december 2023

one year of newsletters!

hello!

a mandolin

On December 1st, I sliced off the tip of my finger with a mandolin. It was my first time using one. I only bought it out of jealousy at how quickly food Youtubers can prep cucumbers and cabbage with it.

Anyways, I got five slices into a red onion before the tip of my ring finger came off.

It was a weird moment. The actual slicing didn’t hurt, just the aftermath.

My parent helped me wrap it up via FaceTime. I had to wrap an elastic band around the base of my finger to stop the bleeding and treat the wound. If anyone is ever in a similar situation, I highly recommend the elastic band tourniquet. It made everything much easier.

I actually taped the missing flap of skin back onto the wound. We were all hoping the flap would re-attach like a gecko’s tail or something. But alas it fell off after a week.

A month afterward, everything looks more or less normal! Although I haven’t regained feeling in the tip yet. Here’s a slideshow about it!

I have a cut-resistant glove now.

number twelve

This email marks the one year anniversary of this newsletter! I thought it made sense to reflect on that.

Length

I haven’t stuck to the length limit. In my initial post, I said there would be a maximum of 500 words per post. I went over that limit frequently; my average was about 750. Here’s a chart.

It’s kind of funny that I thought I could limit myself to 500 words. I regularly have too many thoughts in my head and not enough time to refine them. It’s like the Mark Twain quote:

“I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.”

My writing here should be concise, short and clear (as prescribed in this book). I’ll try my best to do more of that in the future.

Lateness

I’ve also regularly been late. My vague promise at the beginning was to deliver “on the first Sunday of each month” which would fall on the 7th at the latest. Here’s a chart which day of the month each post was actually delivered:

I didn’t post on the first Sunday once.

I just have the usual excuses for this: Laziness, lack of preparation. I would usually be writing most of the newsletter after the month is out. I’d like to do less of that.

Looking back

Overall, this archive of newsletters has been helpful for me to remember what has happened over the past year. It’s quite easy to take a couple minutes and read. It’s also helped me remember all the things I have to be grateful for.

I’ll be continuing this in the new year!

tech tech tech

browsers

I switched browsers over the Christmas break. From Chrome to Arc. They both use the Chromium engine so performance is comparable.

The main difference is the UI. Arc arranges tabs on the side of the screen, more like a file directory. I think it’s really nice. It leaves more vertical space for the website which makes sense to me. Theo.gg did a video on Arc that explains it pretty well.

astro.js

Remember when I said I was rebuilding my blog back in September? I was using Next JS. Turns out, I didn’t enjoy using it so it never really worked. There are several reasons for this, mostly surrounding my requirement for a static output to deploy my site.

So I rebuilt it again over the break using Astro JS. I highly recommend it. Great to work with (mostly because of Vite).

It’s live now at kahvipatel.com (or at astro.kahvipatel.com). You probably will not notice a difference (other than speed).

This completed build marks the fourth iteration of the blog. I’ve gone from HTML → Jekyll → Gatsby → Astro. Hopefully this one lasts a couple of years 🤞.

Check out my process here!

ginger bread oat chai

I’d like to use this section of the newsletter to commemorate the gingerbread oat chai from Starbucks. Although it only existed for a few months over the holiday period, it was the best version of a chai latte I’ve ever tasted. I pray it returns next season.

technical note

Ever since October, the subscribe function of this newsletter has been broken. I’ve brought this up with Substack, but I don’t think it’s fixed yet. So if you want to subscribe you’ll have to email me (iamkahvi at gmail.com) and I can add you manually.

the end

That’s it! see you next month