Is it even social media if you don’t occasionally post photos of your lunch?
Not something you see every day in Shoreham…
I much prefer the feel of matt dust jackets when reading a hardback book to glossy ones.
John Naughton’s review of An Ugly Truth, a new book about Facebook, makes it sound like essential reading. Next on my list after I’ve finished Charles Arthur’s Social Warming.
How can you not?
The absence of iPadOS 14.7 from last night’s round of updates is curious…
Evening on the Adur.
Schmigadoon! is an intensely joyful slice of TV.
Beach flora.
Ha ha. No, no and more no to this terrifying idea. There’s absolutely no way I want Facebook to have more access to my purchasing data than it already does.
I have coffee and a piece on supply chains to finish. Wish me luck.
Beach break.
Self-solving tech problems are my favourite kind.
Last night I had intense dreams about Swedish third wave coffee shops.
That’s about as on-brand for me as it gets.
The problem with working on a MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro side-by-side is that I keep trying to touch the Mac screen…
Today is my “Max Vax" day — two weeks since my second dose.
💉💉🎉
I am happy to report that, as of this weekend, all adults in my household are fully vaccinated. 💉💉
(It’s just me and Lorna, but still…)
UK schoolchildren faking positive lateral flow COVID tests to get two weeks off school — using orange juice. 🤯
Just had a depressing email about the planned final withdrawal of the .eu domain name I used to own, but am no longer entitled to.
A good reason for a drizzly beach picnic last weekend…
Steve Leighton has left HasBean, and now I don’t know what to do
My favourite coffee buyer and roaster is no longer running the company he founded. The most recent bag of coffee I had from the company was, well, disappointing, in a way that I don’t remember encountering from them before. And then a marketing email from the company dropped into my inbox, and it dawned on me that it lacked the enthusiasm and personal voice of the man who used to write it — Steve Leighton.
A quick Google later, and I uncovered the truth — he’d left HasBean, and was clearly having a rough time before he left:
For the last few months, I have been dealing with what can only be described as a mental health breakdown. To protect myself i have disappeared into my private life.
And parting company with the company he founded — and sold — was clearly the right thing for him to do, however hard that must have been.
My third wave coffee journey
I’ve been drinking HasBean coffee for well over a decade. Somewhere around 2008 or 2009, when I started spending time back at Estates Gazette’s Holborn offices, I tweeted about my struggles to find a good way of brewing coffee in the office. And Steve replied. He recommended an Aeropress, and so I bought one from him, and some coffee to go with it. And I’ve been a customer of theirs ever since.
Between his videos, his blog posts and his Instagram posts from origin, he helped suck me much deeper into the world of coffee. I didn’t start drinking the stuff until my early 20s, and then went through the slow journey from instant to cafetière through the last years of the 90s and then the early 2000s. And then, partially because of Steve, I started to encounter the third wave of coffee, and that was me hooked. I’ve looked for good, independent coffee shops all over the UK, in the US, Singapore, Malaysia and India, thanks to the world Steve introduced me to.
My post-HasBean coffee supply
For the last 12 years or so, I’ve had a reliable source of coffee I can trust. Steve has a knack of not only choosing great coffees, but roasting them well to bring out the richness of flavour. Generally, the roast was lighter than you encounter from many roasters, and that’s become my preferred style.
Happily, Steve is back buying coffee for an Irish roaster, and is also moving to Sweden to be with his pregnant parter full-time. (He co-owns a coffee shop over there with her). That’s great for Steve — and for the Irish and Swedish coffee scenes.
But now, I find myself hunting around to see if a different supplier can meet my coffee needs. I’m starting with Sussex roasters, as I like to bring money into the local economy when I can. Let’s hope I can find somewhere as good.
Otherwise, it’ll be pricey shipping from Ireland for me…
Up at stupid o’clock for a podcast guest appearance…
Concert time down near the Beach.
The Bear on the Adur.
Having a coffee in Tom Foolery with my daughters. It almost feels like the old days again. ☕️
