zacharyc

Coffees This was a light week for coffee because I was working pretty hard at home and mostly brewed Chemex. Sweet Bloom Coffee - Arvada, CO - Despite their reluctance to produce more natural coffees, this place is just awesome. I was able to get a 1:1 with the Gesha from weeks past at the Arvada location, even though it’s no longer available on the website. Olympia Coffee Roasters - Doing their Little Buddy as a Chemex. I’ve found that I use a 1:16 ratio for hot coffee and a 1:10 ratio when pouring it over ice. This remains my most consistent coffee over the past two years. Coffee Ride - Pouring over some of their coffees. I finished the Nicaragua La Bastilla Natural, and as I got to the end of the bag, it really began to grow on me. I have a little bit left of Colombia Finca Villa Betulia Honey Caturron, which still isn’t my favorite. It is a little too funky, even for me. Blue Sparrow - RiNo - I love this place because they do a bunch of different cold brews, including a Japanese-style flash brew, which is really nice. Got a cortado that was okay. It was with their house. Am I the only one who wishes more shops would always have a backup espresso for trying? Life Updates Finally got my Subaru back with the replacement charge port cover. Now I can do that again. I’m excited to save a little more on gas. Got to do brunch with my good friend Tim, who was in the area skiing on vacation. Tim and I have a very antagonistic relationship, which I thoroughly appreciate, and he hasn’t gotten rid of me yet. It’s good to have friends that you can joke around with. Finally did some sewing with the Sailrite on this trip. I made a grocery bag with my friends, but it was too big, so I had to make a smaller one. I learned a bit about sewing binding with the needle position on the LSZ Sailrite. Made 3 dinners last week; one was California burritos, but the challenge is not overfilling them. I failed at that. Another note, chicken thighs marinated in Bachans overnight are really great with rice and broccoli. Tech Updates Continue working on the laser cutting program. There will be some pretty cool updates to that soon. Working with Qt and Python is a challenge, but we are pushing through. Side note: I hate that Python doesn’t support true visibility and protects private variables and methods until I start writing tests, and then I like that I can take shortcuts to manipulate objects quickly to test exactly the part I want. Sacred Space is starting to fill out as a site with some real events. Last week was a little blower in use because of Envision, a major festival at which we are most prevalent. I’m playing around with Plausible.io instead of Google Analytics, and loving it. It shows me traffic across all my websites on a single page, with a better dashboard. Continued work on Authentic Auctions has resulted in the listing and selling of several cars in the past couple of weeks. I’ve also been working on a new format for van information as we move further into that market. Continued working on my research around the CNContact from Apple and running into some interesting notes. I will be posting more notes on it here over the next couple of weeks as I investigate doing something significant here. Incredibly custom web project coming online soon. Moments Brunch at Blackbird in Evergreen with Tim: ...

Continuing on with my weekly update tradition, looking back on what I did last week. Starting with coffee Coffee I realized that I have missed a few places along the way and will continue to bring them out in future weeks. Corvus Coffee - This place is awesome. Okay, I don’t know that, but their coffee is awesome. They have a Hacienda Senora Natural that is tickled me and I can’t stop going and getting it. It is exceptional in all the ways I like a natural. From Costa Rica, really great cherry taste. Sweet Bloom - Again coming in strong. I had them twice. I had an espresso when I needed a quick boost, and even with the house washed it hit. I then found out the other location still had some of the natural gesha that is no longer on the website, this was also great. Atlas Coffee - They carry corvus, but I walked into the location and walked out without ordering. Just didn’t feel like a place I was going to get somethings special. Onto - I may have made the mistake on walking into this place right around chinese new years and the place was packed. Their logo is super cute and I couldn’t resist buying stickers (also their stickers don’t have words, just art, which is the best type of sticker for me). This is not a place where I would expect a great cup of black coffee, but their Vienna was good I got the Black Sesame in the same visit. Queen City Collective Coffee - This place was the find of the week. They had a great natural Ethiopian on espresso and it was just fantastic. They are a bigger shop but when I asked them about wholesale, they said there orders didn’t require large quantities so they could be a good candidate for next years Hanukkah Coffee Box. Coffee Ride - Boulder - I’m going back on my previous statements here. The Nicaragua has really grown on me. I have figured out how to make it in a way that really works. I drink it iced after doing pour over with a 1:10 ratio and I get much better notes. Tech Projects Updates Create a new van template at Authentic Auctions for this van. It made it through auction without sale, but you are getting a lot of van for the asking price, and I wanted a way to show this better. Sacred Space Facilitators have a new view that allows them to create a landing page for them and their events. Wrote a whole TDD (exercise I did for an interview) on how we are going to update the Event object to be more searchable as we keep expanding the number of events we have. We have a lot more events, but that was my business partner, not me. Untitled Multi-Genre Game - This project is still in its infancy and I can’t talk to much about only to say that I download Godot and started looking at how this game engine works. I’m more interested in this from a building and story telling perspective, but I also have some friends who would be people would play with it. Culture Corner - This is an independent initiative I’ve started to connect with old coworkers. The goal is to create a small zoom meeting twice a month for friends to hang out and catch up. Attendance is not required, but if you are interested on getting on the mailing list, fill out this form. Top Secret Project -> This is a project to fix what is wrong with Contacts and CRMs. I have some plans, but it’s still early and I’m ready to share a bunch about it yet, though maybe I’ll write some posts on the parts of the system I think are currently broken this week. Python Qt-App -> This is a project I’m working on as a consultant. I’m helping build out an app that is used for industrial purposes. The current code base was written in Python and Qt with AI and doesn’t have a structure or tests. I’m working on both of those things. There are a couple of other projects on the list that I haven’t enough time to really develop, but I’ll talk more about them in upcoming weeks. ...

New initiative, write more about the weeks and share more with friends. Coffees I’m in the Denver area and still hunting for coffee that works for me. Because this is my first weekly review, I’m going to include a couple from a couple of weeks back. Lima Coffee Roasters - Fort Collins - Vibe was great, but my coffee was pretty poor for the cost. Didn’t have many naturals Sweet Bloom Coffee Roasters - Lakewood/Westminster - I love it when they do naturals, but until last week, they have had only six washed coffees and blends. Last week, they released a Gesha, but it looks like it is already off their site. Coffee Ride - Boulder - I love everything about this place and mission, except the coffee was a bit of a miss for me; it could also have been the coffee I picked. I tried the Colombia Finca Villa Betulia Honey Caturron, and it smells like Ginger. First time I have ever had a coffee smell like ginger, but the taste is very Cardamom for me. I also tried the Nicaragua La Bastilla Natural, and while it is a natural, brewed at 16:1, it still feels like a darker roast to me. I wanted more fruit. Despite all of this, I will go back and try another coffee there before too long. The shop is too cool. They started by delivering coffee on Bicycles! Huckleberry Roasters - Denver - This place has the same issue for me as Sweet Bloom. ALL OF THEIR COFFEES WERE WASHED. I got a 1:1; the barista was cool enough to make me one even though it wasn’t on the menu. The macchiato had no art. This doesn’t by default mean it is bad, but this one was bad, and the coffee tasted a bit burnt. Verb Coffee Roasters - Boulder - Saving the best of the week for last. This place has been on my radar before. Two years ago, we found it by accident while trying to go to another coffee shop in Boulder. It was hands down the best cup of coffee I had that year. Last year, I came back, and my coffee wasn’t anything special. I thought I had heard about them changing management or something, but apparently that was all in my head. Talking to coffee people at Sweet Bloom, I was encouraged to check them out again. So glad I did. Since I went a couple of weeks ago with family, I have been twice more and can’t wait to go again. I had a great YEMEN - WADI JANNAT - NATURAL SL34. I also had the RWANDA - NOVA WASHING STATION - ANAEROBICNATURAL RED BOURBON Achievements Did a really deep dive on the process of the Hanukkah Coffee Box and have some big learnings for next year. Added Ruff to a project I’m working on in Python thanks to a recommendation from Ethan Hunt. Made some big changes to the ways event locations are handled for [Sacred Space]https://www.findsacred.space]. This allows users to specify directions at their convenience, rather than an address. It also allows users to keep their address private until people sign up for the event. Font Awards for 2025 has finished, with Citywide as the winner, and I have set up the website to start accepting nominations for 2026. Any font created or redesigned in 2026 is eligible for the award. I am working on some of my leather crafting. I made a cover for my leather notebook with rivets. Started work on a new project that has the potential to change the way we deal with people through our technology. Discovered Post Oak BBQ and tried the Ron Swanson Sandwich Texas-style. I decided to start doing these weekly posts again. Photos ...

Sometimes I get a crazy notion to put something together and decide to do it on a whim. That is the story of font-awards. It is my first fully AI project (sort of, as in sort of fully AI). A former coworker and good friend was talking about how they created a quick prototype of a project using nothing but Windsurf and AI, and how they were able to build out the project’s scaffolding very quickly, with very little manual input. ...

Okay, so that’s been a minute. My last post was from August. You would think that I’ve been doing nothing since then. False. I have had a lot of projects, just not all of them something worth writing about. First up, a new edition of the Hanukkah Coffee Box. This is the second year of the box, and I’m even more excited about the roasters. I had more time to plan (though I still managed to be late on releasing), and so I got some different roasters from around the country. There are a couple that were new to me last year and even a few that I haven’t personally tried before. I have only tried a couple of them because the roasters asked for feedback, but they all smell fantastic. This year, I made about 50 boxes and have already sold about half. Head to the website to learn more about the box. ...