A Method to the Madness

First off, thanks to @caseorganic on Twitter the tip about the Ace Hotel Lobby being open late, I'll make that my next stop. Secondly, I've come up with what I feel is a unique way to find new places to try which I'll explain below, but first I need to provide a bit of background:

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.

What I've done is to create a search query that will pick out when someone around Portland posts a note referencing "coffee" or "cafe" or "roast". Of course this generates quite a number of posts about "Ugh, want coffee..." and the like, but it also helps me find new places that other Tweeters talk about. You can check it out by subscribing to this RSS feed.

If you're already a Twitter user, you can find me there at @bandit36. Also, if you know what a "fail whale" is and want something else, try Identi.ca, I'm @bandit36 there also.

And on a final note, I found this post on Life Hacker pretty interesting and though it fit the topic enough to mention it here:

Scoop Clip Keeps Coffee Fresh, Measures
The Scoop Clip from Pampered Chef is a simple but useful multi-tool that works as both a freshness clip and tablespoon and teaspoon measuring tool. It may seem a little silly, but if $5 means you don't have to fumble bleary-eyed through your drawers for your tablespoon and your coffee's going to be that much fresher, it's not a bad buy. Then again, if you don't feel like shelling out the extra cash, rolling your own is a very simple kitchen DIY project waiting to happen.
Scoop Clip [via Cool Tools]