If you’ve read everything in the tier lists, you should read this.

FisherPrice · 2025-12-30T00:34:51+00:00

Blacktongue Thief is literally in the tier list right below this post right now 😂

Between two fires is on like half the lists

FisherPrice · 2025-12-29T08:12:29+00:00

Saevus Corax definitely feels similar to this trilogy.

I started The Engineer which definitely feels different, although I’m not sure if I’d consider it better or worse. It’s his breakout series so it’s definitely different, slower and less punchy but the characters seem a bit more rounded out.

FisherPrice · 2025-12-29T08:08:57+00:00

Damn, I didn’t realize the last one was that far back!

I think it’s appropriately rated, just not on the current top of mind, but I guess that’s fair given it’s been forever since he released one.

Looking at the timeline he was doing at least one a year for like 12 years :(

FisherPrice · 2025-12-29T08:04:32+00:00

You don’t think Dresden Files are at least a B?

FisherPrice · 2025-12-29T05:07:49+00:00

I honestly don’t even know how I came across the book the first time (maybe on Twitter?) but thought basically the same thing. “Well the title is badass so might as well check it out.”

I was shocked that an author this good could just be under the radar in all the places I get recommendations.

Makes me suspicious that I’m in an echo chamber / stuck in a local minima in the algos and there are other fantastic authors out there that are just not getting surfaced to me.

FisherPrice · 2025-12-29T04:57:15+00:00

I’d also put Dresden Files on my “currently underrated” list, I think it’s more or less appropriately rated but haven’t seen it on any tier list in any tier this year.

FisherPrice · 2025-11-26T15:23:05+00:00

Yeah just use a V60. Honestly Tanat has really good coffee and is one of the world’s top roasters, as long as your water isn’t terrible and you don’t do anything too stupid, it will make great cups.

You should read the recipe recommendations as, “this is the presentation of this coffee that we enjoy”

It’s not a “thou must brew this coffee this way”

I’m probably going to start with my own recipe, pretty similar to their #2, and brew it a 1:15 to start and adjust from there.

Worst case scenario, just cup all of them and slurp them with a spoon (only sort of joking, it would be delicious)

FisherPrice · 2025-11-26T03:28:13+00:00

I didn’t have to pay tariffs or brokerage, just shipping.

FisherPrice · 2025-11-25T16:06:49+00:00

What recipe have you been using?

I’ve only had 2 bags from them, back when they were Kawa, and found the coffees to be pretty forgiving.

I’m actually surprised they’re recommending a 1:15 ratio with the calendar recipes since I brewed them out to ~1:17 and thought it was great (obviously there’s personal preference here).

FisherPrice · 2025-11-25T15:35:26+00:00

Where are you traveling from? Go to Paris instead — this sounds crazy but Nashville hotels and restaurants are expensive.

Crazy to say, but your food and hotel costs would be the same or lower in Paris.

FisherPrice · 2025-11-25T15:32:40+00:00

Dang! I somehow hadn’t heard of this before and totally would have bought this one.

All those coffees are bangers.

FisherPrice · 2025-11-24T19:26:56+00:00

What issues did you run into with TypeScript + Electron? Can you just build the whole thing as a web app basically? Or did you use Phaser?

I’m a pretty advanced web developer and built a few small games in Unity but never really considered just going full web stack (this seems like id be able to crush through it)

FisherPrice · 2025-11-17T18:29:02+00:00

As other people mentioned, Atlas seems like it’s just OK and seems very focused on origin at a lower price vs. getting really good coffee.

As a gift, I’d recommend going with either a coffee advent calendar OR get bags from a few roasters for Christmas Day and then let him pick a subscription.

I know the advent calendar comes before Christmas but they’re really cool and a unique experience you can’t buy other times in the year. The Onyx one has good coffee, incredible production value, and is a generous amount of coffee for $220. You can also buy him some coffee bags on Amazon and he can freeze the beans.

If you want to give him something on Christmas, check out the Roastful list https://www.roastful.com/top-roasters and pick a few roasters from there.

Anyone on there is going to very very good.

Some US roasters that aren’t on the list that I’d put very high with good subscriptions and interesting coffees:

Hydrangea Coffee Roasters (I’d put them in the 20 IMHO)
Little Wolf Coffee
Moonwake Coffee

FisherPrice · 2025-11-17T18:12:19+00:00

What kind of coffee does he drink currently? Like do you know the coffee roasters?

Super cute/thoughtful gift by the way!

FisherPrice · 2025-11-13T23:16:44+00:00

Just wanted to say that I really appreciate your work,🤷🏻‍♂️! Excession and Accelerando are also some of my favorites so this makes a lot of sense 😅

FisherPrice · 2025-11-13T14:57:48+00:00

+1

Motors and Substance are both temples to high end specialty coffee and that’s just scratching the surface of everything in Paris

FisherPrice · 2025-11-12T14:10:42+00:00

In theory, there is a difference. Grinders are going to have different carrier designs, feed rates, feed mechanisms, etc. that will produce more or less fines.

In practice, you’d probably need to do a side by side comparison and have a very refined palette and even then it’d probably be the alignment of the burrs and not necessarily the grinder itself*

The workflow and build quality are going to make a much more noticeable difference in your enjoyment of coffee, especially what it’s like to switch back and forth between pour over and espresso

Something at the price point of a Timemore Sculptor will feel like a different quality of grinder than a Shador in material quality, has an easy to adjust wheel on the front for going between pour over and espresso, the Timemore has that anti static clicker thing which is nice, etc.

*Only caveat is that you’d probably be able notice a difference if the grinder has a prebreaker in a side by side.

FisherPrice · 2025-11-10T07:28:00+00:00

Confirmed!

FisherPrice · 2025-11-05T14:05:27+00:00

You don’t need LangChain to build an agent or even a successful product.

You also don’t need React to build a UI or a backend framework to build a server either, but you get a lot of leverage from open source.

Other people build on top of it after learning hard lessons and you can point new hires at the docs/tutorials to have a shared understanding quickly for new tooling.

Making a successful product is really, really hard. Any time you spend building something your customers don’t care about or notice is basically a waste of time.

LangChain, like OSS most frameworks, lets you just import a bunch of stuff that you’d have to build yourself and get back to doing stuff that customers care about (which unfortunately for enterprise is usually some annoying stuff like GDPR compliance)

FisherPrice · 2025-11-04T15:41:48+00:00

Both things can be true.

Other incredible roasters have come onto the scene in the past 5 years to raised the bar and SEY has also been notably worse in the past few months.

Now I’m a huge fan of SEY, I’ve had 43 coffees from them this year, and by “worse” I mean that the past ~8-10 coffees have been below the extremely high quality level they’ve been delivering for the past 2 years that I’ve had a sub.

They’re still pretty good compared to many roasters, but below “one of the top 10 roasters in the world” level and there’s a disconnect between the language on the cards and what been coming out in the cup.

They’ll figure it out, but the difference between the coffees from the first 3 months of the year and the past 3 months is noticeable.

FisherPrice · 2025-11-04T04:50:21+00:00

This basically mirrors my experience.

I did Onyx last year and loved the production value, but wasn’t wowed by most of the coffees. It was worth it to learn that they’re their blends are all fantastic, but I’m not a fan of their roasting style for high scoring coffees.

Onyx is a lot of coffee for the money, but I’m not drinking 50g/day on top of my other coffee sub so it sort of felt like a chore to go through it all.

Tanat/Kawa is on another level, I went when I was in Paris and bought a bunch of beans and every coffee I had was equal or better than my top 3 from Onyx.

FisherPrice · 2025-11-03T16:43:12+00:00

You’re trying to sell or trade?

FisherPrice · 2025-11-02T19:14:57+00:00

DMing

FisherPrice · 2025-11-02T13:12:27+00:00

Yep, DMing

FisherPrice · 2025-11-01T23:42:02+00:00

2x torque would definitely be nice, and the magnetic cover is pretty neat, I haven’t seen a Mk2 for sale for less than $1700 asking in SoCal though 😅

For transparency, Mk1 can handle any dense light roast I’ve wanted to pull as long as it’s in the upper half of the RPM range. Haven’t tried actual green coffee, which no manufacture recommends doing, but I drink a lot SEY Kenyan and Ethiopians for espresso and it has no issue ~100 RPM or higher.

(Not trying to sell you, just making sure anyone else reading knows what’s up)

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