Robbie Fowler has signed for the North Queensland Fury. You heard it here second.
Author: Nathan Campbell
Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.
Things I use: The Evolution of a coffeesnob
That’s a graphical illustration of the typical path of the home consumption of a coffee snob. If you’ve skipped any of those stages good on you. The path from International Roast to roasting international beans at home is one filled with pitfalls and dangers.
The best way to traverse this is with the help of others. I’ve found the forum at coffeesnobs.com.au to be particularly helpful in my own personal coffee (r)evolution.
The forum was most helpful during the rebuild of Sheila, my Rancilio beastie.
I’ve collected a bunch of links to particular discussions that I think are vital to such a process.
1. Choosing a Grinder
2. Corretto
3. Buying used coffee equiptment – I’ve bought two grinders from this part of the forum, and been happy with both. I only bought the second because upgradeitis set in. Mostly because my other one was fine for home use, but I now roast beans for other people and take my machine to parties.
4. Plunger tips
5. Stovetop tips – you can get crema using a stovetop
6. Coffeesnobs glossary – helpful guide to finding your way around the forum.
This is something I would like to do when I have some spare time – but I also don’t want to electrocute myself. The Panasonic SD-200 breadmaker I use for roasting is annoying because you can’t just switch it on and make it spin. This modification adds a switch that just turns the motor on and off.
Other good coffee sites/articles:
“Ingredients for perfect espresso”
Knockbox – a forum moderated by the aforementioned Ministry Grounds (where I buy my green beans) Neil Atwood, good Australian alternative to coffeesnobs.
Home Barista – a world wide forum – mostly US centric. With a great “How tos” section
Whole Latte Love – full of reviews and stuff. Including this article on “rituals of espresso” that’s pretty helpful.
Coffeeparts – a great parts wholesaler who are more than happy to provide helpful customer service. I’ve bought a bunch of parts and paraphernalia from them.
Crema Magazine – an Australian coffee journal.
Cafe Grendel – a great coffee blog.
The Knockbox – another coffee blog run by an evangelical Christian who home roasts.
The best bits – February 4, 2009
Here's what has excited me from the blogosphere today.
- The Life of Christ in Cats
- Infuse Your Tea With Jaws
- Usernamecheck: check availability of a username in many websites at once
- Japanese Police Use Wii Miis For Suspect ID
- Want Photoshop? Not a Millionaire? Try GimpShop
- Homemade Vanilla Extract
- US passports can be read and copied from a moving car using a $250 rig
- US passports can be read and copied from a moving car using a $250 rig
- Okay, Which One Of You Hacked The Queensland Road Signs?
- Half a terabyte of public domain video, free for the downloading
GimpShop is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) dressed up as Photoshop.
Stupid RFID technology.
Daily bread
Having just posted about a weird medical condition yesterday I feel a bit silly doing it again today.
We’re tucking in to some freshly baked bread, fresh from the breadmaker, and I’m sure it has given me crazy hiccups. A quick google reveals I’m not alone.
How should I cure my hiccups?
Bookmarks for January 4th
Best of the interweb:
- Faith no more does little good for society – Opinion – smh.com.au – While the no religion box tells us about people’s sense of affiliation with religious institutions, it tells us nothing about their personal faith. How many of those who refused to describe themselves as Christians, Jews or Muslims still acknowledge the creator, and find themselves praying in times of need and wonder about life beyond death?More probing research, such as the world values survey conducted every 10 years by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, can help. Its most recent survey reveals that 80 per cent of Australians said they believed in “god”, 85 per cent believed in the “soul” and just 5 per cent described themselves as “atheists”.
- Is Christian music dying – I hope so. I loathe “contemporary Christian music”.
- Introduction to Shutter Speed in Digital Photography – Shutter Speed explained.
- Learning about Exposure – The Exposure Triangle – And more from the Digital Photography School – this time on finding the balance between ISO, aperture and shutter speed.
- Long Exposure Photography: 15 Stunning Examples – Some great long exposure photos – I particularly like the Lighthouse and the fireworks.
- Slow Shutter Shoot-Out – 3 Slow Shutter Speed Techniques – Another cool tip from the Digital Photography School. We are enjoying playing with shutter speed and other manual settings with our Canon.
- Mastering the Zoom Effect – A series of useful camera tips from the Digital Photography school. Useful if you’re playing with a new Digital SLR.
- STUFF JOURNALISTS LIKE – coffee – It now all makes sense to me. Actually, this website is kind of funny for a one joke pony. It’s very similar to the “Stuff white people like” which is another long running blog in the same vein.
- 1 Awesome Gmail tip You Don’t Know about. Seriously. | MakeUseOf.com
Wipeout – it’s no knockout
Novelty Australian game shows probably hit their peak with It’s a Knockout.
If not then maybe the original Australian Gladiators.
They hit new, unimaginable, lows with the Australian version of Wipeout. Watching stupid Americans hurt themselves was pretty compelling. Watching Australian trailer trash stand up and say “I’m representing all the female bus drivers in Australia while carrying my son’s first tooth” is less compelling.
Also painful was seeing the personal trainer who was “the fat kid at school” yell some stupid catch phrase, and the horribly unattractive 38 year old single IT consultant in rainbow socks pitch herself to prospective suitors was just nasty. Ouch. Watching her crawl through mud saying “this isn’t what I had planned. This isn’t how it was supposed to turn out” made me wonder just what she was expecting.
I guess the pierced forehead was meant to be a turn on too?
7.51pm – Where did they get these people from? Angus Tandy “the Human Cannonball” seemed like the most normal one of the bunch. And he was wearing a white jump suit with racing stripes.
YouTube Twosday: so good it had to be posted
When I was a young lad I spent a lot of time playing with GI Joes. Call them Barbies with guns. Call them a terrible influence on a developing psyche. I call them awesome. So this movie, complete with ninjas, is on the must see list.
YouTube Tuesday: What’s the number for 911
Thanks to Pete for introducing us to that one.
A much nicer font
This is a much nicer font I made using that very cool YourFonts tool. 
You can have it. For free. Download by right clicking and “saving as”. I don’t really expect anyone to use it. It’s just an example of what you can produce using that site.
I know it’s not in the league of my dad’s fonts. Like Foxjump (zip file).
Which was used by the Tasmanian government in its “love this” campaign.
But I spent way too much time today playing with that site.
K-Ruddy handout
For those who missed the news today – K-Rudd is giving something back to the workers of Australia. $950 a pop. The comrades in arms who have contributed to our time of economic prosperity. No doubt we’ll also be told to spend this cash to help stimulate the economy.
So now the question is “what to buy” – I wouldn’t mind spending it all on crappy USB products from Hong Kong… but can I suggest that if you want to make a positive contribution to reducing the abortion rate in Australia that you check out Free Money for New Lives a support service for mums who would otherwise have abortions.
The campaign was put together by a bunch of bible college students in Sydney and is a nice way for Christians to do something about the issue rather than picketing clinics where women are making pretty intense emotional decisions and are often close to psychological breaking point.
The group splits contributions between a couple of organisations. One aims to financially help mothers who want to keep their babies but are worried about the cost, and the other is a think tank – the Womens Forum Australia – that:
“works across the usual political and religious divides, to advocate for life affirming, pro-woman alternatives to abortion which would enhance women’s freedom to have their babies.”
In the end probably a much better cause than spending your money at “Brando” – which is a USB gadget seller based in Hong Kong. Spending your money off shore isn’t going to stimulate the economy at all anyway, so K-Rudd wouldn’t endorse that.
My font
I finally waded through the YourFont masses and created a quickly written font of my handwriting (right click and save as). This font was constructed with a stubbed niko, two stubbed nikos actually the first was out of ink.
I think I’ll play with this again later.
600
I passed 600 posts four posts ago. That’s a milestone of sorts. My posting rate growth is probably not sustainable – 346 of these posts came since October 2008. The other 258 were spread over a two and a half year period.
Stacks of fun
One BILLION DOLLARS. That’s what it looks like people. It’s in $100 notes and is a US billion. Which is different to the rest of the world. So it’s 10 million $100 notes.
The same artist has also stacked up your life* in Rolex hourglass sand.
*81 years.
Fontastic
Fonts are fun. I shared a link to this site in the “best bits” post below but it’s worth a post all of its own.
YourFonts will create a font from your handwriting for “FREE” (as in beer). Will upload mine when it’s done.
Hot chips
The debate rages. I received a bunch of comments on my Facebook status on the question of the superior brand of chip. Here’s an interesting little bit of chip trivia. There are two main players in the Australian chip producing landscape. Arnotts and Smiths (a Frito Lay distributor).
The Real McCoy produce Kettles, Samboy and Tasty Jacks (as reported April 08 – but not reflected on their website). They also distribute Pringles.
Smiths produce Smiths and Red Rock Deli.
Here I was thinking that Red Rock Deli was a successful little boutique chip start up made good. Oh well. Their sweet chilli and sour cream line still scores highly on my taste-o-metre.
Here’s my top ten “potato chip” varieties – this excludes Twisties, Cheezels, Burger Rings, and Cheese, Doritos, CCs, and Bacon Balls – I do appreciate all of those on their merits.
1. Red Rock Deli – Lime and Black Pepper
2. Red Rock Deli – Sweet Chilli and Sour Cream
3. Tasty Jacks – Chicken
4. Kettles – Crunch Cut BBQ Grill
5. Pringles – Texas BBQ Sauce
6. Red Rock Deli – Morrocan Spiced Chicken and Lemon
7. Smiths – Thinly Cut Thai Sweet Chilli
8. Tasty Jacks – BBQ
9. Kettles – Honey Baked Ham
10. Pringles – Sour Cream and Onion
Honourable Mention – Smiths – Thinly Cut Roast Chicken – for longevity.