The circles I travel in are tangentially related to theology, and this pleases me. I really do have a love for theology, and every time I get to talk about God with folk I end up feeling better. So, when the name of a book kept coming up again and again and again I thought, ok God, I’ll pick it up. The book is Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas. He also gave the speech at this year’s congressional prayer breakfast. Guy’s quickly becoming a big muckity-muck.

So I’ve made it through the introduction. Yeah, super speed-reader over here and just as quick to judge. One thing it’s brought to my mind, though, is the importance of the faith that saves us from our sin. The introduction lays out Christian responses to the gospel in a continuum ranging from cheap grace to costly grace to legalism. I’ll explain.

Cheap grace is the belief that God will always happily cover all our sins so there’s no need to change anything about how we live. In a sense, sin is free. Costly grace believes that Jesus paid a very heavy toll for our sins, so we owe it to him to live our lives worthy of him. Well, I’m not 100% sure that’s what costly grace is, but that’s how it is in my head right now. Then legalism is legalism. We earn our salvation by being right before God. This is stupid.

Costly grace as a concept confuses me. What does it mean that costly grace necessitates life change? How does costly grace work without having to perform the faith that saves us? And if we have to prove our faith how is there any hope for anyone?

Example: If I have faith in electricity and local government and my home maintenance I have no second thoughts about flipping on the light switch to turn the light on. If, however, I try to hit the lightbulb with a broom or consult with expert electricians how to make light appear or even worry each time before I turn the switch on I demonstrate that I do not, in fact, have faith in the light switch to do its function. Moving then to the faith that saves us from our sins, how can we demonstrate our faith when the very thing we have faith in is our own inaction (our total depravity deprives us of any opportunity for action) and instead in the Christ’s actions. How can that be acted?

I do hope the book will have its own answer, but since I’m coming at the book with my own agenda it probably won’t be answered. It’s really not fair to the book, but still I can’t help but be a bit frustrated.

The iPad has a completely new display that is demonstrably better than what came before. It makes every activity on the iPad more enjoyable. We can know this without having used a new iPad. Just look at the iPhone display upgrade (iPhone 3GS -> iPhone 4). It made everything more enjoyable. Going back and looking at the old display you constantly felt like you needed to blink away the ugly. Truly, the new display is a standalone feature.

The new iPad also has double the amount of RAM which will make it feel faster, and it connects to 4G wireless networks, which is a really, really fast way to connect to the internet when you’re out and about. Seriously, it’s fast.

These are not minor upgrades. And yet, most everyone I talk to looks down their nose at the progress that happens before them. It’s like that for  more than the iPad, too. People really don’t want to think there’s anything out there better than what they have. In one sense it’s definitely healthy to not spend money on things you can’t afford, and one strategy for doing that is to downplay the need for potential purchases. I can understand that.

The better strategy is to acknowledge that there is something better, but to still be happy with what you have. And, like before, that goes for more than just an iPad.

Turns out, professional roasters really know what they’re doing. Who woulda thought that passionately working on your craft each day would make you better than the guy who passionately works for fifteen minutes or so a week. Plus having a coffee roaster that didn’t start out it’s life as a Ronco Rotisserie Chicken Roaster helps. In any case, the beans I’ve been getting the past month have been better in most every way. In a strange way this is a very good thing.

Now I know where I need to improve and where I’m doing well. I am getting good green beans, and this is a great start. Some of the professionally roasted beans clearly start out as good, but not great, greens. You can tell in the cup since they don’t absolutely sing, and since the roaster isn’t crowing about all the specifics of where the coffee comes from. Other times I have been able to tell because they actually say it’s from a large farm (such as La Minita in Costa Rica). These coffees are good, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t hold a candle to the great coffees I’ve been getting from places like PT’s Coffee and Terroir. My roasts don’t come close either.

I definitely can improve in my roast stability. That is, after the roast I find way too much variance between the beans in roast level, at least visually. It might be interesting to split up a batch into lighter and darker tones after roasting to see if there’s really a difference in taste. I imagine most of this variance is due to not having a slot-loading roaster. In order to load the beans into the roaster it must be cool (or at least it takes so long to load the beans it is cool by the time they are loaded). Since the roaster is starting from a low temp it is my hope that getting a slot-loading roaster will fix the variance I’m seeing.

In all this has been a very tasteful and insightful month. Oh, and I’m getting coffee from Square Mile next. Jealous?

For those who may read this who don’t know, there’s a website that’s become very popular with folks who love technology called Daring Fireball. It’s been available for readers since 2002; I’ve been a regular reader since about 2004. It is authored by one man, John Gruber. I doubt he’ll ever read this.

I have loved reading his site mainly because he states what I’m feeling about technology in good, concrete terms, and elaborates on what subtle movements by companies can mean in the long term. He is seldom wrong in his predictions. I don’t think he can handle not being the underdog, though.

Over the past few months I’ve been following along with both is writing at Daring Fireball and his regular talk show, appropriately titled The Talk Show and there is a greater undercurrent of carelessness than usual. I’ve found his writing to always be brave and honest; part of being honest is stating things as directly as possible and part of being brave is only caring about the listener you have in mind. John seems to be exceptional at this part; only caring about being honest for his intended listener.

My problem is that he seems to be caring about less and less these days. Either that or I don’t care about what he writes as much. To me, it’s an interesting case of being a victim of good fortune.

Everything John does revolves to some extent around Apple. Apple has become the largest corporation in history. Apple is now the incumbant. When you are the incumbant you are treated differently; rebels take on a different shape when they assume power. John has been a very successful rebel online, writing honestly and bravely about the up-and-coming Apple. Now that Apple has the power, the shape of John’s writing is changing in my mind.

Windows and Intel are shrinking dramatically. Yep. And?

RIM is history. About right to me; this is old news.

And then there’s the Claim Chowder¹ that just keeps rolling in. Very, very old. People say stupid things, this is not news.

So now that I’ve sufficiently buried the lede, let me tell you what I think should happen. John should do what I think all successful entities should try to do: be honest and brave and open about the future. Where does he see Apple going and why is Apple going to be the best? The pieces that still resonate with me are future oriented; subtle stings at ailing companies don’t make me laugh anymore.

Psychologically speaking there are different positions you have to take when you are the majority versus when you are the minority in order to resonate with people. The minority states its case as loudly as possible and never acknowledges the opposition’s points as even potentially valid. The majority acts magnanomous in victory and emphasizes its plan. I believe in the past John’s posts followed the minority position very well.

Daring Fireball is no longer a minority blog, it’s time for it to accept success.

Really, I think the idea of integrating a touch sensor in a stylus would really be amazing in terms of its usefulness. The big advantage of writing in the real world with a pen or pencil is that most of the time you can just pick it up and start writing. You generally can’t do that with an iPad. If you had a sensor in the stylus, you could.

So, I’m putting them down here. Anyone can run with these, I’m just the idea man.

Buying roasted coffee honestly isn’t terribly more expensive than buying good green coffee in bulk from a well respected source such as Sweet Maria’s. All the little value-adds that a roaster provides such as sourcing¹, roasting², and packaging are actually done really well, in such a way that the difference between high quality green coffee beans and buying from a roaster really are just a few bucks. When you get right down to it, high quality coffee beans themselves are what make for good coffee, so it only makes sense that the source of those beans sees the benefits of their labor. No, the cost that I just can’t swallow is the shipping.

Shipping is going to be expensive, and there’s just no way around it. More than that, due to the nature of coffee as a fruit you’re going to have to ship frequently if you don’t have an amazing roaster in your town. At best there will be two shipments per month with a few months where you might be able to swing just one coffee shipment. Multiply that by $6, the best standard price per pound of coffee, and you’re looking at around an additional $20 per month, just for shipping.

That’s insane, and there’s no way around it. It makes me angry just thinking about it, because there’s no way around it, the cost is just there. The delivery company should be paid to take produce hundreds or thousands of miles. There’s no way to buy in bulk to cut down on the number of shipments because then the coffee goes stale before you can drink it. Game over, man. Game over.

However, sometimes the only way out is through. You have to delve deeper into coffee by roasting your own to win. See, green coffee has a shelf life measured in months, not weeks, so you can buy in bulk to cut down on the number of shipments. And since you’re roasting yourself you can make sure your coffee is always fresh. Just make sure you roast new coffee while you still have a couple days supply of the old roasted coffee available to drink while the fresh roast degases. And if you’re a nerd, and let’s be honest here you most certainly are, getting to play around with the fiddly aspects of roasting coffee is right up your alley. Because boy, howdy, are there ever some fiddly aspects to roasting coffee³.

Let me make a prediction, if you do decide to roast your own coffee you will experience some of the worst, strangest flavors as well as some truly great, rewarding coffee. It’s a game, nerds, and you can figure it out.

Lastly, even though your roasting your own you’ll want to occasionally get it from the pros. Memory has the stability of Silly-Putty, so you need to keep being reminded what others are doing to get a feel for what’s possible. Don’t be afraid to go outside of your usual suspects, either.

There’s a lot of good coffee out there, and I’d be happy to try some of your tasty, tasty coffee to tell you what I think. You know, I’m just thoughtful like that.