I used to really dislike coffee (as my brother keeps reminding me when I try to push for better coffee at my parents). Now I really like coffee and for that I mostly blame my good friend Andrew Duncan.
The Early Years
The earliest I can remember actually having a coffee I liked was probably 1997/1998 when we went to Canada on holiday. I’m fairly sure I had a coffee Frappuccino type drink which was likely from Starbucks. I probably enjoyed this because it was cold, sweet and full of milk so took away the bitterness usually associated with coffee. I think from then I probably started to drink coffee on occasion at home; instant with lots of milk and sugar.
Proper Coffee
I’m fairly sure my parents had ground coffee either on a Sunday with breakfast or for special occasions. My brother and I always enjoyed plunging the cafetiere (who doesn’t, it’s the best bit if you’re not drinking it!). I’m sure I had some on occasion but I have no good memory of it.
The University Years
Mostly instant, but more of it. I got a little desktop coffee machine (although older that that one, with only one tiny mug) as a present so needed some actual ground coffee. It worked pretty well for a tiny cup of coffee and sure helped for 9am lectures.
In my third year someone in our house got a drip coffee machine so that was good for a while.
Starting Work
Once I got a job I was persuaded to get rid of the instant and go for the pre ground from the supermarket. I generally ended up with the Qualità Rossa blend from Lavazza and sure remember enjoying it. It all started to build up from there.
Fresh Roasted
I started ordering fresh roasted but ground coffee from Has Bean. Then I got this awesome hand grinder and obviously started ordering whole beans. I got an electric grinder (although it’s the older version now, the Maestro Plus) last year and it’s great.
The number of brew methods I had at my disposal also increased. The obvious starting point of a cafetiere, then an AeroPress and then a SwissGold one cup filter. All make a great cup of coffee.
I use the SwissGold by far the most. It makes a good cup with very little effort and interaction. This is extremely handy first thing in the morning as I am rushing to get out the door. The AeroPress is my favourite though. It makes such a good, smooth cup.
Good Beans
I generally get my beans from Has Bean, the best beans with the best service.
I go for a different coffee every time just to try them. Through a process of elimination I have come to find I enjoy the earthier coffees a lot more than the fruity ones. It’s a difficult thing to tell, as it’s mainly a description from the roaster as I can’t tell myself (most of the time) when a coffee would be described as fruity. Sometimes you can really taste a certain flavour though; there was this lovely one from Bolivia last year that had a great biscuit taste.
Additives
When I have a good cup with good beans I just drink it black. If it’s done right then it’s not bitter and doesn’t have any of the bad tastes. It can be naturally sweet and tastes great. Sometimes I get the need for a milky cup though and that’s good too.
In Conclusion
So, I like coffee a lot. I only generally have one cup a day. It tastes great.
The glasses look a little strange, like Geordi La Forge’s visor…they might go over a little better if they looked more Warby Parkerish.
As futuristic as they look, a pair of classic glasses seem to me like a better idea. Especially if you already wear glasses, then you could just get a prescription pair.
Now all we need is for them to be as immersive as the glasses in Dennō Coil.
I like taking photos. I think I have always liked taking photos.
Original Film
When I was little my parents mostly used one of two cameras: an Olympus Trip 35 and a Canon T50. Both of which they still have but aren’t used any more. I don’t think anyone has tried the T50 for a long time but my brother apparently used the Trip a while back but the low light warning doesn’t work any more (someone dropped it!).
I remember the Trip being used a lot by Dad when we were on holidays, probably because it was smaller and he was probably having to deal with us. I can’t remember how much my Mum took photos, I only really seem to remember Dad with the cameras. At somepoint I was allowed to use the Trip, but I don’t remeber using it a lot. The T50 had my attention.
I always thought the T50 was the best. It wound the film on itself, you could change the lens and you could manually focus it. I even got to take photos with it! I don’t remember if they were good, probably not, but I learnt to change the lens between the two we had; a prime and a zoom, the zoom was the best. I also learnt to focus them, which really helped. The one very clear memory I have is playing with the camera with no film “taking” photos of this one toy car I had. You pulled the car back and let go. It went slowly but then after a little way it’s bright yellow outer shell burst off to reveal a sports car and it went racing away; I loved that car. I think I was trying to get action shots.
After this I think more school happened and I didn’t really have a real camera. I got one of those Advanced Photo System point and shoot cameras. It wasn’t great, but this did let me see what happens when you open the back of the camera with a film in: the developer sticks an infuriating sticker on the picture telling you not to do that.
On to Digital
At some point I got a digital video camera. One of the earlier, small cheap ones. It had a tiny terrible screen and it was likely very low resolution but I really enjoyed that. I remember getting a huge 256mb compact flash card for a cheap £30 or so (not sure how close that price is to reality). It also did stills and could record just sound. I remember using it a lot but can’t remember what for and I can’t find anything that was shot on it. I do remember making a video of the house one Christmas for Mum to remember where things were the next year.
I used my phone camera for a year or so before I got a dedicated digital camera; a Nokia N70. I think it did a pretty good job overall:
It’s Getting Serious Now
The next camera I can remember getting was a while later (2008): a Canon IXUS 950 IS. After much Internet research I settled on the Canon. It’s a really great point and shoot and did everything I wanted at the time. It could also have the custom firmware CHDK which let you do a lot of cool things that the camera shouldn’t have been able to do, such as long exposures and movement triggering (for lightning! (that I didn’t really get working)). I really liked the results I got out of that camera:
In 2009 I decided I wanted to step things up an get a DSLR. After much research again, I went with the suggestion from Ken Rockwell of the Nikon D40, it was good advice. This was at the time such a great choice. It was soon to be replaced by the D3000 so it was actually fairly cheap. It’s fast and works really well. I was very happy with the results with the included lens:
But I also wanted to get the 35mm prime lens. I love the photos I get with this lens; it’s the only one I end up using. I find it fantastic in most situations:
Did I mention how much I love my photos from the D40.
I would of course like a super fancy newer camera but it won’t make my photos overall any better, probably just bigger (and videos), I’m so happy with my results right now.
iPhone
I also like taking photos with my iPhone, the camera is good. The ridiculous amount of good editing software available for it is so great and so much fun.
Film
I love the look of shots taken on a film camera, just something about them. There is this shot of my group of friends at university that is grainy and kind of looks like it could have been taken anytime in the past 20-30 years (at least I think so).
One of my friends went around Europe in 2009 and took some great photos on film.
Looking at all these photos made me want to try a film camera again so I got an Olypmus Trip from eBay. My first roll didn’t go so well as I had apparently forgotton how to load a film. The second roll has been in the camera for about a year now, only a few shots left so I get to develop it soon!
I have just finally got to watching John Gruber’stalk from Çingleton 2011. It’s a great talk, worth watching. The talk wasn’t about iCloud but one of his answers to a question at the end (around 46 minutes) he talked about not being able to use iCloud unless your app was in the App Store. This has been recently brought up with regards to the new Gatekeeper funcitonality Mountatin Lion and so reminded me of a point I haven’t seen1: the cost of iCloud to Apple.
A lot of the arguments about Apple keeping iCloud App Store only seem to focus on security, keeping developers from storing massive amounts of arbitrary data in iCloud and other such things. These are all very valid reasons and on their own good enough reasons for Apple to do this. However what about the cost of running iCloud, because it must cost Apple something. Some of the cost is likely factored into the initial purchase of the devices and Apple must take some of the money from their 30% of app sales to fund iCloud. If Apple allowed any developers to use iCloud then those not in the App Store would be costing them money.
However it is also likely that the cost of iCloud is negligible compared to other things and that all of Apples vast profits easily cover all running costs of the service.
There must be a cost somewhere.
Unless anyone can point me in the direction of an article↩
A few friends have been talking about webcomics recently and I said I would get a list of some of the many I read. So here they are, not really for everyone, but someone might find it useful at some point. These aren’t in an order and I will write something for a few if I can think of anything useful or interesting to add and I might update the list later.
MS Paint Adventures
I am really enjoying the current story, it’s been going for over two years now and I’m sure there are over a thousand pages so it’s not the easiest to get into right now. There are some summaries on the site somewhere.
‘It’s not Pokémon’ the PR people shout. Of course it isn’t; that would be silly. Combining World of Warcraft and Pokémon is an insane idea that could only end in tears.
Whilst checking how Apple spell “centre” in “Notification Centre” for my iOS 5 post I noticed they had localised it for British spelling; a nice surprise.
If you hadn’t heard, it’s pretty great. Here are a few points I wanted to talk about.
iCloud
iCloud seems to be holding up pretty well so far. I haven’t heard of any major issues and I haven’t had any, which does bode well. The only minor problem I had was when setting it up on my Mac. Everything seemed to enable except the “Mail & Notes” option in the settings. I would check the box, it would say starting, but then upon leaving the screen and going back in the box was unchecked and mail not set up. Leaving this alone for an hour or so, then trying it again worked fine, so I can only assume that it was just a slight connection issue. However there was no message saying such, it just didn’t do anything.
Notification Centre
Notification Centre seems to be liked by some but not by others. I do like it. The problem some people seem to be having looks like more to do with habit than anything else; not checking Notification Centre. I see it as something that people would actually get used to doing over time. A scenario for this problem is given by Ben Brooks in his article The Annoyment Center:
So here’s a common scenario for me:
While driving home from work I get notifications from OmniFocus, Twitter, Text Messages.
At some point during the drive I need to make a phone call, so I unlock the phone and make the call, using voice dial or Dialvetica.
I get home and use my phone to check Twitter and Email, but now all the notifications that were on the lock screen are gone because I unlocked my phone and made that call.
Therefore: I never see those notifications. I thought this entire system was designed so that I don’t miss notifications any more?
I would argue that the last bullet point should read “I get home and use my phone to check Notification Centre, Twitter and Email…"; so you still see relevant, up to date, notifications that you may have missed but are now gone from the lock screen.
User-Defined Keyboard Shortcuts
I am just coming round to seeing the usefulness of TextExpander on my Mac and these are a good way to get a bit of that functionality built into every text fields in iOS. These can be set in Settings > General > Keyboard.
iPad Gestures
I got round to having a long play on my iPad last night with iOS 5 installed and these new gestures are just awesome. With 4 or 5 fingers they let you swipe left and right to switch apps, swipe up to get the app switched and pinch to go to the home screen. Much less double clicking the home button is great.
As is usual now, I was reading Twitter on my iPhone first thing this morning when I read the sad news that Steve Jobs had passed away. He is the first public figure, someone that I have never met, who I am actually sad has died.
I started writing this on my iPhone on a train and have finished it on my iPad at home. When sat with the iPad next to me, every time I look over at it I think about how I am living in the future. He helped make the future now.
The iPhone 4S is a significantly different device under the hood, including a faster processor, better camera, faster mobile web access, better antenna design, worldphone features, and better battery life. In other words, a much better phone. (These aren’t just “specs,” either — these things matter.)
These rumours about the new iPhone next week are all over the place now.
I can’t remember any mention of this anywhere (but there probably is) but if we have the iPhone 4S in an inventory database and no iPhone 5 (yet), couldn’t this rumoured tear drop iPhone 5 actually just be a new iPod Touch and these cases are just labelled based on these rumours?
