I'm reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It's my first Sanderson and I'm a little over 300 pages in. It's been on my TBR for a few months and finally decided to take it on.

This is awesome. Did you build it? Where are you going to put it? Do you have more pictures of the complete library box?

I got a French press and used it for awhile. I'm extremely lazy though and got tired of having to clean the coffee grounds out of the screen. That's something I didn't consider before buying it. I switched to a chemex that I like much better. Yeah, there are disposable filters but it works better for me. If I were starting over, I'd probably just get some kind of pour over thing that fits over my mug. That would take up less space than the chemex.

I've been feeling the same way the last couple of weeks. I finally got so fed up with the toxicity of Instagram that I uninstalled it from my phone. And since finding Lemmy, I've disengaged and deleted my Reddit account. So I'm trying to figure out what to do on this Internet now. And it really feels like how I used to use it. I'm finding niche blogs and sites that people post on Lemmy. I'll add them to my bookmarks so that I can remember to visit them again. I'm actually reading the articles and not just jumping straight into the comments. It's like going back in time 12 years. And I don't know if this is just in my head, but I feel like I'm regaining some of my ability to focus and increasing my attention span that's been atrophied over the last decade. I just spent most of my weekend building and playing around with a new homelab server... Something I would have done years ago but would have been nearly impossible to do if I was stuck scrolling through the dopamine machine that is Instagram and Reddit.

If you're dissatisfied with the results you get on Google or you're looking for websites that might not be in Google's search results, I recently came across this site: https://www.marginalia.nu/. The search engine touts itself as focusing on non-commercial content. It really makes me nostalgic for the old Internet... Back when you could find some random person's blog about something really specific. They weren't trying to get monetized or fit into some SEO algorithm. They just wanted to spread their passion for growing different varieties of butter beans, free of charge and subscription.

I feel that. I'm finding myself gravitate back to going directly to individual blogs. Just in the past couple of weeks, I've been introduced to new blogs on these smaller, more slower-paced niche communities. So it feels reminiscent of how I used to use the Internet 10-15 years ago before Reddit and monetization of everything. I had a handful of places I'd rotate through. It was just enough that there was usually something new everyday, but not an infinite sea of content. And I'm finding now that I'm actually reading the links being posted instead of just reading the comments. It kind of makes me think of how people used to watch TV. A show would release one episode a week and you had to wait for next week's show. And there was a limited number of shows. Now with all the content on all the streaming platforms plus YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc. there's an endless amount of content to consume and no built-in breaks so you can literally binge non-stop.

With Reddit or other fill-in-the-blank service where your attention is the end goal to sell ads, the incentive is to get you to never pause, never take a break, never leave. It was exhausting. Here, it feels more relaxed.

I've bought at least two bags from ebags.com that I've been very happy with. The first bag was for a large 17 inch laptop I used in college. It was one of the only places I could find that carried laptop backpacks that could fit a thick 17 inch laptop. That bag is still getting use when I travel with very little signs of wear. I was so happy with it that when I needed a new carryon bag, I went back to ebags and got their Mother Lode Travel Backpack. It looks like they have a lifetime warranty for their ebags brand products.