Summer Food Fun and Drink Chapter 5 Working with Wood at Camosun · Wednesday June 30, 2010 by colin newell
Download the Fine wood-working schedule here – Camosun-Woodworking-Summer-2010.pdf | We spoke with Betsi Davis (bdavis@camosun.bc.ca) at Camosun in the Continuing Education dept. about some of their fine wood working courses for the summer of 2010. There are a few of the courses that are in jeopardy of not happening owing to enrollment minimums not being met.
Two in particular are “ Veneering and Inlay” course and the “Wood Carving Level 2” which are never offered outside of the Summer Woodworking Institute in July.
I have attached the pdf brochure for the courses. Let’s get the word out.
Attached a handout on our Woodworking Summer series of courses as requested.
Betsi says… “As you now know, we need to meet a minimum number of students to run any course and by sharing this information with you – and having you share this information with your colleagues, we could possibly meet the minimum requirements for those upcoming courses that we discussed.
Again, thank you for your input and your efforts!”
Betsi Davis – Administration
Trades & Technology – Continuing Education
Camosun College – Interurban Campus
250-370-4563
Rites of Spring #28 Technology of our undoing - broadband over power lines · Saturday May 29, 2010 by colin newell
My day job is in multi-media design, modernization, implementation and blah, blah, blah…
…in the educational environment. In my case UVic.
(so)Give me a classroom or lab with a black board and a piece of chalk and I will give you video data projection, infinitely variable lighting controls, high speed internet, web-casting and sound so crisp you would swear it’s live.
because in the year 2010, it’s easily to learn when you have all the tools.
And this applies to the home as well.
I have a PC workstation for audio production and a MacBook Pro for doing the stuff I am doing right now… a very high speed internet connection… and Wireless-N that I do not even use. I like my cat-5 wiring if at all possible. It is secure… and it’s reliable as gravity my friends.
I also like keeping my bits and bytes contained within copper cable if possible. Not adverse to wireless… as long as it’s wireless-N or better. Which is secure as heck after all – low power. It’s safe. And nobody gets hurt, right?
Well, there is something that has come down the pipe (more popular in Europe than here) that is scaring the crap out of me – not for what it does to people or creatures – but what it potentially takes away from us… our ability to communicate.
It’s called broadband over the power lines or BPL and it uses house wiring for distributed ethernet. God knows who designed this stuff. It has the capability, ironically, of seriously interfering with existing digital radio and TV and old style AM and FM radio – impeding our ability to communicate with each other and enjoy our high tech lives. Now that is genuinely ironic wouldn’t you say?
The boxes (shown above and sold at COST-CO) are made in China and they are shit. Some colleagues and I are investigating an interference report from the area around Beacon Hill Park in Victoria – some 4 city blocks wide! And it is likely one of these little peckers (shown above). From some of the intelligence that we have gathered, people are buying these units at COST-CO and then returning them shortly thereafter – not because they don’t work… because they do – but because they are difficult to set up.
Wireless-N is tried, tested and true – sets up easily and does not interfere with any domestic or terrestrial radio or data services.
Now imagine that you neighbor down the street buys one of these boxes and your audiophile set-up is screwed… or your HD TV is now replete with interference lines or inexplicable odd behavior – and don’t think for a second that because it’s digital it is immune to interference – cause it ain’t.
So think about this: One device (shown above) and 4 city blocks wiped out.
How wiped out? I listen to CFAX 1070 AM in Victoria and the offending box (or something like it – we are not exactly sure it is this particular unit) actually interferes with a 10,000 watt radio station.
This should concern us.
Rites of Spring #16 - Gadgets - playing with the Clever Coffee Brewer · Sunday May 16, 2010 by colin newell
On a brilliant Spring day in Cobble Hill, British Columbia I drop into The Drumroaster Cafe (owned by Patricia, Geir and Carsen Oglend – arguably the coffee masters of Vancouver Island)
I am enjoying a Chemex pot of an exotic single origin coffee and one of Patricia Oglend’s marvelous baked creations when Geir suggests… “Want to roast some coffee?”
Do I?
Within minutes we are in the roaster room firing up a 60 pound Deidrich coffee roaster – It is a gas powered drum roaster that I have a passing familiarity with – but Geir plays it safe and assumes (correctly) that I need some hand holding – good thing because we are about to play with hundreds of dollars worth of coffee over the space of a half-hour or so.
During cooling cycles he pulls out this wonderful little coffee maker – it looks like a Melitta #4 coffee filter holder… with a twist. It has a spring loaded valve on the bottom that stays closed unless the coffee maker is sitting on top of a mug.
So. When one is brewing coffee by a.) dropping in a gold filter or #4 paper filter and b.) Putting some fresh ground coffee into the filter and c.) adding some water directly off the boil into the filter – and then counting down about 2 minutes…
and then placing the Clever Coffee Maker onto the mug – which opens the valve which allows the coffee to flow through into the mug.
Sure you could do this with a regular #4 filter holder (like the Melitta) but you have no brew control other than the grind of the coffee and your ability to finesse the right amount of hot water into the basket at precisely the right rate. This is called Brew dwell – and no, I did not just make that up.
The Clever Coffee Maker is clever for several reasons. It allows for a degree of French press type immersion and allows you to control the amount of time the ground coffee comes in contact with the water.
Clever? I would say brilliant!
And at $20 (Tax-Incl.) dollars for this delightful little coffee gadget, I would say…
Get smart and get the “Clever”. Want more info? Visit the Drumroaster online.
You can get your own Clever coffee brewer from The Drumroaster Cafe on the Island Highway on Vancouver Island at the Cowichan Bay turn-off – visit in person or contact them on their website online.
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Rites of Spring #12 - Espresso, you wicked mistress · Monday May 3, 2010 by colin newell
Someone once said… “Teach a man to make coffee and he will be happy every day… teach him to make espresso and he will be frustrated for a lifetime.”
Truer words were never spoken.
Me, I have been out of the espresso game for almost a year.
I love my french press and drip. And I think I am pretty good at it.
(And) When I get a hankering for an espresso, I leave it to the pro’s – like any of the folks at Discovery Coffee, or Habit Coffee and Culture, or if I absolutely positively without question have to have the closest-thing-to-religious-experience espresso… well then I make the pilgrimage to Drumroaster coffee on the Island highway – somewhere near Cobble Hill at the highway turnoff to Cowichan Bay. It’s worth it.
Because when you are in the company of Geir or Carsen Oglend or Tristan Mapstone or are nibbling some wonderful brioche created by Patricia Oglend… well, the coffee angels are whispering in your ears.
For me, self produced espresso can be a mixed bag. As you can see from the shot above, I can make a mean espresso. But I screw up a lot. And I don’t take it well.
I am currently playing with an espresso machine that I call the Red Dragon. It is the only rebuilt and custom espresso machine on the planet that has had Reg Barber participate in the production phase. (I will review it soon on coffeecrew.com)
And then, because it has crossed me once (produced bad espresso because I was not on the ball…) I am giving it away.
That’s right folks – a one of a kind pump driven espresso machine. Brass boiler. Fire engine powder coat red… and it can make killer espresso.
But it’s got to go. That is just the way I am.
I’m a drip that loves my drip coffee.
And I speak a bit of French as well.
So stay tuned.
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