Software History

When was the last time you wrote a physical letter, with handwriting? I cannot accurately answer this question for myself. Part of me wants to believe that I have written a letter by hand and sent it to someone. However, I cannot think of a single occasion where this is true. Perhaps when I used to enter into magazine competitions when I was a kid, although that was not a full letter so much as filling out a form to enter a competition.

For the last few days, the server on which this website (and many others I run!) started acting strangely. Every so often, nginx would stop working and I'd have to restart the service manually. I had restarted nginx two or three times over the last few days so I knew something wasn't right. I spent some time this afternoon figuring out what was wrong. I found an issue with certbot renewals and nginx that, when resolved, fixed the errors I found in nginx and the /var/log/syslog file on my computer.

I was in Edinburgh last weekend for the first time in many months. It was nice to break out of my usual routine and do something different. I visited many coffee shops and two museums. If you are ever in Edinburgh, I would recommend visiting both the National Museums of Scotland and the National Gallery. If you happen to be reading this shortly before travelling, check out the Typewriter Exhibit at the National Museum. I saw not only a Lego typewriter in person (yes, Lego, and it works!) but many other interesting typewriters from history. Anyway, I digress.

I was recently thinking about what attributes are common among the coffees I enjoy the most. I have written about this subject before although the last time I covered it was last November. Since then, I have tried many more coffees. Not only have I tried more coffees, I have tried more unique coffees. I have sought out more distinct coffees—from those with unusual flavour notes to those from origins I have not yet tried—because I enjoy trying something new. In doing so, I have found some flavour attributes that I really like in coffee.

Sara started the IndieWeb Carnival last month, a fun challenge that invites you to post a blog post on a topic selected by a rotating set of participants each month. Sara started us off with the topic

Over the holiday season, when I had some time off, I got back into watching films. Before then, I usually preferred putting on a sitcom like Seinfeld or watching Coronation Street if it was on the television. I decided to start watching movies because I had long spaces of time to use up. I started by watching the Christmas Chronicles movies. Those movies are now among my top recommendations for Christmas movies. Perhaps I shall issue a reminder later in the year about those movies. It's a bit too early to talk about Christmas movies, I think. Pardon my faux pas.

I mentioned casually in passing that I have houseplants. My peace lily has been troublesome; my other plants have grown and thrived. A friend mentioned in passing that peace lilies can be difficult plants to grow and thrive. The wisdom shared by my friend -- the sort of serendipitious remark that stands out in your mind -- provided me with a semblance of relief. It was not I who was the problem (Taylor Swift's Anti-Hero is now singing softly in my mind), with my forgetfulness interfering with watering schedules.

My TODO list is an interesting place. Candidates for this series are interspersed with the rest of my TODOs. I am eager to document new words and my TODO list is often the lowest friction way to do so; the file is always open, ready for me to add notes. That's why

On Saturday, while I was in Edinburgh, I spent some time in coffee shops (as usual). [1] I am slowly making my way through the list of cafes I would like to visit, which I keep both in my head and in a designated list on the Google Maps app on my phone.

I have already explored a number of Edinburgh coffee shops. I have visited Stockbridge, New Town, Old Town, and further afield for a cup of coffee. Now that I'm getting toward the end of my list of Edinburgh coffee shops, I have started to think about where to go next. I am not done visiting Edinburgh coffee shops, rather that I want to explore other places which also have good coffee shops to visit.

I was in Edinburgh on Saturday doing a coffee crawl (which has become a regular event since lockdown restrictions eased). I shared a photo on Instagram of one cafe, asking people to guess where I was. Later in the day, I ended up in a conversation on Instagram with someone who guessed one of the cafes correctly. I shared a few more photos and that person guessed the cafe featured in three of four photos I sent.

Today I had the pleasure of drinking coffee from three separate coffee shops in Edinburgh. When I was in the second shop, I thought to myself that I should take a picture so that I can run another quiz. I took pictures in the other two shops I visited so that I would have enough for a quiz.

There are times in the day when I say

When I start these posts, I am tempted to open with an introductory sentence such as

Last night, I was exploring personal websites and left numerous tabs open to which I wanted to come back and explore further. During my exploration, I found Anhvn ^1 published a blog post called

Over the weekend, I worked on adding a new feature to my personal website: videoconfencing. I was motivated to explore this space by Angelo ^1, who used Twilio to run a video conference on his personal website. Twilio is reliable but is not free, so we explored alternatives. Angelo told me about a piece of software called MediaSoup ^2, an open-source project that enables you to run video calls through self-hosted infrastructure.

mf2py, the official Python microformats parser, is now under active development. After a hiatus without a lead maintainer, a few community members and I have coordinated to help drive the package through a series of updates.

I am excited to announce that IndieWeb Utils is now in v0.3.1. This update is the culmination of months of work from project contributors. Before I get any further, I want to note a special thank you to James, Tantek and Angelo for their collaboration in this project. Their contributions, code reviews, and suggestions have greatly enhanced this library.

Craft Coffee: A Manual, written by Jessica Easto (who I'll refer to as the author) with Andreas Willhoff, is the ideal guide for a home brewer who wants to level up their skills. Unlike many other coffee books, this one is written from the perspective of a home brewer. Many of the books I have read, such as Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee, make reference to how their companies do things. This makes sense because I get the experience from the writer. Easto sticks with what she knows: home brewing.

I am writing a blog post every day from December 1st to December 24th, 2021, about a blogger whose writing or site I follow. My aim for this series is to help you discover new blogs and to help get the word out about content creators whose blogs I appreciate. You can read more about this series in the inaugural Day 1 post.

I came across Ana Rodrigues' blog post

I am writing a blog post every day from December 1st to December 24th, 2021, about a blogger whose writing or site I follow. My aim for this series is to help you discover new blogs and to help get the word out about content creators whose blogs I appreciate. You can read more about this series in the inaugural Day 1 post.

World maps fill me with wonder. Every so often I will open a world map online, scroll around, and explore. Amsterdam. The Faroe Islands. The UK. The US.

I have just finished my first coffee cupping. I had an informal cupping at my local coffee shop a few weeks ago where I compared two coffees. It was not the same because I was drinking Americanos and comparing them. In a proper cupping, ground coffee is used. A particular process is followed that results in a final grade for each of the coffees that are being evaluated.

I have been making espresso at home for almost a week now. I bought the Flair Espresso maker so I could get into espresso without having to spend too much on a machine. I have many reservations about espresso machines—if I could fit one in the kitchen, cost, if the machine would be compatible with my power—so I thought I would stick with lever espresso making. There is something quite special about being able to make espresso with (almost) no electricity.

Good morning, world! It is a sunny Monday morning here. I am looking out the window of a Starbucks onto the street; people walking past, buses going. An orange truck carrying a skip drives past. Does a truck

For the last two weeks or so, the Aromaboy has been on my mind. An electric coffee brewer which takes up as much space as my kettle, the Aromaboy has a delightfully retro feel, which is most likely a result of this brewer being in production since 1979. The retro aesthetic this brewer has was a large part of why I bought it, but I also thought about the recommendations I had received. I asked a few people whether they thought the Aromaboy was worth the money even if I liked to brew coffee by hand and everyone with whom I spoke recommended I give the Aromaboy a try.

As I write, I have Zoom open in another window. Nine members of the IndieWeb community, including myself, have come together to work on our personal websites as part of Create Day. I decided to work on improving the maps feature on my site, which features several maps of places I have been around the world. For example, you can browse all of the coffee shops or eateries I have visited in New York City, with information about the extent to which I recommend each of them.

Note: I talk about a minor injury from the cold, windy weather in this post. If you are sensitive to such things, I'd encourage you to read another one of my blog posts instead!