Recently

Inspired by Tom MacWright’s Recently posts, here’s what’s been going on with me!

Music

I got my vinyl copy of Nothing Happens by Wallows on Thursday and I’m delighted :)

I discovered Su Lee through kyuuwaii’s cover of Can’t Get Over You by Joji aka Pink Guy, which was fun. She is wonderful.

Reading

I don’t know when the last time I read a book was, but I have been itching for a reread of the Eragon series in order to read the first book in the sequel series.

I do spend a lot of time reading my many RSS feeds I’ve subscribed to in Feedbin. Here’s some of the articles I’ve read recently:

• 🔎Julia Evans🔍 on Twitter: “take on hard projects(from my zine “so you want to be a wizard” https://t.co/kSR3wloMSn)… “

• Why does writing matter in remote work? — Tim Casasola

This is one of the reasons why I made this blog, but I’ve been slow to post to it, in exchange for fidgeting with the design.

• Linkrot - macwright.org

  You can see my middling attempts at solving this problem in A Day on the Trails. I added the Internet Archive snapshots of the links in that post as small icons right after the canonical links.

• Short-form vs long-form posts - Jonnie Hallman (@destroytoday)

• Kimberly Hirsh - This is not a polished blog.

  These two have inspired me to add notes vs. posts to my site and to aim for more flow rather than substance in my blog.

• Pseudo-Randomly Adding Illustrations with CSS – Eric’s Archived Thoughts

  This is a crazy-cool way to very-pseudo-randomly generated an order for a set of background illustrations - I will be glad if I can someday make use of illustrations as much as Eric Meyer or Tom MacWright

I’m hoping that in the theme of zettelkasten I can post more useful tidbits of information that can be useful for both myself and y’all. I remember a post from Chris Krycho (do you see a theme here?) about using his blog as a public notebook, and I definitely vibe with that idea.

Drinks

In November I stopped drinking coffee and soft drinks and started taking Vitamin D supplements and using the Rise sleep app to track my sleep in a non-didactic way, and I had a good experience. Carport Coffee is an active hindrance on this plan though. They have delicious coffee and take great consideration in their brewing and water filtration.

Recently I stole back my Moka pot and Mr. Coffee espresso machine from my friends and family and have tried my hand at perfecting an at-home cup of Carport blend coffee. I haven’t had the best of luck, since I have the cheapest hand-powered burr grinder possible — a JavaPresse. It was \$30 and better than a blade grinder, but terrible in global terms of grinders. Especially compared to a set of beautiful commercial-grade electric burr grinders. I’ve kept track of my attempts in [Bear.app](https://bear.app) and you can see them at [Coffee Attempts](https://jasik.xyz/coffee-attempts/). I bought a [Fuzion Digital Kitchen Scale 3000g/ 0.1g](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L92PSMP/) at the recommendation of [James Hoffman](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMb0O2CdPBNi-QqPk5T3gsQ) and it is wonderful! It is 0.01g accurate up to 500g so it is great for measuring coffee beans and baking with. I was able to make [Japanese milk bread](https://www.carolinescooking.com/japanese-milk-bread/) at my friend’s recommendation and it was absolutely delicious.