The hidden melz

After I guess four long years, with over 500 days of uptime, I’ve decided to upgrade my server OS from Ubuntu Bionic to Focal. I’ve been meaning to do it for a long while now but the fear that the server would not boot up again was scary. As it turns out, after several succesful reboots (prompted by other updates), I decided to take the plunge and fortunately everything came right back up again.

Today, for the first time in my life (other than when I was first born), I became bald. During the past month or two, I’ve been undergoing chemotherapy and my hair started to drop in copious amounts after my second session. During my first session, the nurse had advised me to cut my hair short since there was a high chance that it would start dropping. Naturally, I ignored her advice (my hair was shoulder length then) or rather, I figured I’d wait till I experience it first because apparently there were folks who only experienced mild effects so it made no sense to rush this step.

There has been some big developments in my life this year so far of which I won’t get into on this blog (for now) but as a result, I haven’t been doing much, if any, web related development. However, due to a desire to do something “meaningful” with my time instead of lying around in bed daily, I decided to look into updating this blog again. Or more exactly, set things up so that adding a new blog post will automatically regenerate my blog contents and post it to this site.

The year 2020 was suppose to be THE year for me. In a strange way, it did indeed turn out to be THE year – as it did for everyone else on the planet. 2020 was particular for me because when I was in my early teens, the then-Prime Minister of Malaysia announced his “Vision 2020” for the country. I didn’t care much for the vision (don’t even recall what it was about), but when the TV and billboards all around me started to use the phrase “2020”, it left a lasting impression in my mind.

A house-keeping note: I’ve restructured the “weekly” dates to start from Monday and end on Sunday after realizing that most events tend to run its course on the entire weekend (duh, right?) and it felt awkward to split the reports to different weeks. On to this week’s news: Both G.Itoya’s System Techo Salon 2020 & Nagasawa’s System Techo Summit ended last Sunday. Meanwhile, Bungu Joushi Expo 2020 takes place this week from November 27-29 in which several system techo makers will make an appearance, with special editions for the event.

This has been a crazy week because we are nearing the end of the G.Itoya System Techo Salon and the two big players – Ashford & Knox/Plotter – will be wrapping up the event. At the same time, Nagasawa will be holding an event – System Techo Summit – at their Umeda-Chamiyamachi store in Osaka as well, with lots of new releases to share. Roroma Classic’s History & Charm Points Watch the live-stream recording.

Hoshino-sensei’s IGTV Live on her haul from the 2020 System Techo Salon & Tokyo International Pen Show Hoshino Katsura-sensei, author of the “D.Grayman” manga, is well-known in the stationery world as an avid stationery fan. She streamed two 1-hour sessions of her haul from both the System Techo Salon as well as the Tokyo International Pen Show, hosted together with her older twin sister (Yuu). Watch Part 1: System Techo Salon and a little from the pen show

ASHFORD’s Planners’ Room Live: “M6 Refills” Watch this week’s Planners Room Live on Instagram. Mukai-san introduces ASHFORD’s entire lineup of M6 (Mini 6) sized refills sold commercially, including several new releases. Ashford’s new promo video on the Heritage Series Watch on Instagram, also on Youtube. A video slideshow showcasting Ashford’s new “Heritage” series which officially launches this month. The “Heritage” series is the spiritual successor of the “Prescott” series (now

In the most recent「趣味文CLUBメルマガ9/25号」email newsletter from Shumibun, editor Shimizu-san mentions a recent buzzword that popped up in the M5沼 community: 「M5はノーカン」 which literally translates to “M5s are no-count”. To put it in

As I ventured deeper into the sytem techo world (of Japan), one of my most-used techo happens to be an outlier: Plotter’s 3-hole leather binder. Now, calling it a “techo” probably isn’t right as I used it primarily for quick memos. It was originally made available as a limited edition item at the “Plotter Special Pop-up Store” held at Aoyama’s “Spiral” in March 2019. In short, you had to visit