Moleskine notebooks

Moleskines are the de facto standard notebook of choice for designers and hackers alike. Best thing is if you like using a notebook you’ll always need more of them which makes them the ideal gift for Christmas. £5.24 from Amazon and available in all good stationers.

Palomino Blackwing Pencils

You’ve probably seen plenty of talk about how awesome the original (and discontinued since 1998) Eberhardt-Faber Blackwing 602 pencils wer,. so much so that they often fetch around $20 per pencil on Ebay. Luckily California Cedar Products took over the rights to the Blackwing trademark and have started produced their own version. Whilst they might not be 100% the same as the Eberhardt-Faber pencils the general consensus is they’re pretty good albeit that they wear a bit quicker than the originals. 12 of these little fellas are $19.99 from pencils.com.

Big Trak

In the 80′s my brother and I were given a Big Trak as a joint present complete with trailer. We had it for about 2 weeks and it broke so my parents took it back to the shop and didn’t get a replacement.

Big Trak has a keypad that allows you to program up to 16 command sequences; e.g. go forward x 6, turn left etc. Go forward x6 would translate to the Big Trak moving forwards 6 times it’s own length. The trailer is not currently available, but is due to be coming out in January 2011.. Available from Amazon for ~£26. It’s ok you can pretend it’s for your children.

Amazon Kindle

Most Geeks I know definitely like their books. The most recent edition of the Kindle is pretty nice, and is worth taking a look at if you’re looking for a solid ebook reader. At £109 it’s a bit of a bargain really. The only downside is if you’ve already got lots of books you’ll need to buy the ebook versions. Available from Amazon for £109.

Threadless

Always a favorite, Threadless have had some pretty good deals on their great t-shirt designs recently. Check out Threadless.com for more info.

Coffee

If you know someone who likes good coffee then here’s two of the best UK coffee roasters to take a look at.

• Hasbean Coffee – Stocks excellent coffees as whole beans and ground for specific machines.
• Square Mile Coffee Roasters – Fantastic coffees, though bear in mind they only provide whole beans.

Even if not for a present, definitely get an order in for some fine coffee to enjoy after your Christmas Dinner.

Arduino Starter Kit

Arduino is an open source electronics prototyping platform allowing hobbyists to build cool projects that can take inputs from a variety of sensors and switches and use that input to control motors, lights, displays and anything that can be hooked up to it. From building a traffic light system for your CI server to controlling coffee machine temperature, the only limitation is your imagination.

The latest Arduino board is available as a Arduino Starter Kit at Cool Components (UK) or Adafruit (US).

Our second daughter Molly was born on Sunday 11th Jan 2009 at 15:51 weighing 5lbs 13oz. I can’t express how totally awesome it is to be a Dad for the third time.

So why was it so bad? Well in this case the coffee tasted foul because the machine’s not being cleaned properly. Coffee oils go rancid very quickly which means you’ve got carry out regular cleaning routines and keep the machine in top working order.

It’s interesting that in this country we seem to be able to put up with bad coffee on a daily basis. From my experience I’ve got the point where I really appreciate good coffee. Now whilst I consider myself to be no more than an amateur home barista, to me majority of shots I brew taste better to me that the usual Nero or Starbucks. The differentiator for me is that if I brew a shot that’s crap I’ll discard it and start over. From watching baristas at work in chains they really just don’t have the knowledge and understanding to be able to make good coffee which is obvious when you watch the espresso piss out of the portafilter at a rate of knots.

What’s missing from the coffee chains is the passion. Just like anything, be it web-sites or coffee, to stand any chance of being good at something you’ve got to at least be interested in what you’re doing. It’s only in cafes like “Flat White”, “Fernandez and Wells” in soho and “Monmouth” in Seven Dials that you can really find coffee made with passion. These people care that the coffee that you consume is made from great beans and that it’s brewed to perfection by people that understand the chemistry behind the brewing process.

Coffee is an art form, from the grind to the tamp to the temperature of the water and consistency of the milk, each and every parameter has an effect on the result. Just like web developers; the very best developers I know have passion in spades, and they understand how to balance all of the aspects of web development to produce the perfect result.

It was a great experience working at Yahoo, I got the chance to work with plenty of awesome people and learnt a huge amount in my time there. So to all of you (you know who you are), thanks for everything!

Anyway, to get to the point in my last asthma review I’ve been prescribed a new inhaler. Instead of the Becotide (beclomethasone) steroid I now have a new inhaler called Seretide. Seretide contains two active ingredients, fluticasone propionate and salmeterol. The first is a more effective steroid replacing the becotide and one is a “protector” that keeps your airways open for up to 12 hours. I’ve been using this for 4 days now and the difference has been nothing short of a revolution. I haven’t used my Ventolin (salbutamol) reliever once. For me this is like someone has flicked a switch and turned off my asthma symptoms.

Yesterday at 13:30 Sandra gave birth to our son Sean naturally, he weighed 3.794kg (8lbs 6oz). Both Mum and baby are doing in fine and Sean seems incredibly contented, let’s hope that continues when we get him home. Our daughter Emma met him last night and was really pleased to see him now that he’s come out of Mummy’s tummy.

We arrived back in England a week ago last Sunday, after a couple of days travelling up from Montfrin.

We had a really good time, it’s been a while since I’ve had that much of break from computers and the internet, and I really needed the break. It’s always nice to get a chance to spend so much quality time with your family. It will be the last holiday we have with just three of us before Sean arrives later in November.

There were many amazing places near to where we stayed. To start with it was 35 degrees and almost too hot to go out but as time went on the temperature cooled off a bit making it easier to get out and about. We had a pool at the house and Emma has been learning to swim so it was always possible to head back to the house for a swim if the heat got too much. Us Brits eh? Complain about the bad weather and then when we do get some sun we can’t handle that either.

The highlights of the trip for me were; the trip to the Camargue, La Ferme aux Crocodiles and Mont Ventoux.

The Camargue

The Camargue is so full of amazing wildlife it’s buzzing with loads of dragonflys, hummingbird hawk moths, flamingos, wild horses and bulls. There’s plenty to see there. It was fun driving down some un-made roads along the side of the salt-flats. Whilst I was taking a photo of some horses and dragonflies I saw a hummingbird hawk moth and was so taken aback I forgot to take a picture of it before it dissappeared. These moths are truly amazing and through the rest of the holiday I kept seeing them.

La Ferme aux Crocodiles

One morning we got up and Emma said “Daddy can we see the Crocodiles?” after having seen the leaflet in the Gite, so we headed up there and had a great time going around the farm which has 355 crocodiles. They are also one of the largest breeders of crocodiles and one of the people who works there told me they had just had a huge order for crocodiles to be exported to Japan.

Mont Ventoux

Mont Ventoux is about 2000m tall and dominates the skyline for miles around. It’s a mecca for cyclists as it’s part of the Tour de France and there were loads of cyclists struggling up it. Quite amazingly you can drive right on up to the top of the mountain, where there’s a weather station and a tourist shop selling trinkets. At the top the wind is nearly enough to blow you (literally) off your feet and Sandra got this great shot of Emma and me before we nearly got blown away.

When we started up Mt Ventoux I had 1/4 of a tank of fuel and by the time we wer coming down I had nearly none left so I spent most of the downhill journey easing back on the fuel. We made to Sault where I filled up and we had a nice afternoon eating crepes in the most disorganised yet charming creperie I have ever been too.

I took lots of photos and for once uploaded the lot to Flickr, 554 pics to be precise. So to view more pics please check out the flickr Photo Set.

I wish Richard, Andy and Jeremy all the best with d.Construct, and I look forward to reading all of the related notes and blogposts so make sure you help Steve with the note-taking on subEthaEdit.

If you’re going to be at any of these events have a good time, I will be back later in September with more details on the upcoming WSG London Meetup Microformats special on the 19th October, featuring Jeremy Keith, Drew McLellan and Mark Norman Francis.