Coffee, the constantly growing industry

Zë Au Sol

8 Apr 2016 — 1 min read

A while ago, I knew a guy in a place. This guy, we’ll call him Carter (and the place Milk Bar) made great coffee and knew other people who make great coffee. Finding out I was from Oxford, he pointed me in the direction of another guy, and another guy, who we’ll call Nathan and James, who worked in another place. It transpired that Nathan and James were planning to open a humble coffee shop in my city, what would be the first good coffee shop the city would know (sure it had Missing Bean, but they’d never quite hit ‘good’).

This was all about three years ago. Jump-cut to today, and Nathan is working his mid-Western charm in Birmingham, running his second Quarter Horse coffee, with his own roastery attached. Coming full circle, and just as I leave Oxford, QH:O (which I still consider my personal coffee shop, and remember the sincere apologies when other customers would be there in the weeks after it opened) has been redecorated. It finally has a toilet, in the summer will have a garden at the back, and has a fantastic open plan feel to it.

I look forward to seeing what the next three years brings to Quarter Horse coffee.

On Garmin and Polar chest straps

Both Garmin and Polar make chest strap heart-rate monitors. Garmin's product looks expensive, but you only ever need to buy one: it'll fail within the warranty period and they'll replace it for free. Polar's are modular, and I haven't had

Inhabiting William Gibson's Modern Trilogies

I think William Gibson is best known for the Sprawl trilogy, and specifically Neuromancer. Amazingly he has written other books: the Blue Ant/Bigende trilogy, and the Jackpot series, among others. Pattern Recognition - there will be spoilers in general - follows Case Pollard, a woman who has an allergy

Spring Julbo EVAD-1 Update

I have a couple of other posts on the EVAD-1, tl;dr is that the software is incredible, but the early hardware I had was... challenged. Four years on, how's it going? Problems 1. Swipe sensor doesn't always want to swipe. 2. No way to turn

Brief Sennheiser Momentum Sport Data Analysis

Sennheiser released their Momentum Sport headphones in 2024-04, an interesting partnership between Polar (they who invented the chest-worn ECG) and an audio company. Historically, the ear has been an excellent point to measure both temperature and heart rate from, so logically these headphones should have been able to readily replace

Read more

On Garmin and Polar chest straps

Inhabiting William Gibson's Modern Trilogies

Spring Julbo EVAD-1 Update

Brief Sennheiser Momentum Sport Data Analysis