ændrew » awesomesauce

Highlight diaries #1

I’ve been using the geolocation service Highlight for about 4 months now, mainly because it intrigues me.

The idea is it grabs your Likes and some basic profile data from Facebook to create a profile, which then shows up on the devices of people who have the app and walk within what seems about a 2-block radius. Likewise, you see their profile and can message, ping/poke (“high five”) or favourite (“highlight”) them.

Maybe it’s just London, but in the sum of the time I’ve used the service, a grand total of one person has actually messaged me. I’m thus going to try experimenting with the medium and posting my results here.

So far I’ve tried:

• High-fiving anyone with 5 or more shared interests
• High-fiving anyone who seems even remotely cool
• Posting about London’s shitty weather
• Posting about Daft Punk’s latest album
• Posting about how I high-five anyone that’s cool

Any thoughts? Am I doing something wrong? Am I just that lame? Or is Highlight just — on a whole — a pretty big waste of time for meeting interesting people in my community?

-Æ.

Roasting Journal: Costa Rican at Preset 2 Pt. 2

Today I once again tried roasting some Costa Rican beans at Preset 2. My last batch was really decent, but it was a little bit light, even by my standards. I was thinking about going from 4:45 to maybe 4:00, but I kinda got carried away taking photos and roasted to 2:45.

Really though, I think they needed it; while darker than yesterday, they’re still pretty brown. I’d say it’s between a medium and a dark roast, leaning more towards “medium” than “dark.” That said, I won’t really know until I sample it sometime tomorrow.

I think after this batch I’m going to wait until I’m entirely out of coffee before roasting anymore so I can sample it the same day I roast it. Next I’ll do two batches of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans, one lighter and one darker; stay tuned for photos later today.

Roasting Journal: Costa Rican at Preset 2

In order to better keep track of my exploits in roasting coffee beans, I’m going to start posting my settings and experiences to Tumblr.

I’m using the i-Roast2, and this is probably the fifth or sixth batch of beans I’ve roasted with it. Up until now, I’ve used Preset I, which is a straight “10 minutes at 450ºF, 4 minute cool” process. The first time I roasted beans, I did the entire ten minutes, which set off the smoke detectors and resulted in an extremely dark roast. I don’t particularly like dark roast coffee; I generally drink my coffee black and burned beans (such as are often used at Tim Horton’s or Starbucks) make the coffee taste really bitter. A medium roast is not only easier to drink black, but it also contains more caffeine — something to think about next time somebody brags how dark their roast is. At any rate, I generally now manually put my roaster into cool mode with 4:00 to 4:30 remaining in Preset I.

According to my roaster’s manufacturer, Preset II is more graduated, starting at 455ºF for 6 minutes, then moving to 400ºF for 4 minutes, then back to 435ºF for the last 1:30. While lasting 1:30 longer than Preset I, Preset II ultimately gives more lenience to medium and light roasters due to its longer and lower-temp second stage, while giving dark roasters the ability to burn the crap out of their beans with the extra-hot third stage. I decided to give it a whirl today, running some Costa Rican beans through and initializing cooling with 4:45 remaining on the clock (6:45 total roasting time).

While I still managed to set off my smoke detector (even with the roaster running under my stove’s fume hood and the kitchen window open), I don’t think there was as much smoke when I roasted the same beans for ~7:30 on preset I. I’ll probably sample them later today and post the results.

I’ve also been trying to figure out how to set specific roast times — if I only want to roast 6 minutes, I shouldn’t have to manually push “cool”. That said, every time I try to set my own time, it puts like 30 seconds on the clock; something to investigate.