EV road trip strategies

Presented at Fox Valley Electric Auto Association (fveaa.org) on 2023 Jan 20.

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EV life with no home charger

Presented at Fox Valley Electric Auto Association (fveaa.org) on 2023 Nov 18.

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Staresso review

Short link to this article: https://j.mp/3dUR1eX

Staresso https://staresso.com/ released a mini version of their manual espresso maker. I backed their Indiegogo project and have been using this for a few months. Disclosure: I have no affiliation with Staresso and purchased the item with my own funds.

Prior to a Staresso, I used an Aeropress for my daily and travel coffee needs. I switched to an Aeropress Go for travel because the parts are designed to nest together for compactness.

The retail box

All the parts

Parts description, top row, L-R: pressure chamber, stand, pump, carrying case with cleaning cloth. Bottom row L-R: cleaning brush, brew basket cap, brew basket, measuring scoop, cup. All the parts except the scoop fit together and inside the carrying case. The carrying case is hard sided and zippers closed.

The parts list may seem complex at first, but once used a few times, are pretty straightforward.

Size comparison

L-R: Staresso case, Aeropress Go, full size Aeropress with funnel, Staresso.

The Staresso in action

Link to video

According to the maker, the Staresso brew basket holds 10 g of ground coffee. The chamber has marks at 50 mL and 80 mL. When filled to 80 mL, the output almost fills the steel cup, so I expect the cup to be around 80 mL as well. This is a bit more than 2 shots, where 1 shot = 1 oz ~ 30 mL

For comparison, I used 2 Aeropress scoops of coffee to 100 mL water. Each Aeropress scoop is about 2x the Staresso scoop. The Staresso uses half to a quarter of the coffee as the Aeropress, and less water, to produce comparably tasting output.

Fine granularity

Brew basket holds about 10 g. Scoop can be used to tamp the basket.

Alternatively, can use the pump plunger to tamp. It fits exactly in the brew basket.

The maker also claims the pump can produce 20 bars of pressure in the chamber and 15 bar at output. This is plenty for a proper espresso, and produces a nice crema.

About 80 mL. Crema!

Drank half

All gone!

I found too tight a tamp causes water to back up in the pump, so I settled with a medium tamp. This still produces a much richer yield with a nice crema, compared to the Aeropress.

In terms of time spent, the Staresso is faster than the Aeropress. Process breakdown: While the water is boiling, I hand grind the beans. The water is usually done by the time the grind is done. The time difference to boil 80 mL vs 100 mL is negligible, but grinding 10 g coffee for the Staresso vs 20-30 g coffee for the Aeropress is noticeable. I steep the Aeropress for 3 minutes, versus pumping the Staresso takes less than 1 minute. End-to-end time, from setting foot in my kitchen to sitting at my desk with coffee, including cleanup: Staresso 10 minutes versus Aeropress 15 minutes. For the time saved, less coffee and water used, and more robust tasting output, the Staresso is now my daily driver for making coffee.

Cheap solutions for 2nd p2p phone

short link http://j.mp/1suyDK3
Now that Uber released their driver app for Android and Iphone, some drivers have commented that they still prefer two phones and were looking for a cost effective way to provide service to both phones.

Cheap / free mobile calls over voip

short link http://j.mp/1f2Dsmz
Previously, I had used Talkatone to make free outgoing calls over Google Voice via xmpp. On May 15, 2014, Google is dropping support for third party xmpp access. After some research and experimentation, I found this workaround. Perhaps it's cumbersome, but it's a one time setup for ongoing free calls.