BachoTeX koffiedik

-
More visitor/cup photos:

Jerzy Ludwichowski
Jerzy's cup
During the upcoming BachoTeX conference deep down in the Polish woods I will again provide espressos in my little cabin #10 which is conveniently placed along the footpath from many other cabins to the place where meals are served to the participants.




Some visitors come early, to get a strong potion fighting travel fatigue or a little hangover from the beer consumed during very late-night meetings about ligatures, microspacing and hyphenation in the modern world. Others drop by in the sunny afternoon when the air in the conference hall has become thick with glyphs. And some who prepare for another post-midnight meeting about LuaTeX programming arrive in the evening and then there is time for musing and brainstorming about 'the future' of this and that.

This time visitors will be asked to share their views about the next 40 years of TeX, assisted by what we can 'read' from the mix of coffee fines, crema and syruppy espresso left behind in the cup.


This proven method helps people to clearly see the invisible with remarkable accuracy, if one is willing to disregard predictions about things that didn't happen (or happened when no one was looking).

In Dutch this is called "koffiedik kijken" and even though the term is mostly used to illustrate awareness of ignorance about the future, it's an art most likely learned from the ancient Turkish art of coffee reading during the time the Spanish occupied the low countries.

Since TeXies can discern subtle differences in print, this fine coffee reading should be a no real challenge. It's easy to perceive, for instance, a reference to 'crowning achievements ahead' when the coffee has drawn the typical pearly droplets on top of a crown, just like a small tear here and there reminds us of TeX dialects which have been practically forgotten.

Hopefully we will get intuitive answers to questions like

    will TeX survive the next 40 years
    will you use TeX till you drop down
    will paper and print still matter a decade from now
    will typesetting be of any importance in 20 years
    will you be able to convert 5 strangers to use TeX
    will there be a BachoTeX in 2059
    will climate change result in coffee being grown in BachoTeX in 2119

So, TeXies are welcome next week at cabin #10!



Predictions can be discreetly delivered into two vintage sheet metal coffee storage boxes:

Educho Kaffee -- Tee - Kakaoimport, Eduard Schopf Bremen

Albert Heijn ('70s?)

Reacties

Een reactie posten

Populaire posts van deze blog

Finished Pavoni & Fuji PXG4 pid: Probe Inside the Ring

-
Afbeelding
Delicious cup: all the work was well invested! At the end of the previous blog about the pressostat and PID working together , I mentioned that I would like to clean up the xmas tree of wires and have as few cables and probes as possible to visually disturb the classic design of the La Pavoni. Getting rid of the probe that was fastened with copper tape to the top of the brew group was a priority. I wanted to hide a new probe in the cooling fin as close as possible to the brew group. This morning I asked Tije if he could do that. He would need to drill a straight hole of 3mm diameter in the 4mm inner ring of the cooling fin that sits as a tight clamp around the brew group. Always the optimist, Tije set to work: First, Tije made a piece of aluminum to fit the inside of the ring. Drilling a thin hole straight through the curved aluminum, if possible tangentially going through the inside of the ring to touch the brew head directly, you need the support of the temporary insid...
Meer lezen

KiwiSDR2 [radio]

-
Afbeelding
  Despite selling one and giving away two of the five monster vintage 'boat anchor' receivers that I had, I still enjoy listening to shartwave radio. The modern iCOM R8600 that I also have has a wider range plus some decoding options but it's not easy to figure out what encoding is used on which frequencies. The SDR-Control app from Marcus Roskosch at https://ham-radio-apps.com/ makes this much easier and also allows some remote control of the receiver so you can place it and an antenna at the top floor of your house while listening downstairs. I also got the SDRplay RSP1B box: This offers a great listening experience at a very low price compared to the iCOM hardware. I had one before and bought one again after a (somewhat limited) Mac version of the software became available. This device needs a computer to be connected to the receiver. For some time now a nifty little device has appeared which not only works standalone, it even allows you or anyone else to utilize the ...
Meer lezen

Tiny Cheap Fluid Bed Roaster by Tije and Jan

-
Afbeelding
(also see Daily Coffee News feature ) Tije designed and made the following structure for a tiny and cheap fluid bed roaster, to which Jan van der Weel added the Arduino parts, electronics and programming: Sketch by Tije de Jong Jan sourced a very cheap blower (€ 11) to start with, Tije developed and constructed the mechanics, Jan built together and programmed the TC4 / SSR electronics.  On his blog, Jan will specify exactly how the TC4 part is combined and programmed and I will copy these details into this blog entry, just as Jan will use this video in his blog. We did a few test roasts to make sure it works at all and it does. Towards the end, the first roast tended to get a flat BT line and airflow was slightly decreased. 200g seems max load of green beans. Second roast a little more power was given to the heater. Next we will try the Background Roast driven by the PID software of Artisan. A week later, with updated software that works better to change the...
Meer lezen