Just a mid update. Thanks to 3G and my Galaxy S.. Everything is pretty chaotic right now. Mid everything. But this new place has great potential. Should have regular internet by Friday or beginning of next week if things go a little less. less. I will update more then either way.
Never mind, too difficult to write on this (stupid) smartphone.. I'm truly sorry half of this makes no sense..
Monday, 30 May 2011
Friday, 27 May 2011
Moving Madness
The following text should be read whilst listening to the following song on repeat.
Now it's semi-official.. semi, since we haven't officially moved yet and don't have the keys to the new place and shit like that. Obviously this also means that soon I won't have time to blog for, let's say a couple of weeks or so. Yeah, it might be and probably will be less but I would rather not get your hopes (hopes?) up so I won't. This weekend and the beginning of next week will be utter moving madness. Thankfully though, my awesome wife has gone all Robert Mugabe on our asses and as such she's in charge of packing and coordinating everything pre-moving. I say thankfully because my "packing" consists of taking a box, and just sweeping everything I can reach into said box. Needless to say, this is why when I looked for my passport some months ago (went to London, got married) I had a moment of thinking "Where did I 'pack' my passport last time we moved?"
...
"Oh yeah, that's right! It's with my porn!"
Which it obviously totally was.. because I suck at packing. I am however better at the "manly" part of moving. The moving boxes from one location to another, so that will my Mugabe-moment. Anyway.. things are a bit chaotic at the moment to say the least.
As parts of me are sad because.. well, I won't have a balcony any more. Other parts stand erect and more than willing to take on new challenges (penis joke). It's time to move on, out with the old and smelly that hasn't been used in a while (No longer a penis-joke.. stop laughing!). In with the new, fresh things like a Masonry heater in a quaint wooden house. This place has served us well.. adequately. Things will be missed. Others will not so much, like our staring neighbours from across the road.
So, I might not be able to blog as much for a random future amount of time. But mourn not for the loss of my awesomely sex-able writings, instead gaze your eyes towards the future for that is where we will meet again. And for those of you that are in a coma, it's okay.. we're cool, you haven't really been reading this anyway. Unless you have a relative or some other close next of kin that is sitting next to you reading this out loud, at this very moment. By the off chance that you are.. Have you tried poking them with a sharp stick? Oh, not funny? What about a blunt instrument like a spoon? At least then you would have an original sin to confess;
- "Father, forgive me for I have sinned. I poked my comatose cousin with a spoon."
Partly stolen from Eddie Izzard, but only partly. Check him out, he's hilarious. Even with a laughometer.
Now I'm trying to figure out how to end this in a way that ties the beginning part to the end bit. But I can't think of anything that can logically go from "We're moving to a new apartment" to "butt sex". So instead of trying to make sense, which I rarely do anyway. Here's two pictures of an owl baby that was sitting at my mom's front porch this morning. The 'effin thing did not move an inch (nor a millimeter) as we pictured it, only making klickety noises in a unsuccessful attempt to scare us of. But I mean "come on", it was like ~12 cm (4.7 inches) high at best. I've drunkenly stepped on things bigger than this, though they couldn't in all fairness bite me either. Anyway.
So my farewell words this time will be "Oh, Owl baby, I really want to stroke your pimp hat".
Now it's semi-official.. semi, since we haven't officially moved yet and don't have the keys to the new place and shit like that. Obviously this also means that soon I won't have time to blog for, let's say a couple of weeks or so. Yeah, it might be and probably will be less but I would rather not get your hopes (hopes?) up so I won't. This weekend and the beginning of next week will be utter moving madness. Thankfully though, my awesome wife has gone all Robert Mugabe on our asses and as such she's in charge of packing and coordinating everything pre-moving. I say thankfully because my "packing" consists of taking a box, and just sweeping everything I can reach into said box. Needless to say, this is why when I looked for my passport some months ago (went to London, got married) I had a moment of thinking "Where did I 'pack' my passport last time we moved?"
...
"Oh yeah, that's right! It's with my porn!"
Which it obviously totally was.. because I suck at packing. I am however better at the "manly" part of moving. The moving boxes from one location to another, so that will my Mugabe-moment. Anyway.. things are a bit chaotic at the moment to say the least.
As parts of me are sad because.. well, I won't have a balcony any more. Other parts stand erect and more than willing to take on new challenges (penis joke). It's time to move on, out with the old and smelly that hasn't been used in a while (No longer a penis-joke.. stop laughing!). In with the new, fresh things like a Masonry heater in a quaint wooden house. This place has served us well.. adequately. Things will be missed. Others will not so much, like our staring neighbours from across the road.
So, I might not be able to blog as much for a random future amount of time. But mourn not for the loss of my awesomely sex-able writings, instead gaze your eyes towards the future for that is where we will meet again. And for those of you that are in a coma, it's okay.. we're cool, you haven't really been reading this anyway. Unless you have a relative or some other close next of kin that is sitting next to you reading this out loud, at this very moment. By the off chance that you are.. Have you tried poking them with a sharp stick? Oh, not funny? What about a blunt instrument like a spoon? At least then you would have an original sin to confess;
- "Father, forgive me for I have sinned. I poked my comatose cousin with a spoon."
Partly stolen from Eddie Izzard, but only partly. Check him out, he's hilarious. Even with a laughometer.
Now I'm trying to figure out how to end this in a way that ties the beginning part to the end bit. But I can't think of anything that can logically go from "We're moving to a new apartment" to "butt sex". So instead of trying to make sense, which I rarely do anyway. Here's two pictures of an owl baby that was sitting at my mom's front porch this morning. The 'effin thing did not move an inch (nor a millimeter) as we pictured it, only making klickety noises in a unsuccessful attempt to scare us of. But I mean "come on", it was like ~12 cm (4.7 inches) high at best. I've drunkenly stepped on things bigger than this, though they couldn't in all fairness bite me either. Anyway.
So my farewell words this time will be "Oh, Owl baby, I really want to stroke your pimp hat".
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Detox, Part Deux
Since Nine Days Later was technically Part One. Technically. Damn it, here I thought the worst was over.. but oh no, turns out that detoxing from a substantial amount of caffeine and refined sugar is not as peachy as I thought after a week. I used to drink 3-4 cups of Robusta a day.. now I'm down to 1-2 cups.. one Arabica and one Robusta (we only have Robusta at work). I also used to consume about 50 grams of refined sugar in total with all of my ditch water coffee. Now I don't used sugar at all, no matter how foul tasting the coffee is. With milk at work, and black at home. Are all of these tiny little details important to any of you? Probably not, but for sake of making a detailed report of my changing of habits I feel I shouldn't neglect details. And to answer your question, yes, you have to suffer for that. But imagine that I said that with a sparkle in my eye..
So yeah, at around the 15th of May I figured that although things had been a bit rough, it was just uphill from here.. peachy..
In my mind, it was like this.. but awesome-er.
But as time went by I kind of noticed that no.. the 15th was more of a fluke than a preview of what was to come. So since then I've mostly still felt sluggish, tired and generally uninspired to well.. do anything of any kind of importance in life. My wonderful wife has been understanding and supportive, which is really awesome of her. Like today, just as I had shared about how tired I felt, she asked me with a smile (of evil) on her face "How it feels to walk amongst all the other mortals?" It feels like crap is what I told her and began to rant about how this is what it must feel like for Superman. If Superman had a piece of Kryptonite in an eternal state of being shoved up his derrière.
That would be the up the buttocks by the way, for those of you that don't speak French.
So yeah. Turns out my initial expectation of how "easy" this would be was oh so terrible wrong. So instead of feeling "oh sho peachy".. I felt more of a "oh so fuckin' peachy!"
In reality, it was like this. Only worse.
I'm still hoping that I'll start feeling better at some point. But as of right now I'm not really having all too high hopes, let's call it playing safe. For now at least.
If I can just figure out a good way to bring good coffee with me in the morning. I still haven't perfected the Manhattan Blow Job but it's a hell of a lot better than my other options. My biggest concern at the moment is the act of transporting the embeejay (I named it, I'm in charge of pronunciation as well). To put things simply.. I need to have it in a better cup than my current one, something where the "lid" doesn't fall of at any given turn. Arnolds sells Smoothies and Fruities and their cups would probably be quite excellent for my purpose. Actually come to think of it, maybe I should ask them if I could have a couple of them. I doubt they would mind the free advertisement despite the fact that I wouldn't be using them for their intended purpose.
So detoxing.. it's still a bitch. But maybe it will start to turn around at some point. But days like this (yesterday was worse) I feel like every caffeinated beverage is calling out for me to consume them, to quench my mighty Superman-ly thirst with their deliciously carbonated diabetes inducing goodness. But I won't. I'm stronger than that.
Well that, or just too poor to be able to afford them.
Yeah, it's probably the second one more.
They're in my dreams.. taunting me..
So yeah, at around the 15th of May I figured that although things had been a bit rough, it was just uphill from here.. peachy..
In my mind, it was like this.. but awesome-er.
But as time went by I kind of noticed that no.. the 15th was more of a fluke than a preview of what was to come. So since then I've mostly still felt sluggish, tired and generally uninspired to well.. do anything of any kind of importance in life. My wonderful wife has been understanding and supportive, which is really awesome of her. Like today, just as I had shared about how tired I felt, she asked me with a smile (of evil) on her face "How it feels to walk amongst all the other mortals?" It feels like crap is what I told her and began to rant about how this is what it must feel like for Superman. If Superman had a piece of Kryptonite in an eternal state of being shoved up his derrière.
That would be the up the buttocks by the way, for those of you that don't speak French.
So yeah. Turns out my initial expectation of how "easy" this would be was oh so terrible wrong. So instead of feeling "oh sho peachy".. I felt more of a "oh so fuckin' peachy!"
In reality, it was like this. Only worse.
I'm still hoping that I'll start feeling better at some point. But as of right now I'm not really having all too high hopes, let's call it playing safe. For now at least.
If I can just figure out a good way to bring good coffee with me in the morning. I still haven't perfected the Manhattan Blow Job but it's a hell of a lot better than my other options. My biggest concern at the moment is the act of transporting the embeejay (I named it, I'm in charge of pronunciation as well). To put things simply.. I need to have it in a better cup than my current one, something where the "lid" doesn't fall of at any given turn. Arnolds sells Smoothies and Fruities and their cups would probably be quite excellent for my purpose. Actually come to think of it, maybe I should ask them if I could have a couple of them. I doubt they would mind the free advertisement despite the fact that I wouldn't be using them for their intended purpose.
So detoxing.. it's still a bitch. But maybe it will start to turn around at some point. But days like this (yesterday was worse) I feel like every caffeinated beverage is calling out for me to consume them, to quench my mighty Superman-ly thirst with their deliciously carbonated diabetes inducing goodness. But I won't. I'm stronger than that.
Well that, or just too poor to be able to afford them.
Yeah, it's probably the second one more.
They're in my dreams.. taunting me..
Friday, 20 May 2011
Whoa Man!
This video + you + full screen it baby, for the win! But for the record I am so not responsible for any induced headaches and/or vomiting. And don't say I didn't warn you, because I totally did, just now.
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
Mistakes
So yeah, maybe I need to learn to commit mistakes too.. perfections isn't achieved the first time. And in the spirit of that, here's for no apparent reason a quote from Scott Adams.
Also, no takers on my offer of 0.0002 % of my soul? Shame on you..
Also, no takers on my offer of 0.0002 % of my soul? Shame on you..
Monday, 16 May 2011
Whoring Myself
Yes. For once I have a title that says it all, right to the point, no subtleties or discretion here. No Sir and/or Madam!
So here's my dilemma. I really want a digital kitchen scale so that I can start measuring coffee by mass instead of volume, that would be grams instead of ml for the less intelligent ones of you.. (Good start Carlos, insult them to get on their good side). Measuring this way will be even more handy when I start grinding my own beans. Also totally more accurate as different grinds won't matter since the mass doesn't change even if the volume does (and trust me.. it does). But.. despite the fact that I have Paypal, I can't actually use it. Because apparently you have to validate your Paypal account with a credit or debit card, which I of course don't have, and wouldn't really want either.
So in a sense, I am now whoring myself, to see if anyone would to purchase a digital kitchen scale for me? Pretty penis with please on top?
I already feel incredible dirty.. but since I have gotten the metaphorical ball(s) rolling now I might as well continue. Here's a link in case you feel like checking out the incredible cheap scale I have found. Because yeah, not only am I whoring myself, I'm also very cheap. So for only 4.45 € you can now own a small part of my soul. Yeah I know, my soul is pretty dirty by now and the second hand market for inferior souls is less than good, but hey, who knows. I might even make you your very own diploma to frame and hang up. Come to think I could totally do that.
I did the math again. Yeah I know what they say, if you do the math, you're good at counting things.
Anyway, according to humanforsale.com I'm worth $ 2,497,650. Holy bat-accessory that's a lot! So with current exchange rates that would become 1,754,460.52 €. Which means for 4.45 € you could be the very proud (although probably not) owner of roughly 0.0002 % of my soul. Now if that isn't as good a deal as any, than I don't really understand the concept of what constitutes a good deal. Of course, if someone out there really actually feels like buying a digital kitchen scale for me I would reimburse you with the money you spent.. well that.. or I could actually make you a professionally printed diploma that looks like this;
Any takers?
So here's my dilemma. I really want a digital kitchen scale so that I can start measuring coffee by mass instead of volume, that would be grams instead of ml for the less intelligent ones of you.. (Good start Carlos, insult them to get on their good side). Measuring this way will be even more handy when I start grinding my own beans. Also totally more accurate as different grinds won't matter since the mass doesn't change even if the volume does (and trust me.. it does). But.. despite the fact that I have Paypal, I can't actually use it. Because apparently you have to validate your Paypal account with a credit or debit card, which I of course don't have, and wouldn't really want either.
So in a sense, I am now whoring myself, to see if anyone would to purchase a digital kitchen scale for me? Pretty penis with please on top?
I already feel incredible dirty.. but since I have gotten the metaphorical ball(s) rolling now I might as well continue. Here's a link in case you feel like checking out the incredible cheap scale I have found. Because yeah, not only am I whoring myself, I'm also very cheap. So for only 4.45 € you can now own a small part of my soul. Yeah I know, my soul is pretty dirty by now and the second hand market for inferior souls is less than good, but hey, who knows. I might even make you your very own diploma to frame and hang up. Come to think I could totally do that.
I did the math again. Yeah I know what they say, if you do the math, you're good at counting things.
Anyway, according to humanforsale.com I'm worth $ 2,497,650. Holy bat-accessory that's a lot! So with current exchange rates that would become 1,754,460.52 €. Which means for 4.45 € you could be the very proud (although probably not) owner of roughly 0.0002 % of my soul. Now if that isn't as good a deal as any, than I don't really understand the concept of what constitutes a good deal. Of course, if someone out there really actually feels like buying a digital kitchen scale for me I would reimburse you with the money you spent.. well that.. or I could actually make you a professionally printed diploma that looks like this;
Any takers?
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Nine Days Later
PUBLIC WARNING: Long text broken up with a few pictures, but totally well worth the read. I'm not kidding, go make yourself a cup of coffee, you're going to be here for a while.
It's now been nine days (at least I think so) since I purchased a Bodum Bistro Nouveau coffee maker.. can I actually call it a coffee maker since I do most of the work myself? For the sake of argument I am going to call it a coffee maker, if it's good enough for the manufacturer to call it that.. then it's good enough for me.
So how's it been? Well, let's put it this way. I won't be able to drink ape urine excuses for coffee any more. That's how it's been going. Nah, but really, it's nothing if not an eye opening experience so far. I could have never imagined coffee being able to actually taste this good, with subtleties from all sorts of things. I now have an entirely new vocabulary including words like acidity, bitterness, nutty scent with a hint of chocolate. Obviously it has it's downsides too, since now whenever I meet a shitty cup of coffee, I simply can't drink it any more. Bare in mind now that, as anyone who knows me knows, I used to drink my coffee with milk and sugar. Lots of fuckin' sugar. At least when comparing myself to friends and acquaintances.
Now, I drink my coffee black.. like a real man!
But not be manlier actually, but because it tasted ruined with milk and/or sugar. Of course I had to try several different variations. But in the end, black won. And hurray for it too, although I have had to suffer the consequences of a decreased sugar intake, which has been a total bitch, thankfully though, the worst of that has passed. Now I am beginning to feel actually a lot better than I did before.
A word of warning though to anyone who "suddenly" decides to cut down of refined sugar. Before this and ridding my addiction of Coca-Cola I was averaging a daily sugar intake of 120 grams and sometimes upwards. The recommended daily intake is between 36-40 grams (depending on your source). So easily three times the daily recommended amount of refined sugar per day.
Yeah, I did the calculations minutes ago. Scary stuff isn't it? I specified "refined" sugar because that's the amount I could easily calculate, I obviously get natural sugar as well and hidden refined sugar in me, but those probably fulfil my daily needs nicely. So the probability is quite high that I have had a intake of 4x daily recommended. That's probably not very healthy or what do you think?
So the warning; If you're going to cut down your sugar be prepared for a shock as your brain pretty much just shuts down and refuses to work in any way before it's gotten it's "hit". It'll pass after a week or so, at least it did for me, but until then it's a bitch. I have semi-honestly never felt so out of energy and "sick".
Anyway... back to the coffee talking. Come visit me, I'll make the awesome-est cup you have ever had, hopefully. I'm still in the learning stage, I for instance need to get a burr grinder too.. gotta grind my own beans now, otherwise the stale bitterness from not so fresh coffee is too noticeable, damn it. So Zassenhaus Brasilia 151 here I come! Unless someone has a better suggestion for a manual burr grinder? Haven't quite decided which blend I like more yet.. I would want to find Sumatra but alas I have no idea where to look for that in Vaasa and Saluhallen hadn't heard of that blend.
I'm testing different brewing techniques, different brewing times, trying it with and without "break & clean". I suspect my beans are a bit too finely ground by the way, no fault of Saluhallen though as they ground them according to my wishes. Awesome service, kudos to them! I have tested with different kinds of water as well, speaking of which... how does one do a double-blind study with only one test-subject? Because I tried to (and succeeded) in doing a "sort of" double-blind study to see if I could tell the difference between Spring water, tap water and filtered tap water. The double-blind part being that neither my wife (the reasearcher) or me (the test-subject) knew which water contained which. For the sake of consistency all liquids were cooled to the same temperate so as to not influence the test-results. So, what about the results? What did they show me?
I failed miserably. I wasn't able to tell the difference in any sort of way. The biggest goal of this test was to see if I was able to discern the difference between tap water or Spring water, because according to some coffee enthusiasts, there's a difference. Clearly according to my small study I could just as well be drinking urine.. or.. well maybe not urine, but at least it shows that I can in good conscience use tap water for my coffee making needs. If I can collect more participants I will try to arrange another double-blind study later on.
Edit; The Spring water was of a Finnish label called Polar Spring. Should I have used a different brand? Maybe that isn't a good one? Vaasa's tap water has a pH value of 6.5 on average, I checked. The filtered water, was just tap water filtered through the coffee filters I have for my drip machine, Rainbow unbleached to be specific.
I've had people over, so they could try out my coffee as well. One friend said it was incomparable to any kind of coffee he had had recently. In a good way though, saying it had a very Starbucks quality to it, which I'm assuming is a good thing.
Two friends (who hasn't tried press coffee yet though) tried just drinking drip coffee with a better blend (Arvid Nordquist: Classic French Roast Extra Dark) and they commented that it's difficult to go back to crap coffee after it..
One friend said it was better but couldn't really tell much more. She's not a very accustomed coffee drinker though so that's okay.
Still waiting for Beije (and possibly his mom..?) to come for a visit though. His (their) opinions regarding coffee is something I value, since they're huge coffee drinkers.
All in all, it's been and still is an eye-opening experience. Some three weeks ago I had never reflected on coffee being anything else than bitter shitwater with milk and sugar that I drank to fulfil my daily requirement of caffeine. Then a couple of weeks ago I had started thinking about how our tap water tasted differently (bad differently) and how my coffee tasted worse than it used too.
Coincidently, around this time my brother was out to buy an electric kettle for his apartment, randomly I asked why he didn't buy a combo machine, a.k.a. drip machine and electric kettle.. kind of like the Princess Diarrhoea Machine I have. Then the salesman (thank you Gigantti) swept my brother to a 150€ espresso what-not machine and started talking about coffee and such for probably 30 minutes. In the end, my brother bought the machine and I started thinking about buying one too. That and many evenings after I searched on Google. A lot. Deciding that if my brother can have better coffee then so can I. And the rest is well.. not so much history as it's.. well.. the present.
Now, I sit and enjoy my black coffee wondering if I can find a blend that has more nuttyness but less acidity. Maybe an ever so slightly stronger hint of chocolate with a little berry. I'm also so totally making another mornin' cup to take with me to work tomorrow. I will mix "Conquista Blend-Sulawesi-Barahona" together, let it steep over night (cold brew style), add a little milk and vanilla ice cream in the morning before I go to work. I had it last Friday, and it was the most beautiful way of waking up.. ever. Since I don't know if there's a name for what I had, I'm so totally naming it right now.. "Nothing gets one going in the morning, like a Manhattan Blow Job.. in your mouth".
Tell all your friends.
It's now been nine days (at least I think so) since I purchased a Bodum Bistro Nouveau coffee maker.. can I actually call it a coffee maker since I do most of the work myself? For the sake of argument I am going to call it a coffee maker, if it's good enough for the manufacturer to call it that.. then it's good enough for me.
So how's it been? Well, let's put it this way. I won't be able to drink ape urine excuses for coffee any more. That's how it's been going. Nah, but really, it's nothing if not an eye opening experience so far. I could have never imagined coffee being able to actually taste this good, with subtleties from all sorts of things. I now have an entirely new vocabulary including words like acidity, bitterness, nutty scent with a hint of chocolate. Obviously it has it's downsides too, since now whenever I meet a shitty cup of coffee, I simply can't drink it any more. Bare in mind now that, as anyone who knows me knows, I used to drink my coffee with milk and sugar. Lots of fuckin' sugar. At least when comparing myself to friends and acquaintances.
Now, I drink my coffee black.. like a real man!
But not be manlier actually, but because it tasted ruined with milk and/or sugar. Of course I had to try several different variations. But in the end, black won. And hurray for it too, although I have had to suffer the consequences of a decreased sugar intake, which has been a total bitch, thankfully though, the worst of that has passed. Now I am beginning to feel actually a lot better than I did before.
A word of warning though to anyone who "suddenly" decides to cut down of refined sugar. Before this and ridding my addiction of Coca-Cola I was averaging a daily sugar intake of 120 grams and sometimes upwards. The recommended daily intake is between 36-40 grams (depending on your source). So easily three times the daily recommended amount of refined sugar per day.
Yeah, I did the calculations minutes ago. Scary stuff isn't it? I specified "refined" sugar because that's the amount I could easily calculate, I obviously get natural sugar as well and hidden refined sugar in me, but those probably fulfil my daily needs nicely. So the probability is quite high that I have had a intake of 4x daily recommended. That's probably not very healthy or what do you think?
So the warning; If you're going to cut down your sugar be prepared for a shock as your brain pretty much just shuts down and refuses to work in any way before it's gotten it's "hit". It'll pass after a week or so, at least it did for me, but until then it's a bitch. I have semi-honestly never felt so out of energy and "sick".
Anyway... back to the coffee talking. Come visit me, I'll make the awesome-est cup you have ever had, hopefully. I'm still in the learning stage, I for instance need to get a burr grinder too.. gotta grind my own beans now, otherwise the stale bitterness from not so fresh coffee is too noticeable, damn it. So Zassenhaus Brasilia 151 here I come! Unless someone has a better suggestion for a manual burr grinder? Haven't quite decided which blend I like more yet.. I would want to find Sumatra but alas I have no idea where to look for that in Vaasa and Saluhallen hadn't heard of that blend.
I'm testing different brewing techniques, different brewing times, trying it with and without "break & clean". I suspect my beans are a bit too finely ground by the way, no fault of Saluhallen though as they ground them according to my wishes. Awesome service, kudos to them! I have tested with different kinds of water as well, speaking of which... how does one do a double-blind study with only one test-subject? Because I tried to (and succeeded) in doing a "sort of" double-blind study to see if I could tell the difference between Spring water, tap water and filtered tap water. The double-blind part being that neither my wife (the reasearcher) or me (the test-subject) knew which water contained which. For the sake of consistency all liquids were cooled to the same temperate so as to not influence the test-results. So, what about the results? What did they show me?
I failed miserably. I wasn't able to tell the difference in any sort of way. The biggest goal of this test was to see if I was able to discern the difference between tap water or Spring water, because according to some coffee enthusiasts, there's a difference. Clearly according to my small study I could just as well be drinking urine.. or.. well maybe not urine, but at least it shows that I can in good conscience use tap water for my coffee making needs. If I can collect more participants I will try to arrange another double-blind study later on.
Edit; The Spring water was of a Finnish label called Polar Spring. Should I have used a different brand? Maybe that isn't a good one? Vaasa's tap water has a pH value of 6.5 on average, I checked. The filtered water, was just tap water filtered through the coffee filters I have for my drip machine, Rainbow unbleached to be specific.
I've had people over, so they could try out my coffee as well. One friend said it was incomparable to any kind of coffee he had had recently. In a good way though, saying it had a very Starbucks quality to it, which I'm assuming is a good thing.
Two friends (who hasn't tried press coffee yet though) tried just drinking drip coffee with a better blend (Arvid Nordquist: Classic French Roast Extra Dark) and they commented that it's difficult to go back to crap coffee after it..
One friend said it was better but couldn't really tell much more. She's not a very accustomed coffee drinker though so that's okay.
Still waiting for Beije (and possibly his mom..?) to come for a visit though. His (their) opinions regarding coffee is something I value, since they're huge coffee drinkers.
All in all, it's been and still is an eye-opening experience. Some three weeks ago I had never reflected on coffee being anything else than bitter shitwater with milk and sugar that I drank to fulfil my daily requirement of caffeine. Then a couple of weeks ago I had started thinking about how our tap water tasted differently (bad differently) and how my coffee tasted worse than it used too.
Coincidently, around this time my brother was out to buy an electric kettle for his apartment, randomly I asked why he didn't buy a combo machine, a.k.a. drip machine and electric kettle.. kind of like the Princess Diarrhoea Machine I have. Then the salesman (thank you Gigantti) swept my brother to a 150€ espresso what-not machine and started talking about coffee and such for probably 30 minutes. In the end, my brother bought the machine and I started thinking about buying one too. That and many evenings after I searched on Google. A lot. Deciding that if my brother can have better coffee then so can I. And the rest is well.. not so much history as it's.. well.. the present.
Now, I sit and enjoy my black coffee wondering if I can find a blend that has more nuttyness but less acidity. Maybe an ever so slightly stronger hint of chocolate with a little berry. I'm also so totally making another mornin' cup to take with me to work tomorrow. I will mix "Conquista Blend-Sulawesi-Barahona" together, let it steep over night (cold brew style), add a little milk and vanilla ice cream in the morning before I go to work. I had it last Friday, and it was the most beautiful way of waking up.. ever. Since I don't know if there's a name for what I had, I'm so totally naming it right now.. "Nothing gets one going in the morning, like a Manhattan Blow Job.. in your mouth".
Tell all your friends.
Monday, 9 May 2011
Unvenomous Snakes?
Hmm.. Yeah, that title makes even less sense then they usually do. Anyway. Yeah, I've promised to update you about the whole coffee situation, and I will. But not right now, I'm too tired to write an essay about my various experiences with different coffees. So until then here are two pictures, one of my former comrade in the caffeinated world, the diarrhea machine.. and one of the new awesome machine that's requires more effort, kind of.. but the coffee, oh your god the coffee.. it's not even comparable to the shit I used to drink. I can't imagine ever going to back to shit like Kulta Katrina or Juhla Mokka.. not when I have coffees like Conquista Blend, Sulawesi and Barahona. Next I'm probably going to have to get a coffee grinder though, a manual burr grinder would be really nice. But more of that when I'm less tired.
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Uneasy ( but kind of awesome) Listening
For lack of other things to blog about, and whilst I'm waiting for more results for the things I will blog about soon, here a review (yeah, that's right) about HIM's Uneasy Listening album. Released originally in 2007 one could say that this review is.. hmm.. a bit late? Which albeit entirely true also highly irrelevant, like I've said before, I'm sort of, kind of going to blog about whatever I feel like. And well, I happen to feel like blogging about this now. Besides I have no more news on the Ukulele front yet anyway. Sad, I know, but alas so true. So whilst we're all eagerly awaiting the coffee results and some 'effin pictures of sanded (grinded?) Ukulele's, until then.. this will have to do.
Uneasy Listening by HIM (the band) is I think an album where Ville Valo (the vocalist) really gets to shine in ways he hasn't shone (or shined if you prefer that) before. All in all, some songs are more lacking, or just plain out a bit boring but the album as a whole. Awesome! Their own rough and acoustic version of Buried Alive by Love is so brilliant in my mind, that I actually prefer it over the original. Artists rarely outshine themselves when going acoustic, take Britney Spears for instance. No specific harm meant to Britney, she's been picked on enough as it is, and really? Maybe, just maybe, shaving your head wasn't the best of ideas. Anyway. I tried youtubing her doing an acoustic version of any of her songs, couldn't find one. So instead of Britney Spears.. I present you with Kristin Rian, a norweigan Country/Pop Singer-Songwriter (I hope I got that right now..) doing an acoustic piano version of Britney Spears's Everytime. It's p'rty good, do have a listen. Scratch that.. it's really really good.
But.. back to Uneasy Listening, like I already said. I like it, so yeah, there you have it. I like it, it's good.
tl;dr edition
I'll give HIM's Uneasy Listening 4 drunk and passed out Finnish people out of 5. And Kristin Rian gets 5 klippfiskar out of 5. I've had Norwegian klippfisk by the way, and even though I personally thought it was awful, like chewing on piece of salty wood, in this context it's a good thing. Yeah, I know, it makes no sense but just go with it.
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
A Gift He Couldn't Refuse
When the Godfather gives gifts, you don't refuse them. Especially if they're awesome!
Today, the Godfather decided to randomly give Boons an Angry Bird. I suspect I'm probably more happy about it than he is, especially since he doesn't really know what Angry Birds are. Hmm, maybe I should let him play it sometime just to see what he thinks. Either way, I thought it was a pretty nice gift/gesture, so here I am, shamelessly blogging about it. I actually took a better picture of Boons first, where he was looking into the camera smiling and all, unfortunatly my camera decided to spaz out at that particular moment, so in this next photo he's back to watching Alfons Åberg again. Easily distracted mind I guess, can't really blame him though since he sort of (and by "sort of" I mean totally) gets it from me. Anyway, it's still some nice pictures, so enjoy!
Today, the Godfather decided to randomly give Boons an Angry Bird. I suspect I'm probably more happy about it than he is, especially since he doesn't really know what Angry Birds are. Hmm, maybe I should let him play it sometime just to see what he thinks. Either way, I thought it was a pretty nice gift/gesture, so here I am, shamelessly blogging about it. I actually took a better picture of Boons first, where he was looking into the camera smiling and all, unfortunatly my camera decided to spaz out at that particular moment, so in this next photo he's back to watching Alfons Åberg again. Easily distracted mind I guess, can't really blame him though since he sort of (and by "sort of" I mean totally) gets it from me. Anyway, it's still some nice pictures, so enjoy!
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