What to do about scale

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Some time back I lived near Durham1For the sake of clarity, that’s just plain “Durham”, the ancient pilgrimage destination, rather than the Durham which always seems to have “North Carolina” appended to the name. where the water is blissfully soft. Five years of sparkly clean kettle and coffee machine that just don’t scale up! Since moving to a harder water area, I have often wanted to recapture those halcyon days. And now I think I may have…

I’ll spare you the long sob story about fruitless googling for simple effective answers to scale and jump to the solution I am now trialing: citric acid.

Continue reading →

 

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↑1 For the sake of clarity, that’s just plain “Durham”, the ancient pilgrimage destination, rather than the Durham which always seems to have “North Carolina” appended to the name.

Gaggia Baby Water Level Meter

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One of the saddest sounds in the world is the change in tone of the water pump as the water runs dry half way through a shot. There’s no real rescuing this situation. It’s go ahead with a sub-par cup of coffee or start again. Not only is that a wasted 40p of coffee beans1For a double shot. but, worse, it dishonours the farmers, roasters and everyone else who has put so much effort into bringing such a wonderful flavour to you from the far reaches of the planet. So, what is needed is a water level meter that can warn when the reservoir is getting low. Continue reading →

 

References
↑1 For a double shot.

Wiring tricks for the coffee machine

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When modding a coffee machine, it is easy to overlook questions around just how to connect up the wiring. The space the wiring occupies can be very hot. Just the air can easily be over 70°C and if the wire touches the boiler itself, that can be well over 100°C. Some wires also have to carry fairly large currents and mains voltage. The large currents cause extra heating and the large currents and voltages both cause electromagnetic interference.

Here are some wiring tricks I have learnt over the years. Continue reading →

Mounting the flow meter

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I have struggled for years to find a good way to mount the flow meter on my pimped Gaggia Baby Class. Eventually, when I bought an old Gaggia Baby Twin, I had a look a the metal bracket Gaggia uses and that immediately gave me an idea. An old PC expansion card blanking plate, bent over, a notch filed on the end and a cable tie. A little bit of silicone glue for stability and viola! Continue reading →

Gaggia Baby Twin front panel protocol

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I recently got (and fixed) a broken Baby Twin off ebay. I want to experiment with the extra boiler. Anyway, it turns out the Twin talks to its front panel using a TWI based protocol. Here are my notes (which I made in an ASCII editor – enjoy the ASCII graphics and sorry about the scroll bar at the bottom): Continue reading →

Holy Spirit Church: Arranging the Furniture

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The way we arrange the furniture in our lives (both the literal and the non-literal) communicates so much about who we are and who we aspire to be. And it sets the background scenery to our story. If the arrangement of the furniture is at odds with our goals, this can frustrate or even prevent us attaining our goals. One cannot physically relax in a living room without comfortable chairs. Equally, an untidy desk can be an impediment to work. Less literally, a cluttered calendar has no space for a new departure in life (e.g. deciding to pray regularly) – something has to move out to make space.

So it interests me immensely how we arrange the furniture in our church buildings. We should sometimes stop and ask what our furniture says about our understanding of who we are and who God is calling us to be.

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Parish Rule of Life Proposal

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As vicar of Greenside Parish, I have been exploring with my church the idea of adopting a church rule of life. Recently, we began to look at some potential wording for such a rule as a way of exploring the idea. Whether we will ever adopt this wording or even something similar to it remains to be seen. For now, it is just an exploration.

The words we have been considering are below. Continue reading →

Tears

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It's passing strange...
    - although why I think it strange, I can not penetrate -
    - maybe all my "normal" is but surface shadow, dim reflection -
    - perhaps what I call "strange" is ocean deep -

It's passing strange - and ocean deep - that vast conceits...
    ...can only be expressed in drops of salted water.

Hot, large and urgent
    or slow, gentle caress.
Falling and bursting on hard ground
    or flung in myriad spray from blinking lashes
    or rivulets upon the face.

If I say words out loud, say "This creation astounds",
    my barren sounds congeal into flat, dull, tasteless mass
    (tofu words)
But if I weep the words,
    the cataracts of worlds pour forth
    in delirium of rapturous delight

If I say "This creation is broken",
    the dull monotone tugs at mired feet, sinking in ennui
    (damp words)
But if I weep the words,
    my running heart is torn from heaving breast
    and I strain in passioned yearning for the resolution of ages

If I say "The Lord is risen",
    not much rises above my bleating
    (spent words)
But if I weep the words,
    a fresh cosmos burst forth
    and the founding stars laugh and dance

If I say "My friend is dead",
    I convey, in open prose, a matter of fact about molecules at rest
    (inert words)
But, if I weep the words,
    each glittering tear cradles within its liquid shell
        the world of worlds
        the tale of tales
    Teaming abundance.
    Desolate despair.
    Highest praise.

And today I weep.