time-threads

Today's blip courtesy of Hipstamatic and it's excellent films and features is of my yearly Hobonichi Cousin - a notebook, journal and planner.  The pages on the left have been filled this year and the pages on the right are still to go.  Much like a book!   Also, I don't know why I am explaining how books work - except, in Japan, you would read the book/manga from right to left.

There are interesting and thought provoking quotes at the bottom of each page (in English, Japanese version available) and a huge amount of accessories you can add to it. Here on the right-hand page is a pencil-board.  The paper is very thin, yet smooth and beautiful to write on, but it also helps to have a board underneath, when writing.  My journal is full of writing, but also receipts, flight tickets, train tickets, postcards, instax mini photos and certain bits of the page are more blobby!  

I chose this pen-board as I love sunsets and sunrises, and it reminded me a lot of many of these epic weather moments and sun-light colours I have seen. A good friend also chose the same board, he also loves the sunsets.

Towards the end of the year when the nights are drawing in, I get my instax printer out, and fill the journal out more - with even more pictures, stuck in with tape, and decorated with stickers.  It becomes a great record of the year, to remember what happened when, and the details of silly conversations, happenings, and generally to remember how life is.

The planner company are currently preparing the lineup of journals and covers this year, it will be their 25th anniversary of this product itself. I haven't bought 25 of them (this is only my 3rd year!) but I will absolutely be getting one for next year - the only problem is to choose the design!   They reveal a few different designs and items each day in August, up until they are on sale on 1st September, so there is plenty of time to evaluate what will work for you.  In previous years they have sold out in a couple of days after the products went on sale, so it helps to buy them from Japan at the time they are on sale.

However - this is 3am UK time!  Last year I sat up and ordered for 4 people, however the website crashed and scalpers bought up all the stock to sell on eBay for inflated prices! It was a very poor experience as a customer. I managed to get back to sleep around 6am, woke again around 8 and found that the scalped stock had been returned to the website and was once again available! eek.

The company now sell as well through various other shops and some physical shops in the UK do carry the journals - just not at the time of sale online!

Anyway - that was lots about Hobonichi, but I love mine, and love what a sense of personal history I get, looking through it!  I posted it in the first place, because it became apparent whilst looking at the book, that a lot of the year has passed, and not a huge amount is left - and what there is left, should be spent wisely!

Today's day has also been curious. We are able to use Microsoft AI at work to ask it to do some tasks.  I'm not a fan of it usually at all - especially because of the processing power and resources it wastes. I asked it to analyse a document for me, but it wasn't parsing the data correctly and a lot of erroneous content was displayed. I spent some time teaching it what to look for... going through one by one and making sure it understood all the variables...and then it could only analyse the first 15 pages of a 345 page document.  Well that's no help!  I did it myself in the end.

My manager is on leave next week, and I am the "named contact". It is usually fine when my colleagues are in this position, but a couple of years ago when I was the named contact, a large and very important system stopped working at a very critical time, in a very confusing manner, so it was my job to fix it!  I wonder what treats await me next week...

I am also holiday cover for my team. They all have partners and families and, like normal people, take holidays over the summer.  I can't wait until they all come back, as then it's my turn to go away, but not for a while.

What day is more thoughtful than a Friday!