The first was the opthamologist, who kindly saw us at very short notice. Even better, he's Andrew Tridgell's brother and a lovely guy. He did a great job of answering our questions and generally reassuring us, and the short of it is that Catherine's...

The homemade Corretto Roaster was designed by, you guessed it, someone named Corretto, and consists of a bread maker and heat gun to roast the beans, and a fan to blow the smoke. To tell when it was done roasting, you'd use the cracking sound to judge.

One gentleman, Andrew Tridgell, wanted to put his own twist on the Corretto roaster. For his coffee roaster, however, he wanted to use a computer to control the required power. His solution involved a Linux laptop and a lot of intelligence to make his...

The beans will crack as they approach completion of roasting. She determined when the beans were done by which set of cracks they were on. About 4 sets of cracks are the usual for roasting beans. Then, Andrew Tridgell came about, and worked on...