Geoff's Amazing Web Site
November 5, 2005 (later).
It's been a long time since I've updated this, because my ISP decided to forget my password. Their password system is labyrinthine enough that I wasn't able to log into FTP for a week afterwards, so I gave up. Just today I tried again. Check out my blog. The blog will be replacing my updates here. I plan to revamp this site and make it more into a storage area for photosets and the like.
Speaking of photosets, I uploaded three sets of images, but never got around to adding them to this page. Or giving them thumbnails, actually.
15 Days still hasn't gone up, yet.
November 5, 2005.
My Mom died in hospital early on May 3, of complications from brain surgery. She was 58.
I miss her.
May 1, 2005.
The day I posted that last post, my Mom went into hospital with hydrocephalus. It's been a pretty tough couple of weeks and I wasn't able to get in more than a few token photos most days. Yesterday I didn't get any photos at all, so I've decided to call a halt. I'm going to try again later when I have the time, but I don't know when that's going to be.
I'll get the results of the 15 days I was able to do up in a little while, depending on time.
On a more positive note, I did manage to learn a few things:
- Taking pictures of wildlife is fun, especially if your camera has a significant delay on the shutter release.
- Doughnut shop clerks get anxious if you randomly take pictures of the food.
- Macros are awesome.
- You can get away with saying your camera has 3.2 megapixels if you interpolate up from about 1 megapixel.
- Check your resolution after you change batteries, especially if the camera's (non-replaceable) internal battery conked out months ago.
- Don't plan an exercise to take your camera everywhere you go and take pictures if
- you plan to go anywhere that's inside, and
- your camera's CCD isn't sensitive enough for indoor shots.
All right, lots of that isn't learning experience and just me whining about my camera. I did manage to get a bunch of good shots. But I was disappointed many times when I wanted to take pictures of things inside where I didn't want to--or couldn't--use the flash. And I was particularly let down by the higher resolution settings, which came out grainy and only suitable for the screen. In the film world, it's the low-speed films that have the smallest grains, usually, so I got hit by a double whammy. When I get my next camera, I'm going to do some more research into the capabilities, not just compatibility with Linux.
April 13, 2005.
I have new photos from my weekend trip to Taylor Creek Park.
For my birthday (this Friday, hint hint) I plan to set myself a 30-Day Challenge. I'll carry my camera around with me for a month, taking lots of pictures each day. At the end, I'll post the best picture from each day. Or maybe every week or something. The point is to get me to use my camera more. Instead of doing a few photo essays of interesting places, I'll be focusing on taking interesting pictures of everyday things.
I'm planning a small reoganization of the site as well, once I get some time.
January 30, 2005.
I was in a car accident a week ago. Nobody seriously hurt--just a few bumps and bruises. It's all good. Well, the car was a little smushed. Hopefully the insurance will cover it becuase it was the other guy's fault.
Anyway, it's time for
Adventures in Coffee!
Around the end of last year I decided to try out an assertion made by Brillat-Savarin and Balzac: that coffee pounded in a mortar is superior to that ground in a mill. (``Le café concassé à la turque a plus de saveur que le café moulu dans un moulin.'') I went ahead and purchased a wooden mortar and pestle at Honest Ed's for not very much. I let it wait for a bit, since I was finishing off my supply of already-ground Christmas coffee--a vile concoction made pleasant by the fact that it didn't taste all that bad. Kind of like chocolate and marshmallows. But I digress.
By early January, I finished up my December supply and went down to Alternative Grounds for some of their fine Fair Trade coffee. I then attacked said coffee with the pestle. Then I drank same. I learned two things by this process:
- It takes forever to pound coffee in a mortar.
- Coffee pounded in a mortar tastes rather nasty.
I figured I'd spend a little time on weekends pounding enough for the whole week. I miscalculated. It took maybe three hours of pounding to produce enough coffee for one pot (I drink two cups at a time). During this time I had to devote most of my attention to the mortar, or else the pestle would fly out of my hands. Also, it didn't come out even, and I often had to skim off the larger granules of coffee from th ecoffee dust and repound them. It was also hard on my hands (which, I'll freely admit, are very soft).
Also, the coffee I produced was pretty awful stuff. Perhaps this was because I didn't pound it consistently fine enough (my first batch had some quartered and halved beans in it). All the same, it came out smelling like fresh tobacco and tasting little better. I drank this coffee for about five days before buying a mill.
A coffee dealer much closer to me, the Merchants of Green Coffee, sells burr grinders. Hand-operated burr grinders. Hand-operated burr grinders manufactured by Peugeot. So, I bought one.
It didn't work.
At least, not at first. On my first try, the milling elements were spread far apart, so I ended up maybe breaking a few beans in half, while smaller ones slipped right through. I was able to produce a half-assed job by yanking the spindle upwards and holding it up while grinding. Suffice to say, this produced a lousy grind, as I was unable to hold it up while turning very well, and also the beans would tend to seperate the elements. However, it turns out every single piece that could be was wedged tight. Especially the adjustment screw. So, after a little manual persuasion, I managed to get it working properly again.
So, after three weeks of working fine, I decided that I wasn't working hard enough for my morning coffee and decided to start roasting my own beans. And by ``decided'', I mean I couldn't be bothered going from East York to Roncesvalles to buy coffee yesterday. So I went to Merchants, and picked up three pounds of green coffee, and went about roasting it. Now, the Merchants sell electric roasters. These are basically glorified popcorn makers, with--and this is actually important--filters to catch the chaff that flies off during roasting. I did not buy one of these, because they have helpfully provided instructions on how to roast coffee using a normal oven.
So, yesterday, I made my first roast: an intriguing blend of dark and medium that was indicitive of a master coffee roaster, and not an inexperienced hack roasting unevenly. Fortunately, I like medium/dark blends a lot, so this came out acceptable. I was worried that I'd burnt it, since I couldn't tell the difference between unroasted beans and roasted beans covered in chaff in the light of the oven lamp. But today, after letting the beans cool down all the way, it tasted even better. In fact, it was the best coffee I've had in a long time.
More adventures as I come across them: I still have two and a half more pounds to get through.
December 12, 2004.
It's the RC Harris Filtration Plant today at Daily Dose of Imagery.
Sam is one awesome photographer.
Check it out!
I've cleaned out some of my photos to make room on the site for some .
If you experience any broken links, please let me know.
I'm also thinking of abandoning Photobucket since the space and transfer limits have decreased.
What this means is fewer photos until I switch ISPs.
Things I have written. Such as rants.
Pretty, pretty.
See also the sunset on the Beaches and Taylor Creek Park.
Some of the programmes I have written.
Things not said by me. Wisdom of the ages distilled into chewable bite-sized pieces.
What I'm up to these days.
Where Geoff goes online.
These pages are best viewed with a browser that supports Cascading Style Sheets, at a comfortable resolution, and with as many colours as your video card can support.
Although this site should load fine in MS Internet Explorer, the severity of MSIE's security problems makes me want to suggest using another Web browser. I personally like Mozilla Firefox, but really anything other than MSIE will do.
Root Page
Text and pictures copyright © 1998-2005 Geoff Gilmour-Taylor, except as noted.
Last update: May 1, 2005.
