I have just come into the possession of some Shure E4 earphones. My, they’re good. Read on for more reviewy goodness.

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I am about to be fixated by the film, The Flight of the Phoenix. It won’t be all pleasant – there may be tears. Spoilers follow. More after the jump…

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Please, for the love of all things good, noble and right, do not deign to venture near Nestle’s Short Black – their recent [lack-of-]effort at bringing instant coffee to those who know better. Ignominious rubbish.

Here’s what Alan Frew of Coffee for Connoisseurs said on the topic this month in his newsletter:

Nestle has recently released a new instant coffee called “Short Black”. In the spirit of adventure I bought a sample jar and tried it out. It does indeed foam up and produce a pale yellowish faux-crema when you pour boiling water on it, but the product in the cup bears little relationship to a real short black.

Even at the much higher concentration (for instant) than normal, one and a half heaped teaspoons in a 100ml cup, it lacks the body and mouthfeel of a real espresso. While there is real coffee taste (very much like bland Brazil) it is mouth puckeringly acidic, like sucking a lemon. This may be an artefact of whatever processing is used to produce the crema effect, but it’s not the sort of thing I’d drink for fun.

I agree with Alan. Rather than buy the stuff I had the unfortunate opportunity of trying it out at work. I dumped the correct amount of fine light-brown powder (think half-size International Roast granules) into an oversize cup and sloshed the appropriate amount of boiling water on top. I was surprised – it does actually foam up, and the top of the coffee looks like crema-oozing goodness.

That, however, is where the similarity with real espresso ends, much in the same way as forward movement of a car ends when it meets a solid concrete wall at speed.

The stuff tastes like I performed as perfect a 23-second extraction of a single roast bean as possible… and then removed my espresso cup for safekeeping, substituted another and extracted for 30 seconds more with the already dead coffee grounds still in the portafilter. Add a dash of lemon juice and some fake frothy stuff on top, and voila! Nestle Short Black.

Do not let the world foist bad coffee upon you. Resist the temptation – you don’t know the power of the Short Black side.

I ordered an Invisible Shield for my iPod nano just under a fortnight ago. It rocked up in the mail today, very nicely packed in a padded bag. So tonight I took a deep breath and began the application procedure involving the deliberate wetting of my music-playing 4GB-storing oh-so-uber-stylish-looking friend… Click through for the run down.

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