I took the bus back to the Edinburgh City Centre from the airport today, after my flight from Berlin. The tram had just departed and I thought the bus would be quicker. I carried my suitcase onto the bus, lifted my suitcase onto the luggage rack, then sat down. A few moments later, two young women boarded. I would guess they were around my age. They sat down and started conversing in German. I gazed out the window and watched people walk past.

I was walking through the shopping centre, speaking, when I heard a song in the background, playing through the speakers at a tone loud enough that I could hear it but not so loud the music was the only part of the environment on which I could focus. As soon as I heard the music, my mind leaped into action, noting

I shared a few photos from my trip in Berlin on my notes blog yesterday. I realise I have a few more photos to share. I thought I would do that here so that they appear on my main blog (this one!) and in the feeds of all of those that subscribe to the blog.

The Cheapshot cafe in Edinburgh caught my eye online because it is the size of a police box. Curious about its origins and size, I decided to reach out to Mel, the present operator of Cheapshot. Mel kindly answered a few of my questions about Cheapshot for this blog. Below is our interview.

One of the cafes on my

Over the last few months, I have spent a lot of time thinking about, talking about, and building a search engine. The search engine was first designed for my blog and then I expanded it into IndieWeb Search, a search engine for the IndieWeb community. Working on this project has been interesting but also challenging. Search involves solving many different problems, even if your intention is only to build a search engine for your own website.

I am experimenting with statistical next word prediction. My goal is to build a system that can accurately answer a question given a corpus of text. For now, my system is producing interesting summaries of content. Below is a summary of my post on the joy in listening to songs you used to love from a few days ago, generated by the tool I am building.

I was sad to see that the Beaker Browser project has now been sunsetted. Beaker did great work on building concepts related to a read-write decentralized web. Beaker showed that there is a lot of room for exploration in browsers. The notice that the project had been sunsetted, while unfortunate, was a pleasant read.

I love reading cafe reviews and so I was thrilled to discover Double Skinny Macchiato, a site that often reviews coffee shops around the U.K.. I recently got the chance to speak with Bex, the author of Double Skinny Macchiato, about her blog, how she came up with the name Double Skinny Macchiato, and more. The interview is below.

When I ran out of beans over a month ago, I stopped in my local coffee shop and asked for some beans. They gave me some beans they served in the cafe although I was not sure where they were from. I later found the beans were from The Missing Bean, a speciality direct trade coffee company based in Oxford. I've been following them on social media and I decided to reach out to see if I could get a peek behind the scenes of roasting.

A few years ago, I got a Beatles album on Vinyl. The album, called 1, brought together their greatest hits in one vinyl. Well, as many greatest hits as you could fit in a record. There are many more songs that did not make the cut. The Beatles wrote so many good songs. It was one of my first vinyl records and I loved it. At the time, I was listening to Beatles music regularly and I learned words to many of my favourite songs.

The latest CSS Tricks newsletter has me energised about what browsers could be. The newsletter makes this point:

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and well-known for its food culture, speciality coffee community, and more. Edinburgh has many good food stops and coffee shops minutes away from the Waverley train station, a common entry point into the city.

Cairngorm Coffee has deep roots in the Scottish coffee scene, from being involved with the Scottish Aeropress Championships to its reputation for roasting quality coffees. I've been following Cairngorm on social media and I had a few questions about the business. I reached out to the founder, Robi Lambie, and he shared some exciting insights about what it is like to work at a coffee roastery.

I was playing Jon Batiste's I Need You on piano this weekend. His music came to mind earlier today. Jon Batiste inspired me to learn how to play the melodica, an instrument that Batiste describes as

Thursday 03:57 ⸺ Finally, an excuse to use the long hyphen character. That is not the real name of the character comprising three hyphens, but I cannot recall the name. I should have no excuse: this very topic was a matter of discussion 10 days ago. Nevertheless!

Note: I wrote this blog post before Christmas 2020 and never got around to publishing it at the time.

Note: This review does contain many spoilers. But, if you already know who won, then you will probably not mind.

Cheapshot Coffee is a takeaway coffee business that operates from a former police box on Marshall Street, a one minute walk away from the University of Edinburgh's Informatics Student Services building.

I ended my last blog post on coffee cupping, where I cupped the same coffee roasted to three different degrees, with two questions:

Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities. The architecture is beautiful, a mix of old and new. When I visit the city, I cannot help but be in awe of the buildings you can see. Some have been around for centuries. In addition, Edinburgh is full of hidden treasures. I often feel like I have only scratched the surface of what I can explore, despite visiting the city many times. One of those hidden treasures is the city's world-class speciality coffee scene.

Sweetness is my favourite attribute in a cup of coffee. The best coffees I've had have been floral or fruity with a nice dose of sweetness. In coffee, we do not talk about sweetness the same way we talk about white sugar. Speciality coffee does not have any added sugars. This is why you will see some people refer to sweetness in speciality coffee as

In addition to reading about coffee, I have spent some time watching coffee documentaries. The latest I watched, Barista, was released a few years before Baristas, which I watched a few days earlier. Barista chronicles the journeys of five people racing to become the barista champion of the U.S.. Intrigued by barista championships and competitive coffee, I knew this documentary would be in my wheelhouse.

Based in Seighford, Hasbean roasts blends and dozens of single origin coffees from around the world. Ever since reading Coffeeographer, written by the founder of Hasbean, Stephen Leighton, I have been fascinated by this business. Out of curiosity, I emailed Roland, the Sourcing and Production Manager at Hasbean, who kindly answered a few questions about coffee roasting. Formerly a hands-on roaster, Roland shared many insights that answered my questions. Our chat is below.

Note: I wrote this blog post before Christmas 2020 and never got around to publishing it at the time.

If you walk around the City of Edinburgh, there's a chance that you run into at least one police box, a large metal box formerly owned by the police that were used for communication by police officers. Portable radio communication and modern technology rendered these police boxes much less useful than they were before, leading them to be sold off. Now, a few passionate entrepreneurs are running cafes in these former police boxes.

Photo credit: Carolyn West.

A barista in one of the Nomad Coffee shops in Barcelona was wearing a shirt that said “Be nice. Drink water. Smile.” earlier this week. I love shirts that have little kind messages like this. The last one I saw was in an airport. I cannot recall the exact words that were on the shirt, but I know that seeing the message made me smile.

Do you know that feeling when you know you are exactly where you should be? When the mind can’t possibly imagine one detail to change. When you are elated; joyful.