Gore recently gave a new talk at TED about the climate crisis. TED has this to say about the talk:
In Al Gore’s brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act.
A must see.
Merlin Mann is the guy behind Inbox Zero who ponders Personal Productivity, Time and Attention, and shorter meetings. He writes 43 Folders, and was featured in the book Presentation Zen.
If you like Van Halen and think your next computer might be a Mac, be sure to check out the MacRumors Buyer’s Guide for the right time to purchase. If you are unsure, check out Apple’s Get a Mac Guide it answers just about every concern you may have about the platform.
In my continued fascination with 37signals, David has this to say on going the extra mile instead of getting some sleep:
Software development is rarely a sprint, it’s a marathon. It’s multiple marathons, actually. So trying to extract 110% performance from today when it means having only 70% performance available tomorrow is a bad deal.
Matt Bauer made an interesting comment in his presentation at MinneBar today.
Front-loaded design [The Waterfall Model] only makes sense if the cost-of-change later is high.
I’ve liked Agile for some time now (despite having no significant opportunities to use it) and Matt’s comment finally crystallized the whole Agile vs. Waterfall issue for me: It isn’t that corporations think Agile is a bad idea. They don’t think it is possible. And they are absolutely right! Most legacy applications have a huge Regression Deficit. Every change comes with huge risks, and huge risks require huge testing efforts. That all then translates into a very high cost-of-change. You simply can not iterate as fast as Agile suggests if the risk and effort to change are big.
You can however be agile when you are using modern design and development processes. If you get tools like CI, VCS and processes like TDD up and running, you can think up an idea at 8am, design, code, test and publish it by 10:30am and roll the whole thing back by noon because something wasn’t Just Right. That’s Agile. In my own environment the fastest we can deploy any change into production is 4 hours and sometimes it takes us as much as 3 weeks to get everything prepared. Rolling back is another story all together.
Anyway, the Corporation would probably like Agile if it was given the chance. The Legacy Software however, will never be friends with Agile.
Most of you like a fresh cup of coffee, and some take it up a notch and grind your own coffee beans. How many roast your own coffee beans?
It’s a lot easier than you think.
Tools: You need next to nothing. You could by a roaster for just about any budget, but my favorite is a cheap and simple popcorn air popper. The only catch is that the air vents need to be on the side, not the bottom (chaff falls off the beans and could catch fire otherwise)
Beans: There are many places to find un-roasted beans on the internet. Search for Green Coffee Beans, Fresh Coffee Beans, etc. I’ve done all of my ordering from the Fresh Coffee Beans Company and just last week I ordered their 4lb Variety Pack at a very reasonable $4.50/lb (compared to $9.95/lb for Starbucks House Blend). Start with something cheap and see how you like it.
Roasting: Put the green coffee beans into the air popper, and turn it on. That’s about it. Like popcorn, you won’t want to fill it up too high. Timing will vary by bean, air popper, and the roast you want. I like a dark roast, so I tend to wait for the “Second Crack” (which makes more sense once you’ve done this once). Seven Bridges has a nice Basics of Home Roasting.
Oh, and do this outside. As wonderful as coffee beans smell when they are done, the Great Disappointment is that they don’t smell so great while roasting. Let the beans cool and off-gas overnight.
My last batch looked like this, and I’m trying the first cup in a couple minutes here.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes!
monthly email
RSS 2.0