A little change of pace – some talk of coffee, my favorite vice. I bought myself a Bodum mini electric Santos a few months ago, which is a very cool vacuum-based coffee maker. I bought it on a whim after my other pot (a black and decker which was incapable of pouring a cup of coffee without spilling) spilled one splash of coffee too many. After the novelty of the pot wore off I was at first ambivalent about it but I’ve grown to really like it. It has some downsides – there is more cleanup than a drip-based coffee maker and it takes more coffee to make a rich pot than a drip machine does – but on the other hand once properly run it makes a better cup of coffee and it’s much faster than my drip machine was. These things are worth checking out if you’re in the market for a coffee machine. Also if you’re curious I happened across this history of the vacuum coffee pot, where the author speculates that the vacuum coffee pot is poised to make a comeback. Apparently for a period of time ending in the late 50’s the vacuum coffee pot was the preferred pot in american households before being displaced by the drip based pot, but the vacuum pot is trending up.