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This To That

thistothat.com

386 pointsthunderbong92 comments

The hard part about getting this sort of advice online is localisation.

If it had a drop down to choose your country, and someone had done the legwork of localising the answers then it would be really good (for me).

Same thing happens with recipes, when I'm making a carrot cake I might search for good recipes only to find the highest rated mentions lots of brands (rather than detailing the product), then it's a bother to try and find equivalents.

This is what I came here to post. This website is absolutely fantastic - but translating between American products and European ones is often extremely hard.

Is it really? One could just get the product name and search Google for "XX European alternative"

Not really, because Glue is quite specific. And just because Glue X can be substituted with glue Y if you glue A and B together, doesn't mean Y is a good glue to bond A and C

Two problems:

First, it's rarely clear what a specific glue actually is, in terms of chemical composition.

Second, when there is an obvious 'alternative', it might be a different glue (different solvents, ingredients, etc) because of differing regulations. That could mean it handles differently.

Not only would it be hard, it would also remain incomplete - there are more than two English-speaking countries out there...

And it doesn't even tell you the substance. If you say "super glue", I have no idea what to do. If you say "cyanoacrylate", I can get it for a euro.

Yes, some chemical details about how each substance works would make this site fabulous.

To be fair, the page for "Super Glue" does mention it: https://thistothat.com/glue/super_glue.shtml ("This is cyanoacrylate.") which then links to: https://thistothat.com/glue/cyan.shtml which in turns links to the relevant brands' pages.

It could be expanded, since not all brands on the site have this, though.

Yeah, I mentioned that because it was the only chemical I knew, but the general point still stands.

Oh, my bad -- definitely a fair point and I agree. I would love to see an internationalised version of this website with chemical details, and perhaps more safety information.

Can you can give an example that supports your point, instead of making a general point and one example that disproves it?

What do you mean? Most of the examples I've seen didn't mention the chemical name:

https://thistothat.com/cgi-bin/glue.cgi?lang=en&this=Ceramic... https://thistothat.com/cgi-bin/glue.cgi?lang=en&this=Ceramic... https://thistothat.com/cgi-bin/glue.cgi?lang=en&this=Ceramic...

etc.

I had a hard time finding CA glue here in the Netherlands until I discovered it is what we just call secondenlijm ('secondsglue').

Also whenever I find a tube or bottle of superglue I am always tempted to attach a red cape to it (using glue of course).

Similarly, we call it "instant glue". I had no idea it was the same until I looked at the ingredients.

I love cyanoacrylate adhesives. With paper/cardboard you get a composite that's almost fiberglass. With nylon (anything from stockings to ripstop) you get even closer. Or silk or kevlar. All of them react exothermically with cyanoacrylate, so they cure very quickly.

I use it mainly for plastics, where it works very well (I managed to break the plastic before the CA bond). However, yesterday I had one fail when I used it in the sink (and thus was wet a lot). I have no idea why water ruined the bond, but I used an epoxy for it and hope it will be okay now.

Cyanoacrylate works well with plastics that it dissolves. So it's like solvent weld plus glue. Polystyrene, polycarbonate and PVC, for example. Or materials with hydroxyl groups, with which it reacts. Such as paper, wood, silk, rayon, nylon and kevlar. But not polyethylene.

And not polystyrene foam, because it melts it. My favorite for that is Gorilla Glue. I don't know what's in it. But it has something that reacts with water (which is the catalyst) and also the same materials that cyanoacrylate works well with. But it doesn't melt the foam, just melds with it.

What bond failed in the sink, if I may ask?

For polystyrene foam, I use UHU Por (not sure what the chemical is), it makes it brand new. I have an EPP wing that I crashed three times and broke into pieces, and Por makes it brand new again.

The bond that failed was PLA to PLA (I 3D-printed a soap holder, so the surface wasn't very smooth either). I don't know if it was the water or if I didn't apply enough glue or what.

I'm not familiar with PLA.

Maybe this: https://hackaday.com/2018/02/07/locally-sourced-pla-adhesive...

That is excellent, thanks!

The original Gorilla Glue is a polyurethane glue.

Water is also a catalyst to cyanoacrylate. The trouble is cyanoacrylate cures instantly, so if the surface is at all wet the glue doesn't get a chance adhere to the surface - it solidifies instantly on contact with the water.

True. You just get white crust.

When I'm in a hurry, I touch edges of a joint with a slightly damp piece of cotton. A polymerization wave then sweeps through the joint. As I vaguely recall, that's how we used to set polyamide resin for boat repairs.

Baking soda (which is to say, sodium bicarbonate) is also handy with cyanoacrylate glues, as a filler and accelerant, for example[1].

1: https://www.instructables.com/id/Baking-Soda-Reinforcing-Glu...

Thanks. I'd forgotten about that.

Also, bizarrely enough, fine brass wool. I used that to fill a large gap in the rim of a pottery coffee mug. That repair has lasted over five years. Including microwaving multiple times daily to warm coffee.

Agreed. As soon as I saw "Krazy Glue" (which just sounds American) I assumed all other product listings would be US-centric, and it appears they are.

Not too difficult to find alternatives available in the UK/EU (Amazon.co.uk sells some US glue brands, it seems) but it would be nice to have country-specific listings on this website to avoid the searching process.

Related and only half-serious, but I am irritated by the crazy names people give to food, which tend to appear out of nowhere as some foreign dish suddenly becomes popular, and then also acquire restaurant or region-specific variations not reflected in the name.

Many times in my life I wished people would adopt chemistry-style naming for food. So instead of "devolay" (which, it turns out, is a misspelling and shortening of "de volaille cutlet"), they'd say something like "fried, breaded, X-stuffed chicken fillet" where X is "butter" and/or "dill" and/or whatever the local chef invented. Or at least a "cabbage salad" instead of "coleslaw". Yes, it's longer. But I don't want to store countless of arbitrary words in my mental hash table; I have plenty of other stuff to put in there.

I think that sort of naming would end up REALLY long.

Basically you're talking about including the actual recipe/ingredients/method of cooking all together in the name of the dish.

We would need to invent whole bunch of words that would mean a very specific set of ingredients/cooking approach. Then using that we could end up with slightly shorter names.

You don't need to be specific to an absolute fault. People aren't machines. A compounding approach in practice would likely just result in English constructions similar to Dutch or German - eg Krautsalat -> Cabbage Salad (Coleslaw).

You kinda have to be specific if you want to avoid common names for things. Lets say I give you a menu and it says "Oven baked ground corn". If you ask me for it, do you expect to get cornbread or polenta?

Likely, the more popular option will be known as "Oven baked ground corn". The less popular, more contextual option would have an attached qualifier to distinguish it from the one most people want, such as "Oven baked ground corn porridge". That will of course lead to regional differences, but that's normal.

Wat? You've just shown how your nomenclature is less exact and more likely to be misunderstood than simply using "corn bread" and "polenta."

Anything that becomes common will eventually degenerate into such inexactitudes.

These sorts of things are already present in food terminology - "chips", "jelly", "bacon". In practice, they don't really bother people.

I'm asking to use "corn bread" and "corn porridge". You'll note that all of the words - "corn", "bread" and "porridge" - are common categories that can be combined with other common words to describe a great amount of meals.

What I'm asking is to stop the constant introduction of dish-specific unique terms (and renaming of existing dishes so that they sound more exciting), and instead use words that can be combined. That's the 101 of preventing combinatorial explosion. When you write code, your functions have arguments. You don't create zero-argument functions for every possible thing a program does and give them unique names.

In German, "cabbage salad" == coleslaw. In English, "cabbage salad" != coleslaw. Coleslaw is a very specific type of cabbage salad, prepared with a limited set of ingredients beyond which it would be a specialized variety of coleslaw, e.g., apple coleslaw.

> In German, "cabbage salad" == coleslaw. In English, "cabbage salad" != coleslaw.

Of course. This is a purely hypothetical exercise, in which we are speculating on an alternative means of naming food items which is more descriptive as to what those items are. Such a derivative of English, I contend, would look similar to German in construction. That is the point. Coleslaw is merely picked as an example of how such things would look.

> Coleslaw is a very specific type of cabbage salad

Except when it isn't. Different cultures, different restaurants, different people make it differently, so when I hear someone saying "coleslaw", all I can be sure of is that it's a salad that involves cabbage and something bitter. At this point this gives me zero information over "cabbage salad", but I have to remember a new word for it. Rinse and repeat for whatever your city/country imports or renames this year.

You're changing your claim a bit. Originally You claimed giving the ingredients like that was more accurate. Now you're saying they're equivalent, but not how "cabbage salad" gives you any more information, because that's not the case. In many contexts gives you less.

If you're speaking English, coleslaw will give you a much better idea of what to expect, narrowing it down to two major variations. No matter what the actual result, cabbage salad leaves more possibilities. You talk about cultural variation on it, but I can't find any that don't fall under one of those two main varieties. Even when I could find a rare example that did not use cabbage, it referred to the product as the more generic "slaw", not coleslaw.

What it boils down to though you're complaining that language can be ambiguous. And it is! That tends to be more a feature than a bug though. It allows ever greater levels of abstraction that facilitate more complex ideas. If you really insist on a "cabbage salad" style of speech, you need to understand that it doesn't stop at "cabbage salad". That is so general as to be meaningless for the purpose of informing me on what I'll receive when I order it. Even if there are contexts where coleslaw would be ambiguous, it will always encompass fewer options than cabbage salad. For your style of speech to work, it would have to go much further to add information to this, something like "Shredded cabbage and carrots with mayonnaise sugar salt and pepper" Even then it wouldn't be enough, because method of preparation may vary, changing the dish.

Even if I grant you that coleslaw sometimes doesn't conform to what I've described, it's still the case that it will give more information in many more circumstances than cabbage salad. Cabbage salad will win many fewer "information" contests.

And, again, you mostly already get your way in this because the vast majority of restaurants actually to give a description of the meal. What you're complaining about is that in addition to such descriptions, there's also a single term abstraction that can be instantiated in a variety of different ways.

Fair. I concede the point, I guess I've been hiding a set of additional expectations under the term "cabbage salad" that's region-specific and also not explicitly stated in the name.

I admit that I'm just whining here (that's why I started the subthread saying I'm only half-serious about it). It's not the occasional new unique word that annoys me - just the impression that those new words seem to constantly pop out of nowhere, and half the time they are new names for some regular dishes.

I’m sorry, are you frustrated that words have meaning and sometimes you have to learn what it is?

I think the real problem is with words that already had meanings, but the meanings were not preserved. So I see some place selling Middle Eastern food in Toronto, go and buy some only to see that it is some unholy deviation from the original. If only we could be a bit more Cognac about preserving our food names.

Or recognize that foods evolve differently in different cultures?

If I go to Chicago as an Italian and eat pizza there, I might think that their weird thick pies are an "unholy deviation from the original," but I won't deny them the right to call it "pizza." Even in Italy we have one word ("pizza") but recognize it means very different things in different regions.

(It's quite possible that whatever middle eastern food you ate was actually cooked in a traditional manner for a specific locale, but it simply wasn't the version you'd ever had before.)

Well, yes, as a mexican living in the U.S. I am frequently dismayed at the use of "pico de gallo" and "burrito", and even tried to resist, but it is a losing battle. Now even the american use of burrito has made its way back to México and I fear younger generations grown up with the american version instead. I'll be over there on my corner all grumpy, then be forgotten.

One of the main features of language is that it offers abstraction layers that simplify communication by having a single term. Let's just take your example of using "cabbage salad" instead of "coleslaw":

-Coleslaw denotes a specific preparation of cabbage, notably that it's shredded and prepared in either a vinegar mixture or mayonnaise.

-"Cabbage salad" does not capture this meaning. It could mean any salad where cabbage is a significant ingredient.

-Sauerkraut could plausibly be considered a "cabbage salad".

-Coleslaw frequently has other ingredients or seasonings, which vary by recipe, that wouldn't be encompassed by "cabbage salad", like carrots, honey, multiple types of cabbage.

-The above ingredients could be considered to circumscribe the possibilities, beyond which it is no longer properly considered coleslaw, and is it's own thing that may or may not have a unique name.

-Basically, "cabbage salad" is less accurate of a description for coleslaw because it can encompass many more variations. Coleslaw can be considered a very specific type of cabbage salad. If I see "coleslaw" on a menu, I have a much better idea of what I'm getting than if it said "cabbage salad"

-Most menus don't simply give the name of the dish like "de volaille cutlet". They will actually give the description, like "fried breaded chicken cutlet stuffed with a creamy brie cheese and prosciutto ham"

> Coleslaw denotes a specific preparation of cabbage, notably that it's shredded and prepared in either a vinegar mixture or mayonnaise.

Except where it doesn't. The exact preparation and substances used seem to vary between people, places and nations that make it.

When I see "cabbage salad" I know it'll involve a cabbage as the main ingredient, the word "salad" constraints my expectations by giving me a distribution of preparation methods, and similarly I roughly know what other ingredients go with "cabbage" and "salad" when there's no modifier in the name. In other words, in general situation I expect a kind of dish, not a very particular one.

The problem is, the same applies to "coleslaw". Because there's no agreement as to what exactly it is, the word itself gives me as much information as "cabbage salad", except that now I have to remember yet another weird word, remember the arbitrary mapping between "coleslaw" and "cabbage" and "salad".

The ability to introduce a new word to abstract over a large concept is a very powerful thing, and it's especially useful if the abstracted grouping is unique and frequently used. The case of "coleslaw" or "de volaille" or countless other terms and there misspellings and mispronunciations is neither unique nor useful. It's pure waste of mental resources.

I brought up chemical nomenclature for a reason. Chemists have figured out there's just too many similar but not quite the same molecules, or groups of similar molecules, to not bother with giving a unique name to all of them. Instead, they exploit another awesome feature of human language - structure. Ability to harness the combinatorial explosion by utilizing prefixes and suffixes and modifiers.

> -Most menus don't simply give the name of the dish like "de volaille cutlet". They will actually give the description, like "fried breaded chicken cutlet stuffed with a creamy brie cheese and prosciutto ham"

Depends on the restaurants. I love those that do that.

Here is a fun game

Coleslaw is to Hamburger as cabbage salad is to ?

Hamburger, because "coleslaw" is some random word suddenly imported out of nowhere, whereas a hamburger is a major food type and a huge part of American culture (and at this point, of the Universal culture).

Yes, I'm totally unfair here and essentially asking food fashion to get off my lawn, but that's why I wrote I'm only half-serious. Not all cases where I feel annoyed are 100% rational.

Meat patty?

Honestly, I don't get it, that's the only answer isn't it?

"Beef patty" probably comes closer, in the sense that it specifies what kind of meat as well?

Beef sandwich?

Half related and only quarter-serious:

I bet your code is full of functions with names like:

    takeCustomerIDAndDateThenQueryDatabaseToReturnArrayOfPurchaseOrdersWhichConsistOfPONumberAndNetSalesPrice


    takeCustomerIDAndDateThenQueryDatabaseToReturnArrayOfPurchaseOrdersWhichConsistOfPONumberAndLineItemsOfProductAndQuantityAndUnitPrice

No, it isn't. Because what you wrote is the exact equivalent of "coleslaw" and "de volaille" - taking what should be a parametrized base, or set of interchangeable tokens - '(salad cabbage vinegar), '(wrap (fillet chicken) butter) - and turning them into unique names.

In other words, "coleslaw" == takeCustomerIDAndDateThenQueryDatabaseToReturnArrayOfPurchaseOrdersWhichConsistOfPONumberAndNetSalesPrice, and all I'm asking for is to parametrize it instead like a sane human being.

Ah, I more fully understand your complaint. (Now only 1/4 related and 1/8 serious.)

I thought you were opposed to nondescriptive names, but instead you just want to have a minimal set of orthogonal constructs which can be combined together on an ad-hoc basis to create meaning. So your ideal code looks like this:

https://github.com/Battelle/movfuscator/blob/master/overview...

Not this minimal, and not restricted to two to three tokens :).

Brainfuck, then. Eight commands oughta be enough for anyone, amiright?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck#Commands

They're all called with the wrapper function

    takeFunctionNameAndInterpretAsFunction

It's the only function with a body.

Yes, that's exactly what names like "coleslaw" or "de volaille" are. Unique names for things that should be parametrized instead.

Turns out it's just a regular interpreter, and there are strict semantics about how things must be named. That's what they meant by metacircular interpreter in SICP, right?

I love that site. Use it all the time.

We shouldn't impose on every website the requirement to support the whole world. This website is probably just run by a guy/gal on their free time, for fun.

I'd love that more people in other countries also created more websites like this, localized and specific to their market, without feeling the pressure to escalate to the entire planet.

I think we need to refer to the Unix philosophy, each program does one thing well. Make an English to English translation tool. I once had an English student use the word "aubergine". I had never heard the word aubergine before so I corrected him, "no, that's an eggplant." A North-American-English vs European-English war broke out. Lorries crashed into 18-wheelers, rubbish bins and trash cans caught on fire, friends and mates turned against each other. When the dust settled those who remained wanted to pay their respects to the fallen; some people lined up, other people queued.

> rubbish bins and trash cans caught on fire

Well, of course. One is flammable, and the other is inflammable.

Inflammable means flammable? What a country!

“England and America are two countries separated by the same language” George Bernard Shaw

If you go to the "Impartial" page (https://www.thistothat.com/impartial.shtml) there's a little "Best viewed in any browser" gif. Sadly given the proliferation of Chrome-only web apps, those things really need to make a come back.

Agreed! I'm a JS developer and SPA is over rated!

All web page should have a mode (or graceful degradation) that work in text based browser like Lynx, Links2 without JS.

What bothers me is that if you build from the ground up, you already get all of that for free.

Use semantic HTML elements, write your content, then you snazz it up with CSS and JS if you want. It will work everywhere, in every accessibility tool, with no extra work whatsoever.

> Attach Ceramic to Leather [Let's Glue!]:

"We won't ask why you would want to glue ceramic and leather together - we just give gluing info.

If the leather is thick (eg. boot leather), we recommend:..."

That sounds like it would be useful for cosplay.

If you're into adhesives, the Applied Science (Ben Krasnow) youtube channel has a great video discussing his shortlist of adhesives to keep around and when/how to use them.

"Tools and Tips #1 from Applied Science": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBQp04glQqc

Also check out Project Farm's channel. It's a little more automotive based, but the product comparison tests are extensive. If you ever wondered which type of drywall screw could resist the most sheer force or if you can use Zippo lighter fuel in an engine, this is a great channel.

My only criticism is sample size is usually small (3-5 samples), and no checking on variation between product lots. But, it's one guy doing all this for free, so I can't complain.

I was really expecting this to be a well built Amazon Affiliate marketing site. Pleasantly surprised that it's just purely informational.

"Whenever you are gluing metal it's a good idea to clean it first with steel wool or sandpaper. (Rust never sleeps.)"

Glad to see a Neil Young nod in an esoteric reference site. That feels very old-internet to me.

These kind of sites can be super helpful, they just need more input to them, would be great if they were a sort of wiki.

For example with plastics, like nylon which I don't believe has a reactive adhesive, hotglue can work well. Infact hotglue when cured can host hundreds of pounds in things like wood even.

Also the term 'plastic' is very generalized. Would be great to be able to know what to test for to see what kind of plastic is what. Different kinds can have different reacting adhesives that are very strong as the site points out about PVC

This site has been online for 20+ years, damn!

It's a recommendation engine for adhering [this] item to [that] item. The adhesives recommended and the advice given appear to be US-centric.

20 years and still going strong! This site was one of the first microsites I ever encountered. It does exactly one thing with minimal window dressing. That thing is useful and idiosyncratic. It probably makes them little to no money, but there it is every year. Sometimes they tweak it.

It's a little funny it's implemented via CGI; this design dates back to the days before you really could do anything dynamic client-side with presentation. These days it'd be a single page app with a JSON database driving it. Best thing about that is the hosting cost goes to near zero, it's all static files.

So glad this site still exists. I've used it 3 or 4 times over the last 20 years and it just does what i need it to with no fuss.

Site appears to be down. Can anyone give an overview?

The site helps you figure out what glue works best to attach two items to each other. It provides links to glues/compounds, and also has helpful tips to help you better.

-------------------------------------------------

From their Philosophy page:

"We are here to help you choose the right glue for your bonding requirements. We are committed to keeping current with the adhesive market, but we don't claim to know everything about every glue on the market. We recommend the glues that we have found work best for us. We do know one thing for sure: there is no such thing as the All Purpose glue. Every glue has its pros and cons. The secret to a successful bonding challenge is to consider the following glue philosophy:

The primary principle of glue is much like any relationship in that the adhesive must fit the adherend. (Kinda Zen, eh?) All glues work best when aided with a physical attachment. When ever possible the combination of glue and a screw, nail or staple, a glue and a joint, a glue and stitching or binding, will guarantee a successful bond.

Any glue is only as strong as the weakest material in the bonding union. There is no point in using a glue stronger than the materials you are bonding.

The success of a bond is dependent on the amount of surface area. The more surface area you are able to incorporate, the stronger the bond.

Always use the least toxic material that meets your bonding requirements.

Understanding how a glue works will help you choose the right glue for the job. The manufacturer knows their glue better than the cashier at the hardware store. Reading the label thoroughly will help you know if a glue is appropriate for your needs. Also, many glues have a help line or a website. We have found some sites for you."

About three weeks ago I struggled to glue a tiny acryl/plastics figurine to a stone. Sadly, stone is missing from the glueable surfaces.

Stone is weird, the surface prep varies so widely, as does the grain structure. Its hard to generalize, and is usually covered under porous/nonporous. If smooth, lightly abrade any polished surfaces if practical, and ca should work fine when gaps are <1mm, use baking soda to fill gaps qnd build up edges. For rough/porus, use a 2-part epoxy of your desired properties, all major brnds are great. It can be helpful to knock down tall spots to get better contact of the surfaces to be joined. Making a regular series of gouges can increase surface area for stronger mechanical bonds.

Is it fair to call this an algebra? The materials are elements in a set and the adhesive is kind of like a binary operation.

It’s commutative, at least in terms of picking a glue. (Sometimes they recommend to put the adhesive on one material first.)

cgi-bin/glue.cgi – blast from the past!

haha I was thinking the same thing. Can't remember the last time I saw that.

site's been around since 1999 apparently

It reminds me of this sketch on YouTube - Sticko! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58zzs4hzEIg

I wonder if it makes sense to have something similar for software. E.g glue react to bootstrap. Answer: reactstrap!

But that's nothing a Google search/stackoverflow search can't do already :)

Useful, easy to operate for users, straight to the point. Nice :-)

Useful data, but it's a spreadsheet hidden behind a single-lookup database that make s 100x slower and harder to use.

All the data should be displayed in a single page, using browser in-page search to navigate.

Isn't that a bit of an exaggeration? I disagree either way. I like the presentation and didn't find it 100x slower or harder to use. It took me 4 clicks instead of a hand contortion for a keyboard shortcut and then 10-20 keypresses to do my searches, and then on top of that I didn't have to search with my eyes to make sure I was on the correct row of glass to metal vs glass to plastic.

The tidbits on the results page would be very difficult to read in a grid.

I don't see silicone anywhere on that list :)

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