What I'm up to - February 2025

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media.

What I did in January

Moved to San Francisco 🌁
Joined the engineering team at Chroma
Bought a record player. I've been listening to records from The Marias and Fred Again's Actual Life. I managed to track down a Pablo Casals recording of the Mendelssohn's first piano trio.
Published some essays: craft in the digital era, joining Chroma, and a mini data center.

Articles : Neutraface is the "font of gentrification". Mocktails are coming to coffee shops, Paul Krugman on Departing the New York Times. Earth is two floating rocks. Craig Mod's 2026 Membership Program Recap had some great lessons.
Books : I'm reading From Nerd to Pro about the story behind one of my favorite cafes in Denmark. The Almost Perfect book about the residency program I did last year just came out and it's great.
Podcasts : "Is it ok to just work all the time?" was a thought-provoking episode about finding meaning in work.
Documentary : Ants on a Shrimp was fun.
Videos: I loved Magnus Nilsson's Talk at Google about The Nordic Cookbook, especially how he justifies including a taco recipe. "My gift to USA" by a Norwegian comedian.
Coffee: Been drinking a lot of pacamaras recently. Also, I spotted a first Bellweather coffee roaster in the wild at CoffeeShop.
Tools: Brick is an interesting approach to managing screen time (but, I haven't tried it). Pencil Type-C is an iteration on my favorite pen. neal.fun is crazy - I got to the stock market stage.