Just this guy, you know?

Hotel Chocolat make this device called a Velvetiser. It’s some where between a kettle and a blender. You put some milk and chocolate in and it heats up the milk while mixing it quickly to make it frothy (Velvetised). It makes one cup, in a short amount of time, very quietly, and is easy to clean. What’s more is that it’s really well designed and pleasant to use.

The mixing paddle attaches via a magnet and magically is spun through that coupling. This makes attaching & detaching the paddle really easy. It also leaves the bottom of the mixing compartment smooth and therefore easy to clean.

I bought a 64GB 4K Apple TV recently and it’s magic.

It replaces a combination of Fire and NowTV sticks. Both of which are old and were cheap at the time. Their UIs are slow, remotes feels cheap, and clutter up the place.

My immediate reaction is that tvOS is buttery smooth. Zero complaints. Moving between apps (and having it remember positions) is perfect. Starting streams is super fast, especially NowTV!

I’m tinkering around with Clojure at the moment and have found the tooling to be quite nice.

My setup is:

• VS Code running on my Windows 10 machine
• WSL 2 running Ubuntu 20.04
• Installed leiningen on Ubuntu
• Open VS Code and connect to the Ubuntu machine with the Remote - WSL plugin installed on Windows
• Install Calva on the Ubuntu side[0]
• Open up your clojure project and then “jack in” to the repl with “Calva: Start A Project REPL and Connect” which you can find in the standard CTRL+SHIFT+P menu, select leiningen and you’re away.

I recently dropped my Pixel 3a perfectly flat on the bathroom floor and utterly shattered the screen. This broke the OLED too. I tried to repair but it failed[0]. I took this opportunity to shake up my tech stack and buy an iPhone.

Here are my observations so far:

1. Everything is just buttery from a UI perspective. It’s hard to describe but it animations feel smoother.
2. Password manager integration is amazing. Autofill has worked every time on iOS where as on Android I’d constantly be copying and pasting stuff around like an idiot.
3. FaceID, just wow! I’m late to the party here and was fairly critical of it in the past but it’s utterly frictionless. Much more reliable than the finger print reader on the Pixel 3a.
4. Apps take longer to install. I think iOS apps are larger on disc so just take longer to download
5. OS updates take much longer than Android.
6. My bank has Apple Pay integration where they didn’t have Google Pay. Nice.
7. The MagSafe charger is lovely, no fumbling around with cables.
8. It’s annoying that the damn thing has a Lightning cable rather than USB C (which is at the other end of the charging cable!!!) but I suspect that the charging port will be going away soon anyway.
9. The cameras are solid but I miss the Google AI magic that makes things pop with no effort on my part.
10. The camera app applies some sort of sharpening that sometimes makes things like miniatures look quite different.
11. Apps cost money, which I think is nice? I’m happy to pay a few quid to have ad free experience.
12. Google apps look nicer and feel smoother on iOS which feels weird.
13. All my images (photos, memes, rando stuff from pals) go to one big folder? This is terrible.
14. The first time I connected it to a car via Bluetooth it clearly asked if I’d like to turn off notifications while driving in a way I don’t remember Android ever doing. Nice.

[0] I replaced the screen but it wouldn’t lie flat no matter how much I cleaned the glue or wiggled things. I also managed to ruin the speaker grille removing the old screen. Once I booted it up I noticed that the touch response was all kinds of messed up. At this point I’d spent as much as the phone was worth so I gave up.

I’ve continued making sourdough and have been tinkering with the recipe:

1. The flour mix now will always have granary in. Around 30% of the 500g.
2. More salt (2 spoons). Salt is great.
3. Mixing the flour, water, and salt together first before adding the starter. I’ve found it easier to feel when it’s thoroughly mixed. As soon as it’s mixed whack the starter in and give it a little knead together then autolyse.
4. A little more water than previous
5. I now take the new starter out just before the final shaping. It’s one fewer time to come back to the dough.
6. The number of stretch and folds has come down to about 3 from the original 5.
7. The banneton has been put away. Absolutely pointless and if your dough decides to stick to it then you’re in a world of pain.
8. Don’t bother scoring it, let it crack naturally.
9. Bake for 2 hours with the lid on, don’t bother taking it off for a bit.

These tweaks mean I’ve been putting in less work and getting better results. A recent loaf was what I’d call my best yet.

I’ve bought a Clever Dripper and put the Aeropress and cafetière in the loft. Whilst the Clever can’t do the volumes a large cafetière can, it makes great coffee with no sludge and easy clean-up (that’s compostable).

The brew method for two cups is:

1. Fold the edges of your unbleached size 4 filter and put it in the Clever Dripper
2. Rinse out the filter with warm water from the tap
3. Grind 20g of beans to a little finer than a cafetière grind and boil your water
4. Add 300g of water to the Clever Dripper, careful here because that’s very full
5. Add coffee to water, do not stir
6. Add 200g of water, it’ll be very full
7. Leave for 5min as the coffee grounds create a crust
8. Stir the crust in
9. Leave for 5min
10. Draw down into a carafe/thermos

Everywhere I’ve seen agile used it seems to stutter and fail as people get tied up in process and bike shedding. That led me to think about how I’d like to run agile sprints.

So here it is:

• There’s a ranked and ready backlog of tasks going into sprint planning. This will be a persons full time job. They’ll gather test data, acceptance criteria, and work with stakeholders to get the priorities sorted.
• You’ll have short refinement sessions where the team helps with breaking tasks down and pointing them. Having some archetypal tasks to point against is useful.
• Don’t split hairs when pointing stories. If in doubt use the higher score.
• Only commit to as many points during a sprint as your velocity indicates you can complete[0].
• During the sprint you’re allowed to bring in extra tasks if you’ve finished everything already or you are reasonably sure it will get finished in the sprint.
• At the end of the sprint update your sprint velocity and reflect on how well you pointed.

And on the subject of agile ceremonies:

I’m a white white cishet software engineer who’s growing a man bun and trying to eat less meat so it must follow that I also make sourdough. I’ve been making it for a year and it’s great. It’s also incredibly simple. You don’t need all the ceremony you see online.

First you need your starter. Get this from a friend because it’s easier. I summoned my own but you don’t have to[1]. I store mine in a modified Kilner jar as below.

As mentioned on various social media, podcasts, and documented on a damn wiki I went to the Sabaton Open Air festival in Falun! It was fantastic.

I wont bore you with the details. I’ll just highlight the most interesting bits.

Thursday’s highlight was Svartsot. I’ve listened to them for a few years and enjoyed them. A friend described them as “penny whistle metal” which isn’t technically correct but definitely gets across their folky and slightly repetitive theme. Glad I saw them.

We got a Roomba-like. The Eufy RoboVac 11. The idea has always appealed because I know I should vacuum more but I’m really lazy. In the new house we’ve got a white kitchen floor which could be a pain to keep clean. So we got the Eufy.

Why not just use a vacuum cleaner? But how often do you actually get it out of the cupboard and use it? Not as often as you’d like? … Exactly. I wanted to be able to press a button/set a timer and just have the thing run. That way the floor gets cleaned far more than it ever would previously.