geoff.mollyandgeoff.com

Things like this make me feel like I need to go get a degree in psychology to make any more headway with information security. It’s semi-well-known that idiotic password complexity/change requirements generally have the opposite of the intended effect. That is, people either write them down or choose predictable ones, and go to greater lengths to make them predictable. PayPal™ has taken this to the next level. (Screenshot after the jump since I can’t get my style sheet right for images here within the 5 minutes I’ve allocated for posting this…) (more…)

I’m currently at the end of my pound of Ritual Life Saver. This is one of the smoothest, sweetest blends I’ve tasted. When it first arrived (3 days off roast) it was too bright for me, almost sour. After degassing a few days more, it really came into its own. Shots have been consistently milk chocolate-y with a whiff of berries. The blend holds up well in lattes also, though in mine the milk overpowered any fruit flavor. These were easily the best milky drinks I’ve produced since bringing the machine into the house.

If it were obtainable locally, Life Saver would likely unseat CC Toscano as the house favorite. It’s definitely every bit as tolerant of my still-uneven technique; I think I’ve only pulled two sinkers on the pound. This one will most definitely be reordered.

Also, a hat-tip goes to Dillon @Ritual for taking a phone order manually when I couldn’t get their online shopping cart for some reason. I called it in Monday and had it on my doorstep Thursday.

I have nothing more to say about this.

And I think it’s spot on.

Most "mad scientists" are actually just mad engineers.

Andy Lee’s AppKiDo is free, source is available, and it’s drastically better than XCode’s doc viewer. And this is the third or fourth time I’ve discovered it only to later forget all about it. Maybe writing this note about it will help me remember. It’s worth the download just for its consolidated method lists (one of my biggest gripes with Apple’s AppKit documentation). Get it here. I wish Apple would adopt this and ship it with XCode.

Just some links so I don’t lose them over the next few months:

• Ritual Lifesaver
• Barismo’s blends
• Weaver’s Coffee Espresso
• Black Cat blends
• Vivace blends
• Metropolis Redline Espresso
• Terroir

I just got my latest Boca shipment yesterday. This time around, I stuck with the espresso and the peaberry. I opened the espresso this morning for a couple of shots, and the change seems to go beyond the packaging. I’m not sure if they’ve changed the blend, roasted darker, or what, but so far the difference is not good. The only flavors I’m getting this morning are charcoal and tires. There’s no way this can be the whole story. I’ll have to update after playing with the grind and temperature a bit.

Update: No amount of fiddling got this batch to not taste like tires. Blech.

But when you know you’re just not going to have a very good run, for whatever reason, she’s excellent company for a jog. I don’t know anyone who gets more outwardly happy about running than she does. Today we “ran” 5k. Our first 3k were done in about 15 minutes. Our last 2k were another 20. This made sense, as I’m trying to ease my knee back into real runs, and she just loved it. Hopefully it’ll pay dividends in the form of a tired hound, too.

Today I drank entirely too much espresso because I was having fun watching the shots. I also learned how to get Molly’s camera to take video and how to get that from camera->YouTube.