The northlondonhippy

Archive for February, 2009

I took delivery today of my brand new Robo-Toaster – the Toaster of the Future!

Not only did I receive it today, I made this rockin’ video:

I shot it using my Kodak Zi6 HD Pocket Camcorder in about 10 minutes and edited it in a couple of hours using iMovie ’09. I’m not experienced at all with that version of iMovie, so it took a bit longer than it should have done. Plus I found it easier to render it out in Quicktime, rather than playing it back in the application, which stuttered and stalled a bit on my 2.8mhz dual core iMac as I added layers of effects and titles.

Clearly I have too much free time on my hands. And if you just spent 2 minutes watching my video, clearly you do too.

Having a lot of free time recently has meant I’ve been able to immerse myself in the Twitterverse. Its an odd place to virtually hang out and it reminds me of so many things.

I’ve already compared it to trying to shout the loudest in a room full of shouty people. Competing for attention seems to be impossible, unless you already command attention from people in the real world.

Celebrities seem to thrive the most in the Twitterverse. As they are already celebrated, people are ready to engage with them and hang on their every word.

Many people seems to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to communicate with celebrities, to be noticed by them, receive a reply from them, or better an endorsement of whatever it is they do on the internet. There’s a sort of special personal validation that can only come from making some sort of contact with a celebrity.

Its not a one-way street, as the celebrities also benefit from the attention they receive. The more followers on Twitter you have, the more popular and worthy a celebrity you are and I would expect this sort of thing will be used in future contract negotiations for some of them. I can hear their agents now, saying with absolute authority, that celebrity X has 100,000 plus followers on Twitter which means there’s an instant, loyal audience for anything they do.

Maybe that’s true. But maybe not.

Just because I follow a celebrity on Twitter, does not mean I will see their film, watch their TV show, buy their album or even visit their blog. The ease with which you can follow someone means you may only have a passing interest in what they really do, but you are curious about how they use Twitter.

Some celebrities seem to use Twitter as a way to feed their own ego and narcissism. There’s nothing wrong with that and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind scoring myself a little piece of that kind of Twitter action too. It seems seductive and addictive, to have a constant flow of positive affirmation from strangers who admire you for one reason or another.

But Twitter doesn’t work like that, if my brief and ever-evolving list of followers is anything to go by. As a virtual Twitter nobody, people choose to follow me on the basis of randomly encountering one of my tweets, or fishing for key words contained within them.

I’ve been tweeting a bit about my coffee consumption. Its innocuous enough, true to my life and its how I start most days, with a freshly made cappuccino. Probably 20% of my followers have picked up on my coffee references and that’s why they are there.

I’ve also made a few references to being a journalist in real life, so I have a handful of followers interested in the field of news. I don’t tweet much about that part of my life, so they will end up disappointed.

I also tweet about drugs, specifically my weed intake. I sometimes use bad language and one day I may even make some cock jokes. I know that when I do, I will lose followers.

The more focussed your tweets are on a particular subject, the more loyal your followers will be. Perhaps I should split myself into several virtual people on Twitter; the coffeehippy, to tweet about my java intake, the weedhippy, to tweet about smoking spliffs and lastly, the cockhippy who only makes dick jokes.

I’m just going to keep tweeting whatever I feel like tweeting and if I offend some people, I’ll probably end up enthralling others. Who knows? My net number of followers seems to be slightly ever increasing and I’m not really paying that much attention to the people who leave.

I did promise to tweet my credit card numbers if I ever reach 1000 followers, which is quite an incentive to follow me and put up with my bullshit.

And by bullshit, of course I mean high-quality, informative and entertaining bullshit of 140 characters in length.

Six months ago I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Disease, otherwise known as Chronic Thyroiditis. At the time I didn’t really grasp the significance or seriousness of my diagnosis.

I do now.

I’ve probably had this stupid disease for a while, longer than I’ve known. I had symptoms that I didn’t know were symptoms for at least a year prior to being told of the cause.

I just thought I was getting old.

I am getting old, but age was not causing my problems, my useless thyroid was…and is.

I’m still not well. I find myself saying that a lot lately, in response to people asking me why I look tired, or pale.

I’ve been undergoing treatment for Hashimoto’s since my diagnosis. Treatment comes in the form of a small pill taken daily to replace the thyroid hormone my body no longer manufactures.

The side effects caused by the pills are very similar to the symptoms of the disease. I get heart palpitations, breathlessness, headaches, dizziness, light-headedness and these get worse every time the dosage is raised.

The dosage gets raised every couple of months as I am still not on a therapeutically effective level yet. I started out on 25mg, then went to 50mg and now I am on 100mg of Levothyroxine. Its about to be raised again, probably to 150mg, though I am awaiting for the results of a blood test for confirmation.

Lately, extreme exhaustion and lethargy have been added to the mix. I constantly crave sleep, but I don’t sleep deeply or for very long. I get physically tired very easily and don’t have any of my usual stamina.

My normal walk to my local highstreet used to take me well under 10 minutes, it now takes me closer to 15 and the return journey is stretching to the 20 minute mark.

I’m having concentration problems too. “Brain fog” is another symptom and there’s a real pea-souper in my head most of the time. I find it difficult paying attention to people when they tell me anything complex, my mind wanders and I am easily distracted. The same is true of my reading comprehension, if a paragraph drags on too long, as this one seems to be doing, I forget what it says.

I get waves of nausea, my appetite vacillates between having none at all, to suddenly being ravenous and I’ve been having mood swings too.

All of this sucks the big one in a very real, demonstrable way and I am tired of it.

To complicate matters, I haven’t been having much fun with the NHS.

My GP referred me to a specialist and after waiting months for an appointment, I ended up leaving the clinic without seeing the consultant endocrinologist. The clinic was oversubscribed, there weren’t any seats in the waiting room, the nurses were surly and rude and after waiting way too long, I left.

I did receive a letter of apology from the consultant for my poor treatment, but that is a small consolation. The entire experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth and no desire to ever return to that clinic.

It gets even worse, my regular GP, who I have been seeing for nearly a dozen years has been having health problems of his own. He’s cut back his hours and for the last several weeks, I’ve been unable to see him. I finally gave up and saw the surgery’s senior partner.

The senior partner immediately said she would take over managing my care, which makes me think my regular doctor won’t be back full time any time soon.

Being sick seems to be hard work and I worry if I ever had something seriously big wrong with me that I wouldn’t have the patience to fight my way through the system to get the treatment I would need to survive.

And speaking of survival, people can and do die from Hashimoto’s Disease. One of the things it does to you is weaken your heart and one can suffer from heart failure. I’m not saying that’s what I am heading for, but quite often it does feel that way to me.

I’m told that once I am on an effective dose of medication, I’ll feel like a brand new person. I’ve heard that a lot for the last six months. I’d be happy if I could just feel like the old person I used to be, before I was diagnosed and on this stupid medication.

The exhaustion caught up to me this week and prevented me from getting to work. I’ve been living on adrenalin and my supply must have finally depleted, I sort of collapsed the other night. I’m now signed off work for a week to rest.

I feel like this is my life now and I’ll never feel like my old self again. I know I’m an impatient patient, but I just can’t see a path back to good health. Let’s hope my doctor’s vision is clearer than my own.

Hello. Welcome back. Did ya miss me?

Its ramble time. Woke up too early following too little sleep. Must focus.

On what?

Its a pleasant, relaxing day off, or rather it should be, but I’ve got heaps to do ‘round the house and I might even wander up to my local high street.

Do they call it a “high street” because you have to get high before you go there? No? Well, tough, because I will be high when I go.

It should be a rule that you have to be high before allowed onto your local high street. It would make the entire shopping experience more pleasant for everyone involved. The shop assistants would think all the customers were mellow and pleasant, the shop assistants would be helpful without being overbearing and I wouldn’t nearly get into fist fights with all the rude, surly people knocking into me and blocking my way.

Oh wouldn’t it be grand?

As soon as they start opening cannabis cafes around the country, this is the sort of relaxed Utopia we can expect. Until then it will continue to be no fun.

Did you see a group of former presidents from Latin America are urging the world to adopt a controlled and regulated cannabis market? Did you look here?

Even the UN is working towards this fairly obvious and sensible conclusion. In the good ol’ US of A, they are moving in this direction. President Saviour Obama has even said that federal raids against medical marijuana establishments must end and the federal government needs to start respecting laws passed by individual states.

Many states in America have already decriminalised weed. That means it is considered the lowest possible policing priority, with penalties for possession being the equivalent of a minor traffic or parking offence.

Why can’t we do that here?

We could and we were going to until Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith started mucking around with things. These two nincompoops believe laws should be used to “send a message” to people, rather than reflect the scientific evidence or the truth.

This week the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). the body that advises the government on drug policy stated that ecstasy (E, pills, MDMA), be re-classified from its current A grade, back into Class B, to reflect its relative harm to the user. Sounds sensible enough as E is not in the same league as coke and smack.

The head of the ACMD, Professor. David Nutt went on to say that taking ecstasy is no worse than horseback riding and an equivalent number of people die from both activities annually. You would have thought that he said Jesus was secretly Satan for the drubbing he took over the comments. He was even forced to apologise and his future on the ACMD has been questioned.

Just for telling the truth!

In America, MDMA has been used by mental health professionals to assist in the therapy process. Would medical doctors prescribe something potentially lethal when their first rule is to “do no harm”? What do they know that we don’t know.

Nothing! The difference is our government uses legislation to “send a message” rather than to treat people with respect. Legislating morality never works, because people have their own moral compasses and that counts for something.

The simple fact is that anyone who’s ever smoked a joint or necked an E knows that what the government is saying is bullshit. What do you reckon that does to the government’s credibility?

It knocks it into the toilet. When a government lies about anything, we all suffer.

Drug taking is a health issue, not a moral or legal issue and trying to force it only does a disservice to everyone. If I choose to ingest MDMA, or cannabis or chocolate or even broken glass, its my body and my choice.

Criminalising millions of people serves no one. If you’re having trouble with drugs, you should be able to seek help without worrying about ending up with a criminal record. And if you are enjoying them responsibly, it should be nobody’s business but your own.

Common sense and compassion will eventually rule the day, but for now we’ll have to just keep watching our leaders screw things up more and more. Its frustrating, annoying and unavoidable, for as long as politicians can use the debate over drugs to score points with Middle England, the senseless persecution of people who enjoy something other than booze will continue.

Gee, that wasn’t as nearly as rambling as I expected it to be. Lucky you, or maybe even lucky me.

A year ago, I spent far too much money on my coffee making set-up. I say that, sitting here a year later, sipping the finest cappuccino I’ve ever had.

Since yesterday.

Every day I drink the best coffee I’ve ever tasted and I have absolutely no regrets on how much money I spent.

I have an Izzo Vivi espresso maker and a Macap M4D grinder as well as various accessories that help me pursue the perfect coffee.

The Izzo Vivi is on the low-end of the pro-sumer coffee maker scale, but is an excellent piece of kit. Its been reliable, dependable and relatively easy to use and maintain. Most importantly, it cranks out shot after shot of delicious espresso and has plenty of steam power to turn your milk into light and pour-able mirco-foam.

The espresso maker, as I quickly learned, is not the most important machine component in coffee making, its the grinder. To really make good espresso, you need a grinder that is up to the task and whatever you think you should spend on one, its probably not enough. Any coffee website or forum will tell you exactly the same thing.

My espresso maker has no real controls on it, except for the lever that operates the pump. You fill the portafilter with freshly ground coffee, lock it into place and then lift the lever to the pump. When you’re done, flip the lever down and the pump stops. That’s really it.

All of your control comes from adjusting the fineness of the grind and once you find your espresso range, requires minimal tweaking depending on the type and freshness of your coffee beans.

Which leads me to what I think is the single most important component in coffee making: freshly roasted beans.

I’ve read of something called the “rule of twelve’s” when it comes to coffee which goes like this:

unroasted, green coffee beans stay fresh for 12 months
roasted coffee beans stay fresh for around 12 days
ground coffee stays fresh for 12 minutes

I buy my coffee online, about every fortnight, to insure I have the freshest, tastiest beans possible. I grind my beans directly in the portafilter, only seconds before I brew my espresso. You can’t get any fresher than that.

Coffee oxidises quickly and releases gasses which break it down and the flavour suffers for this. If you’re buying your coffee pre-ground, or you are buying roasted beans without knowing the roasting date, you are cheating yourself out of the best coffee you can drink.

And if you are using those pre-filled coffee pods, you are trading convenience for taste.

You don’t have to spend as much as I have, but you really owe it to yourself to grind your own coffee and there are plenty of more affordable options for grinders than mine.

And freshly roasted beans aren’t that expensive, a quarter kilo of a decent single estate or blend costs about the same as a tall cappuccino from one of the high street chains and you’ll get at least 8 double espressos from it.

And it doesn’t have to be espresso, a decent Bodum press-pot with freshly ground coffee will make an outstanding cup and if you are only grinding for filter coffee, you can find some real bargains on grinders. I promise you, you will taste the difference.

My grinder is used every day, but the same can’t be said for the espresso maker. When I don’t have the time to heat it up, or clean it down after use, instead I use an Aeropress.

The main feature of the Aeropress is that it will work with the same fineness of grind as the espresso maker, so no need to readjust the grinder. The Aeropress is made of plastic, very simple to use and clean and produces a very convincing espresso-like coffee. I heat up some milk in the microwave and use one of those battery-operated hand whisks to froth it and in less than 5 minutes, have something which approximates a cappuccino.

But when I have the time, I always make the extra effort to use the Vivi. It takes longer and requires more clean-up, but its worth it.

My daily coffee routine is something like this:

Switch on the Vivi
Wait 30-45 minutes for it to warm up
When ready, brew a double espresso
do a 2 second flush to clear loose grounds from the shower screen
backflush for 10-15 seconds to clear oils from the brew path
froth my milk
flush the steam wand to get any milk residue out
build my drink
enjoy

Most days, I have a second cup as well, after that, I switch the machine off to let it cool. Then I clean out the drip tray, wipe it down and every other day, I refill the water reservoir.

I also backflush with detergent occasionally, I soak the baskets and portafilters in the same detergent, I soak the tip of the steam wand in milk deposit remover and every few months I descale the boiler. None of this is difficult or time consuming.

My accessory collection includes 2x lined shot glasses to check I am getting the correct volume of espresso in the correct amount of time (2 ounces in around 30 seconds), a couple of shot pots, a stainless steam jug for milk frothing, a 58mm Reg Barber tamper, a portafilter holder for tamping, and a shot timer. The tamping stand and the shot timer are useful, but not essential, everything else I couldn’t do without.

I also have 4 portafilters; one with 2 spouts and a double basket, another with one spout and a double basket, a third with a blanking disk for backflushing and a fourth that’s bottomless with a triple basket. The bottomless portafilter was useful when I was learning how to pack a portafilter properly, as it showed me where to look for my mistakes.

I spent a good part of the year sampling different beans and blends, but for many months now, I’ve been sticking one particular bean, called Yemen Mokha Matrar which is the richest, tastiest of all I tried. It works particularly well in milk-based drinks, like my amazing cappuccinos.

You can get Yemen Mokha Matrar from a variety of suppliers, though the roaster I use, roasts to order. I place an order on his website and he roasts the beans for me and ships them out the same day. Its a great service and they arrive the following day.

If anyone wants the name of the roaster I use, please feel free to email me. I’d like to include a link to his site, but would you want to be known as my official coffee roaster? I’m not certain he would either.

Since I started making my own proper coffee at home, I haven’t had a coffee any place else that even comes close, not from the high street chains, not from the coffee vendor in my office, nowhere!

Life is far too short to be drinking sludge and you owe it to yourself to provide yourself with the finest coffee possible. Put it this way, if I had to pay high street prices for every cappuccino I’ve had at home in the last year, I could have bought three sets of coffee making gear.

And if you are wondering why an old trippy hippy like me digs coffee so much, its simple. Coffee is a drug, like anything else that has an effect on your mood and perception. Don’t believe me, read this and learn if you drink too much, you can have proper hallucinations.

I’ve spent the last week hanging out on Twitter, tweeting my little heart out. If you’re following me, you now know far too much about my empty shell of an existence.

You’re not following me, hardly anyone is. I don’t know what I expected, perhaps some pied-piper-like effect on people which had me rivalling the top echelon of Twitterteers after my first tweet. As fucking if!

Twitter is a bit like shouting in a crowded room full of shouty people; getting anyone’s attention is practically impossible. Unless you’re famous already, as it seems proper celebrities who join Twitter enjoy instant popularity.

I’m only an internet celebrity, which should mean something on, um, you know, the internet, but it doesn’t. So how does one get noticed on Twitter?

I’m taking the long view, much like I did with blogging. If you just keep doing whatever it is you do, people will find you and worship you like the one true living god you are.

The other question is, how much attention do I want to get on Twitter? How much attention do I want to get full stop? I already do OK here in my tiny little corner of the internet.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, this website is actually profitable. I bring in more than I spend, though naturally that doesn’t include my very valuable time, which you can’t put a price on.

Well, you could really, I get £750 a day, plus expenses, but you get to keep the photos I take of your husband shagging his secretary. Oh no, that’s what a private detective gets!

If I ever won the lottery, I would hire a team of private detectives to dig up dirt on my list of enemies. Everyone’s got something secret lurking in their lives that they wouldn’t want anyone to know about. I’d like to know.

Sorry, I attended a special screening of Frost/Nixon last night and I think a bit of Tricky Dicky’s sleaze rubbed off on me. He famously had an enemies list and used investigators to dig dirt up on people. Of course, he did it with tax payer’s money, I want to use the lottery cash I will never win because rarely buy a ticket.

My week on Twitter has been fun. With the terrible winter weather here in the UK, I’ve been able to keep track of the snowfall in real time, complete with photos and travel updates. I got instant reactions to this week’s crackin’ Battlestar Galactica episode and I learned that BBC Radio One DJ, Chris Moyles actually seems like a decent guy.

Moyles (@CHRISDJMOYLES) has been a surprise on Twitter, he tweets loads and comes across as quite a nice fellow. Who knew?

I posted my own snowy photos and even a picture of 2 of my cute little kitty cats. Awwwwww! I’ve also posted some jokes and some surreal shit too, mainly for my own amusement.

I can certainly see the appeal of Twitter. Its simple to use and provides a very focussed service. It is also extremely addictive and easy to dip in and out of many times throughout the day.

It may be that the novelty wears off for me and I will get bored of tweeting my every thought and action, but for now I’m a tweeting machine.

So what are you waiting for, don’t you wanna follow this hippy? I might lead you to where they are hiding the good drugs?

Screw that, if I knew where the good drugs were, I would be taking them right now and not wasting my time typing up this drivel!