Scott Jangro and I started a new coffee podcast, called coffeecast.  It can be found at CoffeeCast.fm.  It is being billed as the “odd couple” of the coffee world.  Scott will drink anything (even 7-11 coffee) and I will only drink hand picked, perfectly roasted beans delivered to me on a silver platter.

We plan on doing a new podcast each week to discuss everything from interesting coffees to our favortie brewing methods.  If you love coffee, our podcasts should make you love it even more.  If you aren’t a fan of coffee, give it a listen - you will probably be jealous of us and start drinking coffee.

I also love to make coffee at home.  I have four devices that I use to make coffee but really only use two of them regularly.  I have a Saeco Super Automatic Espresso Machine, a Krups Drip Coffee Maker, A French Press and my newest apparatus - a Hario Siphon Coffee Maker (more about that later).  I gave up making drip coffee over a year ago.  I do not like drip coffee and prefer espresso based drinks or french press coffee.  I find drip coffee too one dimensional and the quality is average at best compared to other brewing methods.  I do not use my French Press very often anymore - it has been relegated to camping trips in our t@b trailer.

So this leaves only my awesome espresso machine and my new siphon machine.  We bought the espresso machine for Christmas 2008.  I got it online at Costco for half the list price at the time.  It is so nice to wake up and hit a button that heats the water, grinds the beans and makes the prefect shot.  It is like having a vending machine in your house that dispenses espresso shots!

My new obsession however is with the coffee siphon (it’s a game changer).  It is very popular in places like Japan and even South America.  I predict that you will see a lot more places offering siphon coffee in the next few years.  So what makes it so great?  Well, it looks really cool, it is fun to use and makes very clean (i.e. clear) great tasting coffee.  Plus, look at that thing!  It is like having my own coffee chemistry set.

The siphon works by heating the water in the coffee pot to boiling which creates gases that expand and push the water up into the brewing chamber. The water will remain in the brewing chamber until the heat source is removed. Once all the water is in the brewing chamber, I stir the coffee and then again every 30-45 seconds for two and a half minutes. Then I turn off the burner which allows the coffee pot to begin cooling and the coffee to flow back down into the pot. This takes another minute and a half. Then all you do is remove the top brewing chamber and serve the coffee.

The Hario coffee siphon comes with an alcohol burner but I never used it. Instead I bought a butane burner pictured above because it is faster and easier to control the heat. It is also easier to transport since the it is essentially a big lighter, whereas the alcohol burner is filled with flammable alcohol that looks like it could easily be spilled.

Something not easily seen is the filter. It uses a cloth filter that is pulled tight by a little chain that hangs down the tube and hooks to its bottom. In the picture above, the filter is visible under the coffee grounds. The chain is not hooked to the bottom of the tube so you can see the little hook that hold the filter tight to the bottom of the brewing chamber.

I got my coffee Siphon as a Christmas gift from my mother (thanks mom! - and thanks to my wife for telling her what to get me).  I first discovered siphon coffee last Summer in Los Angeles at LaMill Coffee in Silverlake. I have heard that you can also get it at Blue Bottle in San Fransisco.

The machine is just one third of the equation. You also need water and coffee. I buy my coffee beans at either LaMill or at Peet’s Coffee. For my espresso machine, I buy whole beans since the machine grinds them to order each time I press the button for a shot. For the siphon machine, I have LaMill or Peet’s grind the beans for me. They have a burr grinder that does a much better job than the grinder I have a home. I plan on getting a high quality grinder soon so I can grind the beans to order for the siphon machine. You want to grind your beans not only for the brewing style but so the coffee is evenly ground. Some grinders - most notably the ubiquitous Krups blade grinder - are terrible and shouldn’t be used since they grind beans unevenly.

Currently, I am brewing LaMill’s Organic Ethiopian in my siphon machine. They descibe it as sweet with flavors of ripe stone fruit, apricot preserves, blueberry, and creme fraiche tartness. It really is delicious!

Water might be the most important ingredient for making great coffee. Unless you live in Vienna Austria, you do not want to use straight tap water until you have tested it or been told that it is suitable for making coffee (99% chance it isn’t). It is best to use filtered water. I have a dual filter system under my kitchen sink that removes most of the crap. You also don’t want to use bottled spring water because it has too many minerals and will create deposits in your machine.

The first time a had a sip of siphon coffee, I said; “this is like getting to drink wine with breakfast”. The coffee is very complex with a long finish (after taste). It is perfect black (I usually take a little cream).

Please feel free to leave a comment with your favorite coffee bean, brewing method or experience. Now I want to go home and make some coffee!

Here is a video I found on Youtube demonstrating the siphon method.

I am actually wearing this watch today.  I wanted a straight-up, heavy-duty diver watch for my collection.  A lot of people go for the Rolex Submariner (or if you are cool, you get the Sea Dweller) but I wanted something unique that I wouldn’t see on another wrist.  I chose the Mühle Glasshüte Rasmus Divers with Orange Dial.  I have both the bracelet (pictured) and the natural rubber strap.  It is also available with a black, red, or blue face.

This is by far the heaviest watch I own and at 44mm in width, it is one of the biggest as well.  It is built like a tank out of a solid piece of 316L stainless steel.  It has an automatic movement - meaning it is a mechanical watch that winds itself from the movement of your wrist.  It definitely stands out when worn.  Most people probably instinctively think it is a Swiss watch but it is actually made in Germany.

It has very few features at first glance since it has only one purpose - to tell you what time it is underwater.  The first thing you’ll notice is that the crown is offset - instead of at its usual place at 3 o’clock, it is at 4 o’clock.  The reason for this is so it doesn’t dig into your wrist when using your hand.  It is also extra big so it can be adjusted while wearing a glove.

Another feature not visible in the photos, is an automatic helium escape valve on the other side at 10 o’clock.  This comes into play if you get the bends while diving and need to go into a depth chamber which uses helium mixed with oxygen.  Helium molecules are smaller than water molecules and will enter the watch while under pressure in the depth chamber.  As the pressure is reduced, the watch crystal will break or pop off if the helium is not vented through a valve.

The watch is rated to 1000 meters (3281 feet) which is deeper than a human can stand.  The record for SCUBA is 330 meters (1027 feet), so I guess I am more than covered with this watch.

The watch was designed using input from the AIDA, the official national German apnea diving team.  Apnea divers are also called Free Divers - holding their breath while underwater without using air tanks.  The world record on a single breath is 250 meters!  This watch will be lucky if it ever sees 25 meters on my wrist.

Another favorite watch of mine is the Casio PAW1300 Pathfinder.  It is a great travel and camping watch because (a) it costs less than $250 and (b) it has an amazing amount of functionality built into a relatively small package.

First cool feature is it doesn’t use batteries - instead, it uses solar power to charge itself.  I keep my watches in a pitch black safe when not wearing them.  Even after two months, the watch is still running with half a charge left.  The specifications state that it can go 5 months on a single charge.

Another cool feature is it syncs with the atomic clock shortly after midnight every night over radio waves so it is always accurate to less than 1 second.  It actually can sync to different frequencies around the world (US, UK, Germany, Japan), so no matter where you live or travel, it should sync up to the nearest atomic clock signal.

Speaking of traveling, it has dual time zone capability so you can keep track of two time zones at once.  The time zones are labeled by city like BER for Berlin, LON for London and CHI for Chicago.

The watch also has an altimeter, compass, thermometer and barometer built into it - plus it is waterproof to 100 meters (333 feet).  There is also a countdown timer, five alarms and a stopwatch!

One last cool feature is the auto activated back light that comes on when you turn your wrist towards your body to read the time.  It only comes on in low light situations (and can be deactivated).

The watch is very lightweight and constructed of plastic resin, making it light and comfortable to wear.  The strap has a buckle type closure so you can easily adjust the fit while traveling.  I like this because when it gets hot out, I like to loosen up the strap one notch.

So, I stumbled upon QR codes the other day and have been having fun playing with them.  If you haven’t heard of them yet then you probably haven’t lived in Japan recently - they are all the rage over there.

What’s a QR code you ask?  Good question.  It is that black and white matrix image at the top of this post.  Want to know more?  There is a page on wikipedia that provides more details.

Why am I interested in them?  QR codes can hold data like website addresses, business card info, or anything that you want up to 4,296 alphanumeric characters.  For example, the image above has my business card information encoded in it.

The image below is a link to this blog.

If you have a decoder on your cell phone or computer, you can read the information or they can act as hyper links.  Most cell phones in Japan have these encoders built into them so users can quickly and easily get information or link to websites from offline print ads.  I have one on my iPhone.  If you do a search for QR code in the iTunes App Store you will get several results - all of them are free.

You too can play around with QR codes and even make some for yourself by going to this site.

Might we be seeing and using these more in the near future?

[update] If you want to know more about my secret project, just decode the image below.

The Todd and Sam Show finally has an official home at GeekTo.Me for our weekly podcasts.  Below is the list of topics from our second episode recorded earlier this week.  You can listen to it by heading over to GeekTo.Me where episode 3 should also be posted later today.

• T-Mobile’s gPhone Pros and Cons
• Mobile Video and Audio
• Pandora Upgrades on iPhone and iTouch
• iPhone 2.1 Update
• Installing iPhone Apps Wirelessly
• Todd’s MacBook Pro’s LED Fail
• New BlackBerrys
• Posterous
• Yammer and Present.ly
• Evolution of Micro-Blogging
• GDocs vs Zoho
• WiMax
• Bandwidth Limits
• Performance Marketing and the Economy
• Kindles, eBooks and Audio Books
• Wii Fun

Please feel free to provide feedback on what you liked and what (if anything) sucked.

Please take the time to watch the whole video - it is only 4 minutes and 28 seconds long.  I think you can spare that much time out of your life for this. It really begins to rock at about 0:52.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I checked out who this guy is by visiting Where the Hell is Matt and reading the “about” section. Below are a few paragraphs on this person.

Matt is a 31-year-old deadbeat from Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames. Matt achieved this goal pretty early and enjoyed it for a while, but eventually realized there might be other stuff he was missing out on. In February of 2003, he quit his job in Brisbane, Australia and used the money he’d saved to wander around Asia until it ran out. He made this site so he could keep his family and friends updated about where he is.

A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said “Hey, why don’t you stand over there and do that dance. I’ll record it.” He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It’s actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.

A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as “That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I’ll send you the link. It’s funny.”

I have organized my applications into 5 screens.  The first screen holds all the primary apps that come with the iPhone like Text, YouTube, Maps, Contact, iTunes, App Store, Settings, etc.  Not much to really show you here - if you’ve seen an iPhone, you know what mine looks like.

The next screen holds what I call my utility applications.  These applications are used to access things I use a lot and seem to belong together.  My most frequently used apps are Twitterlator, Facebook, and iVote.  Handy apps that I do not use everyday but really like are iSpend, Pandora, and Urbanspoon.

iVote is a cool application that updates throughout the day with different opinion polls.  I have kinda become addicted to checking it and probably participate in 75% of the polls.  This app is free btw.

Here is a sample poll on which fastfood chain is better?  Once you select your answer, you get to see the poll results along with comments.  Another cool feature is the ability to submit your own polls.

The next page of apps aren’t really apps, they are bookmarks.  A lot of sites are building webpages that act like apps for the iPhone.  A great example is Google Translate.  As you can see below, the UI is adapted for the iPhone.  Another cool bookmark is Dropbox.  This is actually an application on my Mac, but I can access it on the web from my iPhone via the bookmark.  This application gives you cloud storage for files and syncs them with your computer so you can always access them from any computer.

The next page of apps hold all of my games.  Hands down, my favorite is MotionX Poker.  It is a dice game that takes advantage of the accelerometer and rolls the dice when you shake your iPhone.  The graphics are amazing and border on photo-realistic - awesome for killing time in airports or while my wife is shopping.

The last page is the “what’s left over” bunch.  It holds all the applications that I rarely use or don’t fall under the above page categories.  Speedtest is the most useful app (I should probably move it to the utilities page).  It will run a download and upload connectivity test to show you how fast your connection speeds are over wi-fi, 3G or 2G.  I also enjoy Koi Pond.  It really shows off the graphical power of the iPhone - seeing is believing.  One other neat app is A Free Level.  It is exactly what is sounds like - an air bubble in a tube - and it works perfectly.

If you ever want to see any of these apps in action, please grab me the next time you see me and I will be happy to show them to you.  Also, if you have any favorite apps, please post them below in the comments.