2024-11-13 02:53:20
When I first decided to get an espresso machine, I went for a top of the line machine. I wanted something that would last a lifetime. The same applied to the grinder. I bought an ECM V-Titan 64, with titanium-coated flat burrs that are quoted to last at least 50 years before needing to be replaced.
Here I am, 8 years later, and finding myself somewhat frustrated with my grinder.
I make one or two espresso-based drinks a day. As such, it’ll take me a couple weeks, at least, to get through a small bag of beans. If I’m travelling, it could be upwards of a month. If I’m not in the mood for coffee, even longer. Over that time, the beans continue to degass, requiring small adjustments to the grinder each day. That, in itself, isn’t a problem and the grinder does a fantastic job of enabling these minor adjustments. The problem is in the chute design. There is 3 to 4 grams of grind retained in the chute. Not a big deal if I’m doing a number of espressos in a day but trying to dial in necessary adjustments means grinding out a bunch to clear the old stuff before proceeding to grind out what I need. If a bean gets stuck in the grinder (which happens more frequently than I’d like) then I go through an awkward process of cleaning out the grinder, creating more waste.
The workflow was becoming frustrating enough that I decided I needed to switch to a grinder that was optimized for a single dose workflow.
I had been eyeing the Weber EG-1 but, as you can imagine, that price tag is eye watering. Which, looking at the price of the V-Titan these days, is also getting quite pricey. I’m pretty sure I only spent around a thousand dollars on mine.
The espresso subreddit has highly recommended the DF64, which is more reasonable, price-wise, and has plenty of favourable reviews. The DF64 is what I ultimately settled on.
I’ve only had the DF64 for a day, so I’m not at a point where I can enthusiastically endorse it but I am already enjoying it. It takes maybe a couple extra seconds to grind but it isn’t any noisier than the old grinder and I’m getting much less retention—less than half a gram—which is a big part of what I wanted.
Considering the espresso scene these days, it’s easy to fall into an involved process with paper filters and metal screens and OCD tools and WDT tools. While I’ve tried pretty much all of these, I’m finding myself sliding back into a more simplified workflow and the grinder is part of this. My goal is to have a high quality espresso drink within 60 seconds and a reliable workflow makes a huge difference in achieving that.
Tangentially, I’ve been considering getting into pourovers and it’ll be interesting to see how reliably I can change grinder settings and still get consistent results. The Weber definitely sells itself on the flexibility of being able to handle this scenario so if the DF64 doesn’t live up to expectations, the EG-1 might very well be considered.
Anyway, time to get back to the grind…
2024-10-18 22:16:41
After a couple years of not putting any revenue into the business, I realized that it was time to say goodbye. I have officially dissolved my corporation, Snook.ca Web Development, Inc.
My personal blog, Snook.ca, marches on.
2024-09-05 04:31:01
Back in the late 80s, my mom bought me a 386sx 16MHz computer equipped with a 2400 baud modem. It was my first computer that enabled me to connect to an online world. Back then, there was large behemoths like AOL and CompuServe but there were also independent services called bulletin board systems, aka BBSs.
A BBS was somewhat of a one-to-one connection. Most independent BBSs had only one or two phone lines with which someone could dial into. They were little islands of community that one could play simple turn-based games or leave messages on, like a physical bulletin board. Once I logged off, somebody else could dial in and leave their messages or take their turn in a game or two.
Given the limited speed of modems of that era, these services were entirely ASCII text-based. ANSI was a superset that included character codes beyond plain text that could change the colour. As a result, rudimentary and blocky graphics (and even animation) were possible. I remember playing a Risk-style game that was ANSI-based called Global War. (Check out those stunning graphics!)
In order to create a distributed system of messages, allowing for communication across a multitude of BBSs, a BBS would have to connect to another BBS and synchronize messages between the two. FidoNet was probably the most popular of these systems.
I even ran my own board running on Telegard called The Jester’s Palace, where I went by the handle The Jester.
The Jester turned out to be a surprisingly popular name and thus, I decided to change my name (and give myself a promotion to boot): I became The Kind King. Looking back, it’s uncreative and embarrassing but I chalk it up to being a dumb teenager.
In my late teens, I discovered a world of pirated software being distributed via BBSs. Which, when you consider the logistics, is somewhat impressive. In order for software to go from one city to another, a long distance phone call would be made which would cost a lot of money back in those days. (I also used to wear an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.) To avoid paying such costs, people would use a PBX to (illegally) pass those charges onto large corporations and hope nobody would notice. It is within this world that I also learned about Phreaking and Wardialing.
There was a subculture of people involved in distributing pirated software (uh, warez) that coalesced into groups like Razor 1911, The Humble Guys, and FAiRLiGHT.
Within the software that were being distributed, files were included to let you know who was responsible for releasing the pirated software (and cracking the software, removing any copy protections that might’ve existed).
As a result, an entire art scene formed around these groups as artists worked to outdo each other and promote the hacking groups and the BBSs that distributed the software. Being a creative teenager in high school with too much time on my hands, I began creating ANSi art (the warez scene had a thing for lowercase i’s) and even found myself part of an art group called AiR: ARTiSTS iN REVOLT.
Alas, I lost all of my work from those days. Some googling has uncovered one piece from 1992:
I remember my best work as a recreation of the poster from the movie Universal Soldier. I wish I could find that piece again.
It’s interesting to me to see the connection that came from that creativity and curiosity and how it led me to my career doing design and development.
BBSs were where I met my first roommate, Brent, and with whom we’d end up with a bit of a revolving door of roommates, some of who were also from the warez scene. At one point, our house had probably close to a dozen phone lines running into it with each of us running our own board, and I wonder if the phone company technician wasn’t at least a bit curious why we needed so many lines running into a residential townhouse.
I still have that old 2400 baud modem, tucked away in a box, as a reminder of where it all started.
This trip down memory lane brought on by a post from GReG SToREY. Check out The Art of Warez.
2024-06-22 00:12:58
There’s a certain simplicity to the life of the harried and married with children: the nuclear family with two and a half kids. The day to day is predictably unpredictable with its routines: breakfast, lunch, dinner, work, meetings, daycare, changings, sports, mid-night feedings, music lessons, and so on and so on, day in and day out.
And then we split.
Divorce established two worlds. In one world, I was a parent, taking care of two kids and all the aforementioned duties and then some. The other world, I was single and child-less, relatively free from parenting responsibilities.
That other life was like another dimension: a life spent in the future but only for a few days at a time—days that were often spent in another city, another country, another continent. “Once the kids are on their own, I can travel farther, for longer. Maybe I’ll move somewhere.”
Pre-pandemic, deep within a relationship with a woman from one of those other cities in one of those other countries, I was at the peak of being split in two—being asked to rearrange schedules—defragging the calendar, as it were—to maximize the segments of time in this alternate dimension.
Fifteen years post-separation, I find myself on the cusp of the past meeting the future and returning to a one-dimensional world. My eldest is planning to move out soon. My youngest has one more year of high school left. My ex has relinquished control of the rigid schedules we clung to for a decade and a half.
I still have commitments and obligations. There’s still school and work drop-offs and pick-ups. The schedule has become like a Rorschach test, unclear from week to week or day to day.
Eventually, shortly, the two lives will converge back into one. The nest will be empty and I’ll no longer be split.
2024-06-19 23:10:54
Today’s coffee is tasty—different tasty. It feels thick on the tongue, like a high percentage chocolate, with a bitterness bordering on sweetness. Subtle notes are difficult to find, hidden amongst the clouds of creamy, frothy whole milk that blankets—nay, marries—the espresso. Today is not a day for subtlety. It is a day to be consumed.
And this pain au chocolat ain’t bad, either.
