I've had some really nice contact through this site recently. I've put mailto links on a bunch of stuff, just because I never want to have comments again, but that doesn't mean I don't want to talk to people about what I've written here. I don't think I've ever posted anything that I'm closed off to talking about.

I'm glad blogging's coming back, and I hope it continues to grow. I still open Twitter (I will never call it X) occasionally, and I never last more than five minutes. It's so vile how people are on that site now. I see some lovely people still posting on there, but I genuinely don't know how they can bear it. It's weird to think I used to spend a significant portion of my day on that site.

I've seen a lot of criticism about people creating their own echo chambers, but I think people forget that you don't willingly hang out with people you dislike, or disagree with to the point that conversation is impossible, so why would you tolerate that on your social media? I like my echo chamber.

I have been meaning to do this for ages and I was right to put it off because it took so long.

I set up a little area that I guess you can describe as a portfolio but it's just a few categorised sets of my favourite photos from the last 13 years. I spent the last day doomscrolling my own images, and even found a bunch I'd completely forgotten about.

Not sure how I'm going to keep this updated. It's pretty difficult to decide what goes in from now. I might make a rule that nothing newer than 6 months can go in from now but it's more likely that I'll just forget entirely.

Hope you enjoy.

Facebook has started to show me status posts from over ten years ago, and they serve as a delightful reminder of the number of people I've lost touch with. So many orphaned replies; some statuses are just me talking to myself in the comments. Lovely way to start the day; 0/10 do not recommend.

I've added a new Media Diet area on this site.

I have been bouncing the idea of doing this for a little while, and with my new site and nav support for more than 3 links, now's as good a time as any, I suppose.

For those who know, it's obviously pretty heavily inspired by Kottke (and probably heavily featuring stuff I found there!) and Steven Soderbergh, and of course Chris has something similar, but bringing in various genres of link-sharing and other recommendations.

I didn't want to pollute my main RSS feed with this, so if you're interested you can subscribe to it separately. I'm not sure how I feel about the rating system as it might be too esoteric and redundant. It's pretty likely that I won't share anything I dislike there unless it's a film, TV, or a book but maybe that's fine? Clearly I haven't thought it through too much.

Maybe I shouldn't have just stolen Kottke's name for it? I'm probably too small for him to have a problem with it.

I made my new site live. It's likely to be so broken but I just wanted to get it sorted. If you notice something broken and can be bothered, let me know.

I think the Chemex is overrated. Ever since I started making pourover for Charlotte, the Chemex has been almost an aspiration. The Chemex is what you get if you're serious about pourover. When Charlotte smashed her old V60 flask, I decided to upgrade to the Chemex.

It's an undoubtedly beautiful object. Wood, leather, glass. The flask itself is a lovely shape. The pouring channel is so satisfying, and when you pour, the liquid in your cup makes a satisfying double-ended swirl that reminds me of a goat's horns. The whole thing is very tactile and pleasing.

However, it's such a frustrating device to use. I've watched countless (well, probably 10, which is a lot of videos to watch about how to use a flask) videos on how to use this thing, and the filter paper invariably falls into the pouring channel, which creates a vacuum in the flask which stops your coffee from dripping through. So you have to lift the filter out of the channel and stretch it and hope it seats across with enough tension not to fall again.

And it's so slow. Even when it's running properly it takes 2-3 times what the V60 took for the same volume of water. Almost to the point that your coffee's starting to get cold by the time it's finished dripping (this is solved by wrapping a towel around the thing but it's not a great solution!). Owing to the integrated collar, you have to wait for the entire drip to be finished before you can start to pour, and don't try to pour past the filter. The whole thing just irritates me, and the fact that it is heaped in universal praise just annoys me even more!

It is beautiful though.