not too smart.

So I fancy myself a bit of a coffee aficianado, not so much a snob anymore, but someone who's simply addicted to all things coffee; not just the caffeine. Very quickly: I have a ton of different ways to make a ton of different styles of coffee/espresso, and I'm especially fond of experimenting w/ more exotic ways of preparing the drink. Today's story is about the Vietnamese Iced Coffee I had at a multi-asian-culti restuarant in Old Town, Alexandria.

I've researched how different countries/cultures make coffee and I'd been dying to get my hands on some VIC. So at at the end of the dinner I got one as a dessert. Now I know what the ingredients are (condensed milk, coffee) and I had a vaugue idea of how it was prepared. For some reason when it arrived at my table, I just looked at it like it was an alien device. I'm surprised that the waitress didn't notice my stupor, but she took off w/out a word.

So here's this metal device sitting on top of my cup, and next to it is my glass w/ ice. I attempt to pull the lid off the top of the filter, but it was on there pretty tight. Finally it came off and I started to get my coffee bearings. Water goes in on top of a screw down filter top which is situated over the ground espresso. The grind and the pressure that you provide by screwing the top filter down alters the speed in which the coffee is extracted through the final filter on the bottom. Water on top, coffee out the bottom.

The process was already completed so I picked up the cup and started pouring the drink into the ice filled glass. Yep, I forgot to stir the condensed milk while the coffee was hot and still in the cup... Once it hit the ice there was no stirring back. I eventually got everything to the right consistency, but I can't believe how dense I was for as long as I've been dealing w/ coffee preparation.

I went right out and picked a filter up from one of our local Asian Mercados. It's the Arlington Melting pot. Asian, Latino, African, and the Blancas! Now I'm making them fast and furious in the privacy of my own home. No one can see me screw things up now. I'm still working on the ratio because my grinder doesn't really do espresso anymore. I've been adding more grinds to the prep and it seems to be altering the brew time just right. Now I'm happy.


T-Tags: coffee, Vietnamese coffee, caffeine

turning up the geekometer!

I recently added a few extensions and a theme to Firefox in order to "enrich my online experience".  For the longest time I shied away from such frivolous behavior for fear of turning into "them".  You know who they are...  Well it's happening!

The best extension I've added has been Foxmarks.  It's a multi-computer bookmark synchronizer (oh yeah!).  It's great for those of us using more than one computer to do our work on.  I'll be searching for design, and other type of sites on both my laptop and my home computers and my bookmarks were a mess.  I'd get used to one menu and get lost in the other.  I work well w/ patterns (i need them to survive) and using Foxmarks to make them the same has been a lifesaver.  It synchs them behind the scenes so you're never interrupted, and I've never experienced a lag between the two yet.

The next one is what I'm using to write this blog entry.  I added Performancing from Performancing.com.  It's a WYSIWYG blog editor that links to your existing accounts and it launches from Firefox directly.  I sometimes have a sudden itch to blog and I hate having to wade through all the log-in crap to get to the editor.  Now I can scratch it from anywhere!  I haven't uploaded just yet so we'll see how that works, plus there's added the ability to add Technorati or del.icio.us tags as well; can't wait to test.

If you've braved my previous posts you'll know I'm an Mac Aqua junkie.  I've furthered my transformation by adding the Safari Firefox theme iFox Graphite.   Everything is so clean now I love it.   I think this will do me just fine until Adobe finally puts out the Universal code versions of their software and Apple puts out the PowerMacs, or whatever they'll be called.

I was just over at OSX-E and I'm mulling over adding the beta version of xFinder 4.5 which is a Spotlight emulator.  I need to do some research on how good these things work and if they're a system hog.  I'm figuring that it shouldn't since it's not active until you say it is.  We'll see though.

And yes, I've downloaded the entire Panther icon pack, but amazingly enough I haven't started using them.  Perhaps a little too much work?  But they're so sexy...  On another note, I have tried the Windows Blinds version of the Aqua theme, and I had tremendous bugs and crashes.  I didn't uninstall StyleXP so that may have had some effect, but it was deactivated.  I say that because I'm still closing my programs on the top right instead of the Apple left.  Should I be that anal about it?  Probably not, but I am writing about it.

It's good to be a geek.

T-Tags: Firefox, extensions, Mac Aqua, Foxmarks, Performancing