162. Skytree and Coffee
The cover photo shows the Tokyo Skytree I took earlier. At 634m, it’s the tallest tower in the world. It looked beautiful against the clear sky—almost like a scene from an anime.
Record the down-to-earth trending technologies seen every week, and publish them here after screening. If you find it good, you can follow this weekly to get update notifications.
Technical Learning
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks
https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/2005.11401
A foundational paper for RAG. It explains how AI search optimizes outputs by referencing authoritative knowledge bases outside its training data. A must-read for anyone interested in AI.
The Ideal Angle for a Programmer’s Monitor
https://sprocketfox.io/xssfox/2021/12/02/xrandr/
An interesting exploration by a developer on finding the perfect monitor placement. It even includes a small config tool.
Trending Tools
Reactive Resume: A Polished Open-Source Resume Builder
https://rxresu.me/
A fantastic, form-based tool to generate professional resumes. It’s much more modern and convenient than Word. If you’re a developer looking for work, try using this and send it to me!
1000 Inspiring Websites
https://supercreative.design/1000-inspiring-websites
A curated collection of over 1000 highly inspiring websites. Great for curing creative block.
Just Looking Around
Insanely Cool Zelda Foley Video
This is incredibly impressive! (Note: use headphones if you’re in an office.)
Shanghai Peace Hotel Drone Footage
Spectacular drone footage of the area around the Peace Hotel. The moment the lights come on is stunning. As capturing by Jin10Apr noted, it’s not just about the show “Blossoms,” but about that era of opportunity.
Podcast: Li Feifei’s Biography “The Worlds I See”
https://xiaoyuzhoufm.com/episode/65a902ef8a47fd30c098ece9
An excellent podcast discussing AI researcher Fei-Fei Li’s autobiography. Her story of being a first-generation immigrant who stayed curious and true to herself is inspiring. Can’t wait for the Chinese version to be published.
Random Thoughts
How to Get Good Coffee Every Day for Under 1,000 RMB
How do you get good coffee every day for under 1,000 RMB? I want to use this post to share my experience buying and using a coffee machine and choosing its accessories, the purchase that has added the most to my daily life lately.
☕️ Almost every morning lately, the first thing I do after getting up is grind coffee beans, pull a shot on the semi-automatic machine, froth half a cup of milk and pour it into the coffee for a full cup. With the morning sun coming in through the window, the slightly bitter, rich taste of the crema mixed with the sweetness of the milk is deeply satisfying. Over a month I used very few beans and only a few cartons of milk, far cheaper than buying Starbucks, and more importantly, making it by hand and the taste beat buying a coffee by a mile. The machine paid for itself within a month.
🤖 There are several kinds of coffee machines. Capsule machines are simple and fast, and fully automatic ones are feature-rich and easy, you just press a button. I went with a semi-automatic machine, the De’Longhi ECP33.21.W from Sam’s Club, only 629 RMB. The white metal body feels solid, and it has just two functions, extraction and frothing, and it is not hard to use. I chose semi-automatic mostly because I like doing it by hand, and the simple feature set also makes it easy to clean. I think it is a great machine for beginners, well built and durable.
🫘 I also bought the beans at Sam’s Club. After checking recommendations on Xiaohongshu, I got the MM Classic Italian Espresso Blend, 1kg for 99 RMB, the one in the orange-yellow bag. The moment I opened it and poured it into the storage jar felt so, so, so good, the beans plump and oily with crema aroma, and that smell of coffee still stays with me. It also tastes better than I expected, not too sour, not too bitter, just rich and smooth, and after almost a month I have barely used any.
🥛 With milk I knew from the start that I had to buy one that suits coffee, and whole milk is more fragrant. The first one I tried was Mengniu fresh milk from Sam’s Club, 2L for only 20 RMB, great value, and I thought it tasted pretty good, but it is simply too much, a cup a day is hard to finish before it expires. Later I tried Meiji’s rich milk from Hema, which is smooth and full on the palate and also good. Then I tried Yoplait 4.0, which many coffee friends recommended. Hema was out of stock, so I bought 5.0, also very good, its sweetness with the coffee feels just right. I will probably keep using these few.
🎻 As for accessories, the one thing not to forget is a grinder. I chose an electric one. At first I thought a hand grinder would feel more like a ritual, but then I decided it was not worth it, espresso needs a very fine grind and grinding by hand is exhausting. Once the coffee is ground, it needs to be leveled and tamped firmly. The machine came with only a spoon and a plastic tool that doubles as a tamper, which felt a bit cheap, so I got a metal spoon. To make the process feel more like a ritual, I also bought a distributor and a tamper, which make the coffee bed flatter and more compact. I see them as nice-to-haves, the spoon that came with the machine is fine too, but these are better. Then I bought a metal milk pitcher, which is far better than a glass, easy to pour and to feel the temperature. Later I bought a small brush, a coffee cloth and a knock box. These three little things are cheap but super handy, much, much better than cleaning up with paper as I did before.
👷♀️ As for making the coffee, I have not learned to pour pretty latte art yet, it just tastes good. When extracting, be careful not to run it too long. The only part that takes some technique is frothing silky milk, which you can learn and practice from Xiaohongshu. My trick is to put the steam wand at the center first, then tilt it toward three o’clock so the milk spins fast, turn it off once the pitcher is too hot to hold, then pour it into the coffee at an angle.
😄 All in all, before buying I was sure it would end up gathering dust. After buying, I found I have actually gotten used to making a cup of coffee to greet me every morning, and it even gives me a reason to get out of bed, much like in college, when what got me up every day was looking forward to a freshly made roujiamo and fresh soy milk at the canteen. When friends come over, I can’t wait to make them a cup to try my skills, and that feels pretty good.