Agaete

~ Veselin ~ 11 Comments

I visited Agaete to meet a team I work with. The place is charming even off season. The wifi was good. The two co-working spaces we used were convenient. And they make their own coffee in Agaete, which the local guide advertised as the best EU-made coffee.

These coffee beans are drying. Need to be cleaned and roasted and will be ready for consumption. We were given some beans to try, and they were edible 🙂

Team meetups might not be the best reason to work with us but in any case, Automattic is hiring.

Charging Cables

~ Veselin ~ 14 Comments

I’ve not cracked the charging issue yet. My kids run through cables very quickly because they charge their numerous devices while playing games. They twist them, bend them, and use lots of power. We also need to maintain a collection of chargers with cables at the grandparents where they’re used by the niblings as well. The devices and chargers vary greatly and I’m always in the look for improvements.

10 days ago I bought a beautifully looking Energizer cable. 2m long, 100w, looked very, very solid. It stopped working after charging my computer and phone 5-6-ish times each with an Apple’s 45-watt charger.

I was sure something in that cable was fake and decided to slice and dice it to see proof of deception. Nope. You can pull a car with it. But you can’t charge a phone.

Took me significant effort with the pliers to cut through the outside. So I guess, just another brand that wasn’t meant to be.

So what somewhat worked:

  • The Apple’s Lightning and USB-C cables tend to last months to a year with our usage. The downside is that they’re bland, look dirty, subject to dry rot and twisting. I’ve stopped buying these as they are the highest price, lowest joy level, and medium durability for our use case.
  • Vivanco’s 1m cable is my personal favorite for a durable lightning cable. It doesn’t twist as much and is thicker. My kids have destroyed some of these while playing Minecraft but I’ve personally never broken one. It’s short and ugly, so it’s far from ideal.
  • XMart’s cables with textile braid look great, probably best in term of looks from what we use. They are also 1.2m long, which is better. I have an USB-C braided cable at one of my work spots, working with a 100-watt charger, and it’s fine after a few years of use. However, those cables with multiple ends my family likes? Not so much. I don’t know why we keep buying them.
  • Cellularline’s braided USB-C cable would be my top choice. The one I got is 2.5 meters long, about 1 meter longer than it should be, and just works. However, it’s never been put through the real Minecraft test because it’s USB-C and the kids use Lightning.

UPDATE (2025-01-25) Cellularline’s Lightning cable I bought to my kids failed after less than 10 days of use using a 65 watt Cellularline charger: Not ideal.

What do you use?

If you could un-invent something, what would it be?

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments

If you could un-invent something, what would it be?

I believe information exists without observers. A human noticed that we can burn fossil fuel to drive ourselves around instead of riding horses at some point. By that time, cars might’ve already existed for billions of years in galaxies far, far away. We just didn’t know about them. Uninventing cars wouldn’t make them go away, it will only postpone their appearance. They will reappear because they can satisfy the demand for fast transportation.

So removing inventions sounds pointless to me. Certain human behaviours or use of the inventions – sure! I’d make people commute by walking or using bicycles, for example, but I wouldn’t uninvent cars. Cars have legitimate use cases.

Same with other things like nuclear weapons or multi cookers. All of that can be described with numbers, and all numbers already exist.