2026-08

• Released Refmode CLI, a macOS command-line tool for switching Apple display reference modes from Terminal, scripts, and hardware controllers.
• Published Ship the tool, not the agent.
• Shipped a large redesign of ttvl.co made almost entirely of small details.
• Spent much of the month rebuilding Hypercontext, a not-yet-public system for giving people, applications, and AI assistants a durable shared context layer.
• Sent the remaining shipment from the Kyojima studio to Italy, finishing another practical stage of the move.
• Spent two weeks working remotely and traveling across Bali—from Balangan through Candi Dasa and Canggu to Ubud—making a photo study of its beautiful doors and gates along the way.
• Joined a bamboo architecture and carpentry workshop at The Kul Kul Farm, where Ludo and I each made a bamboo tray for the studio.
• Turned a 20-hour layover into a brief visit to Chengdu before returning to Rome.
• Continued setting up the Rome studio, including building a large worktable with a top made from birch plywood.
• Submitted my application for an Italian residence permit.

August happened almost entirely in transit: from Tokyo through Bali and Chengdu to Rome, with another suitcase already packed for Tbilisi. Somehow, it was also a productive month. The last Kyojima shipment left Japan, Refmode became a real tool, Hypercontext moved forward, and ttvl.co received the sort of redesign where everything changed and almost nothing looks different.

The bamboo workshop was a useful counterweight to all the code, planes, and forms. Making a simple tray slowly by hand felt meditative, very similar to what I feel when bookbinding. A reminder that not every useful tool needs a command-line interface. Occasionally it can just be a piece of bamboo.

For the first time, Rome is beginning to feel like home rather than a place I am setting up between trips. The studio has a proper worktable, my tools are arriving, and even the residency paperwork has advanced from abstraction to bureaucracy, which I have decided is Italy’s way of confirming that something is becoming real.

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