Writing
Letterboxd
Coffee Reviews:
10/06/23
My birthday was last month and my friend gifted me a coffee bean grinder, which to be honest I had been wanting to buy for a while. I've used my French press plenty before, but always will pre-ground coffee from the supermarket, and this is really all-purpose coffee. Which is to say the grind is neither fine nor coarse, so it can be used with a filter, cafetiere, moka pot, etc. But this results in a lot of sediment ending up in my mug, and it doesn't taste spectacular. My grinder, however, allows me to choose how coarse I want the coffee, which is great! So I've been hand-cranking out some coffee recently, and I'm not just saying this to justify extra effort or money... but I really do like it! I have a cup every morning (unless I have something to do in the morning. It helps that uni is finished for me now and so I have plenty of time to do frivolous stuff in the morning now...)
Yesterday I also bought a stove top espresso maker, or moka pot. I had never had an espresso shot on its own before, because I didn't think id like it, but who knows. Even after making it I still haven't haha, I put equal amounts of milk in it. I didn't want to not enjoy the first thing that came out of the pot, it might discourage me from using it again! It was very nice though. I've been using generic brand beans from Tesco, but I might branch out soon. The only thing is, the pot makes 8 shots, and unless I find 2 or 3 friends to drink it with me, it means I have to pour away a lot of coffee, and waste a lot of beans. I'm still trying to find out if I can make fewer shots, but unfortunately I don't think I can. When I go home I can give it to my mum and dad I guess! That's less waste. All in all, it tastes good, I like it, I'd use it more often if I could. Maybe I could put the excess in an iced coffee and keep it in the fridge... hmm........ or discover what a cold brew is? Ik that goes on overnight so that might be a good alternative.
I've been thinking about whether or not making the coffee myself using these convoluted methods actually makes it taste nicer, or if I'm being delusional, but I don't think it matters. It's like making a cake vs buying one. the shop-bought cake might taste really good, but because you had a part in making your cake, it will have a certain special je ne sais quoi.
One last thing -- I went to a Vietnamese cafe the other day, and tried an egg coffee for the first time. I had never heard of it before! I think it's espresso and whipped egg whites? It's very very sweet and kind of thick. I don't think I mixed it together properly. It tasted good, and I think I would have enjoyed it a few years ago, but I think my sweet tooth is leaving me, so it ended up making me feel a bit sick, and I only had a small. I would still recommend you try it if you can!
18/05/23
I have tried a LOT of coffee since February. I mean first off, I'm now an oat milk truther. I don't use milk enough to justify having it in my fridge- it will go off before I finish it, and so oat is perfect. It all started actually because my housemate discovered she is lactose intolerant and so started using oat. I tried one of her coffees and was reminded that it's yum. It adds a certain sweetness to it, even if it's unsweetened.
have I had any other coffee since my last update though? I'm not sure. I tried a very nasty cold brew. But I think I'm just not a cold brew fan. I've stopped going to that church coffee shop because after some research I found that it's part of a chain of churches funded and designed to mass convert young people and I don't want to support that. They also weren't super nice to my friend. Idk I've had a lot of vending machine coffee because of long study hours. I went to a nice coffee shop in my city's arcade and sat outside it. and right opposite where I sat was a record shop so I went there too B) and got the new abnormal! Very good album. It's nice though, getting that very French feeling of sitting outside a cafe, but since it's in an arcade, I'm still protected from the rain and harsh sun! best of both worlds I guess. Oh yeah and the coffee was fine.
23/02/23
I've tried a lot of different coffees since my last review. First off, I've been making a lot of French press coffee recently. I could never make it right but it turns out I was using a heaped tablespoon of coffee grounds rather than a rounded spoon lol! but anyway, I bought this set of 3 fancy flavoured ground coffees from a tea shop called Wittards? Because they were for Christmas and so it was on sale. But omg. The gingerbread flavoured one? Splendid. I can even drink it without milk, which is a rarity for me. I rate it very highly.
Another thing is that I'm enjoying flat whites a lot more than lattes? I think it's just that they're starting to taste like coffee-flavoured milk now, which is not what I'm after. I had a good one at this bougie upper-class Greggs knock-off called Gail's, I think it's becoming a big thing here in the UK. And also another 4/5 at this hut outside the museum in my uni city. It was good....... but they're a cashless business which I oppose spiritually politically and groovily.
I also had a nice flavoured coffee at this adorable coffee shop by a lake??? They seem to sell PSL all year round which is so totally my bag, baby.
25/01/23
The best coffee I've ever had is a tie between a latte I had at a shop called dada's in my town, and a latte I had at a church near where I live at uni. It's difficult to say which is best because I last had a dada coffee ages ago. HOWEVER, since I was sick when I had the church coffee, and I still really enjoyed it, maybe that means that if I was well, it would easily be my favourite?????? Who knows. Not me! They serve it immediately drinking temperature at the church too, which is a huge plus. I hate it when I drink boiling hot drinks, it burns my tongue, and then I can't enjoy the rest of the drink!
Also me and my housemates bought a Tassimo coffee machine last year and the Costa latte pods are actually scrum :| sorry! I am a cappuccino person at the end of the day tho ALSO since like 2016(?) I've had like one pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks every year to track how the quality changes year per year. This was after I listened to a podcast that said that a few years ago they changed from a powdered flavouring to a goo/syrup?? And then the taste dramatically got worse, and has been steadily increasing. So yeah. I can't really remember but I thinkkkkkk 2019 was the best year for them? 2022 was definitely not amazing but that might have been because I realised that paying £4.50 for a drink is criminal? And so my expectations were set very very high. Anywho, Greggs does a PSL knockoff too which is pretty scrummy and also half the price.
Raspberry Pi Zero W Web Server
For a very long time, I've felt against the idea of keeping my files on somebody else's servers. Currently, every photo I've ever taken using my mobile phone is being kept on Google Photos. I like Google Photos, it's handy! It syncs to all my devices, it's quick and easy to use, it backs up my photos automatically... however I still don't like the idea those photos are less than my own now. If Google goes under, or decides to put my photos behind a paywall, that's it-- they're gone. It happened to Bebo, and Myspace, and it will happen again. So, of course, I made backups, but then they were sitting on a hard drive in my bedroom, and that's no good if I'm trying to access them in public on my phone or laptop.
the hard drive that I used to store backups on is actually from an old broken laptop of mine. It broke not long after I decided to install an SDD in place of a HDD, as it was years old and starting to be too slow to use for university. I think I caused damage to the cable that reads from storage, I'm not sure, whatever it is, the fix is above my skill level and exceeds my willingness to put in effort. However, it was perfect for running Linux off a USBdrive, and so I decided to turn it into a web server capable of cloud storage. Mid-way through development, my spring exams started, and so I forgot about it, to be honest. When the exams finished, I started the project again, but found that my laptop wouldn't even boot anymore. It was well and truly broken!
Then I remembered that I have a Raspberry Pi Zero W that I never really used for anything other than games emulation kicking around at home. I decided that this instead would be used as a web server. There were definitely more guides online for this than there were for my approach with the laptop, I finished it in a few days! This was after discovering the Pi didn't produce enough power to power my external drive, but this was fixed with a powered USB hub.
The service I used is called ownCloud, which runs off an apache2 web server. I don't know how I feel about using a company's service to carry out my plans. Is it much different to using Google Drive?
Yes. That's a stupid question. I have limitless storage space, and ownCloud cannot touch any of my files, I'm just using their code.
The only thing is, the Pi Zero W doesn't have an ethernet port. It uses wifi. This means it is much slower than I would like. So the next stage of the project is to look into installing an ethernet module. I've never done anything like that before, which is exciting. It's also a mess of wires right now, so tidying needs to be done. Lastly, though I have a domain for it, I don't know the admin password for my uni house's router, so the server is currently only accessible on my home network. Not to worry! I know the admin password for my parents' router where I will be staying over the summer so this will be an easy fix.
Though I'm glad I did this project, I'm not sure if it'll replace my useage of Google Drive. As it is, it's very slow, and in the case of a power cut, or internet outage (which are frequent where my parents live), my files will be inaccessible. Maybe if I got a better microcomputer? Or maybe in a few years, when my current laptop needs replacing, I can use it as a server instead.