Worth Sharing #4

April 18, 2016

Salted Butter: The Cure For Crappy Coffee

Do you find the coffee from most automatic coffee makers too bitter? I do. It’s bitter because the water used to brew the coffee is too hot. Using subpar coffee doesn’t help.

Well, there’s a hack to combat crappy coffee: salted butter.

Salt counteracts the bitter taste. You could just add a pinch of salt to brewed coffee, but butter kicks it up a notch. Butter is a better alternative to artificial creamer or even milk. It adds the creaminess without the sugar content.

Quick recipe: add a tablespoon of butter to a mug, pour enough coffee to cover, melt in the microwave, emulsify with a handheld frother, top off the cup with coffee.

Read my full recipe here.

Aside: I’m no coffee snob, but I regularly use Trader Joe’s Honduran coffee.

‘Do not go gentle into that good night’

I identify with this poem by Dylan Thomas.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

—Dylan Thomas

I recall hearing the opening verse to this poem occasionally over the years but its recurring use in Interstellar (Wikipedia IMDB Amazon) really hit home with me. Aside: Interstellar is a fantastic film, one of my favorites.

We’re all going to die. We should — must — accept this. But we don’t have to like it. The surest way to fight our mortality is to make the most of our life.

I’m not going to go quietly. I’m going to wring every last bit of awesomeness out of life I can. And the way I’m going to do so is one day at a time.

The full poem by Dylan Thomas can be found over at poets.org.

Firewatch

I really enjoyed playing Firewatch. Beautiful graphics, well-written story, and fantastic voice-acting. A very unique game, it feels like you're playing a movie. It's a mystery based in the Wyoming wilderness, where the main character takes a job watching for forest fires in a lookout tower. The attention to detail Campo Santo put into the game shows. I encourage you to read their development blog but here a few highlights I really enjoyed.

Firewatch Demo Day At GDC

Campo Santo brought Firewatch to life by recreating the inside of a lookout tower for the 2015 Game Developers Conference. It’s the little extra details that make this so special. The national forest sign, the desk inside the watch tower, the morphing projected poster, the wood table where you could sit and play the game. Just incredible.

In-Game Pictures Brought To Life

In the game, you come across a camera you can use to snap photos. When I played Firewatch, I thought this was an interesting novelty but it didn’t have a direct link to the game. Afterwards I discovered you can have the pictures physically printed and mailed to you for a fee. Very cool touch. Firewatch is such a beautiful game it’s easy to understand they appeal.