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Articles by Joe Honton
Writing Like It’s a Road Trip
Regardless of where you are on your journey you probably have something to say — and someone wants to hear it. The good news is, that making that happen has never been easier. I’m certain that there’s something inside you that needs to be shared. It doesn’t matter where you are on your journey: octogenarian, mid-life, just beginning to make your way, or coming of age. And it doesn’t matter what that something is. Maybe it’s an opinion from the school of hard-knocks.
The Forgotten Father of Climatology
Wikipedia has a list of people considered to be Father or Mother of a Scientific Field, but it fails to nominate anyone for the study of climatology. It also misses the mark completely when it comes to the founding fathers of geography, cartography, and oceanography. Each of these scientific disciplines is important to the study of climate. They are all interdependent, with advances in one leading to further advances in the others.
Nobel Peace Prize Honors Activists Who Helped Establish the ‘Nuclear Taboo’
OPINION For decades atomic bomb survivors have been speaking truth to power, now it’s our turn Joe Honton · Follow Published in Japonica Publication · 6 min read · -- Photo by Carolina Garcia Tavizon on Unsplash This year’s Nobel Peace Prize goes to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese organization whose members are atom bomb survivors. Their activism brought global awareness to the effects of nuclear radiation and helped establish the idea that using nuclear weapons is the ultimate taboo.
Uncovering the Hidden Secrets of Traditional Japanese Earthen Walls
DIY Renovation Plus, everything you ever wanted to know about bamboo Joe Honton · Follow Published in Japonica Publication · 8 min read · -- A dense bamboo thicket grows wild at the foot of the mountain behind my house. [Photo: JH] It seems that everyone outside Japan loves bamboo, and everyone inside Japan hates it. Fresh, green, well tended bamboo groves can be lovely. But wild stands of untended bamboo quickly become unwanted invasive burdens.
What I Learned From My Rice Farming Neighbors
Why we shouldn’t be alarmed by intermittent rice shortages Joe Honton · Follow Published in Japonica Publication · 8 min read · -- Rice paddies glistening in the early autumn sun. [Photo: JH] The autumn harvest is underway in Japan, and fresh rice will begin hitting the grocery store shelves in the next few weeks, much to the relief of everyone. This year, the confluence of several events created a shortage of rice that led many stores to impose a one-bag-per-customer limit.
My approach to learning placename kanji while travelling in Japan.
My approach to learning kanji while travelling in Japan First time visitors to Japan are immediately confronted with an uncomfortable truth: it’s not easy to get around when you can’t read kanji. I remember the shock of first contact all too well. Upon arrival at Narita Airport, as I was walking through the concourse (even before reaching Immigration and Customs) I spotted a lighted yellow sign with the characters 出口. Ah, I know what that means, it’s the exit.
Kami-no-Michi or the ‘Way of the Gods’
Kami-no-Michi or the ‘Way of the Gods’ Anyone who visits Japan will undoubtedly find time to visit one of its many shrines. No one leaves disappointed. Their beauty and serenity are the epitome of Japanese culture. As a foreigner, it can be a rather perplexing matter figuring out what’s what at a jinja. What are shrines used for? How does one respectfully visit a shrine? Are there special guidelines I should know about? Will I be welcome if I’m not a Shinto follower?
Finishing Up the Year Japanese Style
The New Year’s season in Japan is celebrated with a mix of familiar and unfamiliar customs. Having grown up with Guy Lombardo, Auld Lang Syne, and the crystal ball dropping from New York’s Times Square, one expects a party atmosphere. So in Japan, the countdown to the clock striking midnight is not much different from any other place in the world. But the pre and post rituals to that midnight revelry are uniquely Japanese.
Visiting One of Japan’s Most Remote Islands
Visiting One of Japan’s Most Remote Islands Allow me to tell the story of two separate encounters with a magical place on a remote Japanese island. Reaching it takes a full day of travel. Getting there, in a nutshell — take the bullet train from Tokyo across Japan’s main island, continuing through Kyushu to the final stop at its southernmost point.
The Japanese Word That Expresses Melancholy and Joy at the Same Time
Old mountain villages like this one in Toyama prefecture epitomize the ideal furusato. [Image: JH] There is an aspect to Japanese culture that I've come to appreciate in recent years that is nicely encapsulated by the word furusato. It's a word that is both easy to pronounce and simple to translate, yet steeped in meaning. The simplest possible translation of furusato is "old hometown", but that lacks any of the rich nuance that the word conveys to most Japanese.
The Whisky Tolerance Society
WHISKY PUBLIC NEWS "Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot." The podcast began with the alarm spelled out like an SOS distress signal. The two sides had been skirmishing for a long time before hostilities reached a fever pitch. What started out as a simple matter of taste, had become a serious dispute, with accusations and bitter words, and threats of violence. Both sides had reached their limit. From the outside, it was hard to see what made them so different.
More Good News for Large Scale JavaScript Apps
Importmap offers fresh opportunities for code organization JavaScript's module system underwent a revolution in 2015 with the standardization of the import and export keywords. But until now, the import process has been hampered by the single trunkline rule for relative pathnames. The long-awaited importmap tag provides the necessary flexibility to free developers from this restraint.
More Good News for Large-Scale JavaScript Apps
Nested libraries from NPM and in-house projects don't always play well together. Importmap helps everyone share the same sandbox. JavaScript's module system underwent a revolution in 2015 with the standardization of the import and export keywords. But until now, the import process has been hampered by the single trunkline rule for relative pathnames. The long-awaited importmap tag provides the necessary flexibility to free developers from this restraint.
Data Visualization Using Lines, Dashes, Dots & Arrows
By Joe Honton How to use lineCap, lineJoin, setLineDash, lineDashOffset & miterLimit Figure 1: Each symbolic line in this figure has been drawn using the JavaScript code explained below. Cartography might easily be considered the world's most mature form of data visualization. Over the centuries, mapmakers have created and refined a sophisticated vocabulary of lines and symbols that...
Has Open Source Licensing Reached Its End of Life?
Recently, I finished working on a software project that I’m especially proud of. It took months of effort to complete, and the final result was something that perfectly fit my needs. It was a labor of love. It’s not important to reveal the purpose of the software here, or the technical details of its inner workings. Simply allow me to say that it’s something that I will use right away, and that other programmers may find useful as well.
Full Stack Pronounced Dead
Welcome the 2020 Stack The author decides it’s time to update his job posting and hiring practice to reflect a new reality: “Full stack” is no longer helping him to match job requirements with applicant skills. At the dawn of the new millennium, web tools had reached the point where everything needed to build a website could be assembled from open source software.
Designing a Dark Mode Is Harder Than It Looks
Eight tips for converting your CSS from light to dark Image courtesy of the author. Dark mode style sheets are all the rage, but they aren’t just a black-and-white matter. Scannability and readability are important aspects of proper design too. In this episode of Tangled Web Services, Clarissa tries her hand at creating a dark mode style sheet, and finds out that it’s a bit trickier than it looks.
My Perfect 2020 Stack: A New Stack for a New Generation
The journey from “full-stack” to “2020 stack” has a few surprise winners and losers Remember when web stacks were simple? When the layers could be scrunched into a four-letter acronym like LAMP or LEMP or LEPP? When all you needed was cheap commodity hardware, some open-source software, and perseverance? My first successful website, vintage 1999, was built with just a handful of layers: HTML4, CSS2, JavaScript3 and Apache 1.1, all running on a Linux 2.0 kernel.
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