jamesg

I am writing a blog post every day from December 1st to December 24th, 2021, about a blogger whose writing or site I follow. My aim for this series is to help you discover new blogs and to help get the word out about content creators whose blogs I appreciate. You can read more about this series in the inaugural Day 1 post.

World maps fill me with wonder. Every so often I will open a world map online, scroll around, and explore. Amsterdam. The Faroe Islands. The UK. The US.

I have just finished my first coffee cupping. I had an informal cupping at my local coffee shop a few weeks ago where I compared two coffees. It was not the same because I was drinking Americanos and comparing them. In a proper cupping, ground coffee is used. A particular process is followed that results in a final grade for each of the coffees that are being evaluated.

I have been making espresso at home for almost a week now. I bought the Flair Espresso maker so I could get into espresso without having to spend too much on a machine. I have many reservations about espresso machines—if I could fit one in the kitchen, cost, if the machine would be compatible with my power—so I thought I would stick with lever espresso making. There is something quite special about being able to make espresso with (almost) no electricity.

Good morning, world! It is a sunny Monday morning here. I am looking out the window of a Starbucks onto the street; people walking past, buses going. An orange truck carrying a skip drives past. Does a truck

For the last two weeks or so, the Aromaboy has been on my mind. An electric coffee brewer which takes up as much space as my kettle, the Aromaboy has a delightfully retro feel, which is most likely a result of this brewer being in production since 1979. The retro aesthetic this brewer has was a large part of why I bought it, but I also thought about the recommendations I had received. I asked a few people whether they thought the Aromaboy was worth the money even if I liked to brew coffee by hand and everyone with whom I spoke recommended I give the Aromaboy a try.

As I write, I have Zoom open in another window. Nine members of the IndieWeb community, including myself, have come together to work on our personal websites as part of Create Day. I decided to work on improving the maps feature on my site, which features several maps of places I have been around the world. For example, you can browse all of the coffee shops or eateries I have visited in New York City, with information about the extent to which I recommend each of them.

Note: I talk about a minor injury from the cold, windy weather in this post. If you are sensitive to such things, I'd encourage you to read another one of my blog posts instead!

'Tis the season to read as many books about coffee as possible. I've found books are a great way to learn about coffee. I can easily get lost in a book about coffee, spending hours reading. I like how books can be read uninterrupted without the temptation of opening another tab to start reading another blog post. This year, I've read eight books about coffee, and I've liked each of them.

Note: I wrote this blog post before Christmas 2020 and never got around to publishing it at the time.

On my trip to Rome last year, I met an old man in a shuttle that went from the airport to the city. I wasn't sure how to get to the city. An older man, who spoke with an American accent, sat next to me with his friends taking up other seats. They were all chatting, laughing, excited for the trip.

I glance from a coffee shop window. One day prior, a few steps from where I was seated, I listened in as a patron voiced his discontent with telecommunications companies.

I have been asking a few people what their favourite word is lately. The question

I have been experimenting with OpenAI's GPT 3.5 Turbo API for the last week or so. The result of my experimentation is James Bot, an AI bot that is built to answer questions where the answers can be provided with reference to my blog, wiki, and GitHub READMEs. My goal with this project was to explore building an information retrieval system where a user can ask a natural language query and receive a cohesive answer with reference to relevant source materials to substantiate claims.

This post was written on Saturday, April 15th and published today, April 17th.

One week ago, I announced that I had set myself a challenge to use my phone in grayscale mode for a week. I had been procrastinating more than I would have liked on my phone, and I saw enabling grayscale mode as a potential way to reduce the time I spent engaged. Fewer colours -- particularly the red colour associated with notifications -- would be less distracting.

I want to talk about a project I undertook yesterday. I set up my Raspberry Pi with a new SD card. I do not presently have the energy to think of a more interesting topic. These last few days have been tough. It happens sometimes. We all have days when we are not quite ourselves. This is a blog, not my journal, so I don't want to get bogged down in the details of reality. Here, I write about technology and coffee. To the story!

While Ecuador is not traditionally known for its speciality coffee, I am building more conviction in the potential of this region. Altos De Saragullas, roasted by Redemption Roasters, is the second Ecuadoran coffee I have tasted lately, providing a delicious cup that kept me going this Sunday morning.

A coffee crawl is a planned journey where you visit multiple eateries and drink coffees in various establishments, commonly undertaken when a coffee lover visits a new city or area and wants to explore the local coffee scene.

I would contest that we have already invented time travel. In fact, I think we have invented it twice. The first is through air travel, which enables you to wake up in one country and go to sleep in a country across the globe on the same day. The second is through the combination of photography and memory, which takes us back to a moment and allows us to see something resembling the memory in our head; a place. A time.

Today I have curated a number of interesting words for your edification and review. I have found a lot of inspiration in reading both the Guardian, as well as listening to The Allusionist podcast, a recommendation from a friend. The Allusionist is a podcast about words and language, a blissful combination for an amateur lexicographer such as myself.

A few weeks ago, awaiting the arrival of a train, I stopped to play piano. While playing, someone left a hand-written note on top of the piano. I didn't get to look at them was I was immersed in the music. Thus, I shall perhaps never know who left the note. The note contained a quote:

After a brief hiatus, we're back for another edition of Fun with Words. As I prepared to write this post, I realised that my reading newspapers is a great boon to this series. I usually find a few words in the paper that I can include in an edition of Fun with Words. I haven't read a paper in almost two weeks, though. I have instead traversed the depths of my mind, Merriam Webster, and words I have read in the last day to procure the finest words for today's edition.

I'll have a pumpkin spice latte to go, please. No cream.

Based in Stirling, HBW Coffee is a speciality coffee shop offering coffee, donuts, and vegan and vegetarian food. Their owner, Conor, has worked tirelessly to design a food and drinks menu that meets the needs of his customers. In this interview, I chat with Conor about his role as owner of HBW Coffee, what his typical day at work looks like, and how he designed the HBW food and drink offering. I hope you enjoy our chat.

Every so often, my mind recalls two memories of grammar from early primary school: how to spell the word favourite (

Earlier this week I watched Alex Chan's Sans I/O programming talk. In the talk, Alex argues the importance of separating I/O and program logic, with reference to a situation where his team was unable to use already-available parsing libraries for BagIt data because said libraries depended on local access to a file. This talk resonated with me because it made me realise I tend to couple I/O and logic in my code without realising it. I'd highly recommend watching the talk in full, or at least reading Alex's accompanying summary on their blog.

Manifesto Coffee, based in Perthshire, Scotland, have been working hard for months on a problem that many speciality coffee companies face: how to package their coffee in a sustainable way. After extensive research, the Manifesto Coffee team came up with the idea of packaging their coffee in cans, a form of material that is widely and easily recycled.

Manifesto Coffee is a values-driven company, focused on transparency, quality, fairness, and environmental consciousness. I wanted to learn more about Manifesto's work so I reached out to one of their founders, Alex. He responded to a few questions I had about how Manifesto roasts coffee and what it's like to pursue a career in the coffee industry. Our chat is below.

Update (September 29, 2021): Untitled Oats is no longer operating. With that said, this interview does contain some great insights into the oat milk industry and is worth a read.