Howdy, !

It's been a week of recovering from jetlag and trying to get the apartment in order. Turns out, a month's worth of chores takes about a week to do, but more on that below...

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Week in the life

It's been a week of catching up on all things that I've ignored for the past month. So many emails, bills and little tasks add up to quite a mission. I think when you're living your everyday life, you forget just how many little tasks there are. Only after coming back can I see the things that inflict the whole "death by a thousand cuts" thing...

That said, I have to say I'm actually glad to be home and to be back at work. I thought for sure that after that break I'd be dreading work, but it seems like it was just long enough. I did a whole long list on the weekend and DIDN'T hate it!

More on all that and more over on the blog...

Creative update

First Flight

Ok, you know you're old when you get excited about ironing products, but man, I have to say the Philips steam system thingy is good. So much so that I made a quick video about it before I left.

Gadgets/Tech

Universal travel adapter and charger

Ok I have a charger problem, but hear me out! This trip just gone, I was using my adapter and plugging in my charger to it to get my devices juiced up. I wondered if there was such a thing that had a decently powerful charger built and in. Lo and behold, there was! Not only does it work as an adapter but also outputs 35W so you can charge your phone/iPad with fast charging. It'll also charge most laptops too via USB-C!

This is what I wish I had when travelling.

Other gadgets/tech

• Aeropress Go - If you're after one of the tiniest ways of making great coffee, this is it!
• Matt Black Fountain Pens - For the price, one of the best complete fountain pens you can get

Read

AI Searches Public Cameras to Find When Instagram Photos Were Taken

This one's in the "slightly creepy" end of things but this article highlights an experimental project that someone set up that you can upload a selfie and it'll crawl through available public video feeds and show you where/when the photo was taken.

There's literally movies with this being the "sci-fi" thing about it and it blows my mind that it's just a side project for a bunch of people these days! 🤯

Book I'm reading currently

• The Myth of Normal - this one sounds a bit new-agey for me, but after listening to some podcasts with the author, he seems like someone who's a physician and one who walks that talk. Just starting this one and it seems like a book of the time being about coping with modern day expectations

Watch

How does a fuel pump turn off when your tank is full?

I have wondered this for a VERY long time so I'm glad I looked up the the fascinating way fuel pumps go about sensing when a tank of fuel is full! Allegedly there were many techniques used but this is what the modern day pump handle does.

Quote I'm pondering

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.”

— Rolf Potts

One of the books that I read a while ago was Vagabonding as per recommendations by Tim Ferriss. This quote is from that author and it struck me because after our travels, my wife and I were saying something just like that, but with regards to architecture.

Wandering through the city the past few days has felt more like an adventure because I can see the differences as compared to Europe. It's just that in the day to day, the fascinating gets buried under everything that we class as everyday...

Is there anything amazing that you're overlooking because it seems very everyday? Let me know by dropping me an email!

Thanks for reading! See you next week (I can tell you it'll likely be delayed again!).

- Raffy

PS - Given it's been 2 years, I'll be going back through the feedback and tweaking things. Do you like/dislike the subtle changes this year? Let me know with 1 click! I read the survey every week (& keep tweaking things with your feedback!)

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