Software History

I like to reflect on moments of joy on this blog: the tiny moments throughout your day that make you feel happy, joyful, or alive. Many of these moments are what I observe; the serendipitious little things that happen as I go about my day. I wanted to try something new in this series: summarize a few little moments of joy in one post, the ones that may not make their way into a longer feature post.

I was just skimming the W3C

The primary ways in which I discover new music are: (i) by looking for other songs written by artists who have written songs I like; (ii) looking for artists who have done collaborations with artists whose music I love and; (iii) using Spotify to look for songs that might interest me. Spotify shines when it plays a random song next. I tend to just scroll through lists of songs in playlists but when Spotify plays a song automatically I tend to find something new. This does not always work, but thus far I have found so many great songs by listening to Spotify. This list is not exhaustive but indicative of my primary ways of finding new songs and artists.

We spoke every week or two. You were behind the coffee bar, I was a patron. One day, you casually mentioned that you were moving on to a new career. I was excited, although in hindsight I am not sure to what extent my excitement is visible and interpretable. Part of me entered a contemplative mood. An acquaintance who brought warmth to an environment moved on to something new. Fresh horizons, a new opportunity to shine. Will the environment be the same?

For the last year and a half, I have been co-hosting Homebrew Website Club London / Europe, a meetup where people interested in personal websites come together to chat, ask questions, and share on what they are working. I co-host the meetup with Mark.

A day or two ago, a fellow IndieWebber [^1] recommended that I contribute to the IndieWeb wiki. The IndieWeb wiki is at the heart of the community. It is a live and growing repository of information about all things IndieWeb.

Every so often I get an urge to write some Lisp code. I do not have much experience with Lisp. I need to think of a project I can take on that would excite me! Here are some activation functions I wrote in Lisp earlier:

NB: The espresso pictured above was absolutely delicious. It is for illustrative purposes only.

I am presently sitting with nothing else to do. I enjoy writing so here I am again, back for another (short) blog post.

I have become more attuned to new words since starting my Fun with Words series ^1. I was listening to an episode of This Week in Tech yesterday and I heard an interesting word. I stopped to note down the word for future reference, perhaps for inclusion in a future edition of this series. Today, I have four words for you that I have gathered from the depths of digital media after extensive reading and evaluation, specially curated for your edification. (I was going for the verbosity associated with an episode in Stephen Colbert's Meanwhile series in that last sentence ^2. Colbert really does a great job at the humorous run on sentence in that series.)

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

The holiday season is quickly coming upon us. I spend a fair amount of my free time reading and I thought it would be nice to write lists of the places I go to read about coffee. When I started writing my first post, I realised that I could not fit every blog that I've read a few posts from this year in one post. To avoid trying to squeeze too much detail into one post, I decided to write a second post, which is the one you are reading right now.

I have been a fan of Coffee People, a digital and print zine about the world of speciality coffee, for months. I first read one of their magazines last year and the content intrigued me. A mix between poetry, photographs, drawings, writing, and other creative media, Coffee People explores a theme through the lens of coffee in each edition. The work I have seen in the editions I have read has been creative and engaging, which is what led me to submit an entry myself.

The Coffee Life, authored by Jass Goodman, was one of, if not the first, coffee blogs I encountered online. This blog was what got me thinking about writing posts on coffee.

Situated in Govanhill, Glasgow, Short Long Black Coffee serves baked goods and speciality coffee. I recently spoke with the owner of Short Long Black, Darryl, about what it's like to run the coffee shop, the importance of choosing a good location for your shop, and the sorts of tasks he takes on in his work as a coffee shop owner. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Earlier last year, I ordered a bag of Wee Stoater from Unorthodox Roasters, a Scottish roastery whose coffee names live up to the name

The Orea coffee brewer has been my go-to pour-over device for a long time, alongside the Kalita Wave. The Orea, whose size is ideal for a one-cup pour-over, consistently brews delicious cups of coffee. I first applied my standard Kalita Wave recipe to the Orea, then later moved on to a continuous pour. This means that instead of stopping for a bloom phase, I pour all 250g of water in at once, slowly.

In preparation for writing this review, I decided to read a few other book reviews. It's been interesting hearing opinions by other people on the books they have read. I hope that this review, and future book reviews I write, can deliver the same sense of insight. I already want to buy two books I read about before I started to write this article.

I have been building a search engine for my blog. The search engine is designed to make it easy to find content on my blog. I started with a simple program that indexed content so I could keep track of my posts. I built a web interface to query the index so anyone could find search results. Then I started to add more features to make the search engine more intuitive and better at discovering content. This has been such a fun project to work on because I have had to spend a lot of time planning technical solutions and then I have implemented them, two tasks I enjoy.

Timehop is a smartphone application that generates throwbacks for the photos you have taken on your phone. Each day, you could see photos you had taken on a given day in previous years. I recall installing Timehop but at the time I didn't have too many photos that I could share with the application. With that said, the core idea has stayed in my mind: a system through which you receive reminders of what you were doing on this day in the past.

I have been thinking a lot about accessibility in coffee and so I have been chatting with people about how they share their coffee knowledge. I recently spoke with Jordan Harvey, a barista support representative and trainer for Grumpy Mule. Jordan is also a volunteer for the Speciality Coffee Association (SCA) and a committee member at the Kore Directive, a coffee community of feministic diversity allies.

For all of those that subscribe to my website in a feed or social reader, you may have been wondering why a few pages that do not look like my regular blog posts showed up. The answer to that is that I am now working on a new project: a MediaWiki for sharing breakfast and coffee recommendations to which you can post from your own website.

About a week ago, I posted a question on Instagram: what is your favourite coffee and food pairing? I asked this question as a result of a discussion I was having with a friend and my ongoing thoughts on coffee as a culinary experience. Three respondents indicated they liked something sweet and/or a pastry with their coffee. One person said that their favourite coffee and food pairing was an espresso affogato, a surprising response because I did not consider that espresso affogatos are in fact already a pairing of coffee and food.

Photo taken bygav_smart.

When I first started brewing coffee at home, I had a fear that if coffee was not as fresh as possible, I would be missing out on its full potential. I stored my coffee bags, when opened, in a plastic tub, and would often think about whether my storage setup was adequate. Indeed, freshness and proper storage are essential components of making the most out of your coffee, but I always found storing coffee at home confusing. Do I need a vacuum sealed container? Will my coffee be okay in a cupboard? Should I only open bags of coffee when I have finished one that is already open?

Many speciality roasters visit the farms or co-operatives from which they buy coffee. This allows the roaster to get to know the crop from the people who are growing and processing it. These visits give roasters insights into a crop that cannot be found without having direct contact with a farmer or co-operative. Direct trade has become popular for this reason: a direct connection between the farmer and roaster lets the roaster learn more about their product.

I stumbled upon Coffee People last year and I decided to buy an edition I believe coffee is an excellent conduit for creativity and I was curious about what Coffee People was doing. I was greeted with visual art, poetry, articles, and many other creative pieces which all got me thinking that coffee is more than just a drink.

A few weeks ago, a member of my family said that I should take a note of the countries from which I have tried coffee. I thought this was a good idea at the time because I have tried coffee from so many countries and I did not want to lose track. The idea came to mind again yesterday when I thought just how easy it will be for me to forget where I have bought coffee from as I try more coffees. I must have tried at least five coffees this month alone.

I am not an expert on coffee freezing. This is my experience and an invitation for anyone to share their thoughts on freezing coffee, too. I hope what I share encourages more experimentation with freezing coffee beans.

Please note this project has not been tested, and is likely not going to be tested, on a real coffee pot. My implementation relies on an entirely fictional digital coffee pot. No advice is given on how to implement this protocol with a real coffee pot.