the quantic sea this quantic sea is my ( lightly edited ) collection of thoughts, feelings, and observations on various different things. some of the pages here are a work-in-progress, but realistically all of it is valuable to me to share. feel free to share it! main areas of focus Japan – contains information/advice for visitors coming to Japan Advice for New Residents of Japan – contains useful…
Q: particles? A: yes. Q: 素粒子 means “elementary particles”. A: yes. Q: what? A: everyone is made of particles, and so am i, silly. Q: what? A: for a better explanation, please read “his dark materials” by phillip pullman. thank you!
素粒子 I m particles (he/him) ( 素粒子 ). I also have a neat-ish about page at particles.moe . Perhaps some particles move backward in time; perhaps the future affects the past in some way we don’t understand; or perhaps the universe is simply more aware than we are. — Phillip Pullman, in Lyra’s Oxford
Messaging apps Best overall 2) : Telegram! Telegram is the best messaging app, but not the most secure 3) . It is the most feature rich, has the most luxurious apps across all platforms, beautiful animations, and generally is wonderful. The app to copy. Suddenly gained a reputation for hosting white supremacist content, so now using Telegram is socially problematic. Voice calls are garbage…
Japanese phone numbers for non-residents If you re visiting Japan, you don t need a Japanese phone number. But if you have a need for a Japanese phone number, here s what you need to know: Japanese voice and SMS services require identity verification. With requirements changing in April 2026, this functionally means that you need to present your passport in-person at a reception point in Japan.…
Links A collection of moderately useful or interesting articles for reading. Note that articles (one for now) related to Japan are stored separately on that page. Don t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice remains one of my go-to guides for new software engineers or early career people in software-adjacent fields. If this sounds like you, this is a good read and I strongly agree…
A real-world example of getting FLETS Hikari Cross (10Gbps optical fiber) in Tokyo This post aims to document my experience getting FLETS Hikari Cross installed in a new apartment building. I wanted to document this because there s not a lot of good information on this, and basically nothing in English. My aim is to help any future readers who want this service in Japan, but don t quite know if…
macOS desires macOS was, until recently, my favorite desktop operating system. This is my personal wishlist of things I want to see or want fixed in future macOS releases post-macOS 27. Network storage improvements It has been well-documented that SMB performance is bad when copying files using Finder . macOS should focus on the basics, and make sure SMB is just-as performant on macOS as it is on…
Anime: a guide to anime for adults Anime can be a charged topic in many conversations, particularly with adults. Many adults I ve talked to have some skepticism about the medium, or don t know what to explore, where to start, and things like that. The goal of this guide is to give you the contra of skepticism. I will suggest shows based not on their qualities, but as if refuting an argument given…
this is the quantic sea The quantic sea is a wiki (in the sense of site organization, not in the sense of collaboration) that contains random knowledge, etc. I touch on why this exists in 令和7年1月29日 . The timezone this site operates on is JST. hosting This service is my first service hosted through a Cloudflare Tunnel . The origin server is in a rather annoying state, so as a result, everything is…
UniFi Drive (UNAS-Pro) notes The UNAS-Pro is great in terms of hardware. I love the hardware. The UniFi management interface is nice. I basically decided to adopt UNAS-Pro because it was “dumb storage on the network” and it gave me everything I wanted on a NAS. I had been using a QNAP device, and previously, a Synology, and previously some TrueNAS devices, but I went to UNAS for convenience of…
no summary
My stupid UniFi issue I recently made the decision to migrate from the UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra to the UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber. Unfortunately, I made the decision to a port on my USW-Aggregation so instead of being a heavily restricted VLAN, it would be the new uplink port for my new UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber. I saved the settings, swapped the UCG Fiber in after restoring from backup, and…
GPD Win Max 2 (2022) The GPD Win Max 2 (with various year editions) is a gaming handheld from GPD. I assume “Win” means “Windows” and “Max 2” distinguishes it from the first version, though subsequent revisions have simply been created with a different year number. I own the 2022 model, so this includes my thoughts on that version. My model is also the AMD 6800U with 32gb of memory + 2TB of main…
Pebble Time 2 The Pebble Time 2 is an e-paper smartwatch designed by Eric Migicovsky and operated by Core Devices. The reality is that this is the revival of the original Pebble Time with better hardware. There is a detailed story not covered about the history of Pebble. The pitch behind Pebble, probably in the past and currently, is that it s a hackable/open source smartwatch with custom watch…
Privacy VPN? I used to prominently tell people not to use “privacy VPNs” on particle17 . I now have to soften that because Circumstances Have Changed 10) . What Privacy VPNs do not do Classical VPNs glue devices into networks that they aren t already a part of. Tailscale is an “overlay VPN”. Most people colloquially call VPN services like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Mullvad a “VPN” even though they…
Linux, on my desktop? I ve been a Linux sysadmin for a long time, but I haven t used it in any practical terms on desktop for various reasons. Until I was in university, I used Windows exclusively, and started using macOS on my laptop as a portable. I considered myself a Windows power user, and quite honestly as judged by my ability to diagnose and fix Windows problems far after my daily driving…
Bookmarks This is about self-hosting bookmark software. If you re not into self-hosting or if that s too complex, I don t have a good solution to present to you, unfortunately. Pinboard is excellent, but the archiving leaves a lot to be desired. I used to use Pinboard , the excellent social bookmarking site, for saving things. One of the best features of Pinboard is server-side archiving, where…
acknowledgements I appreciate Chara for feedback that led to corrections on japan . Thank you, Chara! Eli provided an FAQ item from JR Central as well as other background for Suica reactivation . Thank you Eli ! Various anonymous friends have helped contribute providers for jp_numbers . My friend “ppeb” informs me that vaultwarden supports passkeys . My friend ppeb found typos in japan and my…
日本 🇯🇵 日本 means Japan. journal entries and/or personal anecdotes: Why did I move to Japan? / Why do I love Japan? 令和7年2月02日 Suica reactivation - a report I wrote about reactivating a Suica that supposedly had expired using the JR Central workaround. Expo 2025 notes – Now that EXPO 2025 is over, this is less useful and more of an archival item. Summer Comic Market guide Shinto shrine guide from…