space... (and issue 312). We really need implementation reports for AS2 by the way... in case that was news. Let us know what you're working on! Specs imminently entering CR The most substantive issue we discussed on ActivityPub was adding a source property, to indicate the original input the user made in case it is converted from something else to HTML for the content field. The obvious use case for this is letting users author their content in markdown. Storing the original markdown alongside the converted HTML lets the client present the markdown back again for the user to edit in future. Current pump.io implementations have problems with letting users create content at first with markdown, but presenting HTML back to them later, which can be confusing. Personally I think a client that offers markdown editing and can do the conversion to HTML to send to the server should also be able to take that HTML content and convert it back to markdown for the user in the case of editing an existing post. Apparently going back the other way is more challenging though. And Chris's use case was for having a representation of the content in emacs org mode, not markdown. I was worried that the source and content fields could get out of sync if editing the same content is done by multiple different clients. That's (probably?) fairly edge though (though I'm already using multiple APish clients on the same content). We compromised by saying that clients which find source and don't understand it must prompt the user to let them know the original source will be lost of they proceed with editing, as a feature "at risk". I'm a bit wary about specifying a UI thing in the spec, but we'll try it out and see how it goes. But maybe all it really is is a requirement that clients MUST understand this particular property; so far there aren't any properties a client can't ignore. We got agreement to add ActivityPub terms which are extra to AS2 into the AS2 namespace and JSON-LD context, which will simplify things for implementors. This also stands as an initial experiment with how AS2 extensions can be done in the future. Chris also proposed to define the media endpoint of AP as "at risk" as, even though they need it in MediaGoblin, it's not worth potentially holding the rest of AP up for, and they can easily develop it as an extension afterwards. There may also be a possibility of convergence between the Micropub and AP media endpoints. We began our LDN discussion by learning that Kjetil, who had attended the first day of our meetings and then had to leave, implemented a portion of an LDN sender/consumer on his flight back to Norway. LDN is addressing the "backoff" issue previously mentioned for Webmention by referring the new section in Social Web Protocols, and stressing that implementations should anticipate and respect relevant HTTP status codes. After all, it's only polite. We briefly discussed LDN's need to add inbox to the LDP namespace, but we had a session on the Wednesday plenary day about extensibility of W3C namespaces in general, including a bunch of LDP people in the room, none of whom objected. We also had support in our github issue about this. The WG agreed to go ahead with whatever the relevant W3C and Semantic Web communities consent to. Hindsight addendum: I added inbox (at risk pending PR) to the LDP namespace a week or so later. Nobody has complained and the Web still seems to be up. In LDN we had a section ("Security, Privacy and Content Considerations") which mixes normative and non-normative content, and I was getting confused about what kinds of things are supposed to be which. The experts in the room helped us to untangle this section, and we decided to move all normative content into the appropriate parts of the spec; to move some of the informative content into green 'note' boxes if they pertain to something specific, and anything that was left should apply to the spec in general and we could mark the entire section as entirely non-normative. Both LDN and AP will have complete or partial test suites, or a detailed plan for a test suite, before they can enter CR. Specs in earlier stages Post Type Discovery right now defines a 'mapping' from combinations of properties a post might have (based on mf2 properties, though many of them are explicitly unstable so we can't actually reference them normatively) to a 'type' currently presented as an English-language string. We discussed at length the purpose of Post Type Discovery and came to the conclusion that it ultimately needs to be possible to generate ActivityStreams 2.0 types (rather than arbitrary strings, which are essentially yet another vocabulary). Many of us thought it was supposed to be doing this anyway, and were surprised that it hasn't yet. So this should see some significant updates in the near future towards this. PubSubHubbub is raring to go as a FPWD, thanks to Julien's hard work in updating it to W3C spec format. We just have to jump some process hurdles, and that'll be published soon. Now is a great time to raise issues on it if you have or intended to implement it! We spent some time discussing a new name which is friendlier to non-English language speakers, and we're probably going to go with PubSub. We also decided to close the PuSH community group, as any further discussion around the spec should take place in the WG. The future There's a general consensus that we've barely scratched the surface, but we formally resolved not to try to take on any more recommendation track documents henceforth. We need to focus on getting what we have to rec! However, to continue work after the group closes at the end of the year, including for managing errata and extensions, we'll open a Community Group. We'll do this towards the end of our charter, but if you're interested in being a part of it, drop an email to the public list. We're planning another face-to-face sometime in on the 17 and 18 of November in either San Francisco or Boston. Whence we'll hopefully be wrapping things up! There's another writeup here by Chris.
Woah woah woah! I just added an SSL certificate to my new Dreamhost account. Check this out: Click a button to turn https on under domain management. You get a self-signed cert, and a warning that this will generate warnings in browser. Click a button to switch it to a free LetsEncrypt cert. Profit. Beat that every other web host, I dare you.
Food in Kobe Modernark All vegetarian, mostly vegan, but many non-vegan desserts and drinks. Well labelled on the menu. I went here twice, once with a fairly big group of carnivores who were reasonably impressed or at least polite about it. It's open late which is a plus, has a nice atmosphere, and free wifi (you have to ask for the password, when I was there it was 88888888). They also sell some organic groceries, vegan cookies, etc. Food was delicious and portion sizes were reasonable. I tried the vegetarian plate (a selection of things), teriyaka wrap (contains wheat gluten and salad), and a curry and rice bowl. All dishes come with salads and soups. I also had a vegan lassi which was an unusual (but delicious) raspberry flavour, and coconut 'tiramisu' cake, which wasn't really like tiramisu, but was delicious anyway. Pricey in general, but average for the area. Natural House Food Court Tried to go here twice. The first time, though HappyCow says it's open until 2000, they told me they close at 1600. The grocery store part is open later, just not the restaurant. The second time I got there at about 1430 and they told me they'd sold out of curry. Oh well. Picked up some snacks from the store instead, which is extensive and healthy organic produce, though not cheap. Pink Weed All vegan, and proud. Loved this place, but maybe by this point the lack of options in Kobe was wearing on me. It's frustrating that it's only open for lunchtime. There's no wifi, but comfy seating and graphic novels and books to read. I went twice anyway and got a different lunch set each time. The curry was excellent, and more filling than it looked. The sandwich was interesting, I'm not sure what was in it, but it did the job. Accompanying salads and soups were great. I tried cheesecake and poundcake, and chai and iced black tea. Again, pricey in general but normal for this kind of place. It's also about a 15 minute walk from Sannomiya station, which is handy. Follow the trainline west (mountains on your right) until you reach the next station, then it's off a side road. Vegan dessert stall Close to Chinatown we stumbled across a vegan dessert stall. They had waffles, doughnutty cake things, and chocolate cake. We bought one of everything. Kusum Indian All vegetarian, thali and chapati seem to be vegan, though the dessert that comes as part of the dinner set (ice cream) is not. Declined that, but paid the full price anyway. The thali was three curries, rice and chapati, and they were delicious and homecooked. There was no menu, we just sat down and the owner brought out dish after dish. The samosas were great, I could have eaten them all night. Good job I didn't though, or I wouldn't have had room for the curries. As it was, I took some leftovers home. Food all cooked by the owner and his wife, though they seemed kind of despondent. There wasn't anyone else there when we were, early evening. Difficult to find, the map marker in HappyCow was about 15 minutes too far west. But some googling for the name and different parts of the address eventually got us there. We almost walked right past, but I was lucky to see the sign fro the Indian supplies store that is right below the restaurant. Food in Osaka atl All vegan, located upstairs, just off the side of the enormous indoor mall arcade thing that runs through the center of the city. Their specialty for some reason is bagels and hummus, which are made fresh onsite every day. They have three set lunches, which include starters and drinks, and three dessert options for a little extra. It was all really good, filling.. felt expensive, but actually normal for vegan restaurants here. Mel Coffee roasters Friendly, young, husband-and-wife team running this teeny tiny coffee roasters which has been carved out of a corner of a building. They have a bench outside, but no real seating. Any space inside not taken up by the counter is occupied by coffee roasting equipment, and you can watch the beans go round. Seriously good espresso, and a wide selection of hand-drip, too. Plus, the cheapest coffee we found between Kobe and Osaka at 190 JPY for an espresso! And by far the best. Did I mention it was great? Their English is fluent, and as an added bonus had a good working knowledge of vegan restaurants in the area. Wad This is a tea (and cereamics) shop, recommended to us by the folks at Mel's. We tried two different types of sencha, which was produced with great ceremony. It was very pretty, with teeny tiny cups, pots and timers. We initially tried to share a pot (it's expensive!!), but we were required to make an order each. We got three infusions, at different temperatures, and finally - the part we'd been excited about after reading it on the menu - they brought us the tea leaves to eat. Except they returned them seasoned with soy sauce and bonito flakes. D'oh. They have a bunch of tea-appropriate nibbles on the menu, many of which look vegan, but I didn't try any. They sell a very small selection of tea to buy by the gram as well. Paprika Shokudo All vegan and proud. They used a button system to call servers, but it was chronically slow anyway, including the food coming. In the end it took so long we decided not to get dessert. But the food we did get was great. 'Oysters' made from mushrooms, fried soy meat, and cheesey vegetables. They also brought us some small starters to choose from a plate. Prana All vegan, macrobiotic, healthy food. There's a kitchen right across the street from the actual restaurant which was at first confusing. No English menus, but the server/chef did her best to explain what the dishes were. We picked two out of the three lunch sets at random, and tried miso soup, salad, curry, and ramen. The ramen were bland but a large portion. The curry was on par with other curries we've had a vegan restaurants. We followed up with two (small) slices of apple cake. The food was all good, but definitely on the more expensive side. Aju This place. Wow. All vegan, and proud. Reviews on HappyCow claim it only has four seats, and a grumpy owner/chef, but I found a much bigger space and a cheerful, curious, talkative waitress. Their space was occupied by a prebooked large party, but they managed to dig up some extra chairs and repurpose a storage table so that we could stay! Not on the cheap side, but we ordered as much as possible. I finally got to try oknomiyaki which was maybe one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. Plus a pizza with something spam-like, and potato. It was so cheesy and absolute comfort food. We also tried deep fried soya meat, which came topped with more grated radish than one should reasonably try to eat. We got a platter of sides, including bizarre 'squid' (which I was reliably informed had a texture very close to actual squid), and soy meat chunks, and various salad-y bits. There was a poster on the wall with a picture of some ridiculous looking Hallowe'en dessert, and I had to have it. It was pumpkin soft-serve ice cream, matcha ice cream, red bean goo and mochi balls. Plus little biscuits shaped like a bat and a pumpkin. I regret nothing. This was my last night in Osaka, and I was tempted to stay longer just to come back here. Accommodation in Osaka I stayed in a small self-contained apartment near Tennoji. It had a balcony, and a small but functional kitchen. It also came with a portable Mifi hotspot which was fast and the most useful thing ever. Also posted to AirBnB: Great communication from Keisuke right up until I arrived. Really great place, clean and minimal and comfortable. Also a good location, for a train to the airport, and for central Osaka. In fact, I walked into Osaka; it takes more than an hour but is a great way to see different areas. The apartment is also close to a large park and many tourist attractions, including Tsūtenkaku tower. Thanks! Food in Tokyo I have a separate post about vegan food in Tokyo.
So far I've met a leather-clad blues player called Jim and a lovely almost-80 year old lady called Glenda, who has been telling me about her various travel adventures. This is the tenth time Jim has made this journey, from Ohio to Arizona, and Glenda has been on the train since where it started in Chicago (she got off in Tuscon). During our four-hour layover in San Marcos I also met some early-twenties new army recruits, who invited me to go find a bar with them; I declined and stayed on the train to talk to Glenda instead. The majority of this journey has been through two nights, but the daytime took us through Texan desert, including Marfa (where a bunch of famous movies including No Country For Old Men) were filmed. Valentine, where there's an art exhibition which is a replica of a Prada shop (complete with the latest shoes and purses), and not much else. Sierra Blanca, where the main economy is United States Border Patrol. The Mexican border, inclusive of small wall. One of the train crew is helpfully providing commentary. And plenty of desert brush and interesting mountains. Apparently passed close enough to the Mexican border that Three have charged me now almost £25 for data not included in my free roaming. Including around £15 during a period of time when I disabled the SIM completely to stop this from happening any more. Hopefully they'll give me a refund. I wasn't even using the phone, it was just background activity. Sigh. Finally left Texas for a stint through New Mexico. Things started to get greener once we were in Arizona. After watching the sunset over Tuscon (and a couple of movies) I went to sleep. I woke up a few hours later, over an hour early, in LA.
New Amtrak record: 37 hours through the Wild West
This was going to be a week in review, but then I realised I hadn't done one for a while. Week 1: 3-9 Had my last couple of days at MIT Got rid of everything I couldn't fit into two backpacks (or thereabouts) Week 2: 10-16 Went to Austin for a few days Took the train to LA for the weekend Flew to Osaka Worked on getting LDN CR-ready once and for all. Caught up on some bugfixes for Sloph Got started on a workshop proposal for WWW Week 3: 17-23 Hung around ISWC in Kobe for a week. Climbed a small mountain. Worked on adding literature to a submission for WWW I'd ultimately miss the deadline for. Got the SocialWG approval to take LDN to CR. Worked on the WWW workshop proposal. Finally published PubSub as a FPWD. Spent some time touristing and eating in Osaka. Week 4: 24-30 Moved onto my brother's floor, in Nerima just outside Tokyo. Continued improving the WWW workshop proposal. Did a bunch of work on the new Linked Research site. Still working on new issues being opened on LDN, mostly editorial. W3C admin stuff to do with the LDN CR and Webmention PR. Had a couple of not-really-get-out-of-bed days. Today is one of them, but my brain is finally coming online around 5pm. Learnt enough kanji to start grocery shopping (soy bean, meat, fish, egg, dairy). Explored a few areas of Tokyo, including: Roppongi, which has lots of fancy pants art and a big park and two excellent vegan restaurants. Shiodome, which I went to for the advertising museum, but it was closed. Wandered around some of the giant mall buildings, and stumbled into the viewing area of the 46th floor of the Caretta, which is surprisingly free. The turbo lifts are super fast. There's also wifi and power. Unfortunately there's also an steady influx of tourists, but maybe it's not a bad place to work. Walked through the Imperial Palace grounds, just as everything was closing so I only got to go around the edge. TODO: PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD thesis PhD the
I read online that it was surprisingly easy to get vegan mayo in Japan, and that it's much better than its US or European counterparts. So I set out on a quest. Armed with the kanji for tamago, I spent upwards of 20 minutes squinting at dozens of ingredients lists on mayo packs at two different supermarkets. I first searched for the brand I'd seen online, and found one, and it said egg on it... but in red... did that mean it was saying it didn't contain egg? Was it talking about how bad egg is? Then I found one that said in english 'olive oil mayo' on it, but on a second reading I found egg in what looked to probably be an ingredients list. I was gradually noticing patterns, and getting the hang of where to look for ingredients and allergy information. I was almost ready to give up, when I picked up one of the really common seemingly cheap brands (Kewpie) and started reading... and where most brands list egg, soy bean, and katakana my brother later identified as 'apple' (I'm not convinced, need to get J to confirm) in their allergy list, this one only listed the latter two! I re-read the whole pack twice, scouring for tamago and didn't find it. Delighted, I flipped it back over... and saw "NO EGG ADDED" in English, plus a big picture of an egg with a cross through it. But the point is, I practiced my kanji pattern matching. And now I have mayo. And it is better than any I've had in the US or UK.
How do I know the reviewers are experts? I don't know who they are. I know the context and background of my facebook friends, I can critically interpret their replies. The reviewers are anonymous. They're people who had some time, just barely, probably during a commute or on the toilet. Or who owed someone a favour. I've reviewed papers, usually having been asked to by the person who was supposed to be reviewing, about topics I barely know. I think: "it's okay, the other reviewers will swing it if I'm wrong." ...
Why is three positive conference reviews more reassuring than one thousand facebook comments?
One of the things I've loved at vegan restaurants in Japan is deep fried soy meat. Most have it, and meat-eaters I've dined with have compared it favourably to fried chicken or other meat. It's crunchy and juicy and just really super satisfying. So naturally I decided to make my own. As usual, the following image sums up my cooking style: And as usual, I googled it a bit, skimmed a couple of articles or recipes, and then closed everything and jumped in working on Web-refreshed instincts. Well, first I went to Seiyu and bought soy meat (obviously) and katakuriko, a potato starch that I'd read was much better than using normal wheat flour. I found it by screenshotting a google image search result and searching the supermarket to match the kanji on packaging. In case you were interested. I marinated the soy meat in soy sauce, ginger paste, garlic paste, and sesame oil for about 20 minutes. I deep fried some potatoes in the mean time, because I read somewhere you are supposed to fry vegetables before using the oil for meat or something. Also because I love fried potato. Then I rolled the soy meat in the katakuriko until it had a thin coating. Then I deep fried it. Success! This was delicious. The chunks weren't as big as the ones I've had in restaurants, but that's all Seiyu have. It was so good I'd already eaten half before it even occurred to me to reach for the mayonnaiase. While I was at it, I did the same with some thin slices of konnyaku. Also successful, though not quiet as delicious. I think I should have probably made an effort to make a thick, consistent coating of flour.
aka. The Tooth Hurts aka Visting a dentist as a foreigner in Tokyo, Japan, since I need a more SEO friendly header After minor face explosion due to wisdom teeth over the weekend, I eventually decided I should go see a dentist rather than try to wait it out until after my upcoming trip to the US. I am extremely thankful to Mike and Nao for taking me to their local dentist, and translating forms and conversation for me. It's nice to have W3C family all over the world :) We dropped by about 3.30 in the afternoon, without calling ahead, and I was seen within about five minutes, after filling in (or mostly, as it was all in Japanese, Nao filling in) a form. They estimated the prices upfront (without being asked) and to check that I was okay with it, promising for sure less than 10,000 JPY. This is about what I expected following extensive googling yesterday. First was an xray. The xray machine played like 8bit elevator music, and I had to stop myself from laughing. Then some waiting around, and then I was seated in a dentist chair. Then more waiting around. Everything seemed to happen at a very leisurely pace, but staff were friendly and smiley and chatty (in Japanese). The dentist talked to Nao for ages while I was in the chair, and Nao periodically gave me one-sentence summaries. I was reminded of the "moar... intensity" scene in Lost in Translation, and again had to stop myself from giggling. The xray was produced, and I got a detailed explanation of everything wrong with my wisdom teeth. My left side is infected right now, but the right side is just as at risk. The dentist noted that were she to be removing them, she'd take the top ones first. She showed me the best angle at which to clean the emerging tooth, and put some gel on it. She produced antibiotics and very strong painkillers. Yay! And if I'm still in pain on Thursday, I'm to go back. This came to 7,790 JPY - less than expected, though not something I had budgeted for. I'm going to see if I can claim any of that back from World Nomads. I was in there for probably just under an hour.
J taught me to make gyoza today. We even found soy meat in Seiyu (Walmart/Asda). The gyoza wrappers are on the top shelf in a fridge full of packaged meat. It never would have occurred to me to look for them there. The soy meat was not dry, but in a packet of liquid, and needed draining. All of the vegetables get finely chopped and mixed together, plus ginger paste, garlic paste, and sesame oil. Add filling to skin, wet around the edges, fold, squeeze, crimp. Ta da! And fry. And dip! In a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, and chilli oil. Delicious!
How do we get people to mistrust the media? How do we get people to take context into account? Are food bloggers the bane of professional chefs? How do I prove I know what I'm talking about? How do I know I know what I'm talking about? Why would anyone care what I think? Should I publish it anyway? Why is three positive conference reviews more reassuring than one thousand facebook comments? What will I do when the Web runs out? What comes after? Where can I hide?
Gatekeepers are required in academic publishing to enforce quality, coherance and to lend authority. When anyone can publish anything, as is the case on the Web today, lies and misinformation spread much faster than the truth. People publish opinions as facts, distorted interpretations of data, make general statements based on samples and take things out of context. Academia is better than this. We value scientific rigour. We value evidence for claims, and repeatability of experiments. Nothing is more important to us than seeking the truth, whole and unbiased. Except tenure or grant funding. People all over the world write about their experiences, but these are anecdotal. If I want to understand a topic, I read about it in an established journal or conference proceedings. I can tell it's reliable because I have to log in from behind my institution's IP address to access it. It's great that the taxpayers generously cover the cost for me to access material that most of them can't. Not that they want to. The general public, and even our world leaders, are skeptical of 'experts'. Despite the fact that we have devoted our lives to specialising in one topic so we can understand it to its fullest, so that others don't have to. They deried us as 'out of touch'. Meanwhile continuing to proliferate their gut feelings on social media, spreading nonsense, missing nuance. It's a good job we can rely on our trusty paywalls to keep the real knowledge separate from all of that.
Being vegan in Japan is this emotional rollercoaster, being stuck between the two extremes of hunger-weighted frustration that there's nothing to eat, and wallet-weighted frustration that there are too many good things all in one place all at the same time, which are all really expensive. Groceries A lot of Japanese food is vegan by default, including loads of desserts made from rice (mochi!), tofu, or agar agar. A lot is mostly vegan. In the latter case, restaurants either can't or won't substitute ingredients upon request, if they understand what you're asking. Plus things that look vegan probably have secret fish in. Similarly, grocery shopping is fine; buying staples is easy. But there are loads of super interesting looking unfamiliar things that I want to eat but I don't know what they are... they're probably soy, or vegetable, or seaweed, or bean... but I can't be sure. I carried around a list of all the kanji I needed to look for to read ingredients lists, but this is exhausting enough in English. First I googled the problem, and found pictures of things that the internet said are definitely vegan, and hunted some of those down. This includes this brand of soy milk, and these azduki bean ice creams: // Todo photos Then I obtained the services of my brother's Japanese girlfriend, J, and took her grocery shopping so I could point at things and ask what they are. I got all sorts of treats (descriptions on hover): <img class="w1of2" src="https://i.amy.gy/2016tokyo/IMG_20161101_144158.jpg" alt="Flavoured savoury silken tofu. This one is mushroom and pine. I also tried edamame. I tried spreading it on bread, but J told me it is to be eaten with a spoon, with soy sauce." title="Flavoured savoury silken tofu. This one is mushroom and pine. I also tried edamame. I tried spreading it on bread, but J told me it is to be eaten with a spoon, with soy sauce." /> <img class="w1of2" src="https://i.amy.gy/2016tokyo/IMG_20161105_123040.jpg" alt="Soy meat. In Seiyu, it comes in small chunks (like ground meat) or bigger ones. There's not much in a pack, and it's stored in liquid. Dried would probably be more economical." title="Soy meat. In Seiyu, it comes in small chunks (like ground meat) or bigger ones. There's not much in a pack, and it's stored in liquid. Dried would probably be more economical." /> <img class="w1of3" src="https://i.amy.gy/2016tokyo/IMG_20161106_194652.jpg" alt="Konnyaku! Comes sealed in clear plastic surrounded by liquid. Colour varies depending on what else is in it. Clear/white has nothing added, this one has seaweed." title="Konnyaku! Comes sealed in clear plastic surrounded by liquid. Colour varies depending on what else is in it. Clear/white has nothing added, this one has seaweed." /> <img class="w1of2" src="https://i.amy.gy/2016tokyo/IMG_20161111_151412.jpg" alt="Sesame tofu plus sauce sachets. Definitely dessert but not very sweet. Pack contains two. Sauce tastes like if soy sauce thought really really hard about caramel." title="Sesame tofu plus sauce sachets. Definitely dessert but not very sweet. Pack contains two. Sauce tastes like if soy sauce thought really really hard about caramel." /> (Close up of the last one). I learned other things like: There are a million different types of miso. I thought there were maybe three kinds of miso. There are a million. I just picked the cheapest one, but J laughed at me and said it has rice in, it's not for miso soup. Then she laughed at me again when I told her I'd put in the curry she was eating. It was tasty though. Tofu is SO CHEAP. It's awesome. Rice is surprisingly expensive. Vegetables and fruit are also expensive, less surprisingly. Mushrooms get cheaper the weirder (more unfamiliar to me) they are. Which is awesome. Konnyaku is a wonderful gelatinous blob made from yam powder. It's banned in the EU in 2002 because 18 people choked on it, so this is why I'd never heard of it. I blogged separately about making gyoza and deep fried soy meat. Restaurants Vegan and vegan-friendly restaurants in Tokyo are not too hard to come by, but also clustered together, and pretty expensive (like everything else I guess). But they're also fucking good. I had to decide this was just something I was budgeting for. Ain Soph There are a bunch of these around Tokyo, all with different hippie names like 'Journey' and 'Ripple'. Ain.Soph has some poor reviews on HappyCow for being very expensive but with very small portions. J and Dave picked this for me on my first night in Tokyo (to the same branch I'd been to for dessert when I was last in Tokyo, in fact) and I warned him on the way about the small portion reviews (he's a hungry growing boy). But it turns out we needn't have worried. I had a taco salad which was huge and delicious. Dave had a green curry, which was plenty of food for him, and J had fried soy meat and rice, and as a dedicated fried chicken eater, was suitably impressed. We split two desserts between us - the lemon cheesecake and chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was hypnotic. This came to just under 60,000 JPY (~$60) in total (which I paid for because I'm an awesome big sister). A modified version of this review posted to HappyCow. Kerela Bhuvan On one of my first evenings in Nerima, I set out to hunt for groceries. Came upon this place by chance near Nerima station and as I was peering at the menu in passing the waiter who stuck his head out to invite me inside was so friendly that I went in. I'm so glad I did. This is mostly South Indian, and serves meat, but with a decent array of vegetarian options. The waiter was happy to point out which are vegan (I expanded 'vegan' to 'no milk, no butter, no egg' just in case, which I think helped), and we also chatted about where I'd been in India and how much I like Indian food. I was unfamiliar with a bunch of the curries on this menu though, as I know less about South Indian food in general. This was exciting. I picked one at random, which was Rasam (600 JPY) and accompanied it with coconut rice (500 JPY). For an extra 150 I was offered Indian rice instead of Japanese rice, but I had to break the news that I actually enormously prefer Japanese rice. I was able to ask for it hot, and the waiter reassured me that the rice would be fried in oil not butter. I'm not sure if the default is butter, but this is nice to confirm. The food came really quickly, and I ate it just as quickly. It was really good. The rice plate was huge, and the curry was hot and tomatoey and full of delicious. I just managed to finish it all. I came back a second time with Dave (he loves curry) and J, and they both had something with chicken and enjoyed it. J's naan bread was enormous. Dave spilled his curry all over the table. I had aloo bondy to start (deep fried spicy potato balls) and chapati with avial, a coconutty curry full of veggies. All up to standard. A modified version of this review on HappyCow (pending). Veganic To Go This is proximate to Roppongi station, and all of the art exhibitions and museums and park thereabouts, so really handy if you're visiting that area. The first time I went was tipping down with rain so I didn't wander around much. I also didn't fancy splashing out for the museums. But this was worth the trip alone. I wanted everything here. So much. They have four burgers, six or so rice bowls (most topped with not-meat of some kind), a selection of desserts, and various sides and accompaniments. The burgers seem to be mostly made of hemp. The first time I went I had the teriyaki burger, and a side of fried soy meat. Both super delicious. The bread itself was pretty incredible, and the burger patty was made of some kind of beans, and smothered in sauce and salad. It could have been bigger, but maybe I got used to US portions. It certainly left room for dessert. The burger and side together came to 1,490 JPY which is pretty steep. But it was good. The second time I had a slice of chicken mayo pizza, more deep fried soy meat, and hemp milk almond pudding (1,544 JPY). The pizza slice was small and fine, but nothing to go crazy for. Man I love the soy meat though. Veganic has free wifi, but not much seating so I wouldn't feel comfortable bedding in here. They close at 5 on some days, which isn't a big deal if you're there in the evening, as you can just pop across the road toooo... This review on HappyCow Cafe 6BT ... which is open til late. And also has an incredible menu, of ramen and not-meats and massive, hearty looking dishes. The first time I went (immediately following Veganic) I had a soy latte and the chocolate gateau made with rice flour, accompanied by soy ice cream. Dense and totally satisfied the chocolate craving I'd been accumulating. This set me back 540 + 750 JPY. Has free wifi too (which works better than Veganic's) and much more space, plus a few power outlets if you look in the right place, so I can stick around and work here without feeling guilty for taking up space. I returned to try the ramen, and loved the Soy milk tantan, which is a decent 800 JPY. I didn't get the set, but tried a couple of other peoples' sides and they were great. Get a set if you're really hungry, but otherwise the ramen alone is a decent portion size. This review adapted for HappyCow. Monk's Food This isn't a vegan restaurant, but a 'healthy' one, and seems to always have one vegan item on their set lunch menu. If you order this, they also check with you about whether to make the miso soup with dashi or not. The set I ate was vegetables in broth, and tofu, plus sides of pickles, soy beans and seaweed, miso soup, mushrooms, and tea. It was really delicious, and very authentically Japanese. The space is cosy - not really suitable for big groups, though you could take over the whole of the upstairs. The lunch set is 1,080 JPY. This review on HappyCow. Doughnut Plant I first tried to go to the one in Kichijoji, but this turns out to be the main kitchen (though it also appears to sell doughnuts) and it's open between the odd hours of 8pm and 2am. I was too early. I went to the outlet in Lumin Est, right outside Shinjuku Station instead, and got to try two: maple walnut and cranberry. Great! The larger doughnuts are 350 JPY, and they have a huge array of other flavours (containing dairy, though not eggs), with smaller ones starting at less than 200 JPY. Review adapted for HappyCow. Tsuyukusa This place was busy when I arrived, and it turned out there was a special event on. There were crochet things and bags and jewelery for sale, but not lunch. Nonetheless I was welcomed with friendly smiles and a little English by customers and staff alike, and got two small cakes and some really delicious black soy bean tea for 500 JPY. The cakes turned out to be enough to fill me up for a few hours, so a real lunch wasn't missed. Review adapted for HappyCow. The Hawaiian food truck at Commune264 I went to Commune264 for Cori vegan food truck, but it is closed on Tuesdays. Fortunately right across is another food truck with a vegan plate for 1000 JPY. It consisted of a variety of exciting vegetables, beans and pickles, brown rice, and fried soy meat. Lots of food, good value, friendly service. Came with a bottle of water too. Commune246 is a covered outdoor seating area with a whole bunch of food trucks, and a really nice vibe. Part of it is Wired cafe, which provides wifi, power and plenty of seating - a great spot for digital nomadding. Cori Vegan food truck at Commune264 I went back on not-Tuesday, and ate the vegan plate from here too (1000 JPY). Points because they gave me an actual plate instead of disposable stuff. The food was a mix of the usual salad, pickles, fried soy meat and mushrooms but also included the best scrambled tofu I've ever had. It was squishy and creamy, possibly the closes to eggs I've come across. It was only a small amount, but worth trying the plate for that I think. They have lots of other options too, and some interesting drinks on the menu. This review adapted for HappyCow. Brown Rice Cafe Brown Rice is about a 5 minute walk from Commune246. They serve lunch until (last orders for food) 5pm, and are open til 6, so I squeezed in an early dinner here. They are all vegan, and have three main plates plus a special. I chose the curry, which was full of beans and pulses, and pretty good (1,300 JPY). It came with brown rice, and a drink (I had hojicha). I also had a pumpkin soup with mochi for dessert (700 JPY). The food was filling and the space is nice, but nothing to rave about. This review adapted for HappyCow. Magokoro Not actually Tokyo, this is a seafront Hemp cafe in Kamakura, a short walk from Hase train station. It serves fish, but is otherwise vegan. It's very clear which dishes contain fish. Everything has hemp involved somehow. I had a plate with breaded tofu, and the usual selection of rice, pickles and vegetables, miso soup, plus a hemp coffee (tasted like normal coffee). They had a few interesting desserts, but I was full from the plate and short on time. The food was tasty, people were friendly, and the sea view is excellent. This review adapted for HappyCow. Harukucchii All vegan! Also not Tokoyo but a five minute walk from Fujisawa train station. I was on my way back from Kamakura, but I'd recommend visiting Fujisawa just to eat here. It. Was. Spectacular. I had actually changed the day of my visit to Kamakura so I could go here (it's closed on Tuesdays) and I thought I was being silly, but this was a great decision. It's a really tiny space (maybe ten or twelve seats) and it's not cheap, but boy is it good. Did I mention it was delicious? I would normally be hesitant with these prices, but thanks to their free wifi (password: harukucchii01) I found out the US election results after a day of being offline and decided to just drown my sorrows in gourmet vegan food. The menu is not available in English, but the waitress gladly translated every single item for me. There are loads of options, and really interesting ones that I haven't seen elsewhere. I had spicy edamame, which came with a warning from the chef: "this is too spicy. That red one is danger. Be careful, okay?" It was perfect (I love spicy food). I didn't eat the red chilli that sat on top because I didn't want to destroy myself for the rest of the meal, but I did lick it. I had also ordered rice milk, which was rich and creamy and a great compliment to the spice. I also ate fried potatoes, which were simple but perfectly seasoned and cooked, plus deep fried konnyaku, which came with lettuce and a little dish of salt to dip. Everything just tasted incredible. I followed up with hojicha, and matcha 'tiramisu'. I don't like tiramisu, but in my experience so far Japan's idea of tiramisu is varied and unusual, and I'm game for anything with matcha. It was a green, creamy layered sponge in a dish. Good stuff. I was seated at the bar so I could somewhat see into the kitchen, and chatted with the chef and waitress. I paid just over 4,000 JPY for the meal in total, which is more than I would normally pay for dinner, but for this quality of food and service was totally fine. This is probably my favourite so far, second maybe only to Aju in Osaka. This review adapted for HappyCow. Gonbachi Another one a bit far from Tokyo. Out in the remote fields nearby Keio Shonan-Fujisawa University campus, this is a very traditional feeling Japanese restaurant, which uses all local produce and has a homey vibe. There are a number of vegetable dishes, and they were able (upon request, in Japanese) to make the dashi for the mushroom hoto noodle dish without fish. It was a big, hearty noodle soup, full of veggies and mushrooms, which came with beans on the side and tea. We scoured the dessert menu (which is in Japanese), and it appears that most of them are likely vegan by chance, including both tofu and soy ice cream. There were several things I'd never seen before, and I ended up choosing kurogoma pudding, which is a black sesame seed jelly, very smooth and creamy. I also tried amazake, which is a thick, sweet drink made from fermented rice and something to do with leftovers from sake production. They also have a little corner for doing calligraphy. This review adapted for HappyCow. Lima Lima is a little cafe inside a health food shop in Shinjuku. They have all vegan food to go, and some seating. I tried the veggie burger, which was a good size and came with salad, miso soup for 900 JPY. I also tried soy ice cream and a super dense chocolate brownie. This review adapted for HappyCow. Coffee shops Tully's, Doutor and Starbucks are everywhere and all have soy milk options for their drinks, including matcha lattes. I didn't actually go to a Starbucks, but I read they take it very seriously to the point they give you a special 'soy' card to avoid mixups. Wired cafe also has a few outlets, and also have soy milk (cafe au lait though, not latte). Combini Convenience stores in Japan really take convenience to a new level. Not only do they contain a wide array of food at sensible prices (in contrast to the UK, where the closest equivalent to convenience stores are like double price compared to supermarkets), but they usually have free wifi. A surprising number have desks where you can hang out and work, and some of these even have power outlets. They also have decent hot coffee (freshly ground beans) and a selection of ready-to-go hot food as well. When on the move, I was relying on combini, like 7-11, Lawson and FamilyMart, for easy to grab onigiri (they have ume and seaweed flavours) and sushi (natto maki and inari), as well as lots of mochi. Sometimes you'll find bananas, and they have a lot of nuts, crisps, and dried fruit too. I never had chance to scrutinise the hot food until I was in Tokyo, and could see from the photos that they definitely had some steamed buns that look vegan - only they never had any left, whether I was there late or early. Finally I had chance to try one: a bun filled with sesame paste from 7-11. It was pretty great, warm and doughy. If you like that kind of thing. They also had a sweet potato one.
Copypasted results from #ownYourData paper into thesis chapter 3, and edited and added to other bits already in chapter 3. Helped transition LDN to CR and Webmention to PR. Published two WD updates to Social Web Protocols. Went to an Onsen. Learnt to count to ten in Japanese whilst waiting for the bus. Only the basic numbers though. There are whole different sets of words if you're counting something specific like people or things. Obviously. Gave a lightning talk at the W3C TAG Developer Meetup about some of the work the Social Web WG is doing. Fixed my homepage AS2 output (it's still not perfect, but it had disappeared completely for a while). Learnt to make gyoza.
Went to a Japanese dentist Outlined chapter 5 of thesis Started to make chapter 1 (intro) make more sense. Fixed more sloph bugs. Went to Kamakura to see temples and statues and stuff. Existed through the potential beginning of the end of the western world as we know it. Worked from the W3C office at Keio University Added ActivityPub terms to the AS2 namespace and made the human readable version. Went to Kawagoe with Dave and J, ate lots of sweet-potato based foods.