Software History

Most labels on bags of speciality coffee contain quite a bit of information about the origin of the coffee, the flavours you may be able to taste in the coffee, and how the coffee was processed. Coffee roasters often display even more information on their websites. It took me a while to learn what all of the words meant and why they were important to me as a coffee drinker.

Over the last week or two, the weather has been steadily improving. The sunny weather inspired me to try making an iced coffee at home. I was able to make a few tasty iced coffees. Then, I thought about adding milk. My recent French press frothing technique came in handy and after some testing I made an iced latte with which I was happy.

Black Pine Coffee is one of the many independent speciality coffee shops that make up the thriving and growing Glasgow coffee scene. Black Pine Coffee serves blend of coffee they designed with The Good Coffee Cartel, retail coffee from a rotating selection of roasters, sweet treats, and toasties. In this interview, I chat with Pete, the owner of Black Pine Coffee, about what it's like to run the store.

Yesterday I walked on a new path, eager to explore my local area more. My route was a mystery. I reveled in the excitement of new sights to see. As I walked further, I entered a wooded area. I reached a hill; the gradient was steep, but I was unbothered. I was strolling, leisurely, observing the flora and fauna around me.

TL;DR: I now have my own DNS resolver at jamesg.blog with some fun utilities. Read the GitHub documentation for a complete reference manual of all queries, and keep reading below for an explanation of the project and how it works.

In my latest coffee chat I talk with Louisa, a self-proclaimed coffee snob, about her blog, Coffee Snob Blog. We chat about Louisa's inspiration, how she feels cafes can elevate your mood, and how much time she spends working on her blog. The interview is below.

My go-to drink at speciality coffee shops is the cappuccino. It has been months since I last had a cappuccino and I wondered to myself whether I could make one at home (without an espresso machine). After some research online and subsequent experimentation, I found a recipe for an at-home cappuccino which works for me.

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

Breakfast and Coffee is a place to share information about breakfast and coffee shops you have visited, with a twist: where possible, contributions should come from personal websites rather than directly through the website editing interface. Breakfast and Coffee is a MediaWiki. This gives the site a lot of features like categories, a good page editor, and edit tracking out of the box. But, the site accepts Webmentions. When Breakfast and Coffee receives a webmention, it tries to create an entry on the wiki.

I took the bus back to the Edinburgh City Centre from the airport today, after my flight from Berlin. The tram had just departed and I thought the bus would be quicker. I carried my suitcase onto the bus, lifted my suitcase onto the luggage rack, then sat down. A few moments later, two young women boarded. I would guess they were around my age. They sat down and started conversing in German. I gazed out the window and watched people walk past.

One of the little moments of joy I experienced while in Berlin last year happened near Brandenburg Gate. I was walking through the Tiergarten, after having walked a lot that day. If I recall correctly, my ankles were a bit tired. On vacation, I tend to spend a lot of time on foot, eager for new adventures. On my way toward Brandenburg Gate, I started to hear a sound. It was the song Hallelujah being played softly. A woman's voice was signing in the background. I could hear a guitar.

I was walking through the shopping centre, speaking, when I heard a song in the background, playing through the speakers at a tone loud enough that I could hear it but not so loud the music was the only part of the environment on which I could focus. As soon as I heard the music, my mind leaped into action, noting

One of the cafes on my

Over the last few months, I have spent a lot of time thinking about, talking about, and building a search engine. The search engine was first designed for my blog and then I expanded it into IndieWeb Search, a search engine for the IndieWeb community. Working on this project has been interesting but also challenging. Search involves solving many different problems, even if your intention is only to build a search engine for your own website.

I am experimenting with statistical next word prediction. My goal is to build a system that can accurately answer a question given a corpus of text. For now, my system is producing interesting summaries of content. Below is a summary of my post on the joy in listening to songs you used to love from a few days ago, generated by the tool I am building.

The Cheapshot cafe in Edinburgh caught my eye online because it is the size of a police box. Curious about its origins and size, I decided to reach out to Mel, the present operator of Cheapshot. Mel kindly answered a few of my questions about Cheapshot for this blog. Below is our interview.

I shared a few photos from my trip in Berlin on my notes blog yesterday. I realise I have a few more photos to share. I thought I would do that here so that they appear on my main blog (this one!) and in the feeds of all of those that subscribe to the blog.

I was sad to see that the Beaker Browser project has now been sunsetted. Beaker did great work on building concepts related to a read-write decentralized web. Beaker showed that there is a lot of room for exploration in browsers. The notice that the project had been sunsetted, while unfortunate, was a pleasant read.

A few years ago, I got a Beatles album on Vinyl. The album, called 1, brought together their greatest hits in one vinyl. Well, as many greatest hits as you could fit in a record. There are many more songs that did not make the cut. The Beatles wrote so many good songs. It was one of my first vinyl records and I loved it. At the time, I was listening to Beatles music regularly and I learned words to many of my favourite songs.

When I ran out of beans over a month ago, I stopped in my local coffee shop and asked for some beans. They gave me some beans they served in the cafe although I was not sure where they were from. I later found the beans were from The Missing Bean, a speciality direct trade coffee company based in Oxford. I've been following them on social media and I decided to reach out to see if I could get a peek behind the scenes of roasting.

I love reading cafe reviews and so I was thrilled to discover Double Skinny Macchiato, a site that often reviews coffee shops around the U.K.. I recently got the chance to speak with Bex, the author of Double Skinny Macchiato, about her blog, how she came up with the name Double Skinny Macchiato, and more. The interview is below.

The latest CSS Tricks newsletter has me energised about what browsers could be. The newsletter makes this point:

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

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and well-known for its food culture, speciality coffee community, and more. Edinburgh has many good food stops and coffee shops minutes away from the Waverley train station, a common entry point into the city.

I was playing Jon Batiste's I Need You on piano this weekend. His music came to mind earlier today. Jon Batiste inspired me to learn how to play the melodica, an instrument that Batiste describes as

Cairngorm Coffee has deep roots in the Scottish coffee scene, from being involved with the Scottish Aeropress Championships to its reputation for roasting quality coffees. I've been following Cairngorm on social media and I had a few questions about the business. I reached out to the founder, Robi Lambie, and he shared some exciting insights about what it is like to work at a coffee roastery.

Thursday 03:57 ⸺ Finally, an excuse to use the long hyphen character. That is not the real name of the character comprising three hyphens, but I cannot recall the name. I should have no excuse: this very topic was a matter of discussion 10 days ago. Nevertheless!

Sweetness is my favourite attribute in a cup of coffee. The best coffees I've had have been floral or fruity with a nice dose of sweetness. In coffee, we do not talk about sweetness the same way we talk about white sugar. Speciality coffee does not have any added sugars. This is why you will see some people refer to sweetness in speciality coffee as

I ended my last blog post on coffee cupping, where I cupped the same coffee roasted to three different degrees, with two questions:

Note: This review does contain many spoilers. But, if you already know who won, then you will probably not mind.