Software History

Toward the end of autumn, leaves start to go yellow; red, brown. Then, what feels to me like all of a sudden, the leaves have fallen off the trees. The moments of transition -- when you first see a leaf turn yellow, when you start to notice the scrunching of leaves under your feet, when you start to see your breath -- are beautiful. Seasons change gradually, then all at once.

I have started watching Yes, Prime Minister, the sequel to the Yes, Minister series where the Minister for the Department of Administrative Affairs moves on to the top job in the UK government. And yes, my last sentence contained the word

There is a special feeling when the sun shines through the window near which you are situated. It is delightful when the sun is not so bright as to cause strain on your eyes, but bright enough to illuminate your space. I am seated next to a green plant; the sunlight makes the plant look more vibrant. That reminds me, I have to water my plants. Adds that task to his TODO list.

There are websites that let you turn a Google Sheet into a complete website. Such tools are great if you have a spreadsheet of content and want to create an online listing for said content without having to go through a lot of hoops (set up a website, figure out how to import your content, import your content, etc.).

I discovered Cult Espresso on Instagram near the start of my speciality coffee journey. Their online presence is unique and playful; a reminder to not take yourself too seriously when you are making coffee. Interested in their cafe—and their move to start roasting beans—I decided to reach out with a few questions. Adam, a barista a Cult Espresso, took some time to speak to me over email about what it is like to be a barista and what he does at Cult. Enjoy the interview.

The title of this post must be in the running for the longest title for a blog post on this blog thus far. That aside, I just wanted to take a quick moment to say that the thermal printer project was mentioned on the Adafruit blog. For those who are not familiar with Adafruit, they are in the business of manufacturing and selling hardware. They sell a lot of hardware that works with the Raspberry Pi and Arduino, including the thermal printer that I am programming at the moment.

I have gone down a mini rabbit hole. Unlike many rabbit holes, I can map out how I got here. I perused Adactio's blog, saw a link to a blog about writing, and clicked on an article that looked interesting. Then I read a piece of advice about writing more, saw a link to another site, then clicked on another article that looked interesting. I went through three different sites to find the article I found, all the while not seeking any piece of information in particular. Like all things, internet rabbit hole exploration can be fun and teach you a thing or two. Like all things too, moderation is advised.

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 post where I chat more about this series. Let's begin!

The Web is about enabling collaboration between people. I can write a blog post about coffee, publish it, and share it with coffee roasters around Scotland. That post can be referenced for years by people I will never meet who share my passion for coffee. People can respond to that post: like it, share it with others, leave comments. The Web is social.

As much as I love the brewing process, I am always looking forward to tasting the coffee I am brewing. I find pleasure in coffee brewing because I know that the resultant taste of the coffee is in large part a result of my efforts. Everyone from the roaster to the farmer plays their role but it is my duty to make sure I turn the beans they have processed into a delicious brew.

I first learned about Full Court Press by reading Coffee: A Modern Field Guide, a pocket handbook written by the founder of Full Court Press. First a cafe, Full Court Press has expanded into roasting their beans, with a commitment to transparency that I have not seen from any other roaster to-date. I sent their team an email with some questions about their roastery and transparency policies. Over email, I had an interesting chat with Christopher, the roastery operations manager. Our interview is below.

Last night, I thought about high school for a moment. It has been a while. What brought high school to mind was that I considered how I could improve my learning. I've decided that I want to take a more structured approach to my coffee education so that I can stay on-track.

In keeping with my personal philosophy to order from Scottish coffee roasters, I recently ordered a bag of Kenyan peaberry coffee from Scotland's own Artisan Roast. Artisan Roast is one of the biggest players on the Scottish coffee scene and my first coffee from them did not disappoint; it was delicious and well-balanced. So, I knew that I'd get something unique from the new coffee I ordered from them.

A good cup of coffee has a balance between acidic, bitter, and sweet compounds. When you properly extract a coffee—which is usually defined by achieving an extraction yield between 18 and 22 percent—these acids are well-balanced. They do not disappear, rather other compounds help to take away from some of the sour tastes you can experience with acids.

After many hours spent brewing espresso, taking notes, and diagnosing my shots, I realised that the grinder was the weakest link in my chain. It is true what they say about how you should never overlook your grinder for espresso. My espresso journey is temporarily on hold until my new espresso grinder, the REMI hand grinder by Option-O, arrives. So, what should I write about? That question has been on my mind.

The Acaia Pearl scale has been on my mind for a while, more so than any other piece of coffee equipment. I have been having an issue with my regular scales—which were a cheap purchase on Amazon—where the weight of the contents on the scale sometimes changes by 0.1 or 0.2 grams. This behaviour has affected the scales since the start, but I did not mind because the changes did not have a big impact on my coffee brewing.

Earlier this year, I spent some time reading about Japanese coffee culture. I came across the Nel drip (short for

Glen Lyon Coffee Roasters, who are based in the Scottish Highlands, are one of the most well-known roasters in Scotland, roasting single-origin coffees from around the world. I had read a bit about how they got started online. But, I had some questions about how troasters like Glen Lyon source coffee.

One of my favourite places in York is the Museum Gardens. In the gardens, there is a mix of old buildings and nature. St. Mary’s Abbey is an eye-catching centerpiece to the gardens; the remains standing tall and evoking curiosity about the quality of old architecture.

I have been playing around a lot with my thermal printer. While I have accomplished the initial goals I had in mind when I purchased the printer (create a program that prints my webmentions and print myself a daily update), I know there is still more that I can do with this device. Seeing how creative the Little Printer community was, I have been thinking up new modules to add to my thermal printer.

I sent my first webmention yesterday. Well, that's not completely true. I have sent one or two in the past but they were just test-runs. Yesterday was the real deal. I had some thoughts on a blog post I read and I decided that I'd share them with a webmention.

Breakfast and Coffee (b&c), a wiki that aggregates breakfast and coffee recommendations, is now over one year old. I published a blog post announcing b&c on February 3rd, 2022. Since then, I have syndicated most of my coffee shop recommendations to the wiki and have made a number of improvements. b&c has been the subject of numerous discussions in the IndieWeb community, resulting in new ideas on how to improve the site.

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.

1517 Fund posted an interesting question on their Twitter account:

I was just reading a post by Rach Smith on

For a moment a few days ago, I was tempted to build a server-side application for my website. What stopped me from doing so was my memories from building my personal website with Next.js. My site worked. It looked nice. My site lacked one thing. I didn't really know how it worked. There were too many abstractions away from the code itself. I was often confused about why I had made certain programming decisions.

A few days ago, I decided to purchase the Adafruit Thermal Printer, which was compatible with the Raspberry Pi. This thermal printer has been on my mind for a while but this week a reason for buying one came to mind (aside from the fun of experimenting with a thermal printer which was obvious to me). I decided that I wanted to generate a random Aeropress recipe that I could then print. I thought this would be both fun to create and, upon further reflection, good excuse for me to try new Aeropress recipes that I might otherwise not use. So this project would have been a nudge to help me get out of my Aeropress recipe rut.

Try the demo of my project (only works in Chrome and Safari due to Web Speech API compatability issues with Firefox) | See the project source code

At the

A key part of my