February 27, 2006 at 5:13 pm · Filed under In my Kitchen, On the Radar
Tagged with:
deconstruction,
diy,
espresso,
learning,
modification,
nuova-simonelli,
oscar I’ve got to post. I keep saying tomorrow and now my Sciral is deep in red. I don’t like being deep in red, so lets start something.
I’ve decided to modify my espresso machine and to a light extent at this time my grinder.
Welcome to the innards of a Nuova Simonelli Oscar. The Sirai is a give away that this isn’t an older unit. They used to use a Matar pressurestat giving a lot of older users some serious grief. I started a post on Home Barista, another great resource in geeking out. Taking knowledge from HB & alt.coffee folks I’m trying to continue the evolution of ‘better’. Better is a precarious balance these days.
Better to me is:
* Refining any kinks in the machine to make it cleaner running.
* Adding a PID for thermal stability
* Adding a Vacuum Breaker so that the unit can be timed if desired/one less hassle to deal with on startup.
* Clean up the OPV valve/get the unit to do some backflow during a blind filter.
* Maybe a few more things as I travel this path..
At the end of all of this I’d like to be able to dial in any single orgin coffee and pull out the best elements. I’m dieing for a perfect blueberry harrar and I can’t find it with the current setup. If I poll PeterG at Counter Culture Coffee for some numbers and profile I think I can find that zone.
Right now I’m just collecting my tools and my instructions. Getting to know the machine without a hood; to know what is possible. I’ll keep everyone updated with progress. Above all else this is to learn from. If you have any tips they are more than welcome!
-a
February 17, 2006 at 11:44 pm · Filed under Skull Sessions
Tagged with:
ant,
life,
living,
moments,
thoughts,
wakinglife If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching Waking Life. It’s worth a spin. Really it’s worth a few spins. Besides it being an early rotoscoping film in an era that is seeing it done more and more it’s a great work of art and psychology. Check it out on a day you want to relax and just drift through the clouds of your mind thinking those interesting ‘why’ thoughts. There are a few moments that might imprint on an individual and this has always been one of mine …
(Main is character coming out of a subway and bumps into a girl.)
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Hey, could we do that again? I know we haven’t met, but I don’t want to be an ant, you know. I mean, it’s like we go through life with our antennaes bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop, go, walk here, drive there, all action basically for survival, all communications simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. Here’s your change. Paper or plastic? Credit or debit? Want ketchup with that? I don’t want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to be an ant, you know.
Yeah, I know. I don’t want to be an ant either. Ha ha. Thanks for kind of jostling me there. I’ve been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don’t feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It’s like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road, and instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls the confrontation between their souls. It’s like freeing the reckless gods within us all.
Well, then, it’s like we have met.
(They shake hands)
I don’t want to be an ant either. I don’t think any of us should. When was the last time you touched base with your neighbor, the last time you asked someone who waited on you what their favorite color was? Every once and a while help break the static shell that we so easily fall into by living for a moment.
I want real human moments.
I want to see you.
I want you to see me.
I feel some imagry around these contexts that I need to explore (jots down notes). Keep these thoughts with you, spread the meme. We need to stop commoditizing ourselves.
-a
