Java Juice Coffee

For a while now, I’ve been drinking instant coffee at home. Michele put our coffee maker up in a cupboard and replaced with a hot water dispenser. It’s great for tea, but it leads to instant if you want coffee. I’ve tried various Japanese instants and those found in the regular supermarket from Folgers and Maxwell. They are OK, but nothing great.
When I was in Europe I found these small coffee packets that held instant coffee for one cup. I really enjoyed them and had horded a few that I brought home. When I started searching on the net for how to get them in the US, I bumped into Java Juice. I started reading the site and was intrigued. I bought some and awaited it’s arrival to Cruft Manor.


I opened the box and was pleased with the package. Quite a departure from standard supermarket style, the canister had a good tactile feel and appears to be useful for other things once the coffee is gone.
The coffee is made from organic beans and is even kosher. They even mention that the benas are ‘fair trade’.

The coffee extract comes in a packet. It’s not powdered instant coffee, it’s a liquid. The idea is that it is easily mixed into anything.
Java Juice pitches their coffee as a product for people on the go, that want high quality coffee whether they are camping or at the office.

I open the package and poured the black gold out. A strong, delightful coffee aroma filled the air. I’m not sure exactly how they make it, but this is some serious coffee extract.

I add the hot water from the kettle. (Michele tried to clean the hot water dispenser with vinegar. It cleaned off the calcium deposits great, but the dispenser died. So we are back to heating water with a tea kettle until Michele decides on the new hot water dispenser.)

A little sugar and a little milk and we are ready. The taste? Pretty damn good. Much better than any regular instant coffee I’ve tried in the past. It’s strong and has a more ‘thick’ feel to it that some of the thin coffees you encounter.
Michele gave it a try and she liked it as well. It’s been offically added to the house staples.
Java Juice is great, but it ain’t cheap. A single serving is 75¢ to $1, depending on the quantity you buy. Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. I brought a packet to work today, added the hot water from the work kitchen and I had a great cup of coffee. Compared to my usual choice of crappy free machine coffee and expensive yucky Starbucks coffee, it’s well worth the price.

Time to learn

Zoe has been learning to play the Bass Guitar since January. I’ve been talking to my friend Paul about it and even discussed learning to play the guitar myself. Being a slacker, I’ve taken no action to actually move toward learning to play myself. Paul plays guitar and has mentioned it to me several times.
I was quite suprised this weekend when Paul presented me with my own starter guitar and amp.


This is an exceedingly generous gift and I’m quite excited to start playing.
I’ve been goofing around with it, but need to start learning. I searched on ‘learn to play guitar‘ on Google and was overwhlemed with sites. I have idea how to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Any suggestions where to start would be appreciated!

12 Years

Twelve years ago, Michele Leah Keller and I were married in Ault Park, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Since then we’ve experience the joy of our children and the death of grandparents. We’ve lived in Venice Beach, San Francisco, Singapore, Glendale, and South Pasadena. We’ve sleep in tents under inches of snow and luxury hotels.
Through it all, my wife, a crazy artist who loves fabric in ways I cannot concieve, buys strange objects off of ebay routinely, and regularly attempts to get me to eat leafy green vegetables, has been a loving partner to me in everything.


Happy Aniversary Sweet Pea!

Orb

Several months ago, I started playing around with software called Orb. Orb is meant to run in your home, on the computer you store your media (think your music files) on.
Orb allows you to access your music and video files from anywhere on the internet. Orb Networks software, running on your home computer, talks to the main Orb web site. When you are away from home, you go to the Orb site and log in. Orb then connects you directly to your home computer and allows you to stream the media.
Basically, you can listen to your music and watch your videos from anywhere.


So if I get a hankering for the Beastie Boys, I just log in and decide which album to play.

Or, if I’m looking for something more specific, you can search. In this case, I did a search on the word ‘baby’.
There’s a ton more you can do with Orb if you use all the features. With a TV tuner card, you can watch TV remotely ala Slingbox. You can look at photos and even access you content via things like a PSP.
There are a few limitations. The quality of playback is directly tied to your upload bandwidth. The wider your pipe, the better quality the streams. You need to leave your computer running all the time, not a problem if you have a media server already, but for some a concern. Lastly, Orb seemed to crash a bit. You have the capability to restart Orb remotely, but it shouldn’t crash so often that it’s noticeable.
Orb is windows only, so Mac users are SOL. Too bad really. Any integration of Orb & iTunes would be pretty neat for getting at all that iTunes music you bought.
I think Orb is a great product and points to the future where access to media you own will be available anywhere on any device.

Happy Pando

A few months ago I posted about my displeasure with Pando, the new file sharing software.
After I posted that, Yaron and Ramit from Pando emailed me hoping to get it working for me. It’s not often that company founders email you about weblog posts. They didn’t have an immediate fix, but after a few weeks, they asked me to try again. Sure enough, it got working and I was able to send files around. I’m talking big files that usually bork email. Zipping up half a dozens full res photos of the kids can run upwards of 10 to 15 megabytes. Pando handles up to 1 GIGAbyte payloads.


From what I can tell, when you send a file via Pando, you are uploading it into their distributed content delivery system (a bunch of servers all over the internet). The recipient gets and email telling them they have a Pando delivery. Once they install the small client it begins a quick download of the file. I think they are using a bitorrent method to download rapidly. I don’t think they are storing anyone else’s content on my computer.
I’m not sure how Pando intends to make money. Ads maybe, or a tiered service with a free entry level? Who knows, with Bubble 2.0, it might always be free.
In any case, Pando appears to be working well now and is quite useful. Give it a try and send me some cool stuff.

More ego trippin’

Today an issue of ReadyMade Magazine came in the mail. It is special because I’m in it. Well, actually one of my ideas is in it.
A while ago, Julia from ReadyMade sent me a note about recreating my trash can smoker idea from a few years back. Sure enough, they faithfully rebuilt my design, down to even the same iron wood chip box.


Pretty impressive! I hope other people that read ReadyMade like it as well. Go grab a copy of the June/July issue now!
I had never read ReadyMade before today. After looking through the rest of the magazine, I was impressed with the amount of neat stuff. Michele, who normally handles my reading material like some sort of dull textbook, liked the magazine too.
Amazingly I got a credit as a contributor to the magazine, and I didn’t do a thing besides answer my email. I even got to use my favorite photo taken by Martin.

My head swells to even greater size.

Topsy Turvy

Usually post here deal with things I’ve done, but today I’m posting about what Michele has done.
It’s tomato planting season and Michele found out about this new planting system called Topsy Turvy. The systems allows you to grow tomatoes upside down and about some of the normal troubles of tomato gardening.


What I like about what she did was her creative use of an old Ikea clothes rack to hang the Topsy Turvys from. This allows us to move them around as needed rather than hanging from a building beam.
Also notice how Michele spray painted the other containers white to get rid of the ‘yucky dark’ color of the plastic containers.
I’ll try to update you on the progress as they grow. If you are a gardener, check out Topsy Turvy. They even have their own Flickr Stream.

The Battle Continues

At work, I’ve been engaged in a battle with an unknown opponent.
For years, the situation in the stall in the bathroom has been fine, with everything in order. Recently, I noticed the that toilet paper was hung incorrectly and had to fix it.
It’s a small issue, but an important one. Toilet paper should always be placed in the ‘over’ orientation.


I hear stories of people that prefer the ‘under’ configuration, but they are mislead.
All last week, I continued to flip the paper to correct orientation. Everytime I returned, the enemy had flipped it back to ‘under’. At least it gave me something to do while sitting there.
My nemesis seems dedicated, which I respect, but I will be victorious.

FTW

Of the many possible meaning of the acronym ftw, when I use it here on Cruft, ftw means For The Win.
Too make it simpler to understand, ftw can be thought to say ‘is very good’. As an example, I may write, “Firefox ftw”, you can take it to mean “Firefox is very good”.
Clear? Several of you have IMed me about this and I feel compelled to explain it to all Loyal Cruft Readers.
For your homework, go learn what omgwtfbbq means.
For extra credit, please use !!1!one correctly in a sentence.