Category: recommendations

My coffee of choice

On By Paul HubbardIn Coffee, recommendationsLeave a comment

Ever since the late 1990s (yeah, I know), my coffee purveyor of choice has been Whiting Coffee, in Albuquerque NM. We found it while attending UNM and have been customers ever since. I make coffee in a Bodum insulated press, and their French roast is superb for that – complex, flavor rich, light acidity and no burnt notes. And their prices have been excellent.

As a side rant, most French / espresso roasts I’ve tried are overcooked cheap beans, thin on flavor and strong on burnt. Yuck. Whiting actually has a really good South American mix of beans they use for theirs.

Anyway, until now you had to telephone them, tell them what you wanted and they’d include a paper bill with the beans. As of June 2021, they now have a website! Where you can order! I’ll save you a browse and just direct you to my favorite: https://whitingcoffeeco.com/order-online/ols/products/1-pound-espresso-french

You’re welcome.

Excellent news and a reading recommendation

On By Paul HubbardIn essays, recommendationsLeave a comment

For years, I read the absolutely amazing ‘Do the Math’ blog by Tom Murphy, a UCSD physicist carefully explaining so! many! things! (Energy: generation, storage, usage, loss. Details of his lead-acid solar/battery home setup. So much more)

Now the good news – his dormant blog tells us that he’s written a textbook based on on that work, and even better its been vetted and revised and best yet? Free online and inexpensive if you want a print copy. I cannot recommend this enough. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2021/03/textbook-debut/

Textbook Debut

Internet speed tests

On By Paul HubbardIn recommendations, UncategorizedLeave a comment

So you’re online and you wonder how your network is doing. How do you measure it? I’m here for you.

  • (Updated 11/2021) Ubiquiti’s oddly named http://wifiman.com is my new standby – cleanest UI, most consistent at measuring up to gigabit.
  • Fast.com is my go-to for quick checks. It measures using only Netflix connections so bypasses some ISP fuckery with DPI and slowdowns. Elegant UI.
  • Speed.cloudflare.com is excellent. Detailed and capable of saturating my 1 gigabit downlink. Lots of details.
  • Testmy.net is decent but uglier.
  • Speedtest.net is ad laden.
  • Sourceforge.net/speedtest is ok and used to be my favorite. Lots of ads now.

As explained in my series of gigabit posts, making a fast, reliable network takes time and effort, and these sites don’t magically make it happen. However, having a way to measure your changes is super helpful, and I probably use these weekly.

I got an email 11/28/2021 – if you’re having WiFi speed issues, sometimes you need to change the frequency or band used by your access point/router, and Bill Hess wrote this nice how-to here, for both Mac and Windows.

First ebike ride

On By Paul HubbardIn EVlife, recommendations, UncategorizedLeave a comment

My neighbor is in our COVID-19 pod and kindly let me try out his Specialized Turbo Vado. It’s his commute bike.

I just finished a 16.4 mile ride with 1,300 feet of vertical and I feel great. This would have left me mostly dead if not for the motor.

Torrey Pines State beach

I’ve been wanting the Luna bikes Enduro X-1, mostly based on this review as well as this one by a man who’s nearly my height at 6’9”. Sold out now but I am feeling the want. It’s magical to blast up hills again. At 3 to 5 thousand for a nice one, they’re expensive but as I said, I’m a convert.