Apologies for the stagnation. My little sister is getting married tomorrow, and I’m preaching on Sunday. So expect it to continue for a couple of days.
I will try to find interesting things to say in the meantime.
Brisbane Coffee Review: Cup, West End
Looking for the best coffee in Brisbane? Look no further than Cup, in Russell Street West End. It’s a grungy little warehouse/garage in a side street in West End. A hipster’s paradise (and there were plenty of them around). And the coffee is amazing. So good.
They boast an incredible machine. A Slayer. Which I’ve been excited about in the past (more than once). The Slayer was the first machine to allow changing of pressure during the pouring of a shot.
I discovered Cup a couple of months ago. And was suitably impressed. And Robyn and I checked it out yesterday after I dropped my machine in for a service (which means I’ll be checking out cafes for the next few days).
Cup’s house blend is a rich, sweet and earthy delight. It is so thick and goopy. Viciously viscous. As an espresso it goes straight to the back of your mouth and then explodes. It really is that good.
In milk it’s equally sensational. I had a flat white, Robyn a piccolo latte.
This is their current blend. Featuring a couple of beans I regularly roast and sell.
40% BRAZIL Daterra.
Nice balanced sweetness and body. This is the yellow bourbon varietal from a solid reliable farm.40% GUATEMALA El Injerto.
This is a mixed Cattura and Bourbon coffee from the award winning El Injerto farm. It is very clean and sweet with a nice lime acidity. Always cups up great.20% ETHIOPIA Yirgacheffe.
A new Yirgacheffe thats just arrived adds just a little acid to tie the others together.
Here are our coffees. iPhone style.
Bold, and beautiful, visualisation
The Bold and the Beautiful in 6 minutes. Contains adult themes. And stupidity.
Thanks Cafe Dave.
Take me driving in your third person car…
Like many of the internet generation I’m a fan of Red vs Blue. And I was thrilled to discover that the Red v Blue back catalogue is on YouTube.
I discovered that because I watched this video, made by Rooster Teeth, the guys responsible for Red v Blue… there’s a pretty strong language warning on this one about half way in.
Here, in case you haven’t seen it, is the first episode of Red V Blue – there’s a language warning on it too. It’s a series shot entirely using characters from Halo.
Typographic Sins
It has been a while since my last typography related post. So here, as my penance, is a list of typographic sins, with examples (in a PDF) for you to mull over. It’s pretty standard fare. But they are good rules for keeping in mind in order to satisfy your pedantic/designer friends…
- Two spaces between sentences.
Repent of this sin by using only one space. - Dumb quotes instead of smart quotes.
Evil: “Thou shalt not misuse type” § Good: “Thou shalt not misuse type” - Dumb apostrohe instead of a smart apostrophe.
Profane: Don’t use prime marks § Sacred: Don’t use prime marks
By the way, apostrophes always face this way: Pot o’ gold.
They never face this way: Pot ‘o gold. - Failing to tuck periods/commas inside quote marks.
Immoral: “I love type so much”, she confessed.
Chaste: “I love type so much,” she testified.
Life imitates webcomic
Somewhere in my archives there’s a story about people putting the ideas put forward by XKCD into some sort of real life application. Well. Here’s another example (previous examples include adults filling their lounge room with colourful balls to make their own ball room).
Somebody did this. And you can follow the progress of the eBay robot on Twitter, and read about the source code here with an update here…
- It runs every day at 8pm (although it was earlier today because I was testing it)
- It gains $1 every day, and has a 1 in 3 chance of buying an item on any particular day. This means that it will save up money to buy some (slightly) more expensive items.
The method it uses to select items:
- It has a bunch of top-level categories it looks in.
- For each of these categories, it searches for the term “Free shipping”, specifying both pay-now and buy-now, sorting by newest listings, with a maximum of 100 items returned per category.
- For each of these items, it filters on buy-now price. It tries to spend at least 50% of its savings.
- For each of the surviving items, it looks up the individual auction details to find its shipping information so it can filter on free shipping. Despite searching for the term ‘free shipping’ to start, only a small number of items have this.
- At this point I have a list of items that match the price requirements, and can be bought with a credit card buy-now.
- I then sort this list by ‘rarity’ – doing a search for the item title, and finding the item that returns the least results. As the objective here is to buy strange and esoteric things, rarity is preferred.
- Finally I buy the rarest item and subtract its cost from the bots savings.
Sounds fun, right? The guy responsible made a couple of changes yesterday:
- It now tries not to buy in categories it’s bought from before. No more stamps! (probably)
- It biases towards auctions with more expensive shipping costs – If you check out the trademe listings, you’ll see there’s quite a lot of items for $1-2, but the more interesting things typically have higher shipping.
- The ‘only bid every 3 days’ rule is gone. Now it will wait until it has at least 20 items that it can possibly buy before making a bid. This is strongly dependent on how much money it has, so it should come to about the same thing.
So far he’s bought some watch batteries, some stickers, and a casio watch. Hooray.
Burgers and their ads: photographed (like you needed proof)
You knew it, and I knew it. We’ve known it for years. Burgers from fast food places don’t look like their ads, in fact the same could be said for all fast food from all fast food places, and in fact, for all food, from all food places… but in order to document what we already knew this guy took photos of the burgers side by side with the photos used in the ads.
The real pay off was that the guy responsible figured out that the ad burgers couldn’t even fit in their real boxes.
Uncaught, bear handed
How do you thwart a high-tech security system that analyses your fingerprints. In a school. Because all schools need fingerprint scanners… at least according to a school in New South Wales. You stick gummy bears on your fingers.
Yes. Apparently gummy bears can foil most fingerprint scanners. Exciting, no?
From the scientific study of gummy fingers and biometric security systems:
“We also pointed out that artificial fingers can be made not only of silicone but also of gelatin, and examined 11 types of fingerprint systems whether or not they accept the gummy fingers. Consequently, all of these systems accepted the gummy fingers all in their enrollment procedures and also with the rather higher probability in theirverification procedures. The results are enough for us to see evidence that artificial fingers can be accepted by commercial fingerprint systems. The objection will no doubt be raised that it is very difficult to take an impression of the live finger from a legitimate user without the cooperation of her/him. Therefore, we demonstrated that the gummy fingers made from residual fingerprints can be accepted by all of the 11 systems. “
Another brick and a wall
Why do these preachers always sound like they’re hyperventilating?
Via Christian Nightmares.
Misstifying…
There is surely a sermon illustration, or something, in this…
From a recent international between Qatar and Uzbekistan.
Shirt of the Day: Sup, Bud
I like this. The white cord raps around the back of the shirt.
Again, via Threadless (though I’m not sure it’s still in print).
Disinformation Graphics
Infographics make the web go around. So it was only going to be a matter of time before people started putting together disinformation graphics. So, I give you, Helpful Figures.
Coffee dregs art
You’ve heard of, and no doubt appreciated, latte art. But what about art in the cup itself. After the coffee is finished.
From Flickr.