Tea; Punch Cards; Letterboxd; MP3 Player
Issue 36 of This&That
☕ Mr.TeaTaster
The profession of tea tasting has always lingered in my imagination like an offbeat career – someone who spends their days sipping thousands of cups, their refined palate determining the fate of tea batches across the world. While my adventures in coffee brewing had introduced me to similar sensory experts, watching Satish B Menon's interview was like seeing a character step out of my imagination and into vivid reality. With over three decades of experience serving giants like AVT and Tata Tea, Menon's expertise is matched only by his ability to demystify the craft.
🖥️ DocZilla: The Screenshot Revolution
In the vast ocean of development tools, DocZilla's API emerges as a fascinating solution to a problem that's been hiding in plain sight: the need for reliable, scalable screenshot and image creation in document delivery. What makes DocZilla particularly intriguing is how it transforms this seemingly simple capability into a Swiss Army knife of document handling – from crafting PDFs from HTML, generating product screenshots that actually look good, to enhancing PDFs with Paged.js magic.
🗃️ Punch Cards: A Time Machine to 1976 Computer Science
Sometimes the best way to appreciate how far we've come is to look back at where we started, and this writing takes us back to 1970s, when learning Computer Science meant mastering the art of punch cards and Pascal. The author's personal journey through CS1 reads like a time capsule, managing to be simultaneously technically informative and deeply personal. Here is a video for those curious about the mechanical ballet of punch card programming.
&Thats
The Wire flips the script with "Revenge Interviews," where Karan Thapar faces his own interview style – watching Shashi Tharoor turn the tables makes for particularly entertaining journalism.
Stacking my next reads physically beside me to boost my reading habit – if you have any book suggestions that deserve a spot in this intentional TBR pile, I'm all ears.
Pisharody's new series remembers lost artists through the lens of casual conversation – finally, a remembrance show that feels open rather than performative.
Back on Letterboxd with a mission to write one-line reviews immediately after watching – why waste more time writing about movies that already wasted my time?
Flexoki's expanded palette brings more analog warmth to digital spaces, proving sometimes more ink is exactly what we need – I've been using it for my personal website and loving the inky, paper-warm aesthetic.
Bought an MP3 player from Audiocular with frustratingly bad UX (three to four clicks just to pause!) but its single-purpose nature brings clarity to music listening – and I do miss my old hard disks! I would recommend Audiocular M71 over this M31 after using 31 and if ever upgrading it will be mostly to Sandisk Clip, which is not available in India.
Looking for 2025 inspiration in proven wisdom – Atomic Habits remains the finest guide I've found in 7-8 years, with Doublethink's visual summary offering a quick way to revisit its insights.
Babu Ramachandran takes Vallatha Kadha independent on YouTube after resigning from Asianet, promising more stunning content ahead – and yes, I need to get my hands on those newly available three-volume Vallatha Kadha book collection!
Two reads for the day: catching up on AI predictions for the future and news about Google's new AI model, Whisk.
M. T. Vasudevan Nair's passing leaves us with "Vayanakkaran M.T" (Written by Rajagopalan E P) as a glimpse into the reader that shaped Malayalam literature – it's particularly heartbreaking knowing we'll never see an updated version with more of his reading insights.
Japan Habba hits Bangalore this weekend, bringing its blend of Japanese culture to curious minds since 2005. Book Now.