I want one of these for my house. It dispenses 104 different sodas produced by the Coca-Cola company.

http://www.undertheradarblog.com/blog/coke-freestyle-touchscreen-mobile-interactive-machine/

This is a pretty impressive demo.

http://280atlas.com/what.php

I brew coffee with a coffee press, aka French press or coffee plunger. It is really nice since I’m only brewing coffee for myself, and I don’t have to deal with paper filters. However, it does leave a certain amount of silt from coffee grounds at the bottom of my mug, since the wire mesh doesn’t filter it as well as paper. One solution is to use a coffee grinder with a coarser setting, but I’ve found that the ones that you can use for free at the grocery store still leave a fair amount of silt, and I haven’t decided to make the plunge on a good burr grinder yet. Using a coarse grind also has the side effect of requiring twice as much coffee grounds to brew the same strength coffee.

The cheaper and easier solution is to use a nylon fine sediment filterscreen which fits on the coffee press plunger. I could only find these at Sweet Maria’s online store, and they have an annoying $15 minimum, which wouldn’t be so bad, but they don’t sell anything else I’m interested in. They have coffee roasters (did I mention I was looking for the easy solution), green coffee (roaster not included), and roasted whole bean coffee (but I don’t have a grinder). This worked quite well. It didn’t filter all of the sediment, but it did reduce the effect on the entire cup of coffee except for the bottom 2mm. I also think that cleaning the coffee grounds out of the coffee press is much easier than cleaning a re-usable filter in a drip coffee maker.

You can also read someone else’s opinion of the filterscreen.

For Valentine’s Day, my wife got me guy flowers, aka beer. She signed me up for three months from The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club. I received a 12 pack of two to four different kinds of beer each month, and here is a list of my favorites.

• Snake Chaser Irish Style Stout from the Lakefront Brewery.
  • I’ve never had an Irish stout before. This is nothing like a Guiness stout. It is very smooth, and slightly sweet.
  • International bittering units: 16.0
  • Alcohol: 5.0%
  • Rating: 65th percentile
• Primator Polotmavy Märzen from Pivovar Nachod
  • This is a dark beer with a strong flavor.
  • Alcohol: 5.5%
  • Rating: 55th percentile
• Primator Rytirsky Blond Doppelbock from Pivovar Nachod
  • This is quite strong, but it is unusually sweet, which makes it easier to drink. Its high alcohol content also makes the second sip seem much milder. I do prefer this to other high alcohol beers such as the Spaten Optimator.
  • Alcohol: 9.0%
  • Rating: 16th percentile

I am just starting on my last shipment, so I will have to blog those at
a later time.

San Antonio seems to have cornered the market with restaurants having Jalisco in their name. Unlike the plethora of restaurants with Taco in their name, I have a hard time remembering anything but Jalisco, which leads to some confusion since the Jalisco restaurants vary widely in quality. There are two Jalisco restaurants in walking distance from my office, and there is one called Taco de Jalisco that is in walking distance from my house. Taco de Jalisco opened recently and is really good, but I almost didn't try it because of disappointing experiences at other Jaliscos. The new Taco de Jalisco is accross the street from the Witte Museum and next to the Picante Grill, which is another good restaurant although it is very slow at lunch and weekends. There is also an older Taco de Jalisco on Vance Jackson that I have not tried. TJ, as I have christened it, has another heartwarming quality, and that is the fact that is very cheap.