In this post I’d like to share three Japanese bands that I discovered this year that have all found a recurring place in my playlists. I’ve found that overall Japanese music works well for me while working, because I can’t (yet) understand the lyrics. So I don’t get caught up in listening to the words. Without further ado. tricot Early this year I stumbled upon tricot, and immediately fell in love.

Ever since the release of Castro 2 I had been very interested in trying it out. The triage model is very different from how Overcast handles its play queue. However, the threshold to actually make the switch has always been too high. An exported OPML only gets you so far. It doesn’t sync unplayed/played status for example. A couple of weeks back when I somehow managed to empty my podcast queue I took the leap.

One of the most boring tasks an iOS developer can be handed, is to build a static table view. For example a section of the application’s settings. There’s a lot of boilerplate involved. Interface builder might make it a bit easier, but it is still boring. Today I started re-arranging the settings screen in Meal Plan, as I was manually creating data sources and switching over index paths I thought to myself, there has to be a better way.

It has been about a year and a half since I started studying Japanese, at home, by myself, using tools available on the interwebs. Here’s why and how. I’ve been fascinated by Japan since a pretty early age. It began with Naruto being a popular anime in my circles. But even before that I was an avid Sailor Moon fan (no shame — still know the theme, and ending, songs by heart).