We were traveling for the holidays when we ran into more car troubles. One thing led to another and we were driving home in a new car, a 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E.
Our house is already all-electric with electric appliances, a heat pump, and solar panels on the roof. This finished up our conversion to relying exclusively on electricity for all of our utility needs (although we do offset some of our heat with a wood stove). A big concern with switching over our only car to an EV was winter driving and long distance trips. This was well tested with our 700 mile drive home the morning after we purchased the car. We made 5 stops at DC fast chargers and… everything just worked. The drive obviously took a little extra time but it really wasn’t a huge deal. I used A Better Route Planner to determine which chargers to stop at and checked these chargers against reviews on Plug Share.
Originally we were planning on getting a Rivian R2 or possible a Scout in a couple of years (the Scout will likely be more expensive than we’d like to spend). I still love the look of both of these cars and would consider them down the road, but I’m really impressed by the quality and features of the Ford. Even in the base trim level (Select with AWD, Extended Range, and Comfort Package) the car is really well equipped and substantially quicker than anything else I’ve ever owned. I also appreciate getting a car that’s been in production for a couple of years from a reliable company.
This’ll be a bit of a learning curve but I’m looking forward to taking the car on trips throughout the year. First off, 2000 miles next month. š¬
I originally drafted this a few weeks (months?) ago as a potential idea for a YouTube video, but Iām really not a YouTuber and maybe text is best.
In April of 2019 (shortly after our first son was born) I got my Aillio Bullet R1V2. Since then, Iāve roasted over 1000 pounds of green coffee and I figured now was a good time to go over some of my experiences and tips.
What is the Aillio Bullet? Honestly I have no idea if I even pronounce the company name correctly, but the Bullet is a 1KG drum coffee roaster with an induction heater. The induction heat is one of the first big advantages over classic gas or electric based roasters as it allows for quicker adjustment of your heating power. Another key feature of the Bullet is the infrared thermometer which allows you to actually measure the bean temperature instead of relying on the temperature of the air in the drum (there is still a classic thermocouple as well).
When the Bullet R1V2 was initially released it only came in a 220V version, so I have always used a dedicated 220V circuit and outlet to power my roaster. While this is a bit of a pain, Aillio released a 110V model shortly after.
Throughout my time with the bullet Iāve tried multiple methods of ventilation, included just hooking up a filter based fume extractor for internal venting (not recommendedā¦), but I have always gone back to external venting with an inline fan to assist with pulling air from both the roaster and the cooling tray. Aillio offers 3D models of printable adaptors to connect the roaster to various vent sizes. In our first house, I cut a 4ā hole in the kitchen wall to vent outside. In our second house, I replaced a glass block window with one that included a dryer vent. In our current house, I havenāt figured out the best solutionā¦ as we have side swing casement windows, so I just throw the vent out the window and leave it open while I roast (I really need to fix this before winter ā- I didnāt).
Now to actually roasting coffee. While the Bullet has a capacity of 1kg, I typically roast either 800 or 500g batches. A 500g roast will yield about 430g of coffee which is what we drink in about a week. An 800g roast will yield around 680g of coffee, which works out to 2 12oz bags. Loss varies by how dark the coffee is roasted.
To start up the roaster you just set the temperature with the +/- buttons and hit āPRSā. The āPRSā button is used to toggle between different modes (I think it stands for āPre-heat, Roast, Shutdownā but I just call it the āPress Buttonā). The roaster will automatically switch to āChargeā (along with an eerie voice) once it preheats, or you just press PRS when you are ready to go. Remove the rubber cap, pop the funnel on, and dump in your beans to start roasting - the roaster will automatically switch to roast mode here as well. Donāt forget to replace the cap, or else smoke will come right out the top of the roaster.
The front control panel on the bullet has buttons to control power, fan speed, and drum speed alongside a few multi use displays for things like drum temperature, bean temperature, Rate of Rise, and status. Below that is a little tryer to pull some beans out (although this doesnāt work well on smaller batches) and the door to empty the finished coffee. You can set a default power setting for the roaster to start at, and I will decrease power while increasing the fan speed as I roast. Scott Rao recommends keeping the Rate of Rise (slow of temperature increase) decreasing throughout a roast, but every coffee is different and it always takes a few tries to dial in a recipe.
While roasting, I always have my computer plugged in and RoasTime open to monitor this graph and you can also remotely adjust the power and fan speeds from the software. Even better - you can overlay or automatically playback previous roasts. I rarely playback but always use the overlay feature to compare previous roasts. There are also features to mark first crack and other key points to measure the phases of your roast.
Once the coffee is to the roast level that youāre looking for (I typically drop around 210-220C), just hit āPRSā once again and pull the lever to open the door. The cooling tray fan will startup, and you can even start preheating for the next batch by pressing āF1ā and then āPRSā again.
After the cooling process the roaster will automatically shut down once it cools to 80C, and then I always turn it off (typically you need to unplug it, but I just have the circuit on a light switch). Clean up is fairly straightforward - I remove the cooling tray and vacuum chaff there, and then remove the chaff collector on the back of the roaster and dump that into the trash. Some coffee produces much less chaff, so sometimes I only do this every couple of roasts.
About every 20kg, I also do a deeper clean. This involves removing the fan at the back of the roaster and soaking it in hot water with an Urnez Tabs dissolved in it, and then I use the sample water to scrub any oils out of the stainless steel case that the fan mounts to. I also wipe the window on the door, but I have never cleaned the interior of the drum.
I have had a few issues with my roaster, but Aillio has supported me each time and has shipped me free parts when I needed replacements. First - right when I first turned it on it wouldnāt start correctly. As far as I know, I was one of the first US customers to receive a 220V R1V2 because I immediately ran into issues with the power frequency of US circuits which run at 60hz rather than 50hz. Aillio quickly responded and sent me a firmware update which fixed the roaster. I also had issues with the temperature probe and fan on the infrared temperature sensor (the fan runs to keep coffee oil from collecting on the sensorās glass). These were both easy replacements and Aillio sent me replacement parts once the issues were diagnosed. The biggest problem I had was a failed Induction control board, although this was a known issue with earlier R1V2 models and once again Aillio stood by their product and shipped me a replacement part to swap. That was more involved, but still fairly straightforward as it just involved a few screws and plugs to switch the boards out to an upgraded model.
Would I still buy the Bullet R1 today? Well, Iād probably buy a newer R2. The Bullet is the best a home roaster can buy and it has performed extremely well over the last 5+ years.
Just a quick mention on the newer R2 and R2 Pro models. Iām not looking to upgrade, as the R1 is still meeting all my needs, but they are some pretty big improvements that are coming later this year. The R2 includes 150W of additional power, airflow measurements, an improved control panel that is also easier to remove, a bean deflector (I made my own), a barometric pressure sensor, Wi-Fi, better speakers (for alerts), and an integrated light (the original includes a USB light that plugs into the control panel).
The R2 adds to that with even more power (2300W total!) allowing for 1.2kg batches and a very slick cooling tray with an automated bean stirrer. It sounds like the cooling tray will be available to buy separately, soā¦ I might be getting one of those in the future.
Both of these roasters are much more than I bought my R1 V2 for (price has increased quite a bit since 2019ā¦), so itās hard to personally justify the upgrade. The R1 V2 is also still going to be sold and any of these will be excellent coffee roasters for years.
So, hereās to the next 1000 pounds. Thanks Aillio.
Twenty Two Years of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May. Sure, Jeremy might be a total jerk, but Top Gear is the reason I have been so interested in cars. Can’t believe it is almost over.
For years I have wanted to learn Swift and build an appā¦ and I finally did it!
Introducing ClockBar. A Clock for Vision Pro inspired by Mac menu bar apps.
ā° Check the time & date
š„ļø Peek at the daily weather
šļø Flip through the months
šKeep an eye on battery level
Iāve got more features in the pipeline but I couldnāt wait to get this out. Thanks to everyone for helping out and especially to @twostraws for making Hacking With SwiftUI.
This year I’ve been working on improving our camp setup, which I guess mostly means spending money on new things… For the past few years we’ve been camping in a 4 person tent with our 2 ākids and dog. Our gear takes up LOTS of space in the car (with a roof box) and our tent was way too small for all of us.
At the beginning of the season we decided to replace our tent. We got a Big Agnes Bunk House 8 (8!!!) from Out and Back Outdoors. I hadn’t heard of this website before, but it basically resells returned products and for all we could tell the tent was never used or opened and we got it for 50% off. Good deal. The tent has a divider “wall” (sheet) in the center that basically splits it up into two tents that are the size of our older 4 person tent. This is great for giving us our own space.ā
Then I focused on consolidating space. We had 4 tote bags of gear that I dug through and reduced down to 2. One of these contains our kitchen suppliesā - plates, pots, utensils, etc… The other bag has everything else - hammock, camp fuel, lights, matches, a battery pack, etc… I’d still like to find a good bin to replace the tote bags with, but this is working well for now.
Then we did some more shopping.ā Our camp stove took up a lot of space and is quite old, so we picked up a Jetboil Genesis. This is a two burner stove that folds in half. It’s got way more control over the burners than our old stove and takes up much less space. We also have a Yeti Tundra 50 cooler which is also…. big. Our dog shares the trunk with it and I don’t think he appreciates that it fills half the trunk. I just ordered an Oyster cooler. It’s pretty pricey but is basically a thermos with thinner vacuum walls compared to the foam insulated Yeti. It has a smaller overall capacity, but claims that you don’t need to add additional ice (apart from the ice packs). Ice takes up about half the space of our Yeti and adds a ton of weight - so I’m looking forward to testing this out.
So that’s that. As I mentioned, we still want to find a new bin for our suppliesā to replace the 2 tote bags, but we’re really happy with the current setup. It’s about as minimal as we can get and everything has its place.
Since our house was finished up in the winter we didn’t get the opportunity to do any landscaping. Now, 6 months later, we are hard at work. In front of the house we cleaned up the yard and planted a Hydrangea tree to the right of our front door, then we build a flower bed on the other side. Our grass is slowly growing in as well but the clay in our yard is making that quite difficult!
Around back, we’ve been working on build a patio. We decided to keep it simple for now and are putting together a larger pea gravel patio, about 30 x 12 feet! We started digging it over the weekend but then our neighbor felt bad and brought over his Dingo (stand behind skid steer) to help out. Our stone should be arriving soon and we hope to finish building the patio this weekend! Really looking forward to having a nice place to sit and work outside. We also have had an old picnic table with a steel frame and finally bought some work and rebuild the table top. It pretty much looks brand new now.
Plenty more to do, but it has been a lot of fun to make some pretty dramatic improvements around the exterior of our house.
Last month Delta launched on the app store. I have an Analogue Pocket that I use for playing Game Boy games and the launch of Delta has made more more interested in the emulation of other systems. Part of this might just be that I’m getting “old” but I feel like the games that I played in the early 00’s had the perfect amount of content. Games today are too long and bloated and are continually fighting for our attention (and wallets!). I want some simple single player content that I can play through in a few hours!\
I started by looking into other handheld emulators. I love handheld systems (back to the Pocket, my first console was a Game Boy Color) and the idea that I can play my favorite Game Cube, PS2, and even Wii games in a portable system is very cool. After some research I picked up a Retroid Pocket 4 Pro. It’s a very tiny Android based system that supports everything up to the PS2 and Wii.\
At the moment, I’ve been mainly playing some of my favorite PS2, PSP, Wii and Game Cube games on the system. I already finished Sly Cooper and I’m working my way through Super Paper Mario and GTA Chinatown Wars. It’s been perfect to pick up and play these anytime I want (but mainly when I’m sitting in my toddlers room trying to get him to fall asleep…).
Now that we live in the woods I’m suddenly more interested in learning about what birds are around (maybe this is a natural step in the aging process?). Yesterday I put together a quick little BirdNet monitor that processes audio from a microphone to determine what bird calls it hears. There were a couple instructions that I followed, but it took a few tries to get something functioning.
I used a Pi Zero 2W. Since this has very little RAM you need to manually increase the SWAP before doing anything. Once you get to step 18 (before you start the Birdnet installation). Enter the following commands to increase the Swap.
sudo sed -i 's/CONF_SWAPSIZE=100/CONF_SWAPSIZE=2048/g' /etc/dphys-swapfile &&
sudo sed -i 's/#CONF_MAXSWAP=2048/CONF_MAXSWAP=4096/g' /etc/dphys-swapfile &&
sudo sed -i '/^exit 0/i sudo iw wlan0 set power_save off' /etc/rc.local &&
sudo reboot
Instead of copying the command in step 19 to install Birdnet, use following command:
The script will take a long time to run, but once it is complete the Raspberry Pi will reboot and you can access the GUI from a web browser. There are a few suggestions for settings to change if using a Zero 2W. I verified the latitude and longitude (they were a little off) in Tools > Settings (the default username is “birdnet” with no password). I also went over to Tools > Services and disabled Live Audio Steaming and Streamlit Statistics. There is quite a delay when clicking around the GUI, so just be patient…
I haven’t received my enclosure yet - so right now it’s just sitting in a box with the microphone at an open window.
It has been a busy year, but I’m still around. We finished construction of our house last November and are pretty much settled in. There is still some work to do in the basement - and we’ll probably be spending the summer wrapping that up.
In other news, I’ve been learning SwiftUI and have been working on my first app for Apple Vision Pro! It has been a fun, challenging, experience and I can’t wait to release it soon.
I guess Twitter is my main topic here, or X I mean, since thatās definitely what it is maybe called now? Honestly I should probably just stop giving Elon and his antics any attention.
If this equipment is anything like the stuff I worked on while I was at a battery plant I definitely understand the concerns. Operators would need to run equipment with doors open and safety locks removed in order to keep things running as fast as the company needed. The machines were also built overseas and never really met the safety requirements of OSHA. Now Iām grateful to work for an automation builder and would never ship anything like what I saw at my previous job.
While I'm waiting for the "future" of CarPlay that Apple teased ages ago (ok, I guess it was late year), Porsche is adding some really cool shortcuts to their CarPlay app to control the car without leaving CarPlay. Great to see some automakers embrace CarPlay while GM is abandoning it...
It’s not clear why the developers would decide to call back the old joke now, nor has the team confirmed the connection between the new game and South Park
With the recent launch of Threads I thought this would be a good time to go over the social apps that Iām currently using along with what my current Home Screen looks like.
Social Apps
I use two messaging apps, iMessage for most chats (of course) and Telegram for a few group messages between friends without iPhones (of courseā¦).
Similarly, I use two photo apps. Instagram is where I post iPhone and ārealā camera photos for friends and family and anyone else who feels like following me. Those posts also forward to Facebook which I donāt really use for anything else. Iām also on Glass where I look for inspiration from other photographers and share a smaller selection of my favorite shots.
Next up is Discord. I initially joined a weird variety of discord servers as part of a few Patreon perks but I primarily spend time on a private server of people that met elsewhere before forming their own community. Itās a great space and everyone is very comfortable discussing pretty much any topic - and itās where Iāve developed some of my closest friendships online.
Finally, the one that started this train of thoughtā¦ Threads. Before Threads I was on Twitter for 16 years. From high school to post-college. Twitter Jack was definitely the weirdest Jack most likely due to the time periods that I was there for. Once that started falling apart I jumped ship for Mastodon in late 2022. Mastodon is a cool concept with a lot of great intentions but I struggled to find people to follow and missed a lot of groups and individuals that I had followed on Twitter. Threads definitely solved that problem with the sheer quantity of users that immediately flocked there and it was almost too easy to follow people since it imports directly from Instagram and immediately started suggesting a lot of the same people that I had on Mastodon and Twitter. Itās definitely the popular place now, weāll just see if it lasts.
Home Screen
So whatās on my Home Screen? Iāve got two widget locations. A stack with Weather and Box Box (a Formula 1 app) on top and Fantastical off to the side. From there I have a lot of the standard apps and all of the ones I mentioned above. Safari, Photos, Maps, Telegram, Discord, Drafts (where Iām typing this), Instagram, Glass, Reeder, and Matter. My dock currently consists of Music, Messages, Mail, and Threads.
A month later and I’m still left in awe and with many questions about Apple Vision Pro. It feels like a new type of computing and it could be the next big thing, but it could also be a total flop. The technology looks incredible, but it also seems like it’ll be isolating and not something I’d want to use around other poeple. The EyeSight display looks creepy, but it could feel natural in real use. The price is absolutely ridiculous, but they’ll make it more affordable eventually. I’m skeptical, but I am very very excited to try it out. This might be the future.
Today I’ve been playing around with Threads a lot. I have a lot of concerns about it - primarily the fact that it’s run by Meta and uses an algorithmic timeline, but I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I had many thoughts when Twitter started to fall apart and I’ve been exclusively using Mastodon (Ivory) this year but Mastodon still lacked a lot of the journalists, “influencers”, and other people that I liked to follow. Threads has gotten these people to join instantly and it makes it a much more interesting place to visit. This feels much more like a true Twitter replacement and I’m curious to see how it evolves over the next few months. I’m hopeful that they’ll add a chronological view or at least a followers-only view (I keep getting #brands shoved in my face on the algorithmic timeline) and I’m curious to see if they actually integrate with ActivityPub and let me follow people that might stick to Mastodon (or let me follow people on Threads if I abandon in for Mastodon). We’ll just have to wait and see.
Iām still here, but sometimes life gets in the way. Weāre settling into our new life in Massachusetts and our house construction is coming along nicely (targeting moving in ~August or September). Lots of stuff has happened that I wish I spent some more time blogging about. Weāve been exploring New England, Iām still playing plenty of video games, I bought a new camera, and thereās been lots of exciting tech news (Vision Pro!). Iāll be setting a new personal goals once weāre moved in including continuing to learn Swift in order to write my first app and actually posting here in a more reliable manner.
I can't believe that Amazon is shutting down (and deleting) DPReview. It's the best website for anything related to digital photography and I don't even know where else I would go whenever anyone asks for a camera recommendation. I've been considering getting a new camera and even today I've been reading their reviews.
At least some good news, Chris and Jordan are heading to PetaPixel to run their [YouTube channel](https://youtu.be/f6T3qWI2c-Y)
This is an interesting story about a Kickstarter for a very cool looking record player. I'm not sure I would call it a success yet, but it's definitely a good reminder that Kickstarters are for helping fund creators to build something they're passionate about and not a place to buy finished products.
Weāre officially (well, pending a trip to the RMV) Massachusetts residents. Temporarily moved in and now paying close attention to our house progress. š
Panic launched their new catalog for Playdate this week. It's great to see this little handheld system grow. I bought a couple of games and so far my favorite is Grand Tour Legends - a simple cycling game with some excellent visual design. The Catalog works on Playdate and web and the interfaces of both are wonderful (you even "crank to buy" on Playdate!). Looking forward to the Stereo Dock next.
