Other items tend to be designed for people who can put more work in regular cleaning and maintenance. You could buy a commercial espresso machine and coffee grinder to make yourself coffee every morning but the machine is designed to warm up at the start of the day, pull a lot of shots, and get thoroughly cleaned later. You will still need to warm it up and make sure it is behaving well before your coffee and you’ll still need to properly clean it afterwards.
It is excellent.
I think I read that the + model has a redesigned ground container to tackle the static issue - had seen some mention that static was more of an issue with the older “non +” model
It doesn't matter if "burr grinders suffer from static build up" when they're categorically far better than anything else when it comes to grinding.
STOP! Don’t Dump It – Fix It!
(Paired with a Moccamaster)
Wasn’t willing to pay even more for one with a scale
I always grind to measure, in which case I don't need timer.
I've had a few friends whose only experience with a manual grinder was a Hario Skerton or its clones, and get turned off manual grinding because of how bad the experience is. The pricier hand grinders have much better UX.
I have come to really, really resist buying plug-in kitchen gadgets. I have a few, such as a toaster and a kettle, that I actually use. For anything else I've found that they just end up living in the back of a base cabinet and I forget that I have them.
It looks like 1zpresso and Timemore are readily available, at least, and the 1zpresso JX Pro is top-of-the-line.
Have not tried this myself but I was told by a professional this is way cheaper and better than any automatic grinder below USD$1000, if you’re spending around $200 for a top end hand grinder
Grinding coffee beans manually helps me get that little bit of arm exercise though.
There are also other niceties that proper electric grinders give you.
Dropped in a new set of burrs and have an unstoppable overkill grinder with a huge motor and all metal parts
If you are on a budget and don't want to spend £500 ($700 + tax and shipping) on a niche then you can usually find used smaller commercial machines. Research the burrs they use and see if you can find new burrs, this way you can spend probably somewhere around $200 on what would function like a brand new high quality burr grinder.
Yes Baratzas are great grinders but they are not one-size-fits-all depending on what kind of coffee you make. For example Baratza Encore is everyone’s darling with good reason (I have one and I use it for espresso every day!) but it’s not a great espresso grinder because fundamentally speaking its tiny motor just doesn’t have enough torque to drive big burrs, so it has small ones. Which means when you grind at espresso sizes it’s going to lose its tight spread and it’ll output some grains that are too big for espresso, some are too small and some are just right. Since espresso is very dense coffee, this is something that is very clearly tastable even to a skeptical non-expert like me.
This spread of grain sizes is something to some degree any grinder does, but grinders designed for espresso have tighter spreads, so they provide much more of the size you want (so your water can actually pass through) and much less of what you don’t want.
Incidentally this is something I like about specialty coffee industry compared to other connoisseur stuff like wine. Wine experts walk around talking about the earthy aromas, if some coffee ‘expert’ tries to do the same, someone in the audience busts out a refractometer and says ‘aight, let’s see’.
It’s still a money pit, but it’s at least on a much more scientifically solid ground.
I’ll add a pointer towards Mazzer grinders too.
The key is to buy them when they are described as broken, then they are very cheap. As far as I can tell they are almost never broken as such. Either something inside needs plugging back in, or the on/off switch needs replacing (it’s got spades on it, so just plug a new one in).
They are nearly entirely metal, with the few plastic components readily available.
The are quite easy to sand and repaint too, so you can match them to other bits of equipment or decor. The correct colour choice is a 1970s orange.
Other examples of overkill objects I like are some commercial vacuums for clean room environments with spectacularly good filtration and seals, therefore no itching if you are allergic to dust (e.g. some Nilfisk made in Denmark). Or industrial fanless PCs which are sealed and have fantastic copper coolers (e.g. Compulab, Tranquil and many others).
A lot of products even in the supposedly "disposable" everyday category people buy for lower prices have maintenance instructions that would significantly increase their lifespan if actually followed. Misuse resistance means consumer products generally still work if you skip maintenance the manufacturer told you was necessary (which industrial products might not), but it may shorten the product's lifespan, increase operating costs or reduce performance.
My friend owns a dishwasher. Recently little specks of dirt were left on plates sometimes after the wash completed. Guess what, there's no salt in the softener re-charge. So that dishwasher is soldiering on with hard water instead of soft, and it no longer gets things clean. Fill the salt back up, and sure enough the machine's performance quickly improves. I'm sure lots of people are shouting "That's not maintenance". Well, it probably depends how you look at the problem. From his point of view he purchased "all in one" dishwasher tablets which said he didn't need salt. If he'd examined them very carefully they admit that actually you might still need to add salt periodically, but that wouldn't be very "all in one" so it's not emphasised.
It’s not the same as the rinse-aid, which reduces the surface tension of the water so droplets won’t stay on the dishes (i.e. a surfactant).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion-exchange_resin#Water_softe...
If they do, it's usually a compartment at the bottom of the thing with a sealed screw-cap.
Oh, and don't bother buying "dishwasher salt", just buy medium-grain table salt, it's 10x cheaper.
Is it the same thing?
But in another sense, "No". The people selling you table salt know it's for cooking and eating not to run a water softener, so they may tweak the product for these purposes. The product should be labelled, but we saw earlier that people don't read the fine print.
For example isn't it annoying when the little grains of salt stick together in a salt shaker? In some environments it's difficult to prevent plain salt from doing that, especially if it sits in the shaker for a few weeks because you (sensibly) don't use extra salt in most food. But an anti-caking agent reduces this problem while not making any difference (in a tiny quantity) to the taste or dietary effects of the salt. A water softener does not need anti-caking agents, so the manufacturer recommends using dishwasher salt.
Another example: Humans are supposed to have the element iodine in their diet. Some countries historically had a big problem with insufficient iodine, and so the "ordinary" table salt in those countries is laced with (a tiny amount of) iodine. Result: Fewer children with mental development problems. A water softener has no need for iodine, maybe it makes no difference, it clearly can't help, hence, the recommendation specifically for dishwasher salt.
I spoke with a very nice person from Dell via Twitter who out of personal interest went above and beyond to help me calibrate that XPS, but no luck. Booting Windows is enough for fans to reach max speeds and thermal throttling to begin.
Yeah, the Dell is not that problem, but just saying for others that other brand/model laptops with the same symptom might be easy to fix.
The windows refresh joy typically lasts about two weeks and then the jet engine starts again, laggy, some long waits - something in some windows apps/drivers it really does not seem to like and I havent tracked it down yet.
we don't care really, they are still great. Besides, they don't break much (typing this on mbp 2015 while waiting for m1 16" to happen)
I'm writing from a Dell Latitude 7390.
If this had the trackpoint, ThinkPads would be dead to me.
It's 99% perfect. So much so that I'm thinking of gettin an exact replica as a personal laptop.
I’ve been using a 2012 MBPr that still works great/is pristine, other than losing some rubber feet.
Having a user friendly OS with *nix-ish tooling in a high build quality package is (debatably) only available from Apple. I will happily upgrade to an M1 MBP once the next gen is released.
I mean I want to believe Macs are skookum devices but they're really not the best.
Assuming Apple has figured out recent design issues, I'll be interested to see the longevity of the current generation. It seems like the thermals on the M1 are fantastic, which should minimize non-mechanical failures. Time will tell I guess.
Why would I care? If it breaks, I tell my company to pay the repair bill or buy me a new one.
Yeah, you pay a premium in terms of price for that, but it's a no brainer imo.
That said, I have a lot of Dell hardware I like too. I still use two 2407wfp wide gamut monitors on my gaming PC and don't see any reason to change them until there's a 4k monitor I really want. They're bulletproof, and I even bought them used off Dell's outlet site.
One of my other friends had a Dell service business for a couple years, so I'm definitely familiar with how it all works. He uses macbooks these days too.
Working with smaller / early stage startups I've never had an IT dept that I could pass it off onto.
When you repair the device yourself you are independent from such a service. You could get hardware parts from any store you like and you might have some replacement parts at home.
Don't get me wrong I don't think that applecare is bad, but I do think it is better to have more options. Therefore I think it is best to have something like applecare plus the ability to repair the device yourself if necessary.
Maybe I’m doing it wrong?
An extra $150 external backup HDD is worth any crash at work, get your company to get it for every dev.
Even if they buy a new one, how long will it take you to set it up from scratch?
Meanwhile, any other vendor will have competent technicians available almost anywhere (with a support package maybe even 24/7/365), who will be able to at worst transplant your storage media into a working machine while they refurb your old one. The downtime can be shorter than a big Windows update.
Consequently, most failures are "repaired" by swapping the motherboard, and so your flash drive contents are gone.
Happily, you are using Time Machine (right?) and so you plug your backup drive into a spare machine, do the restore, and you're back to where you were an hour before the disaster. You do the same again when your newly repaired machine comes back from the store.
Yeah, it sucks more than swapping an SSD. But hey, you knew that before you bought a shiny, thin, light Macbook.
Paying for people and equipment to can safely swap a motherboard and reassemble the laptop is not cheap, but it's not expensive.
Paying people who can diagnose a fault in a modern motherboard, do the board-level repair, test it, and turn it around to the customer doesn't make sense. Do a quick board swap and be done with it. Maybe forward the faulty board to some central facility for refurb or at least analysis to find out what's breaking in the field.
This isn't unique to Apple -- very little consumer electronics is repaired because it isn't worth the cost.
Now Apple makes the choice to solder everything on the motherboard (both for size & weight, and likely reliability reasons too). That means even peripheral failures junk the whole motherboard. But that's a trade-off they, and their customers, make.
While Louis Rossmann [1] is well-known in the US for basing an entire, profitable small business around boards' component-level repair in one of the most unforgiving retail service markets in the US (NYC midtown Manhattan) [2], there are hundreds of shanzhai and tens of thousands of more generalized repair shops in China [3] who also demonstrate that with sufficient specifications and parts availability, what appears "basically impossible to repair" becomes the start of a journey towards a cradle-to-cradle ecosystem.
Apple has led the industry in the past, and is hopefully leading the way towards such a cradle-to-cradle future. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that their recent designs that are perceived by Rossmann and others as anti-RTR (Right To Repair) are more unintentional side effects of their rapid vertical integration design strategy (the A* and M1 processors being only the most visible part of the strategy).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Rossmann
[2] https://www.rossmanngroup.com/
[3] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-broke-my-phones-screen-awes...
Personally, I don't think I've found anything that beats Apple's laptop trackpads, and I think that my UX matters more than repairability.
Then again, I'm still using a 2013 MacBook Pro with an upgraded NVMe SSD.
Although personally, the lack of a touchscreen on any of Apple's laptops is much more of a dealbreaker for me and despite working remotely, I really don't use a trackpad for work all that often. I imagine RSI would be unavoidable if you used it constantly, wouldn't it?
I never considered the RSI angle about the attraction of touch screens. I still have exactly zero desire to do serious work on a touchscreen where I’d have my fingerprints overlapping the display. Plus, I imagine touchscreens would be less ergonomic than a trackpad in a normal laptop form factor.
And yeah, I totally get not wanting to use Windows on a daily basis - win10 is a mess and I really only keep it installed for Adobe software and a few games. But the hardware of "Windows" laptops is quite competitive with Apple's these days.
On any OS you use it’s possible to have both a long-term backup and a bootable drive clone that is synced from your internal drive and updated on a schedule. I haven’t needed to use it often, but when I did it was priceless to be back up and running 30 minutes later without having to waste two days setting up a new machine or losing any data.
Unfortunately, it seems like the Apple Fabric storage system on the M1 laptops broke bootable backups, and it's possible that Apple has no plans to fix this:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/24/apples-moves-poin...
Trackoads are one of those items that I don't know of a good way to compare them, because most differences become unnoticeable habits over time. Sure, there's an obvious difference between a 20-year old copier whose buttons require a small hammer to activate and modern capacitative touchscreens, but beyond that I can't tell much difference.
Definitely if I use the trackpad on a new computer or on somebody else's computer, it feels wrong. The mouse moves to quickly or too slowly. The mouse continues moving after I thought I lifted my finger up, or stops slightly too soon. But those feel more like acclimatizing to a particular set of device parameters, rather than there being anything actually better or worse with the device.
I am using my unibody ASUS from 2013 with upgraded SATA SSD.
A completely unrepairable tool that is in service a lot longer for way less maintenance? I take that any day of the week.
And here’s the thing, I don’t really care that you can repair your Dell. I wouldn’t be able to do so without putting in a lot of time and it would be a little stressful. Reducing that time requires a significant investment.
The other failure mode I've seen is that a RAM module will fail to be recognized or cause a POST error, and the computer will not boot until it is replaced.
Neither happens often, but I've seen each of these more than I'd like. I could imagine both issues might possibly be less likely with a solid soldered connection vs. a port which can become damaged or dusty, but I don't have enough experience with soldered RAM modules to be able to say anything about its reliability.
This is how it works on most industrial job sites - your drill breaks, you go to the locker and check out another one. When the Hilti guy comes around, he collects the broken ones and they get serviced or replaced.
Meanwhile, my business laptop, the one the company provides me, has been macbooks for the most part, recently I've got a dell latitude. The latitude is one of the worst laptops I've had, bulky, heavy, noise. Yet, in terms of performance, I can't say I really see any differences in my day to day usage. On top of it all, the bluetooth is constantly causing issues, which I've never had with any of my previous laptops.
What do you like about the dell latitude line?
(0) Same goes for ThinkPads, not every ThinkPad is equal, even if it's the same one.
Which is totally fair, everything is fair. I'm not a negative person. (I think.)
Commercial dishwashers, esp. the fast cycle ones beat the living light of any mugs/plates/etc. unless they're plain white.
They use way more pressure and heat, and resulting clean is much more aggressive, shortening life of everything inside them. Only plain glass and plain porcelain came out relatively unaffected. All decorations doesn't stand a chance.
This is why some mugs denote "Safe for normal dishwasher use".
I want one.
The reason those big £3000+ machines are impractical for the home is not the cleaning or even the warm-up time (as both of those factors are the same for any espresso machine even the home ones) but rather with the fact that the bar grade espresso machines expect to be plumbed into a reverse osmosis filter and take up a shitload of space.
Commercial machines may need a little bit more time to warm up but I still let my gaggia warm up for around 15 minutes before I use it otherwise I find consistency falls and I just get frustration.
Regarding cleaning, the process is the same for home machines and just needs to be performed less often (I do this around once every week depending on use. I pour 1-4 shots a day every day). There are powdered detergents which are used to backflush the group head and solenoid valve to clear out coffee oils, this process takes about 5 minutes to perform and doesn't require much manual effort except for clearing out the drip tray and wiping things down a bit.
When it comes to cleaning the boiler, this isn't done by disassembling the machine or anything crazy like that. An acidic solution of usually some combination of primarily citric acid and/or potassium bitartrate is added to the water reservoir, the boiler is then flushed to get the solution in the boiler, I will then usually leave it in for 15 minutes with the boiler turned off to prevent water from boiling (to make sure all areas of the boiler are in contact with water at all times). Then this gets flushed with clean filtered water to get rid of the acid.
This process takes longer but also doesn't require much work.
Anything under £600 will give you mediocre espresso (due to grind inconsistency and temperature stability problems) or fauxpresso (any pod machine or bean to cup machine basically maxes fauxpresso, there are very expensive commercial grade true-espresso bean to cup machines but these, even when dialled in correctly, still usually make a mediocre espresso).
Any machine (even the fauxpresso ones) will likely require almost as much cleaning effort. Any manufacturer which claims otherwise (especially for bean-to-cup machines) is just trying to reduce the lifetime of your machine so it fails out of warranty and you buy another one.
There are also the lever espresso makers like the Flair or Cafelat Robot, which are cheaper, more robust (no fancy heating elements), but also a bit more troublesome.
Mine did approximately 15,000 coffees in the 20 years of use it had, and had one service for about $US75. It’s still around as an emergency backup.
It’s shown in the wiki. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancilio
I distill brita filtered water and then re-mineralise it by adding solutions of various minerals in specific quantities. Although not everyone has the time for that. I think brita filtered water and a good regular descaling cycle should be more than enough to make any machine last a very long time.
It is. But with home use you don’t pull 300+ shots, it can be cleaned less. I have a 20 something year old Cimbali and it’s just great. It’s on a smart plug to turn on early and warm up.
It had a load of leaks and I decided to upgrade, but first talked to the local agent. He gave 4 washers and said try them.
20 mins later it’s completely fixed at a cost of $0. That’s the only repair it’s had in the years I have owned it. I thoroughly clean it every few weeks.
Time is important in cleaning, and home dishwashers take advantage of that by running for several hours at low power, it is not like you are going to need these plates immediately after you have finished eating.
About commercial espresso machines, another thing to consider is that these machines usually require plumbing. There are high end home espresso machines that are also built like tanks and will serve you better unless you are planning to pull hundreds of shots a day. Commercial machines have an advantage when it comes to temperature stability because they are so big and heavy but smaller machines are still able to do an impressive job.
> and it’s designed for an environment with lots of ventilation
Speaking of, you know what the #1 thing I would design into a residential kitchen if I were building one from the ground up? A fume hood. Just a literal chemistry-lab fume hood box, but where the shroud folds away and the base of it is an induction cooktop. (In other words, it's just a really fancy above-the-range ventilation system.)
Imagine what you could do with that:
• No fear of burning your food setting off your smoke alarm — just drop/shut the shroud around the cooktop, and all the smoke would definitely be going out the vent, not into your house.
* You can grill indoors (with e.g. a Hibachi) with no fear of CO / CO2 poisoning. (Just shut the shroud while the food cooks, and only open it at the end. As a bonus, the extra airflow will make the grill into a convection grill!)
* You can vent your kitchen (and through it, the rest of your house) really quickly, if you're e.g. clearing something rotten out of your fridge.
* You can do real chemistry to make stuff, if you like. For example, given a fume hood, it'd be safe to make a CO2 generator to refill your soda-carbonator gas canister.
* Landlords would no longer have to worry about their tenants turning a house into a meth lab, because even if they did, the house would in some sense be safe to use as a meth lab, with much lower risk of volatile chemical explosions.
Laboratory-grade flooring: epoxy resin. Durable protection, withstand frequent pedestrian traffic. Slip resistance. Impermeable, non-absorbent surface, resists chemical exposure. Low maintenance, easy and economical cleaning and sanitizing properties.
Floor drains and gullies with oil/water separator.
Compressed air supply.
Chilled water supply.
Overhead service carriers for power, chilled water, hot water, natural gas, and air.
Lab-grade furniture, especially countertops.
All packaged in a proven layout taken from modern submarine galley designs.
This isn't from a lab (but from a sushi restaurant), to indicate I don't have a "kitchen as lab" fetish: circulating water Teflon-lined raceway behind all counter runs catches debris that is diverted to a auto-turned compost pile, and the excess moisture of the pile drained off to crops, which in turn drain off to an aquaculture pond.
I could go on, but my ideal dream kitchen would at first glance would probably look like a very cramped lab. "Modern" residential kitchens cause me all kinds of unnecessary movement and labor for my specific use case.
This can't be overstated. There's a lot of overlap between safety in labs, and safety in (especially professional) kitchens. Heck, there's more danger in kitchens with how familiar people are with processes, causing them to lower their guard.
The biggest parallels are probably the slip resistance, and the protective clothing. If you weren't aware, most chefwear is super easy to remove, has a hydrophobic coating, is not tight-fitting, usually layers over itself where it fastens, and often uses fasteners that are completely separate from the garment. (all of these examples are a result of me thinking about the dangers of scalding-hot fryer oil as in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOk2Akqb3CI)
I think lab coats and chef jackets are similar, but one targets corrosive liquids, and the other targets dangerously hot liquids.
TL;DR: get some labcoats, teflon pants, protective shoes, and eye protection for your kitchen.
I only run it at night, and I put it in a window in another room, facing out with some material around it to make a snug fit. The result is a steady breeze coming in the bedroom windows at night and a muted hum from the other room. It makes regular plastic box fans look like a joke. It easily moves 10x the air on low as a plastic one on high.
This approach greatly reduces the number of nights we need to use the AC in early summer/early fall in NYC, when it’s warm but not so humid as in July and August. I’ve tried the same thing with a plastic fan and it’s way less effective...we can come home to a hot stuffy apartment on a Sunday night after a weekend away and have it totally comfortable inside in a matter of minutes.
it's almost always a good idea to buy the professional-grade items you've used at work and know are awesome, it's almost never a good idea to buy a professional-grade item sight-unseen unless you know there's a local used market for it.
At one point, years ago, my brother and I considered creating a web site that explored these kinds of high-integrity options, and acted as a directory and maybe a review site as well. A site that evangelizes high-quality, well-engineered items that are easily integrated into a home and provide much greater longevity without costing a fortune. "Overkill" is probably too strong a term for the idea.
Impossible to break, engineered to was several loads every day, etc. But they’re not cheap.
Crummy valves break. Most builders use the cheapest crap they can get. They save a couple thousand dollars building a house but replacing the $2 crap can sometimes cost a fortune. One of the worst offenses I have had to deal with is the use of C-PVC pipe which is brittle and will eventually crack or burst.
Ideally, the site I thought about would be to educate folks about the kinds of things, components, they should specify when building or remodeling.
For example, Festool, Makita, and DeWalt offer awesome products but are very pricy. All the tools from the DIY shops are rubbish. Things from Bosch are slightly better. But these are all expensive. Meanwhile, the tools from Lidl around €30-50 price point are quite cool.
Nowadays youtube channels like Project Farm have kind of replaced that niche, I could see a channel dedicated to hands-on reviews, funded by affiliate links. I'd watch long videos on several of the topics you mention above...
What light switches do you use?
Longer form: there are three major manufacturers of switches and receptacles: Hubbell (Bryant), Leviton, and Pass&Seymour-Legrand. Hubbell is generally the highest price and quality. Leviton switches just feel "right" to me. I don't care for P&S much even though there's nothing wrong with them. All are completely interchangeable except for small visual details. This is really only noticable on wallplates (Hubbell stainless wallplates look the best -- and they're 302/304 SS so they don't rust in bathrooms like the 400 series trash at HD) and, if you mix them too nearby, switch rockers.
Pick your brand, then get their PDF catalog and find some part numbers. (There are plenty of other ways to do this, I just find catalogs effective.) You want "frameless" switches if you're going down this path: "framed" switches are the consumer junk you're running away from. (I dislike Decora -- I think it's harder to operate in the dark, and that's kind of a thing for light switches, but if it's your thing, go for it.) You'll find many possible part numbers to pick from. You want ONLY things marked as "Fed Spec" (more formally W-C-596). A lot of lesser stuff is "Spec Grade", which is a cop-out for "we think this is up to spec but we didn't actually list it". "Fed Spec" means "yeah, this one's good". (I will accept "spec grade" for oddballs like weird configurations -- it's not like they sell a ton of those -- since it really is decent, but don't settle for that on your main switch or receptacle, because you don't have to.) You can buy the cheapest things that are actually Fed Spec and you'll be golden.
You don't need the high-end Extra Heavy Duty stuff unless you're outfitting a shop or something. And you probably don't want Hospital Grade with those annoying pull-out forces, ugly green dots, and hospital prices. But none of those will hurt anything but your pocketbook, if you are so inclined. You'll just never appreciate them.
You should, for receptacles, get the ones that are Back And Side Wired. That means the side screws and the holes on the back, with the screw needed to grab the holes (i.e. not those horrid stabby-only holes on the super cheap receptacles). I made this mistake (Leviton BR15 vs CR15) and regretted it during install. Oh well.
If in doubt, look for the part number with the most color choices. It's probably popular for a reason. And don't forget that neon ("pilot") switches exist. They make understanding 3-ways and finding the staircase light in the dark way easier. Especially if the staircase lights are 3-way. Worth every penny!
Now that you have some part numbers, you just have to buy them from a trade supplier or industrial supplier and you're done! One place that's reliable is Zoro. They even used to have great pricing when they still offered coupons; seems those are rare now. But anywhere that's not big-box can sort you out.
Oh, and if this is your first time doing this, get a #1 square or Robertson screwdriver. No, not just a bit, you'll use it more than that and it's slimmer this way. The recesses on these things accept multiple bit shapes and I find that one by far the easiest to work with in that recess (due to the multiple-shape thing it's not great at holding any of them...).
This YouTube channel has recently done a number of great teardowns of electrical outlets (receptacles).
Go with Commercial grade.
I would add, if you can afford it, install AFCI outlets as the first outlet in the circuit, or an AFCI breaker in the circuit panel. These are required for residential (non-commercial) bedrooms for new construction in the latest revision of the NEC fire code recommendations, but they are way more expensive than you'd expect to pay for the he dead-simple outlets.
I'm going to go get some catalogs and start shopping, I might just be replacing all the light switches in my house in a few weekends from now :)
You probably wouldn't want those on frequently-swapped outlets, though.
The only problem is that I forget to turn it off in the morning. Out if sight out of mind. Switching it to a timer is on my list.
Then you can turn the fan off after a period of time, at a specific time, at a certain temp etc.
It risks over complicating things though.
That mixer likely won't handle a small load (as in, a single family sized loaf).
Spot on though about some of the stuff. That knife is nice, although being edged on both sides is a liability.
No, it is plain wrong. He recommends borosilicate beakers for beer. I think he never worked in a lab: borosilicate beakers break. Their thermal expansion tolerance is a non feature for cold beer: when did one of your beer mug broke because you served yourself boiling beer?
> Does your glassware meet ASTM Specification E960, Type II requirements? Is it manufactured from 33 expansion, low extractable borosilicate glass conforming to USP Type I and ASTM E438, Type I, Class A requirements? I didn't think so.
I call that hacker syndrome, when the typical hacker thinks a long line of impressive specs and numbers matter, because he has no idea of the customer requirements.
> Used to contain a life raft. Now, my groceries.
How easy it is to clean when there is a spill? How easy it is to replace? I have carried BRICKS inside the nylon woven bags some supermarket sell for $1.99. Rinced with water, ready in 5 minutes.
> For less than $100, I can buy a short USMC Short KA-BAR or a real M9 from Ontario for $150. This is the real thing, used by the US military.
Show off!!
If you want something to bring in a fight, get a Mark 1 trench knife: has brass knuckles for punching (and limit the risk of dropping your knife), a long thin blade for more lethality (easier puncture wound regardless of angle than with a wider blade). And in the kitchen it is ideal to break walnuts :)
Of course it does not look "nice" - like carrying bricks in a nylon supermarket bag. It is about knowing the needs you optimize for.
In my dad's lab in the 1970s, they used to make coffee in a large Erlenmeyer flask and filter it under vaccuum with a Buchner funnel. The safety director eventually banned it and made them buy a Mr. Coffee.
A simple example would be gloves. What would be the pro version of a glove? The ones used in steel mills? If you want a glove for riding a bike, you’re better of with regular biker gloves. If it’s a glove for winter, maybe skier gloves and so on.
For example, Ansell HyFlex gloves are standard issue in Amazon warehouses and they’re awesome for chores around the house too. They fit really well (and come in more sizes), they’re durable, and they are comfortable to wear for extended periods of time.
[1] https://www.deltaplus.eu/en/article-details/-/article-detail...
Some of the older dual Xeon servers on eBay were tempting, but the noise/power draw made it a non-starter.
Right now, I have a silent 4U rackmount GPU server running 24/7 in my living room, cooled just fine by a 120mm Noctua fan (plus a silent consumer ATX PSU fan).
I also have a commercial 1U Atom server that I've adapted for living room. The Atom and mirrored HDDs are passively-cooled (though you can also get Xeons in the same chassis). The Flex-ATX PSU was loud, but I opened it up and soldered in an effectively silent Noctua.
The noise-no-object jet engine servers are a problem, especially full-depth 1U ones with a phalanx of jet engine fans. But people have had some luck removing fans and replacing some of them with quieter fans, or liquid cooling.
Commercial gym equipment, on the other hand is more expensive, much heavier, and doesn't bring many advantages over a high quality consumer product. If you're running a gym where thousands of people use it every year the extra weight and cost makes sense but for a single person it's just a pain.
The fans were about 1 inch on a side but between them they sounded like a fully loaded 747 spinning up.
I've had my fair share of actual 12.9 steel screws from Amazon that are actually 12.9 steel, and my fair share of 12.9 steel screws that were actually made of cheese.
Plus... this is something maybe only a CAD user can understand - McMaster Carr provides an outright sex bible of importable 3D CAD objects.
Like, I really thought my CAD instructor in University was joking when they said McMaster would be your Bible if you're ever designing in CAD for hobby/industry. Then I got a job, and holy shit were they right. So I like to think whenever I pay slightly more on McMaster for what I could get on Amazon or eBay, I'm supporting the bible for all of the goodness it's given me for my hobby designing and in making actual work less stressful as well.
Luckily many suppliers are doing this. Misumi for example has plugins for CAD packages like Solidworks that even generate CAD parts for parts with custom configurations (like aluminum extrusion cut to size) so going from assembly to BOM to purchase order is a few clicks.
The Dyson fans tend to have a particularly quiet sounding noise profile compared to their volume of air displaced at low to mid power in particular, and also are far quieter and low powers than traditional fans.
They're not worth the money they cost, but there's a lot more nuance than this presents.
It's not even That loud though
it does stand a bit taller and weight about twice as much.
For dedicated dough makers - spiral, fork or diving arm mixers are the standard. But planetary mixers are good if your dough is side affair or you need to whip some eggwhites from time to time.
Every knife was dull and identically serrated like a budget steak knife, despite presenting as a comprehensive set of chef knives. The whole set was almost completely useless.
Sunbeam is not the reasonable quality brand it once was back in the Sears days, stay away.
The mixer I have is a hand-me-down from probably the 1970s. (Model 1-7A, in "beautiful" almond color scheme.) Still works perfectly.
I have some older Craftsman tools that seem indestructible, and I really hope they are, because you can't get replacement parts or support for pretty much any Craftsman tool any more (even the newer ones).