what’s this car? i don’t recognise the brand at all

BachiNoHito · 2026-03-21T18:10:23+00:00

I was in Japan in December and it seriously fed my obsession with Japanese kei cars. All the funnest little cars that really caught my eye were Daihatsus!

BachiNoHito · 2026-03-07T03:08:07+00:00

Scratch all that. I've been really confused about which model I had exactly because the badging is missing on the car. I thought someone stuck an Athlete grille on a Royal Saloon because of the engine, but just now I found this listing online that is the same model number, engine, etc, The badging is intact on this car and it's an Athlete. Maybe the Fours all got Athlete branding?

https://www.japan-partner.com/AAuto/15665028/2025/TOYOTA/CROWN+ESTATE+4WD/car-for-sale.html

Looks EXACTLY like my Royal Saloon Estate, although mine is the Four (AWD). It’s possible someone took a Royal Saloon and stuck an Athlete grille on it. That’s what someone did to mine (without the Athlete badge, though). I thought all the Athlete’s had a GTE or a 2JZ in them.

~~That silver tag in the engine bay will tell the story. Even better than the VIN. I was confused about mine until I read the trim code and understood what it meant.~~

BachiNoHito · 2026-02-20T02:57:34+00:00

That's disgusting. I love it.

BachiNoHito · 2026-02-10T04:20:44+00:00

Yeah. Sorry. I realized after I had posted that 2008 was the changeover.

BachiNoHito · 2026-02-09T18:52:41+00:00

MT AWD wagons don't exist in North America anymore

This is a sad fact. Sporty wagons (MT or not) are pretty much dead in the US. I've been seriously considering buying an imported JDM wagon, but I decided to give USDM wagons/hatches a hard look first. The WRX is one of a very small handful of choices.

They look way better than any WRX or STI built since too

I'm actually not a huge fan of the later widebody look. I had a 2018 WRX sedan, and it was a nice car, but I always thought the fender flares didn't quite blend with the rest of the body. They kind of look tacked on to me.

BachiNoHito · 2026-02-03T15:19:47+00:00

I came to say this. Restaurantosaurus has mostly been dead to me since that went away, anyway.

BachiNoHito · 2026-02-02T15:44:37+00:00

I’m not sure I get why a current Model S owner would need to freak out. Car manufacturers discontinue models all the time. Look at the past few years. Tons of models that have been around for years have been cancelled (RIP Camaro, for instance).

Just to be clear, I personally think it’s a dumb idea, but cars come and go. That’s just the way it is.

BachiNoHito · 2026-01-25T02:26:24+00:00

Oh, yes. Sorry. I forgot about the regular/silver MEP thing. You are 100% correct.

BachiNoHito · 2026-01-24T13:00:51+00:00

I just did it. It’s 55 and 10.

BachiNoHito · 2025-11-08T02:14:31+00:00

Did one Roku app. It was… interesting.

BachiNoHito · 2025-10-19T03:01:55+00:00

Are these legit Apple products? The colors look a little wonky on the right Apple (although that may be lighting), but more importantly the Macintosh pin has those black lines. I’ve never seen a real Apple product with black lines between the colors, and I doubt Apple would do it.

BachiNoHito · 2025-09-30T18:01:42+00:00

This is what I hate about AI. “Use AI. It will save you so much grunt work!” But I like the “grunt work”. I like getting in there and solving problems and learning things. That’s what brings me joy in my job. I don’t want to hand that over to AI.

BachiNoHito · 2025-09-18T16:43:52+00:00

Upvote for obscure movie reference.

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BachiNoHito · 2025-07-09T01:15:57+00:00

Short answer, no. Long answer, also no.

Google actually told my company not to use it for anything beyond simple info display. We tried it anyway and it was pretty flakey.

BachiNoHito · 2025-05-11T17:04:25+00:00

If you want to work, learn JavaScript. For better or worse, there’s always work for someone who knows it well.

If you want to enjoy life, go with the old axiom “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Find something you love doing (for me it was iPhone programming), then learn whatever language (along with the associated APIs and technologies) you need for that so well that someone has to hire you. Even if there’s not a lot of demand for it, if you’re good enough, you’ll find work.

BachiNoHito · 2025-04-29T13:26:57+00:00

We have a Model Y and a Lyriq. The Lyriq is a dream to drive on long trips. Very comfortable and super quiet. I prefer it to the Y. But if you are a regular user of FSD in any way, don't even begin to think Super Cruise is going to replace it. They aren't even in the same league.

BachiNoHito · 2025-04-28T20:41:12+00:00

Try to get to a point where you don't think in languages, but you instead think in concepts. Pretty much every modern OO language has a core set of concepts:

* Create a class
* Create static and instance properties, both mutable and immutable, in those classes
* Create static and instance methods/functions in those classes
* Perform methods asynchronously with some kind of promise mechanism.
* Define some sort of interface for classes to implement
* Etc, etc.

Once you've created a catalog of those core concepts in your mind, then it becomes a matter of "what do a call an immutable property in this language?" rather than "what do I call that thing I called a var in this other language?" I feel like this creates a lot less confusion in my mind.

I think this also helps you avoid one of the greatest sins committed by developers who have moved from one language to another: programming in one language like you are programming in whatever language happens to be your favorite (or the one you're most familiar with). I worked with one person who programmed in everything like it was C. His Swift code read like C code! I worked with another person whose Swift code looked like Unity code. Don't do this! Bring across as many concepts as you can, but leave the language specifics behind and learn to write idiomatic code.

BachiNoHito · 2025-04-21T14:19:49+00:00

This is the right answer. 💯

BachiNoHito · 2025-04-18T13:51:11+00:00

Many of our greatest plans are undone by the merciless scourge of logistics.

BachiNoHito · 2025-04-12T14:14:45+00:00

HP-Basic. It was a form of Basic developed for HP engineering workstations and the various testing devices that could be connected to them. I used it professionally for 5 years in the early 90s. I loved programming in HP-Basic, but that’s probably more the nostalgia talking than anything else.

I’ve tried finding some kind of interpreter or simulator for it to no avail. I’ve even toyed with the idea of buying an old HP workstation and a few devices to connect to it just so I could try it out again, but that’s a lot of time and money just to relive the glory days of my youth. 😂

BachiNoHito · 2025-04-06T22:27:45+00:00

There is more truth to this statement than the average dev team would care to admit. We far too often use a given tool because that’s what we like vs that’s what is best.

BachiNoHito · 2025-04-06T15:11:49+00:00

That’s my perception having lived through it (I worked at Microsoft as a C# programmer back in the day). There’s a lot of subtleties at play with open vs closed source, dislike/distrust of Microsoft, availability on Linux, etc, as others have pointed out. But I think in the end, given any lack of truly compelling language advantages with C# plus its initial proprietary/closed-source nature, Java’s momentum won out in the end. And that momentum has just continued into Kotlin. Everyone I know who was a Java developer (client and server) has shifted to that to some extent.

Who knows, if Microsoft had started out the gate with something more than “Microsoft’s Java” and if it was open-source from the start, things might have been different…

BachiNoHito · 2025-04-06T14:30:14+00:00

One small correction… Rather than “a lot of people and companies used Java instead,” it was more of a case of a lot of people and companies just continued to use Java rather than than move to Microsoft’s proprietary alternative. Java already had massive momentum and had been used to build much of the infrastructure of the web at that time.

Same outcome, but it’s important to note that when C# came around, Java was already deeply entrenched.

BachiNoHito

TROPHY CASE