I love drinking pour-over coffee at home. I brought my aero-press to work long ago, and really enjoy a strong cup of coffee during the day. But at home I am all about the pour over and the French Press. 

It’s funny how important the coffee became to me as I discovered the joy of making a fancy cup of coffee.

Since we lost everything in the fire a month ago, I’ve been missing that hobby. Now that we have settled into a place we can call home again, I was excited to restart the coffee craze. So, I decided that it was worth upgrading the grinder from a Cuisinart electric burr grinder to the Bodum electric steel burr grinder. The Cuisinart grinding surface left a lot to be desired. It produced uneven size grinds and had trouble getting very fine at all. It was more like two discs instead of a deep cone shaped auger style grinding interface. 

My older Hario hand grinder and the Bodum electric have great deep grinding gears, the hand grinder is affordable and effective, but it’s just a lot of work. I have to really crank it hard to get enough coffee ground for an Aeropress shot by the time my water boils in the microwave.   

I ordered two pour overs, the V60 and the Melitta one cup. We had a V60 before and it is still awesome. But, the other big upgrade other than the grinder is my water pouring and heating vessel. I finally decided the time was right for a Gooseneck stovetop kettle. I love it! It’s a lot easier to use if its not too full. Before, I was using a 2 cup pyrex liquid measuring cup, which has a nice spout on it, but it offers nothing like the control of a true gooseneck kettle. Now, I just need to move a little closer to my favorite roasters, Switchcback Coffee Roasters. It was easier when I was a block and a half away from an obsessive small batch roaster.

Coffee is a fun thing that I can experiment with, because it doesn’t require hours sitting in front of my IDE or tweaking config files for an open source CMS.

We visited our destroyed home on Wednesday. And here is the photo gallery.

There was a large metal shed on the property that had a few things stored in it. You can see just how hot this fire was when it went through by the melting of the steel beams.

The fire came through the tops of the trees. The destruction of the forest is incredible.

There was a snake hole in front of our door, we saw the snake occasionally while we lived there. Now you can see what happened to that guy in the photos also.

We are still staying at the home of our close friends. I returned to work this week. Becca and I are having a hard time coming to grips with this event.

We discovered yesterday afternoon that our apartment home was lost in the Black Forest Fire. It’s one of hundreds of home that were destroyed in the last couple of days. We had been preparing ourselves for the news but it was still hard to hear.

I worked cleanup with Samaritans Purse after the Waldo Canyon fire last year and I know how unlikely it is that we will find much in the ashes. So, Becca and I are thrust into a new phase of life. We have a few things in boxes and suitcases and everything we own fits into our two-door car.

We have renters insurance, and we are beginning to work on the claim process. We are mostly trying to keep our hearts uplifted right now by taking time to talk to each other and be with some friends.

Everyone we know has reached out and offered support in some way. I wish I knew what we even need in the way of material help right now. We are going to have to find and do so many things that it feels overwhelming and frustrating right now. But, God has really shown up in the people in our lives. We are surrounded by so much love and kindness and sympathy. Thank you all. I will try to keep this blog updated and coordinate help as we figure out what we need.

Rebecca and I were evacuated yesterday afternoon as the Black Forest Fire closed in on our apartment. We moved into that apartment just 10 days ago. Most of our stuff was still in boxes buried in the second bedroom. We rent(ed?) an apartment that is part of a larger house that 2 other people live in.

We were planning on leaving for Peru this Thursday, but that missions trip was canceled just wednesday last week. We have barely had time to process that.

I sat down at my computer after a very busy morning at work yesterday around 2:30 and saw the notice on twitter about the fire along Shoup Rd. I quickly began calling Becca, but I couldn’t get ahold of her. I tried calling a few other people but coudn’t find my wife. She had the car with her, so I was going to get someone to drive me home. Then she called and said she just got my messages and was going to come get me at work. I told her to not leave yet, because she might not be able to get back in, so we talked through what she could pack into the car in preparation of evacuation. My four month pregnant wife, who was sleeping heavily and feeling very sick already sprang into action and packed our important documents and a suitcase of clothes and a few other important things in the car.

By that point I had gotten a ride from a friend at work and we were working our way towards her around the closed roads. She called and said the Police told her to evacuate now, and she was driving away. The police told her the fire was less than 500 yards away at that point. I made it almost all the way back to our apartment, but met Rebecca and the gas station just up the road.

Our neighbors seem to have all made it out safely as well. The plume of smoke was enormous at that point. We left black forest at 4:15pm.

We prayed for safety for all the people still evacuating. We tried to process what was happening. Then we decided to stay with one of Becca’s friends for a couple nights. So we went to walmart and grabbed an airbed and some sheets and pillows. Last night we spent with our amazing friends at church during our normal Celebrate Recovery meeting. We have been surrounded by great friends all along. We have been blessed with so many offers of places to stay. We don’t know how long we will be without a home.

We are not certain that the apartment was lost but we have a pretty high confidence that the fire went straight through our area. It may be a couple days before we know what happened. Here is a video from yesterday about .5 miles away (right where I met with Becca) looking roughly in the direction of our place.

Last night, from the place we are staying we could see the entire horizon lit up with flames in the direction of our home. We are OK. We have a lot of important stuff with us. And we are healthy. We have renters insurance. It’s just stuff and we have said all along that we don’t want to be tied down by it. But there is a lot of emotion still around just not knowing what happened or what happens next.

4:15:07PM
A new (self hosted) business mgmt. app - Pancake
I like this idea. It has functions for CRM, estimates, project mgmt, and invoices all in one.
One time fee - I would try hosting it on app fog!
3:47:54PM
New Haswell Desktop Chips are available…
but then I would need a new motherboard and RAM
so I’m still hoping for a new MacBook Air announcement
2:50:04PM
Open Source machines for building civilization, so great.
phonesreplacedwithsandwiches
10:19:21AM
Donut sammich
awesome music
Azure continues to improve.

New wallpaper today.

This app is undeniably cool. I like outlining, and this is an app I wish I was building. Why did people all figure out that online outliners are awesome at the same time that I started building my own?

I found a link to an article that outlines a basic excercise program that should take less than 15 minutes. I like that. I like that a lot. I can probably get up 15 minutes earlier 3 times a week. Right? It’s a High Intensity Interval Training program that I can do with body-weight excercises in our living room. Here’s the high points I copied out of the article.

• use all major muscle groups
• balance of strength throughout the body
• alternate exercise intensity
• high intensity
• minimal rest between
• 9-12 exercise stations
• total of 15-20 reps of an exercise
• 30 second bouts at each station
• rest less than 15 seconds (!) between bouts
• use a heart rate monitor
  I tried out the free iTimer app this morning, and it’s limitation of 5 reps was only a minor annoyance. A bigger annoyance was the feeling like I was going to puke because I didn’t use a Heart Rate monitor and over stressed myself. It happens every time I start a new exercise regimen.

Here is the list of exercises I tried this morning. All just with body weight.

1. Jumping jacks
2. Wall sit
3. Push-up
4. Ab Crunch
5. Step-up onto chair
6. Squat
7. Triceps dip on chair
8. Plank
9. High knees/running in place
10. Lunge
11. Push-up and rotation (T-up)
12. Side Plank
    Those last two didn’t make into the workout this morning, I’ll try again on wednesday and see how it goes. I feel happy and energized today.

I have been doing some research on different ways to build mobile apps. There are a lot of options beyond just getting dirty with native code first. Objective C is a somewhat to-dense language for me to understand. I am looking at other options, including web apps, hybrid apps, and frameworks that compile into native code like the Xamarin IDE with Mono Touch (http://xamarin.com) which is nice because I already know C#.

Why HTML5 Apps?

http://www.sencha.com/blog/the-making-of-fastbook-an-html5-love-story/

What is a Mobile Hybrid App

An app that runs on the HTML/JS runtime inside a browser view.
That browser view is actually embedded in a native app that’s packaged and distributed through the app store.
These web views can look just like a native app since there is no normal browser chrome.

Pros - Why should I build one?
It’s so simple, even a web developer can do it.
One code base for all platforms.

** Cons - What sucks?**
Almost like a native app but visibly different (inferior) to users.
Not really just one code base.
Seems like there are so many little tweaks necessary you end up with different code branches for each platform anyways.
Seems like a lot of work still.
Clearly not a magic bullet for creating mobile apps.
Maybe it’s just as much work to create a “real” native app.

Why a Native App

Performance
https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick (are you kidding me!?)
Perfection
You can’t get everything perfect if you are using a different abstraction than other people. What they call being “close to the metal”.
User Experience
I asked this question, and it generated a lot of discussion. http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/39262/any-research-on-user-experience-perceptions-of-native-apps-vs-web-or-hybrid-apps/39295#39295
What do the users think? http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2208676

New Wallpaper available for download (1920x1200).

Luke 12:32

Photo via Flickr By SBC9

Here is a wallpaper I felt the urge to make today. In all my work, I want to feel like a craftsman that cares the utmost for what he does. I often do not feel that way. This verse – Colossians 3:23 – keeps coming up lately. I thought this might serve as inspiration on my desktop for a little while.

Download Wallpaper (1920 x 1200)