For me it was an Elgato stream deck.
Initially bought it on a whim (probably more as a gimmick) but now find myself using multiple times a day in the office (sales) environment.
It’s really a badly marketed product. Its real utility isn’t that it uses less oil, but that it cooks incredibly fast. Essentially an oven on steroids.
It’s made cooking so much easier. I usually toss some boneless chicken in with a light coating of soy sauce and cornflour. While the chicken cooks, I prep a basic Asian sauce on the stovetop.
The chicken and the sauce are both done within 10-15 minutes. Never have to check on the chicken (unlike a pan) or wait too long (unlike an oven). Mix them together and dinner is ready.
*Edit: 'are'
So the thing toaster oven/convection oven is good at ? Aside from big oven heating slowly of course
edit: Also, I should point out that the "basket" form factor of the air fryer is helpful. In the convection oven things tend to lie flay on a sheet, and cooking is less even. Granted, I could put a basket-like container in the convection oven, but it would still be much slower to heat.
It cooks things way faster.
Growing up my parents almost exclusively used a pot shaped one with the fan/heater in the lid, to make roast chickens. The skin usually came out nice and crunchy and spicy. It would be tougher to get that same effect in a toaster oven or oven. They also tend to heat more evenly so for reheating they cook better than a microwave. But can not beat a microwave on speed.
Think of each of these as tool to get things done. Each one can mostly do what the others can. But some tools are better suited to cooking styles than others.
You can argue it's just a convection oven with a faster fan, but that doesn't make it a "meme".
They're also, like, very much not expensive at this point. It's a very commoditized, competitive market, and you can pick them up for <$50.
I cube tofu, cover in corn starch, throw in air fryer for 8 minutes. (chicken wings can be made the same in 20 minutes -- way better than anything from a restaurant)
when tofu is done, i add a little water, toss in some broccoli, close for 3 minutes, done
nuke pre-made rice and i have lunch in no time
i still use oven for longer-cook items like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and brussel sprouts, but only if I have a main cooking in the air fryer. but the oven gets used a lot less these days.
But that is really not it's strong point indeed! It's not an alternative to a deep fryer (but that is primarily the way I see it used), it a faster oven.
Perhaps if you have a deep fryer with oil that is already at temperature. But if you have to heat the oil it's definitely not 3x faster than using an air fryer. Also, no need to clean up splatter afterward, or monitor hot oil while it's cooking. Or figure out what to do with several cups of oil after you've deep fried some french fries.
But temper your expectations. If you need your cooking implements to be squeaky clean, an air fryer will be a lot of work. If you're satisfied with your regular oven having a few bits of carbonized food bits here and there, then you'll also be satisfied with a "camp clean" level of air fryer cleanliness.
Airfryer doesn't get hot enough like pan over direct flame so food doesn't seem to get burned / stuck.
That might seem like a weird suggestion but remember the entire advantage of an air fryer is that it's a smaller form of an oven so it has less to heat and is thus faster for less power. Buying a big one makes it all pointless, just use the oven.
The small ones fit in a sink. Not much different than cleaning pots&pans.
It works by forcing air from the top to the food, not slowly from the back like regular oven. So you get better result if food isn't piled up over itself.
Some think it affects the air fryer cooking but I haven't noticed a difference.
It’s the same thing with instant pot where they probably lose out a bit by not marketing themselves as a serious electric pressure cooker that can also do other stuff.
That's the big difference that I've noticed now that I'm reading about them.
"to cook something in hot fat or oil; to be cooked in hot fat or oil"
Because of what the word means?
If you get an air fryer that's the size of an oven it will be as hard to clean as an oven and will take just as long to heat and cook as an oven since internally the tech is 100% identical to a fan forced oven (a heating element with a fan). Don't make the mistake of bigger is better for an air fryer.
Air fryers are meant to be small pots that have a fan forced oven element bolted to the top that can easily be detached for washing in the sink. That's the whole appeal of it. It's a teeny tiny oven that heats up extremely quickly for little power due to its size. It's easy to clean because the non-electronic part fits entirely in the sink. It's only the size that gives air fryers an advantage. If you buy an air fryer the size of a fan forced oven you have literally just bought a less good fan forced oven.
Cube the tofu, cook for 75% of the total time, pull out and dress in liquid seasoning, return for the last bit and the outside gets crisp while the inside remains juicy!
Curious -- what do you use as a dressing?
Put in airfryer so that they're not clumped together. 180C for 10-ish minutes and you should have some tasty crispy cubes of goodness.
If you want to be extra fancy, you can toss them in a sticky sauce of your choosing at this point.
Serve on rice and enjoy.
You did mention it yourself - "It gets a little dirty inside".
Compare it to the $30 air fryers that are essentially an insulated cooking pot with a detachable heating element. They do the same thing but are so trivial to clean since they are a cooking pot that fits in the sink.
It's one of those things in life where cheaper is better in my opinion and i do not recommend the above product at all.
No fancy features, the design could clearly be improved, but chuck anything in this small chamber, crank up the timer and delicious food comes out 10mins later. I've gifted nice models to others, without feeling any need to upgrade my own. Maybe when it breaks.
I would suggest sticking with a small one though. Quicker to heat, better circulation etc
https://www.ninjakitchen.com/exclusive-offer/DZ550WBKT/Ninja...
I think the marketing is really smart.
It's positioned as a new category of product. Oven on steroids won't sell because people already own ovens. It has to be a distinct appliance otherwise it's competing against a full sized oven. That's not the comparison you want a consumer to make.
Even worse: a full sized oven that I already own.
The next wave of people buying these things are not going to be fryer junkies looking to cut oil, it's going to be people like me that looked at it and realized instead of waiting 20-40 minutes for my oven to heat up I could throw enough food in the air fryer to finish a dish in 7-12 minutes, which changes the dynamic of how I live my life culinarily for the better by a large margin. With the airfryer I can plan meal timing way less, have less pressure to be in the kitchen earlier, have flexibility to cook something like a roast in the oven on lower heat while polishing off fancy veg or multiple fancy veg (because the run time to cook is so low) in the air fryer, plus I save a lot on cleaning at the end because there aren't multiple big dishes to wash.
If they were called 'tiny oven' people probably catch on a bit better.
I have an air fryer which is literally a double walled cooking pot with a fan forced heater bolted on top. It's amazingly fast to cook and trivial to clean since it is small and fits in the sink but i fear many people hearing how good 'air fryers' are might do something dumb and buy an full size fan forced oven that's badged as an 'air fryer' which defeats the whole point.
The fast heating is due to the size. A fan forced oven is the same tech but slower due to being larger. Nothing more.
So if you are buying a large air fryer that's essentially a fan forced oven i have to ask "why not use the oven?".
There may be a case that there's better circulation in most air fryers vs most fan forced ovens. In fact that's true in my case as my large oven and my air fryer have fans the same size (so more relative circulation in the smaller air fryer).
But they are the same tech. The difference in relative fan size probably has some effect but it's not a rule, it's really just a case of how big the fan in the device is and you may have air fryers with smaller or larger relative fan sizes and ovens with smaller or larger relative fan sizes.
If you're wondering why ovens now have 'air fryer' mode that's because marketing. I suspect it spins the fan a little faster.
From what I can tell (and the detail provided on this is sketchy) differences include some or all of (varying between models):
1. Different fan position vs. ovens without air fry mode,
2. Faster fan speed in air fry mode,
3. Using “true” or “European” convection (heating unit behind the fan) in air fry mode, rather than “American” convection (bottom heating unit plus forced circulation fan), which may or may not be used in “convection” mode in a convection oven with an air fry setting.
I haven’t looked, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more peak output from the heating element was part of air fry settings, especially the ones where that is specifically marketed as, or has an additional mode for, “no preheat” air frying.
But of course, up the fan speed and the element size in relation to the interior volume, and make sure you place everything to get optimal air circulation and turbulence (my air fryer has several aero-vanes in its base to create turbulence in the air cyclone, and push it up through the bottom of the food), and you can make an oven that does what an air fryer does.
Air fryer is called "fryer" because of the basket comparison to an oil fryer.
Tiny countertop (often convection) ovens (including, but not limited to, ones marketed as "toaster ovens") are very common, but a lot of them are under powered for their size compared to those markets as "air fryers", as well as having other design differences. And they existed long before air fryers, which needed to differentiate themselves from them.
> The only issue is that people may get misled into buying an oven sized air fryer which defeats the whole point since their advantage is that they are a much smaller oven.
Actually, I think it’s probably going to be pretty common for people to have multiple convection ovens / air fryers and use them for different purposes. The “whole point” of an air fryer is not the size: the convection oven + cooking basket setup has fairly great utility at all sizes. Yes, an oven with a powerful heating element relative to size is going to have the added advantage of coming up to speed faster, which has some additional utility. Yes, the particular design of the cooking pot + top fan you describe (or the InstantPot models with air-fryer lids that interchangeable with the pressure cooker lids) have some unique utility (“pressure cook & crisp” for certain recipes). But ones the size of a typical microwave (or combined with a microwave, as some are now) or a typical full-size range oven also have unique uses that smaller ones lack.
The majority of people I know have an air fryer at this point and that includes, of all things, a lot of senior citizens which is a disproportionate amount of my social circle due to my profession.
These things are out there in a big way. Lots of frozen products already have air fryer directions on them specifically.
I think it’s already the open secret that all they really are is a small convection oven.
Convection is also not common in the US. At least where I am in the Netherlands, shopping for a new "oven" almost guarantees it will be some sort of combo microwave/convection thing. Then it's also common to have a countertop airfryer as well.
Instead, they have a "deshi rehhhn-ji", which literally translates to "electric range". This will confuse people for whom "the range" is the thing you can place multiple pots and pans on to cook simultaneousely.
But a denshi rehhhn-ji actually is more like a combination toaster oven plus microwave with a single shared compartment, designed to use infrared and microwave power simultaneously. Attempts to market these in USA over 14 years ago failed, seemingly due to high prices and consumers' preconception that ovens, toasters, and microwaves are fundamentally separate devices. However, I've recently seen at a Target store in USA three different combination devices that may be similar, from different companies. Their marketing at that store was like "combination air fryer and microwave!" and "combination microwave and broiler!".
deshi reenji …but that the double 'e' is not an English "long e" but rather more like an English "short e" of double length.
[1] Materialistic, on F-Droid.
The only way that it differs from a normal convection oven, is the lack of preheat options. If you want to "preheat", then you turn it on, wait 5 minutes for the compartment to come up to temperature, then add your tray of food.
How's this different from a classic toaster oven? Serious question, I've never used or even seen an air fryer, but I have been using toaster ovens to bake single servings of salmon for over 2 decades.
Fryers have oil, right? Oh, this one doesn't. Air??? Air Fryer??
Not an oven. Not a fryer?
I don't own a fryer anyway, they are gross with all that oil.
This fryer uses no oil?????!!!!
My oven doesn't use oil either. But it's not a fryer!
And then it gets bought.
Any way you look at this device, is substandard, not frying, and best saving your money elsewhere.
Roasting veggies, roasted potatoes, frozen foods like fries, things like that. I can be done with a batch of fries before my oven has even gotten to temperature. Massive time savings.
For me the USP is the slide in and out basket, ability to do a little shake. The convenience of that over a tray in the oven and the washing up and the turning and the burning one side of the items… is priceless
You know what a larger air fryer is called? It's called an oven.
In effect it’s closer to a microwave meets an air sous vice. Much quicker heat up, much more even heat dispersal.
I have a convection oven too that’s the same size, we use the air fryer 5x more often and it’s almost entirely due to the fan not the size. Cuts cooking time in half comparatively.
I think its not technically size at all, but:
(1) Heating output relative to size, and
(2) Fan capacity relative to size, and a less contribution from
(3) Arrangement of heating element and fan.
"It's not due to the size because they didn't shrink /all/ the components equally."
:)
But, I’m mostly saying that its not inherently the case that a small convection oven would have the advantages of an air fryer, and, a major reason for the name “air fryer” for the product categoriy is because countertop convection ovens without those advantages already existed, because they were optimized for other goals, so just calling them “countertop convection ovens” would have sent the wrong message to buyers familiar with the existing category.
I honestly didn't understand what they were at first and didn't bother to find out.
The real driver is the globally increasing number of single-person households tho
What it's actually good for is cooking some things faster than a conventional oven, reheating fried foods.
I have had success making good homemade french fries with my air fryer, but I still thoroughly toss them in oil before cooking them. The end result is not really much healthier than if I deep fry them, but it is a lot easier and less messy.
[Citation needed]
I can’t find any data about penetrations, but IME it is very common for people not to have a convection oven.
(symbols like:) https://www.ebay.com/itm/173568522355
but in the US convections ovens are not that common.
I had in the 90s the faberware "turbo oven". It was too big for me but it was a convection oven and quite fast. Caterers that did functions at the museum I worked hauled them in to heat food.
Where do you live?
The USA.
From what I mean before, it's basically unheard of to buy a single oven without it being a convection oven: https://www.johnlewis.com/browse/electricals/cooking/built-i... -- If you buy a double oven then the top one will likely be a "traditional" oven (mine is like this).
Downside with convection ovens is the heating element can shit the bed if you manufacturer skimps out on the thermal cycling. Had to replace mine yesterday after only 5 years of daily use, but was a quick 5 min job and £15.
But then again, I’m sure you are right. Perhaps this is an easy tell - check to see if the oven has convection features. If so, the house was built for living, if not it was intended for flipping.
I don't recall my last house having it (gas oven).
I get how it would seem that way. I think few enough people make home buying or renting decisions based on it, that most developers building (major appliances are often preinstalled) or landlords renting homes don’t bothers with the small added expense, and most renters don’t have the choice of replacements, and most homebuyers won’t swap out unless the old one becomes unserviceable. As a result, American recipes don’t focus on them, people don’t tend to know how to take advantage of them, and the cycle continues. Maybe the Air Fryer craze will chip away at it.
Both gas and electric ovens without convection are common in the US; in 12 homes I can remember, as a child and adult, in almost 50 years, only in the most recent have I had a convection (gas) oven. (All have had ovens.)
I only have 3 data points, but every time I have used the convection feature at someone else's house, they had no idea it was a feature, or what a convection oven even does.
Edit to add: These were all in newer homes, so could be a more recent trend?
Are you under the impression that most Americans live in giant McMansions?
Gas ovens are common and so are electric, but I didn't have a convection oven until I owned my own home. It's not really worth it for most landlords to make this upgrade.
It's also fantastic at reheating most things that aren't soup.
Normal sized boneless chicken breasts should cook in a pan in about 10 minutes or less, and you really don't need to do anything other than flip them once. If air fryers are convincing people to cook their own fresh food I would say that's a good thing, but I'm still struggling to see how they're actually better than "traditional" cooking.
Dead simple. Super tasty. 10 minutes, easy cleanup.
No doubt, an air fryer made my son's college dorm experience so much better but I don't see the appeal for anyone who isn't single or who has a proper kitchen already.
By this logic it's particularly good at cooking food that otherwise would be better fried, but outside of that it does vegetables like brussel sprouts or small filets of fish particularly well leaving the inside soft and the outside cooked.
Unfortunately those equipped with a stirring function come up as expensive. I would love to see a < $100 air fryer equipped with it.
And which model of stirring air fryer did you end up going for?
You can throw in frozen vegetables, meat and seasoning, turn the machine on, come back in 25 minutes and your food will be cooked uniformly to perfection. E.g., frozen brussels sprouts, chopped chicken sausages, a bit of olive oil and sambal sauce.
Prep time under 30 seconds.
Bonus points: Both fryers come with dishwasher-safe paddle and bowl. You can detach and wash the lid too of the De'Longhi one.
It makes tofu better than any other method and is a staple in our household.
My only wish is that the basket style models had more robust options. We go through one every ~6 months.
Haven't noticed that myself. Then again I mostly only cook pre-fried or that kind of stuff in my air fryer.
Wash and cut the potatoes into whatever's the appropriate size, put in the frying basket, pressure cook on high with the timer set to 2 mins (timer only starts once pressures built), release pressure, remove basket and drain + shake roughly.
Leave to sit for ~15 minutes on the counter while doing other shit, empty and dry the main vessel.
Bit of olive oil (or other fat) and seasoning onto the potatoes with shaking to make more surface area by fucking up the surface, pop it back in and air fry for 20-25m on 200*C, shaking halfway through.
End result? Absolutely perfect roast potatoes. Glassy crunchy outsides, fluffy insides, every time.
Also functions as a dehydrator and is super good enough to turn harvested mushrooms dry enough to powderise to make seasonings.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-air-fryer-to...
You can also steam-slow-cook meat and get juicy tender chicken.
Personally, I use a separate metal basket in my convection oven. But it's entirely possible that more convection would be better.
By comparison, the new breville I have does everything the old one did plus air frying, and the difference is distinct - I tried making fries in the convection baking mode on the old one and the result was noticeably worse than what I get from the new one in air fry mode. Noise and heat output approaches annoying levels with either air fryer, so I'm pretty confident the experience I get is close or the same as the purpose-build one. And the ability to space things out more gives better results, at least for my purposes. (I'll note that 95% of my air fryer use is for fries.)
And if you've had frozen fried foods like mozz sticks, chicken nuggets or eggrolls in an air fryer, it really does live up to the name
I suspect the plastics used were changed, or some preconditioning process was skipped to get more units out for a Black Friday sale or something. I haven't revisited the product category since.
Aka convection oven.
Which is a fancy marketing term for having a fan inside your oven
It's a small convection oven, which a lot (definitely not all) ovens come with standard today. I bought 2 of the cheapest whole kitchen "packages" from HD and both came with a convection setting. The electric even called it "Convection/Air Fryer."
A friend saw that setting and busted with excitement "Your oven has an air fryer!?" Yes my oven has an oven.
Really good marketing.
Never underestimate the power of the oven.
I'm not trying to be critical, but am genuinely curious as someone who's lived more than half the years since 1997 in Taiwan without hearing that term before.
I'd wager that having spent so long in Taiwan you've probably never heard the term because there it would just be "sauce" :P (or less tongue-in-cheek, it's just something that is implicitly and silently understood and recognized rather than having some kind of formal name).
Yeah, I’d tend to think in more specifically, in terms of which of those ingredients you listed are in it but all of those are familiar.
Though the phrase "White Man's Teriyaki sauce" is running around in my head and yes I get the irony of that.
The device itself was more expensive than $200, obviously, but the "small oven" aspect of it saved us from having to run our regular-sized oven at all. I'd been wanting a small (not quite toaster-oven style) oven for a while, but without the counter space we could only justify it by sharing space with the microwave.
Not a literal lifesaver, but definitely a figurative one.
Now I can keep heat-generating stuff like my storage server and the cable modem (surprisingly heat-intensive) in the basement, have a WiFi AP in the attic for great coverage in the yard, and I can easily drop lines down into rooms on the 2nd floor from above by just drilling a small hole in the top of a wall and feeding the Cat6 down, or put one into a 1st floor room by going up from the basement. Cat6 anywhere I want it, basically.
It's something I've wanted for years and held off doing because I knew I was capable of DIYing it, and therefore I hesitated to hire it out. This was dumb.
It took him an hour or so using various specialized tools ("fish bits", "fish tape", tall ladders, drywall saws, etc.), when it would have probably taken me the better part of a weekend and I wouldn't have done as clean of a job. He also knew from experience where the easiest place would be to get all the way from the basement to the attic, given my house's construction style.
Definitely worth the two bills, and also now I have a "wiring guy" for future projects. I've already called him back to help run wiring for PoE outdoor cameras, another thing I've wanted for years but haven't bothered to execute on.
$100 to connect 2 drops. Plug it in and it works. (change the admin password tho!) https://www.amazon.com/Hitron-Ethernet-existing-Backbone-Str...
If you have 5 or less, it shouldn't be an issue.
But yes, it would not necessarily work great in something in like an apartment.
Additionally, >1Gbps is starting to become common on consumer hardware.
Again, it is probably not going to be a concern for most home networks, and MOCA should still be better than mesh networks or powerline ethernet.
As a bonus, if I (or the next guy) wanted to have a landline phone, it's in the same closet and it can be patched to anywhere in the house by swapping a single wire.
Given the opportunity, even after the house is complete, it's a very useful thing to do.
When building new,
Running 2-4 Ethernet cables to each room is a must and cheap. Kitchen islands, garages, you name it. Between different devices, multiple Vlans, being able to run PoE equipment, it’s indispensable. Helps avoid a lot of small switches.
Security cameras if they are your thing should ideally be poe and avoid wifi.
There are some good Ethernet to HDMI adapters as well so prewiring ceilings with a double run for projector plus Ethernet doesn’t hurt.
It also makes it easier to experiment with Linux, etc.
I bought some new plants for my home, which makes the place feel a lot nicer.
I bought some outdoor-trousers - things that go on top of your jeans - when it is cold they keep me warm, and I can now roll around in the snow without getting wet as a nice bonus. (-10°C here today). That said it was only a couple of weeks ago that I came out of a sauna and rolled around naked in 30cm of snow. Bracing!
Other household things that have made my life nicer have included some decent concrete-bolts screwed into my walls and ceiling. Now I can hang plants, have an indoor hammock, and a hammock-chair too.
Finally I've started buying random paintings whenever I go to visit charity/thrift stores. Each time I go I buy a single painting, it must be "amateur", and it must have an artist signature and date on it. At the moment I've got a wall with about eight of these paintings hung on it. All different styles, colours, and levels of "goodness", but together they all look good, rather than a garish mismash. Kinda fun.
Just came back from an exceptionally cold vacation to Iceland and realized that despite years of backpacking and hiking in temperate weather, I knew not nearly enough about layering for truly cold weather.
I mostly bought them to keep my dry, rather than warmer.
Which ones?
I second this. My wife went through a health scare (she's fine now) early in 2022, during which she was a little depressed. one of her outlets was to go to home goods or lowes and buy house plants - one or two at a time, every week or two. those stores have pretty generous return policies if you kill the plant - homegoods 30 days, lowes - a full year!
I think we have about 25 houseplants now including a couple of large ficus and fan palm trees, she waters them all at once on the weekend and it doesn't take much time at all, maybe 15 to 30 minutes per week; there are some annual maintenance tasks as well like re-potting but the return on time investment is really fantastic. Guests always comment how lovely it is in our living room surrounded by plants, and she has a new hobby of propagating the houseplants and giving new plants as gifts. All in all, I'm sure it's more than $200 in total, but if you find good deals, $200 can probably buy between 5 to 15 very nice houseplants.
Though probably not as good for rice specifically as an actual high-end rice cooker, it greatly increased the range of foods I eat.
Makes it easy to make nice one pot meals overnight for multiple days, you can make really good broth soups from chickens etc quickly, or slowly if you prefer.
If you like to try tougher cuts of meat, this is also a good reason to get it. The fact it doesn't occupy one burner is also helpful.
An even easier thing is shredded BBQ chicken. They can even be frozen and it's done in an hour. Would write the recipe but leaving for lunch now.
Easy, fast, flavorful.
The one weakness of the Instant Pot is that most models won't go to 15psi and there is the odd recipe where a longer cooking time can't compensate. For example, there is a Modernist Cuisine recipe for pressure cooked root vegetables that uses a bit of baking soda to help bring a caramelized flavor to the party. Works great in a 15 psi cooker but is a disaster in an instant pot: the veggies just taste like baking soda. I suspect that stocks made in the Instant Pot might not be as good as well for similar reasons but haven't tried that yet.
Multigrain setting on the Instant Pot, shortest cook time. I believe it is 20 minutes at full pressure. I do not know if the multigrain setting is on every Instant Pot.
20-30 minutes of natural steam release once the pressure cooking is complete.
Turns out soft and minimally sticky every time. Perfect for my palate. I was eating it with just butter and soy sauce for a while.
White rice is the same deal, though I usually go a few minutes less (~12 minutes). I like to add a very small amount of some sort of oil to the inner pot with the rice.
The latest revisions of the instantpot do a good job of sous vide. I've tried a sous vide roast [0] so far, 24 hours later I had the best roast I've ever had. Incredible.
Dump in a gallon of milk, heat it up, let it cool, add a couple spoons of a store bought plain yoghurt (if you don't have some started saved from the last batch), put the lid back on and hit the yoghurt button and come back in like 8-10 hours. If you prefer a thicker yoghurt, strain it a bit before storing.
Gallon of yoghurt for the price of a gallon of milk and probably like 20 minutes of active work.
You don't get any indication that things are going right until the timer starts going down, but that's many minutes after you start it. It also comes with two completely incompatible rice recipes, one of which doesn't use rice mode, and no explanation of why. Just terrible UX.
https://www.amazon.com/Yedi-Programmable-Pressure-Steamer-Ac...
Because it changes how warm I feel while going downstairs, I also don't need downstairs to be as warm to get warmed up again. I'm already warm and can sit in a normal temperature room to work.
---
Air purifier (40 bucks on offer I think). We got it for unrelated reasons, it didn't help for that. Unexpected uses:
1. Neighbours' smoke occasionally comes into our apartment somehow and now I can do something about it. Before, I would just suck it up and try to convince myself that the little residue coming through whatever wall isn't going to impact my health.
2. This winter, people seem to like to heat the house with whatever old painted glued rotting wood they can find (or maybe also dead bodies, it's hard to tell). I can wait a few hours, but if it doesn't clear up and I want some fresh air before sleeping then what I do is open the bedroom window wide for a few minutes to replace the air, doors closed, then close window and turn on purifier on high for 30+ minutes, and then go back in there to sleep.
Mostly they run on the very quiet setting (or not at all), but they’ll automatically spin up if someone cooks, farts, opens a window or hits a vape pen.
On the other hand, instead of DIY you could just buy air purifier units with integrated air quality sensors. A friend of mine uses these, they appear to work very well https://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/AC2936_33/2000i-series-air-pur...
I would not recommend it purely because they decided to use an extremely poor touch interface for control which quiet often doesn't register when I try to manually adjust something like shutting the unit down temporarily or resetting an error code
Buying a purifier that can fit standard sized “box” filters will save you $$ in the long run.
Having one very powerful air purifier hidden away in another room is not as good as having a bunch of smaller ones spread around.
Overall, yes, a cheap box filter (placed specifically in the bedroom, if limited to one room) is often the most effective.
Speaking of expensive air purifiers, you can often find excellent deals on used IQair units. I got 4 GC Multigas units from a local museum for 100 euros each.
I have an alert set up on the local craigslist equivalent and constantly get emails.
Those filters were used though, no idea for how long (they only had like 70 hours on them according to the onboard tracking, but that would be easy to manipulate even by accident)
This essentially tracks with the numbers presented here https://www.iqair.com/newsroom/why-you-need-to-replace-your-...
IQair recommends a yearly replacement for my HEPA filter, but my environment had a fairly low amount of particulates to begin with (new building with filtered air intakes) and workload split between multiple units.
I guess it will be on all the time for me.
Did something similar recently for fun and cost was ~20e for co2 sensor, attached to a raspberry pi pico or esp32 and it ends up being 27-30e. (add some more sensors like co or gas for 10e each, a mini display for 5e, hook up to home assistant or telegram and ends up being more useful)
To be fair, QA on these things tends to be valuable, so perhaps cost might be justified.
Cost likely can go down if you know what to buy, I didn't and just bought what a reputable seller had.
The difference is that the computer's fans don't blow directly at you and make you warm while leaving the room effectively unchanged as in my use-case.
When heating up a room, regular natural gas central heating is usually a lot more efficient than electricity. A gas power plant creating electricity for you to turn back into heat is rather lossy. Heat pumps are different: they roughly break even if you have a 100% gas power mix, because they move heat at 300% efficiency instead of creating new heat.
I stay up later than my wife and like to go to lay in a cool bed. She likes it warm. So we compromised and got a mattress warmer for her, and I have the heat set to drop by several degrees at like 11 PM.
But then she gets up at like 7 AM (6 AM on workdays), and she'd be freezing, so I have the heat set to turn back up at 6 AM, which means if I wake up, I find myself roasting and can't get back to sleep.
I don't know the power draw while it warms up. The packaging says 100W but I measured it to actually use only ~30W, average during 1.5 hours. Maybe it does use 100W the first 5 minutes or so. Let's say it uses the full 100W for up to 15 minutes while I do my evening hygiene ritual as an upper bound, that would be 0.025 kWh (1 cent last year, 2 cents at current prices).
Definitely recommendable.
Which probably produced just as much heat as a $200 space heater. Technology Connections did a great video on that. https://youtu.be/V-jmSjy2ArM
I used to occasionally run a space heater under my desk on low because my legs and feet would get cold. It felt nice and cozy, but eventually I just got used to putting on socks and pants.
Oh, you're right, I rounded the three quarter up to a one, but failed to remove the zero before it. Either way, it's a lot better than even just filling up the cold radiator with hot water, let alone it heating the rest of the room up!
Bless you. Not only do my neighbors burn wood for heating but I also have to use an AC for heating. Totally forgot air purifiers existed.
I'm really glad something can finally, truly replace Google search and be just as good or better (neither Bing nor DuckDuckGo were good enough when I tried them).
If we're talking physical products, I'd probably go with the Apple Magsafe wallet. It's a little thing but I love not having a separate wallet to keep track of every day.
In my experience it's at least marginally better, but one of the really nice features that Kagi has (and probably the main reason I subscribe) is you can extremely easily block domains. So whenever I hit a SEO garbage site, I just go back, block it, and I never worry about it again. In the areas you regularly search, this quickly gets you to a result page that is substantially higher quality than google.
I just use ublacklist [1] for that.
I like Kagi by the way, but my problem with it is:
1. major: I value privacy. I would not connect my identity to a search engine (we've learned from recent news events that promises/privacy policies mean nothing.)
2. minor: The subscription cost is a little too high for my usage volume.
You do not need to. You can register with an anonymous email (like SImpleLogin) and use anonymous payments (like PrivacyHQ) if remaining anonymous is imperative to you.
Kagi is 100% privacy respecting though, with the data you choose to trust us with (we are in the business of search, not the business of monetizing data).
As such, it can still be used to link a person to their Kagi account which means it's not private or anonymous in any meaningful sense. Additionally the service is only available to US citizens. I would strongly urge Kagi to consider adding cryptocurrency payments - ideally Monero.
This is coming from a paying Kagi customer. I like to put my money where my mouth is but I'm not a fan of the current payment options. I understand that Kagi is a small company in early stages, but I would expect cryptocurrency payments to be available 12 months from now.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-21/crypto-tr...
Why not Monero, the clearly top choice for anonymous payments?
Well, that would be an improvement, but all searches will still be linked to 1 account, whereas i can search on other search engines without this privacy issue.
On top of that, privacy laws in the US are... quite bad (even compared to Europe.)
> "we are in the business of search, not the business of monetizing data"
I appreciate your effort, i might reconsider at some point. Thank you for your reply!
We do not log searches or associate them with an account (check our privacy policy). This is because this would only be a liability for us, with no benefit. We are in the business of selling search results, not user data.
They have a lot of nice features pulled from Google and DDG:
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/index.html
I haven't done any objective tests, so can't really say much about search quality except that it definitely works at least as well as Google for my searches (usually tech or legal stuff), and it doesn't have ads. Whatever I'm looking for is usually the top result if my query is good and it's not something that's ambiguous.
I'm curious as to where it lacked. DDG works more than well enough for me, but I'm wondering what other people search for where it is not.
But I'd say with Kagi it's almost the opposite - it finds things at least as well and there aren't ads to get in the way. It feels like old-school Google.
I actually found that I was getting annoyed on my mobile devices because they were still searching on Google and I need to scroll past ads etc., before I recently switched them over.
Don't get me wrong, DDG works fine for me for 90% of my search queries (which are usually quite straightforward). But I have noticed a difference in quality vs Google, at the margins. I'm considering trying out Kagi.
When DDG fails, I just re-run the search with "!g" and it goes straight to google and I'm good.
I have been using Kagi for four months now, and can happily report that I resort to it less and less, and even when I do it is mostly due to muscle memory from years of DDG.
For truly rare and unique searches, Google undeniable has a bigger index, so cases where searching for a unusual error code 0x004104010 give you nothing on DDG, Google could find one poor soul in an obscure Korean forum, that solved the same issue and then translate the result, just enough for you to recover your broken data.
If you would carefully look at "Best headphones" example, the reddit result card shows '2 days ago', whereas the link it points to is 7 months old.
Similarly the Sennheiser headphones results card shows $379 on Amazon, when its actually $400 today.
No offenses to how well it works, but if I had to be sold to get a subscription, I would rather like to see a real-time example. A canned example FWIW could be a completely scripted search result.
I am personally not bothered by small errors here and there, it is important to get the big picture right - alignment of incentives inside the search experience. Overall, I believe we also have superior results to Google, please try it for a few days and share your thoughts.
Kagi is in some ways broken and flawed and it is what makes it feel more humane to use.
If there are things that particulary bother you feel free to share them on kagifeedback.org. We are not ignorant of these, just limited by our current resources.
To be clear, I pay $20/mo for ProtonMail Visionary so I'm not averse to paying! I just can't see the value at $30/mo when the other family members don't use it nearly as much as I do.
Maybe this is an untenable problem due to your costs and you need those low use paying users. I'm not sure.
To clarify: by intermixed I mean our tuning was different so it became somewhat interesting, as we all wanted to tune the settings differently. It's not a huge thing, but between that and feeling bad for having three people using one sub...
> We are a ten people bootstrapped team.
We are a 2-engineer startup. We give business analytics/market trends on mined webdata (through our B2B dashboards) with a 48 hour live data guarantee. Every time, user queries crunch through about 9 million data points for every day over last 36 months - in real time. Sorry, but it isn't a very good reason to have stale results.
The fact that it lists ballpark prices rather than exact prices is really not that important in the grand scheme of things.
My critique was about the accuracy of the results, and staleness of their showcase. If I would be a paying customer - be it $1 or $10/mo - I would expect it to be better than something I get for free. I already mentioned in another comment that Google shouldn't be a baseline to improve on, when so many competing innovative search companies such as DDG, Ecosia, You.com exist. Even DDG, Ecosia aren't visually that spammy either. For Kagi to win, the product strategy should win over by a visible margin.
You like it. To each his own.
Also kind of a dick move to compare to your startup to Kagi to justify it sucking. Analytics is very different to search. Your products sound completely different.
I never knew pointing out excuses was a 'dick move' when we are doing the same theoretically (mining web data). In my defense, you could take your opinion elsewhere.
Their example is the headphone search. That Reddit post is a few months old, and has _one_ comment on it. The thread asks specifically about closed-back headphones under $150.
Something like this would be much better as a result: https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/nq0pt/headphone...
Remember we are comparing this to Google where the entire first page for this query is either ads or results full of ads and affiliate links.
Please don't compare yourself to Google. Most people on HN are well aware that Google search has become a terrible baseline. DDG, appending Reddit to query etc., are workarounds discussed a lot of times on the forum.
I have no beef against Kagi. I wish you guys succeed, but please have a better product argument. At this point, I actually find equally good suggestion on 'headphones' from both DDG & Ecosia. If Kagi needs to win over, it should be doing better vis-a-vis the upcoming search engines, not Google which has been SEO gamed over & over.
We may differ perhaps on what 'winning' means. For us having thousands of people pay for Kagi despite such strong and free competition is already winning. We do not have ambition for global domination, but are creating a search experience for people that want an alternative that has their best interest in mind. And when we have a product glitch, it is not like we are delibarately not achieving even higher quality - we are constrained by our resources.
Also have in mind that we launched our public beta just 7 months ago, give us a bit of time (Google has been around for 25 years, DDG for 15 years, Ecosia for 14 years) and we may reach your standards of quality. Fact that generally speaking Kagi already brought more innovation to search experience in such short period time than these legacy search engines did in decades (by legacy I mostly mean using legacy business model - ads) means that we are serious about it. Just need a bit of time.
This happens on Google too, all of the time. I think this is a reddit issue, with how they have their meta configured...
- clothes drying racks that hook onto radiators. Reduces drying time and clothes crumpling
- wired mechanical keyboard. Wired is simpler than wireless. Quality ones have n-key support
- bicycle fenders
- digital wrist watch so that I check my phone less.
Just recently I've replaced them all with 3 new packs of black wool socks.
My life have never been simpler. See you in 2033 for the update!
I have a few specialty items for exercise or dirty yard work, but those are easy to separate from the daily drivers.
Relatedly, replacing all of my cotton socks with wool socks.
I work outdoors a lot and have 100% merino wool thermals to wear as a base layer in the winter (or when skiing), beats the pants off of what most of the rest of the crew is wearing.
99.9 percent of the time nobody will notice. You almost have to draw attention to it deliberately before anyone notices. Any nobody ever cares - the sort of person who would you probably wouldn't want to be around anyway.
I mapped arrow keys and Home/End to Fn+WASD/QE and code navigation is so much faster now, especially when I have a hand on the mouse.
Especially if you're willing to put effort into your tools: vim's sophistication requires effort to learn, but has advantages. I think the same can be said for fancy small keyboards.
https://www.printables.com/model/146449-bicycle-splash-guard
Works great. I have a segment of unpaved road on my commute. Greatly improves trousers and shoes cleanliness.
I KIND OF do this; I have a couple different brands with slightly different styles, but they're all black ankle socks so I don't care if one has a gold toe and one doesn't. Drives my wife mad, but it doesn't bother me and I'm either at home or wearing shoes, so...
I've thought too much about this.
You are clearly pickier about this than I am, hah.
Step 2) Wear socks, when any of them wear out, throw them away. Even a single sock, no need to throw away in pairs
Step 3) When you're low in socks (my limit is 3 full pairs), throw them all away and GOTO 1
I do have a few specialised socks for hiking and winter, but they're the unicorns in the bunch, I just need 1-2 pairs of them.
They have lotion in the fabric. You probably want to wear them more than once, if possible, maybe stretch them to a couple days if you didnt make them gross right away. Once you wash them they turn into regular fuzzy socks.
But on those days that they are fresh, there is nothing like them. I have a stash tucked away for special days, and once they are done, they get added to the normal fuzzy sock rotation. Turns out you can wear black fuzzy socks pretty often.
I have 12 pairs of the same lightweight Darn Tough socks that are perfect for year round use (I don't live in snow). I've had them for ~10 years now and when a given sock gets a hole in the bottom, I put them in a pile and wait until I have 4 then send them back for two new pairs of socks. They were initially expensive, but after each being replaced a couple times, they are dirt cheap (even when factoring in one-way shipping). Thankfully, they have kept the exact same style all these years. Fingers crossed that they stay in business and that 80 year old me will have saved a lot of money by not buying socks.
Around 5 or 7 years ago I found 100% cotton socks on a massive discount, don't remember how many, but I took more than 40 pairs, full backpack I had with me that day. I use them pretty much most of the year, except in summer. Never bought socks since and due to all that "mismatching", I only had to throw a few of them, they were shredded and composted.
Some corporations like H&M accept donations of old clothes for recycling, in return they give you a voucher.
The issue I've mostly had (and found that others have as well), is if you run the battery to 0 using it on wireless mode, it won't even work on wired mode until it's fully recharged. Like you can't use it "offline".
after my son started wearing unmatching socks (and refuses to wear matching socks), I started doing the same and I'm now hooked. Granted these are unmatching socks of the same style (i.e., I have 5 pairs of Nordic socks) and I like just throwing them all in the box after laundry and pulling out 2 at random. Probably not going back to matching socks unless it's required :)
Its going to be a _little_ tricky to get lines to the other bathrooms, but I'll figure it out when the time comes.
Best purchases ever.
If you want heated anything or a blower, you'll first need to consider how you'll get power to your toilet's location. If, however, a cold water bidet is fine then just grab a cheap LUXE.
A TOTO WASHLET is still the gold standard though. That's what I own, and it has been great. Only thing I wish was slightly better was the blow-dryer. The pre-rinse/pre-mist is legit good in terms of keeping the toilet cleaner for longer.
PS - Quick note about mechanical bidets like the LUXE, it has no sensors/safety features. So if a child goes in, turns it on, and runs away it WILL flood your home. TOTO and similar quality bidets automatically turn off the water when weight isn't detected on the seat.
It’s not perfect, but for >$20 it’s a quick fix that didn’t require an electrician. Heated water is 100000% worth it!
There's just no comparison with just wiping. I let it spray, wipe, spray quickly again and wipe clean. Takes thirty seconds.
The real protip, which feels weirdly inappropriate for HN, is shaving down there.
I've heard very much the opposite.
Or at least, shaving down there makes it amazing for a day or two, but then the hairs start growing back and it's stubbly at first, which makes it INSANELY itchy.
I did an experiment when I started shaving my legs where I only shaved one for a while and then later shaved both, only the one that hadn’t been shaved multiple times was painful when the hair regrew.
What's the famous story about the guy who Nair'd this region as a joke/prank and he didn't realize the side effect of: the hair down there acts as a buffer for the scent so flatulence comes out much much worse?
I've seen clamp-on versions in big stacks at Walmart for $25.
I've always wondered how they would stack up, but been too chicken to try.
I moved recently and at the new house water pressure overall is noticably lower and it's far more difficult and slightly frustrating. If I hadn't learned/trained/experinced on higher water pressure I probably would agree with your assessment.
Serious question: why not both?
But if the bidet has done its job, then the towels aren't poopy. A lot cleaner than dealing with cloth baby diapers!
Buy plenty of towels and you can spread out the washing a lot more. We do a load every 3-4 weeks probably.
Getting nature's call outside the house must be hell...
Now, if I lived in Japan, somewhere famous for the widespread adoption of high-tech bidets, sure, it makes sense to adapt. But in basically all of America and Western Europe, it's still a luxury that if I adopted it now, I would be much more uncomfortable anytime I need to go to the bathroom away from home.
Otherwise just a bit of extra paper on a first wipe is enough.
this
I wasn't doing enough. Too much YouTube and reddit, so I stopped and decided to do things.
I used different colored markers for different aspects of my life-- health, work, fitness, recreational travel, home maintenance, etc) and decided I had to do something every week.
The different colors even accounted for down time. Too much color? Draw a nice relaxing blue line for a couple of days and do nothing.
I went from being a hermit to a EMT-qualified volunteer at my local volunteer fire department on his way to Firefighter I training, a spotlight operator at a local community theater, an enthusiastic yogi, and by having the year laid out I can look at weekends with holidays and plan my year's travel months in advance. I make notes on when to plant what and have a pretty front yard.
Digital calendars are nice, but they can't beat having a huge-assed poster right next to the front door with everything laid out in black and white and red and blue and green and yellow and........
If you feel like you're not getting the most out of life, get a huge-assed calendar, start googling local volunteer opportunities, write it down, and then do it.
$30, including markers.
They are basically bionic ears. Headphones, headset, earplugs, hearing protection, hearing aids, extendable ears, and more. Wish they could act as universal translators, but I suppose that's still yet to come.
Seriously, if you have headphones in every day mainly to mask environment noises, these are a must-have. Best buy in a looooong time.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/apple-airpods-pro-lawsuit-amber-ale...
the amount of air pressure I can feel in my ears when a train is coming into the station is definitely much larger than just letting the silicone tip do the little noice attentuation it can
the weird part is that it's not a sound I can hear, I normally have an ok range of hearing but this is just _pressure_
ANC might be a "huh cigarettes cause cancer, who knew" type thing.
More Airpod Pro form factors would be welcome, but the functionality is pretty good.
My experience is that most IEMs actually work quite well (Shure, Etymotic). The Airpod pro rubber seems more ‘slippery’ if that makes sense.
As a result, I use my old Airpods (not sure what gen, but pre-Pro) for zoom calls. I don't need ANC under these circumstances, and I prefer to not be reaching for my ear every couple minutes to push the pod back in.
The only ones that stay in better are the OG Airpods with no noise cancelling. The shape fits my ear perfectly.
Anything that goes in the ear canal? Always pops out eventually.
Well that sort of ruins it…
Beyond a certain point, it doesn't really matter much that something is worse for your hearing than something that will permanently damage your hearing. Plus, people are interacting with lawn equipment, motorcycles, and other such things far more frequently than jackhammers.
Also Motorcycle helmets should reduce things. Further it varies but motorcycles really shouldn’t be 100db, California’s legal limit is 80db for motorcycles manufactured after 1985.
At highway speeds motorcycle wind noise is nowhere close to 100db. Are you talking about high speed motorcycle racing or something?
https://www.hear-it.org/motorcycles-hazardous-to-your-hearin...
First, they do seal, so even if it's not as tight as a foam earplug, it is something.
Second, there's the ANC which is producing out of phase sound and lowering the sound pressure level reaching your ear. I have seen commercial hearing protection with ANC, though I'm not sure if it's allowed to be advertised as such. The theory is sensible at least.
Thirdly, the ANC is allowing you to listen to your audio content at lower volumes, especially in a very loud environment like an airplane.
Fourthly, there's an advertised hearing protection feature in passthrough mode where external noises loud enough to cause hearing damage will be automatically reduced.
Fifthly, There are sound pressure measurements being sent to the iphone for audio content loudness in real time, and also over time notifications you receive if you have been listening too loudly.
So all in all, yes in practice, but we're not exactly talking OSHA here.
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/hearing-protection-us/products/f...
My concern with the Airpods are simultaneously playing music through a small speaker, with its own negative affect on hearing (long term), while also trying to attenuate (poorly) loud noises.
My only complaint is that something in the noise cancellation mic tends to wear out over time. After about 18–24 months of use, I start to hear an unpleasant high-pitch sound whenever I touch the mic opening on an earpiece. This could be related to dropping them, which is inevitable. I'm on my third set now.
For my giant router I use muffs. The AirPods act funny around stuff that loud, and it stops feeling comfortable.
In my experience, Jackhammers and rivet guns will absolutely blast through the foam and the ANC will not be fast enough (the noise also too sharp and high frequency).
Everything else works great but people reading this thread: wear proper hearing-protection!
I've used them in situations where the "ambient" music is ear-splittingly loud (Apple Watch saying GTFO or you're gonna go deaf). Aipods Pro 2 in and I can still hear what people are talking, but the loud noises are brought down considerably.
AW decibel check goes from 90 -> high 60/low 70 with ANC on.
Not as good as actual proper earplugs, especially the ones that look like pine trees, but I carry my Airpods with me everywhere - earplugs I don't. The Airpods go to the Airpods pocket in my jeans, I do have earplugs in my bag, but it's not with me at all times. My pants are =)
I'm genuinely curious: are there any audiophiles on here that could answer?
FWIW - with the ANC off, sounds that make me 'cringe' (sawzall, table saw, hammer drill, etc.) are very much muffled and seem to be just as muffled as when using foam ear plugs. As others have said, there is a big difference between noise levels for a guy remodeling his bathroom with power tools and a someone that saws concrete for a living.
I don't know anything about this channel but I watched a bit of this video and it seems to be a good explanation of how it works:
I do wish they'd come down in price more, and ideally in the future be more sweat-resistant and most importantly have replaceable batteries. I don't really love the idea that they're essentially a ~$200 every 2 years subscription at the moment, all while creating a craptonne of ewaste.
I thought I was going deaf when I couldn't hear my airpods even when the volume was cranked up to max. They were just covered in a film of wax :D
Likely would come from Google's or Microsoft's (OpenAI) services rather than Apple's, given how terrible Siri is.
For me, I view the purchase as an investment in my hearing health. Instead of having to turn up the volume to account for traffic background noise or the like, I can keep the volume low and use ANC. While $200 is a lot to drop on a piece of electronics with a limited (<3 year) useful life, the calculus changes dramatically when viewed through the lens of a medical assistive device.
It's also nice that there are more volume/seek controls built into the stems, versus the v1.
I agree that we need to be mindful of rapid and dramatic changes to how we interface with the world, since our bodies may not react well in the long run.
Doctor said he sees this all the time, and ear buds are to blame.
And before anyone raises a stink about this being bad for my ears, I become functionally deaf when my earwax gets impacted which happens about once ever 2 years.
There are other brands of in-ear headphones that you jam into your ear canal more like earplugs. Possibly those could have an effect. But AirPods Pro are nothing like that.
It's nearly impossible to make something that small _and_ get a 10/10 iFixit score. You can't put any sane screws in anything that small, stuff needs to be glued down.
I am not interested in installing bloatware drivers. Embedded IDEs OTOH...
Isn't this cheating?
The problem is that preventing it is difficult to impossible.
You can't calculate recoil server-side because the latency would make it nigh unplayable. But once it's done client-side, it's cheatable.
Logitech is the problem here for even allowing this in the first place. No CRC checks for mouse firmware or anything? It screams poor implementation. I will not be surprised if anti-cheat software starts banning people or companies like Logitech.
Kind of sad to see the number of threads and communities online encouraging this. The point of games is to have fun, when you cheat all that goes out the door.
It's client-side. Spoofing the CRC checks would be almost trivial.
They don't have to.
All they need is a signature of a valid firmware, and then inject code that returns that signature.
The "kids" won't be the ones writing the cheats. That'll be someone who knows how to write code that injects code into another running process, and then they sell the cheat software.
Blizzard tried for YEARS to detect a bot program for World of Warcraft called Glider. Every time they found a way to detect it, the bot engineers found a way to evade the detection. It was constant cat and mouse until Blizz sued the developer and had them shut down.
More back on topic, most of the cheaters are just script kiddies. There are only a couple that actually develop cheats, and they tend to be quite clever.
Which is not to say that it is not done, but personally I have enough options that I would like to see them try to fire me over something like that. If I'm staring off into the distance to think about something or reading source code without pgdn'ing for five minutes, yes it's not uncommon that my screen turns off while reading something (until I get around to setting the timeout higher at least) but that doesn't mean I'm not working.
It was almost a meme on TikTok during the pandemic, (American) people figured out the weirdest ways to keep their Teams bubble green.
I've never had a need for such a device, but I worked for a company that wrote Skype for Business plug-ins, many of which revolved around "presence". You were considered active on your computer[0] when your mouse moved. We had a tool that we used for billing our time which included a graph of your Skype for Business presence state for the day you were entering time for[1].
I noticed, one week, that I was active 24-hours a day for three days in a row. I discovered that I left my mouse plugged in, it had fallen onto the carpet, and the minor vibrations that would occur in the house mixed with difficulty tracking would cause the mouse to move on its own "little enough" for me to not notice but frequently enough that it kept the computer from sleeping and kept my Skype for Business state bright green.
[0] Similar to Teams, today, you could be logged in from multiple devices; unlike Teams, a toast message might not reach your phone (or appear and be dismissed immediately) if you were active on a computer.
[1] This was entirely to assist in accurately filling out time sheets; it was never used to make sure "butts were in chairs".
The mousepad itself has an eink or similar display to change it over time and have the mouse detect some motion. The "active" part is turned off (to just be a regular display) when there is pressure on the wrist rest.
The mousepad is a USB hub (to get power for itself) that you can also plug the mouse and keyboard into so that its one less cord back to the computer.
[0] https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/c19a56...
this usually keeps the laptop from going to lock screen
bonus: press B to blackout the screenshow to avoid monitor burn-in
If on Windows, I use their "Power Toys" (free, btw), which has a keep awake function. My company user policies do not allow me to manage my energy policy, which is what kept shutting off my screen (and therefore necessitating the complicated password). Power Toys solves this problem.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Fiskars-34-in-Aluminum-Handle-an...
Our dogs are frequently out in the yard, so other than spring pre-emergent I try to avoid herbicides. I bought it after a hand weeder broke pulling up crabgrass.
This thing has oddly been one of the most satisfying purchases I've made in years. You put it in the ground, step on it and the thing easily pulls out weeds and only in the spot you put it. Then you get to shoot them off the claw. I have a bucket I try and shoot them into. It's oddly therapeutic.
This is not the one I have since I have mostly wooden stuff in my crib, but this one looks nice and long and cheap:
https://www.amazon.com/CubiCubi-Computer-Writing-Storage-She...
Forget standing, get long instead.
Oh, and this. I don't know why it took so long for me to think of this, reusable K-cups:
https://www.amazon.com/Reusable-Universal-stainless-Refillab...
And finally, window privacy films:
https://www.amazon.com/Privacy-Frosted-Decorative-Covering-B...
It lets in natural light, no curtains to fiddle with (but you can have curtains too).
> bought the cheapest bare wood door at Home Depot and laid it across two filing cabinets.
Even the "cheapest bare wood door at Home Depot", switch that out with "cheap (but straight) wood" or layers of thick MDF or other durable surface, add paint, grout, tile adhesive and window molding (or something wood for an edge) and cheap ceramic tiles. Cut the MDF to ensure no tile cuts are needed, sand/spray paint the edges to match the tile and you have a pretty decent looking/functional/durable desk of any desired size.
I did a dining table that way in my 20s. It was a curb rescue that the top was destroyed (someone used it as a work bench) but it had a really nice set of thick oak legs that would clean up. I re-used the top after a lot of sanding but the tiling/painting job was maybe an hour's worth of work done mostly by brief instructions given to me from an older gentleman at Home Depot (I owned a dull hand saw and plug-in power drill given to me by my grand father). It took a weekend to complete between the various "waiting for things to dry". I sealed mine, as well. It cost less than $75 about 20 years ago.
Honestly, if I were to do it all over again, I'd skip the $1,200 desk. I'd watch Craigslist for a large hardwood dining room table with the right characteristics[0], preferably with leafs. It's a huge work area. If pressed against a wall, you could set a number of deep cabinets wall-side, put the monitor in the center of the table and even access cabinets behind (but above) the monitor pretty easily.
[0] You'd want legs that wouldn't be in the way of your knees while working at it. Ideally, leafs that are attached in some way which could be re-engineered into a printer/computer stand.
After sending her details about my problems and the kinds of styles I admired, the stylist experience was very old-school retail — a department store — but she was unexpectedly pragmatic, giving great advice about picking durable clothes and materials that specifically fit well on me, with lots of wink-and-nudge budget advice (like "This would look great on you for $50 less" followed by flashing me a Nordstrom Rack or Poshmark listing of it).
Also, finding out that the department store has a complimentary tailoring service for hemming and adjusting the waistline on pants you buy from there permanently changed my clothes shopping process.
When I described my problem, she gave me a shortlist of several other stylists who were outside of what I thought I was looking for, like FernDate, Duchess, and some local vintage-specific pickers who just aren't online.
1: https://ferndate.com/services/
(As an aside, if you're in Portland or the PNW, I also highly recommend Duchess Clothier as a custom tailor: https://www.duchessclothier.com/)
I'm very happy with the service and the suit I got there.
They will spend a lot of time helping you with your style for free, albeit you'll probably want to buy from that particular store. Nordstrom clothes are a bit on the pricier end, but ~most~ are often good quality.
Now, what you can do is figure out what brands suit you and fit well, what sizes are good, then shop past seasons in Nordstrom Rack or elsewhere. Popular sizes and colorways may sell out quickly so it’s a more frustrating experience, but you can see items marked down 55-75% too!
EDIT: I really also want to stress that the stylist was just... nice. Completely non-judgmental about me waffling over things, offering lots of advice beyond just the clothing — how different postures affect fits, being able to explain to me why layering was sometimes uncomfortable and how to alleviate it, how to better adjust my fit when my body's size changes, even a gym recommendation. The in-shop stylist was also very nice, but the hired stylist got me through the door to the shop, and for me at least, that was worth the $175.
I spend 60-90 minutes with her a handful of times a year and it’s been awesome - something I wish I’d started doing a decade ago in fact.
I also never felt entirely happy with Stitch Fix, or shopping the racks myself in stores. It was harder for me to find items which work well together and which fit well.
Nordstrom also tailors almost everything I buy in at least a minor way — length of arms, waist size, length of leg. Really does make a difference.
I believe Men’s and Women’s is 8-10% commission rate, but believe Kid’s is higher. Shopping in Men’s a single jacket from Armani runs about $1500-1800, formal trousers in the $350-500 range, decent jeans or shirts seem to be in the $150-250 range, tees they carry from e.g. Robert Barakett around $70.
It adds up and I feel like it’s hard to get out of there with a few new outfits for under $2000. It’s worth using their loyalty program [1] and worth considering their store card, although “Icon” status means spending >$15k per year on their store card.
If you end up liking Zegna then you’re up into the stratosphere at $3500-5500/ea for many of their items.
I guess it’s possible tips are appreciated if you’re going to visit, take an hour of their time and emerge with one $70 tee at the end? That’s not been my shopping experience, I don’t wear Zegna, but I usually buy a few pairs of Paige jeans and some Bugatchi shirts, perhaps a new merino wool pullover, probably some shoes. By the time I’m ready to spend 90 minutes in Nordstrom shopping and getting the tailor to measure for alterations, I’m usually looking for enough new stuff that the stylist will make $200-500 in commission.
[1] https://www.nordstrom.com/browse/nordy-club/manage-card/icon...
Edit: Oh, and worth knowing is Nordstrom does sales at the start of the AW season [2] for incoming items. It’s a quirk, and it’s worth timing some of your shopping to coincide because it’ll save you 15-30% off a lot of items!
[2] https://www.nordstrom.com/browse/anniversary-sale/details
Which means they will give you the clothes with the highest commission, and are going to tell you that those look best on you.
Maybe $175 wasn't a good objective value for that, but for me, it worked.
> I didn't know what I didn't know.
so it was money well spent.
I think that’s a good point, some things are extremely obvious for some people and they don’t need any consulting on that subject. Good for them, but it may not be obvious for other people. That’s normal and that’s fine.
It is completely normal to hire a trainer for learning a new sport, why shouldn’t you do that for other skills. If you’re bad at picking clothes, you can easily spend way more than $175 on stuff that isn’t comfortable and you will never wear.
And if you look at people on the street, at least one third seems to be bad at shopping clothes ;)
I might be missing the point but aren't you talking upwards of $200+ per outfit (shirt, pants) when shopping at stores like this?
Wow, same! Who/what service did you use? This was my biggest gripe with Stitch Fix, my friends are all surprised I complain about it. I wanted an opinionated new style and all I got was the same stuff I usually wear, just more expensive.
I signed on and in my intake explicitly said I wanted new shorts and I live in Texas so don’t need jackets.
They sent me a jacket and some shoes and shirts and no shorts.
If you’re looking to build out a whole new closet it might be okay if you just want whatever the current style is but if you want something specific it didn’t look like a good product.
I put two notes in my profile, 1) that I have very fair skin so whites and off-whites are not a good look on me. 2) no polos, ever.
My first box arrived with a white polo and a cream beanie.
Could not cancel faster.
Not too surprised that didn't work out given my experience with every other company that had built out massive teams of largely inexperienced DS people.
Look at the guides on their sidebar (on old reddit at least) and they have everything you need, such as a basic guide, what to buy for $X, and so on. Take particular notice at their What Are You Wearing Today (WAYWT) threads, while they are sometimes ludicrous, they often show the current fashion zeitgeist.
I find it odd / annoying that all the clothing is made in low cost countries, but we need funnelers of information or access or recommendations who tack on a surcharge at every step until you're paying $50 for a simple t-shirt.
I equally find it very strange that, for companies making and selling clothing, I can only imagine it costs very little much more to make good-looking clothing and copy the latest styles. Why does cheap clothing always seem to be so unstylish?
Example: someone manufacturing a tie (if people wear those any more even), the material and labor scarcely costs more if it's ugly versus nice. Why are ugly ties still made?
Puzzled.
Finally another of the sales guys started chatting with me. I explained what I wanted and he went and grabbed exactly that. The item was less than my limit and on sale. With the savings in mind I asked if he could suggest a couple more items, told him the colors I like and general style. He brought a few more told me what he honestly thought (if it looked good or not) and I knew this was now my personal stylist.
Now whenever I walk in if he's not working I just come back another day. This guy is good at his job, and has learned what I like. He makes recommendations, I give my feedback when I don't like something, and he rolls with it.
So all I can say is create a litmus test, and don't be afraid to tell them they have totally missed the mark and you're gonna look around on your own. Soon enough someone else will walk up and you try again.
I'm always surprised how often her clients come back multiple times per year. She's had quite a few from the US and Canada too. She caters for men & women
I order from a store that seems to mostly serve cafes based on their order sizes (their other products are things like a 13kg box of butter).
Of course if you have a well-worked-out diet and matching exercise plan that accommodates a daily croissant, this is great (with the air fryer).
I can't recall the name of the store... It's a chain store that is overpriced "imported products" found next to an REI or some other middle/upper scale strip mall.
I also replaced a rock, a brick, and a rubber wedge with magnetic door holders, each about $5. Now when we're bringing in the groceries, we can keep the door open without the rock, and it's easy to close when we're done.
Speeds are much faster and (more importantly) far more stable.
I ended up going for in-ceiling AP's, having the house wired for Ethernet, and powering them with PoE. Now the network is faultless.
Another problem with mesh networks in general is that they're very sensitive to placement, because they need to be able to see each other (in an RF sense, not visually) to form the backhaul. It adds an additional constraint on your physical topology beyond the regular one of wanting to use the laptop on the couch and in the kitchen. So you end up moving the mesh nodes to corners of the room where you didn't really want them to be, aesthetically. At a certain point you ask yourself whether it would have been easier to run the damn cable through the ceiling than to play musical chairs every few weeks.
I just invested in 4 MoCA adapters and a Ubiquiti UDM/2 small APs (tall & skinny row home with 3 floors but now I get 500 Mbps everywhere in the house including the roof) but it ran way over $200.
FWIW, I got only the 1Gbps speed, rather than 2.5Gbps, because my fiber internet tops out at around 900Mbps and I'm the only one in my family who does anything substantial the local network. For once in my life, I might have enough bandwidth at home.
I wonder whether DirecTV engineers approached their management during DECA development and said "we have a problem: this technology we're working on interferes with digital cable," and management replied "uh, yeah, that's not a problem." :)
Thank you!
Your Carpio 2.0 suggestion looks like it could be an improvement because I don't have to put the gloves on and take them off. Because my main complaint with the IMAK gloves is that when I'm on a video call and use hand gestures people always assume I have some injury or pain and ask me about it, and I have to explain that I just don't like hard surfaces, sharp edges and shiny palms, so I end up not wearing them as frequent as my hands would like to be comforted. Carpio looks like a way to solve that!
I use them almost daily for running, cycling, walking and climbing. My only gripe with them is the long neck bad, so I've had to stop myself from splurging on a Mini when it came out. :D
If you do any work in a noisy industrial or trade setting you owe it to yourself to get these.
I used to buy the 3M connect earmuffs but their connectivity is bad, the ear-cushions break down and the mini-usb charger port snaps off. I had to buy a new set of earmuffs once a year.
It’s crazy: shut the laptop and walk away to listen to a podcast on your phone and they just beep beep beep.
* A plug adapter
* My big ol' laptop charger brick and cord
* A medium-sized USB-A charger for phone, headphones, power bank
* A USB-C charger for iPad, Kindle
* A small power strip because I had to plug several things in
Now I just bring the single Passport III adapter. Done. It has a single power outlet pass-through, but I haven't even needed it because the only thing I ever plug in is chargers.
Then the poster just needs a couple of aged accounts to publish the posts, and a handful of botnets to inflate vote counts to boost visibility. It can be extra convincing with some shill bot accounts that post (controversial) replies which spark more organic interactions. These comments may then trigger ranking algos to further boost visibility, to drive more platform engagement.
Cost about 30€ instead of previously used 3€ cotton T-shirts.
Can wear one for about 3 weeks without washing, with no body odor. Much more pleasant to the skin, even for doing sports, driving, etc. Also, warm in winter, airy in summer. Plan to switch most clothing to merino wool.
Don't know where you live, but I visited the shop and looks like they only ship to Romanian addresses.
Never had too much special care around them tho.
WAMA is a good brand.
Good old white-colored old spice (I'm allergic to the blue colored ones) last about 30 hours.
I gather that body odor is closely tied to your own personal skin microbiome, which might explain very divergent effectiveness of products unfortunately.
I was also quite skeptical when I heard, and occasionally ask others to make sure I'm not fooling myself w.r. smell. Also, if I did heavy sports in them, I may stop, even if it was just a week or two. Casual daily wearing could easily go for a month.
For moisture management/warmth in colder weather, we're also checking out mesh baselayers [1] since merino does not dry quickly under multiple layers.
[0]: https://nuyarn.co.nz/ [1]: https://www.brynjeusa.com/product-category/super-thermo/
They weave nylon filaments along with wool for durability
the 3 or 4 I have are pretty covered in holes now (no, not moths), I just keep them around for base layers during the winter.
I rotate through 3 merino T-shirts alternating one every day. If they start to smell, you can just hang them out for the night and they'll be fresh as daisies again.
I think I wash them like once a month or two in a wash that has lanolin in it, which replenishes the natural fats in the fiber and makes it last longer.
For the more technical they are Zigbee and heard all of IKEA zigbee stuff works without the hub. I personally have had issues with HomeAssistant and Tradfri integration so just use the IKEA app and the hub with no issues for over 6mo now.
[1] - https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/fyrtur-black-out-roller-blind-s...
Only small issues I've identified are that 1) Zigbee meshing doesn't seem to behave with these, so you'll have to pair the blinds directly to your hub. This is fine, as long as your place is small enough for there to be no signal quality issues. And 2) if Home Assistant instructs the blinds to open to a specific position (i.e. "80% closed") rather than fully open or fully closed, it can take a really long time for the blinds to update the hub with their state. This means they show as "opening" in the HA UI even though they're finished moving.
We're sleeping so much better with the room mostly blacked out (we also have rear neighbors with bright lights, and cats that roam the neighborhood and set off everyone's motion sensors all night).
Having an exterior covering on the southwest-facing windows has also massively reduced the need for cooling in the summer — our original reason for having the install done.
Our bedroom has ~99% light reduction with the external screens, and our toddler's room upstairs has completely opaque roller shutters and gets DARK, which has made for very easy nap times and great overnight sleep. When we ask Siri to wake the kid up, a scene is executed that rolls up the shutters, turns on the overhead light, and plays a happy song on the HomePod. Always puts him a great mood.
The same thing makes all kinds of sunrise/sunset home automations completely useless :D
A little pricey for what it is, but it is really a no-brainer when you think of how crucial restful sleep is.
High end ricecooker ended up getting more use than expected.
USB KVM style switch to change mouse/kyb over between work and personal device
I also keep switching frequently and looking for something similar
But for toggling over usb stuff this works fine and is cheap
This works especially well in cases where an actual KVM switch would be expensive or unavailable (in my case, I'm switching three 4K HDR DisplayPort monitors, which would require a very expensive KVM switch).
>4K HDR DisplayPort monitors, which would require a very expensive KVM switch).
When I was investigating this nothing seemed to support both >1080 res and >30hz refresh regardless of price. All the ones advertised as 4K have 30hz in the fine print which is rather sad on a 144hz screen.
IT means when I finish work I have to hit the switch to change input on each monitor (and with one setup vertically, it can be awkward, and one requires going through a menu, which is annoying).
I also have to swap the USB dongles for keyboard and mouse from the laptop docking station to my desktop.
Would a KVM fix this for me ?
SO I can just hit a single switch and it will swap over the keyboard / mouse and my monitors?
I'd love that.
It's not one button, it's 3, one per KVM, but yep - I just tap the button on each KVM (under the monitors) and the desktop changes, the mouse/keyboard work, and the other machine is up and running in front of me.
Even the webcam mounted to the monitor switches over - because it's not just mouse/keyboard, there's a couple of USB ports too.
One thing I'd recommend (because otherwise wiring gets unmanageable) is to bunch together the mouse, keyboard, video cables using some split-sheathing. I have an 8-way KVM for the main monitor (all ports used) and this makes it much easier to figure out what's going where.
You would need a triple monitor KVM with at least 2 USB inputs. You could also get an Ultrawide monitor to simplify further, which is what I have done.
Otherwise you'd need a KVM that supports 3 monitors which I'd imagine is a compatibility nightmare if they're beyond 1080p@60hz
You can get KVMs that switch multiple monitors, but you pay more for multiple monitors and for multiple input types (HDMI & Display port), so depending on your setup, it may make sense to have the some monitors on the switch but manually select inputs on others.
KVMs tend to work well, except
- you need to pause for a second when switching to allow the USB devices to reconnect, or sometimes things get into a weird state, like keyboard thinking a modifier is pressed
- rarely things get confused anyway, and I have to unplug and re-plug in devices to one of the computers. Cheaper KVMs and smarter mice and keyboards seem more prone to this.
Bit pricey...250ish...but build quality inspires confidence that it'll last
I agree with carbonating your own water, but sodastream is expensive compared to a DIY carbonation setup. Get a 5LB CO2 tank, some carbonation caps on Amazon, and a good gas regulator. Total should still be less than $200 USD.
The 5LB tank will last at least 5 times longer than the sodastream and total assembled size on my counter is about the size of a sodastream setup. Refilling that tank at a food safe gas supplier is even cheaper than exchanging a sodastream tank.
Agreed, but I expect the HN audience is already far from the norm covered by your "many people".
Yes, but it still adds up to more in the end. The cheapest within driving distance I've found [1] is half the cost to refill the sodamistic 60L bottle from what sodamistic charges, and almost half the cost of refilling the 5LB tank, but the 5LB tank holds 5x more CO2, so after 2-3 refills you're already losing money compared to a DIY solution when accounting for cost of the whole setup.
For now the fact that I've got a sodastream swap place in walking distance makes it an acceptable solution
Once you start kegging your homebrew, you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.
After primary fermentation, I siphon from my carboy into a 5 gal corny keg, then I hook it up to my CO2. Turn the pressure up to maybe 20-30 PSI (strictly for carbonating; turn it down for serving) for maybe a day or two. If you want, you can shake it to dissolve CO2, but I'm lazy and just let time do its thing. It's awesome. So much less work than bottling.
Also higher pressures are better obviously. Another tip is to use cold water because that apparently absorbs CO2 better.
You can also carbonate wine. My girlfriend was very excited to be able to buy cheaper white and rose wines and just carbonate them instead of buying more expensive bottles of sparkling wine.
I also use them in cocktails (about 1/4 packet per cocktail), put in first and pour cocktail ingredients over the crystals to dissolve (or shake if not using any carbonated ingredients).
After years of paying $30 per exchange, I decided to switch to an Spärkel Carbonator machine, which just takes a tablespoon of citric acid powder ($5/lb) and a tablespoon of baking soda ($1/lb) per bottle. So much cheaper.
I'm very tempted to order the system and use it in a 220V country with a stepdown transformer. The specs on the website say that it's 110V only — I assume that's true for the actual product?
I guess I'll just order direct, get it forwarded, and do the same! :) Thanks!
If one wishes to set aside Sparkel saying "don't use generic" out of their financial interests, the counterargument I can see is that if one just uses a careless method for loading the baking soda and citric acid into the chute it actually is pretty easy to have it crystalize in the actual latch, or gunk up the rubber seal on the top-latch. I found that the $0.99 funnel from Ikea is the correct length to fit into their chute but under the top latch: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/uppfylld-funnel-bright-yellow-8... I'm, of course, positive there are hundreds of other funnels, but if you're already in Ikea, can't beat it.
As a frame of reference, I was in the kickstarter for the Sparkel, and thus this is the 3rd or 4th year of making my own charges with no ill effects. I've even recently upgraded to storing them in some of those lidded sampling cups so I can mix up 30 charges at a time versus having to get out the spoons for each bottle
I know you can get so-called "active" switches that tell both host computers that there's still a monitor plugged in, but they're expensive, especially if you use a monitor higher than 1080p. I'm not even sure once exists that will support 1440p @ 144 hz with GSync.
However, I haven't looked for KVM switches in almost two years. Has this situation changed? Is there a KVM switch that will tell the host machines that there's still a monitor hooked up when I switch it to the other machine that will support my resolution and refresh?
I've replaced the 4K Dell and side monitor with a big curved 8K Dell, which has a built-in KVM. My keyboard, mouse, headset, external speaker bar, and webcam are all plugged into the monitor, and they all swap from one PC to the other with a keyboard shortcut that also switches the monitor source. It's a lot handier. However, if I manually switch my portrait monitor to the PC that uses DisplayPort, my windows will still get moved to it when I switch everything else to the other PC. So I just don't switch that portrait monitor very often anymore. Using the keyboard shortcut has made my lazy and I don't bother with the last monitor unless I really need it.
Working: plug display to work laptop
Not working: plug display to my laptop
A proper USB-C switcher would be nicer, but swapping one cable isn't _that_ hard.
In terms of best buy in 2022 was the Peak Design Capture Camera Clip. For a photographer it's amazing to not have the weight of the camera around your neck but securely attached to my backpack strap. The ease of attaching and removing the camera makes me actually use it more on hikes.
Would like to hear more details about what you and OP and others use the stream deck for. I’m trying to understand what it can do that a regular keyboard plus macros couldn’t.
I guess convenience is also a big part of it.
The killer feature for me is that it can also be an output device with the right tweaks, so for my use case in triggering long running jobs, the icon on the appropriate button updates to indicate the job is in progress and then again when it completes.
For regular use it talks to Apple Music and shows me next/prev/play buttons, with the current album cover as the play button.
I can use it to adjust my Philips Hue lights or set Home Assistant variables directly.
For work I have the most used intranet sites as buttons (Jira, Confluence, version control, etc).
Why get gouged by apple on storage when you can just duct tape an SSD to your laptop?
That would get you a TB of storage.
sticker pocket
What I've always done is: a clear acrylic ~$15 shell for the MacBook. Which is something I do anyway. And then I velcro-tape the drive to that shell.
It's kinda funny that you can buy a 256 GB SSD for less than the price of this sticker-pocket, usb cable combo. My Macbook has a 256 GB internal SSD that can barely handle installing both the OS and XCode at the same time!
https://www.amazon.com/VELCRO-Brand-Industrial-Strength-Thic...
Although duct tape sounds pretty amazing now that you mention it. If somebody walked into a hacker meetup with a drive duct taped to their laptop I'd assume they were pretty awesome.
You can get them 25% off from gobros.com as well!
So all the benefits those posts mentioned about merino t-shirts apply to these socks.
The gap in reliability, quality and functionality between the little Ikea drill or $50 Black and Decker and even a low end Dewalt is _huge_. The gap between that and a $300+ drill is _mostly_ in longevity and its ability to stand up to sustained abuse.
Keep an eye out around father's day. There's pretty consistently sales on tools, or at least some sort of deal. I picked up tools up on fathers day a while back and it was was on sale _and_ included two extra free batteries. The batteries charge quickly enough that I've never been able to run them down before the other could charge.
I fought with cheap power tools for years before I finally bit the bullet and I regret not doing it sooner.
Having multiple of some seemed very silly, but it really is so useful!
Reciprocating saw is also useful to have it lying around, especially if you live in a single family home.
Saves _so_ much time if you need to do more than a single hole + screw.
Nothing's worse than trying to mix the perfect water temperature at 3 AM while the baby is screaming, waking up the rest of the family. (We use pre-boiled water for the baby's bottles, so it's not as easy as adjusting a tap.) We bought this after we had our second baby and it's made feeding the baby slightly less stressful.
We use this OXO kettle:
https://www.oxo.com/categories/coffee-tea/brew/tea/adjustabl...
I did some research and testing when buying it when our last kettle died... It's thermometer is accurate, it's 1500w and I like the interface.
Hopefully this is useful to some apartment dwellers out there
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Tommee-Tippee-Perfect-Machine-Bla...
Highly recommended.
So far the MH-Z19 modules are on the top of my list for pairing with an ESP or something and logging data to NAS but I've yet to order any.
I think other models with auto-recalibration also suffer from this (including MH-Z19). It's probably not a problem for you, but if you too live in an extremely polluted area and have to keep your windows shut for weeks at a time, it might be.
After getting meter I found it’s def not enough, especially in rooms with more people doing some activity. He still doesn’t believe my meter is accurate tho.
We updated our air exchanger to fix the problem. Venmar and Vanee are two big brands in america.
You can get it down to 400ppm even with people in the apt.
What sort of levels is it inside? Isn't it inert? (hence the problem of global warming)
At a company I used to work for we started wonder why one meeting room got especially rowdy if we had our 2 hour team meeting there.
Had the building management install a CO2 sensor, it got up to 1500ppm. We were practically drunk in there. Turned out it wasn't meant as a meeting room at all and it had zero ventilation ducts - they were all in the room next door, they had just slapped a wall to split it into two.
It might make you feel different - and maybe not great for being productive, but it would be hard to notice.
I've tried a few software solutions over the years but they all seem to run into issues eventually.
seems to work well for my modest needs. you can either make the mouse move between screens using Ctrl or another key or make it freely roam ...without borders
allows drag and drop of files, shared clipboard etc
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=354...
Doesn't work on Linux.
The keyboard is great, but you have to physically pick up the mouse and press a button on the bottom.
It's way easier to just have 2 or 3 mice at $100.
Switching to bluetooth has a seconds long delay. Regular wireless is instant.
Android apps (not the YouTube app, but definitely jellyfin and some others) tend to shit themselves when you connect the MX keys via Bluetooth.
The button being on the bottom of the mouse is the absolute dumbest thing that they did with this setup for sure.
It is as dumb as these things come. It has no navigation other than IR on the front to not bump into things. It doesn't connect to wifi. I'm not concerned about it sharing data because it has no way to do so.
I turn it on once or twice a week as I'm about to leave for work. When I come home my floors are in decent shape. It saves me about an hour a week on sweeping.
Minimum wage here is $12/hour so even if that's what I made, it would pay for itself in less than ten weeks.
Not counting the hairball issue, a robot vacuum is perfect for a home with hairy pets, cuts down on the amount of random pet hair everywhere quite a bit. Just have it run every weekday on a timer so you don't forget.
Psychologically it's easier to just run through the house and throw stuff out of the robot's way than it is to chase it down and poke it to stop running - and then YOU have to vacuum manually =)
ORLY.jpg
I might have to look into that then.
- I got one of those Stagg kettles[0]. I make a lot of pour-overs, and a nice kettle neck gave me a lot more control than I expected. Coffee tastes the same, but making it is more fun.
- Not Boring's "Habits" app is fantastic[1]. I've been trying to nail down a meditation practice, and this finally did the trick for me. It helps me stay on task without making me feel guilty for it. I've been meditating consistently every day for a few months now.
- I got a copy of "Salt Fat Acid Heat" and read the whole thing[2]. It's made me a lot more competent at cooking than I was, and now other cookbooks make more sense and are less daunting.
[0]:https://fellowproducts.com/products/stagg-ekg-electric-pour-... [1]:https://www.andy.works/product/habits [2]:https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/
Heh. Wanted that for Christmas a few years ago, somehow my mom got confused and got me the not exactly similarly named "the science of cooking", which ended up being in the same ballpark, and helped improve my cooking anyway :)
https://smile.amazon.com/Ratio-Simple-Behind-Everyday-Cookin...
For things that aren't security-related like a light, you can use a writable one, and write the URL to the dot so that anyone's phone will be able to turn the light on/off from the sticker.
Also, a Hario V60 + Fellow Stagg EKG Kettle, really upped my coffee game. Though if you include the Timemore C2 grinder it probably comes to just over $200.
I was anti-extra-appliance for a long time and firmly in the just-cook-rice-on-the-stove, but not anymore. We use the $20 simple cooker to make rice, farro, sorghum, wheat berries, and all sorts of other grains which we can then simply add to almost anything to make a heartier meal.
Definitely get the ones that have thermos-like insulation and can keep the rice warm for a long time.
The really cheap ones have a "keep warm" feature that just burns the rice on the bottom.
Which was fairly cheap and, crucially, small (we have a tiny kitchen). No complaints about it, though I'm sure there are better ones out there.
Reference: https://helpatmyhome.com/which-sodastream-and-soda-makers-ha...
There's a set of string lights in my apartment that were left installed when I moved in. They look pretty nice and they provide decent illumination in an area that's difficult to light, but I virtually never used them because I needed to plug them into an outlet in order to turn them on. I finally bought a device that goes between the plug and outlet with a cord to a pushbutton switch. I now use the lights daily and I have no idea why it took me 6 years to fix a problem that could be solved for around $10.
A bluetooth OBD2 monitor for my car. It can read engine codes and other diagnostics, and it can clear a lot of check engine warnings. It less than a single visit to a mechanic.
This one is way less general, but I finally bought a treadle feeder for our chickens. There were several bird flu scares over the past year and our old open-tube feeder would attract a ton of wild birds (plus the occasional rat). The treadle feeder requires the chickens to stand on a treadle which opens a cover over their feed, and they learned how to use it pretty quickly. I'm amazed at how effective it's been; we're going through significantly less chicken feed now because the wild birds were eating nearly as much as our chickens were.
It seems absurd to go to mechanic to know what the "Check engine" problem is.
Would you care to expand on what this means?
And:
"According to the University of Michigan, blood sugar levels of 300 mg/dL or more can be dangerous. They recommend calling a doctor if you have two readings in a row of 300 or more."[1]
[1]: https://www.healthline.com/health/diabetes/how-to-lower-bloo...
And rice has 10x’s the arsenic of other grains.
An Oura ring. Some quantitative insight around sleep, heart rate, heart rate variation, temperature, etc. SUPER interesting to see how things change when sick, drink alcohol, etc. Also- I confess to not minding the tone/language the product uses for coaching purposes. It is not an asshole.
Relatedly, tracking food/calories/water consumption in the (free- no need to pay them) Noom app has been useful quantitative insight as well. Rare that the free version of a paid thing has any utility whatsoever.
Well, it does run Linux, but the rest - not so much.
Did side by side tests with another sleep tracker and Oura was pulling its data seemingly out of its ass. Completely random stuff. After seeing that all other data it reported didn't instill much confidence either, nor did it correspond to what I was actually observing. So packed it up and stashed into a closet. It's still a cool gadget, but inaccurate to the point of being utterly useless.
There are also inherent power limitations in the ring form factor compared to the watch, which impact data granularity. If you want to be monitoring apnea you really need seconds level resolution, and Oura is tens of seconds.
Anyway, agree about limitations. It has still been very useful for me! Cheers.
Personally I much prefer rings to watches, that's all.
A couple of things that I haven't yet seen mentioned:
A LifeStraw Home water filter. It removes the slightly metallic taste from my home tap water.
Cable management boxes (multiple brands). These allow me to hide away the unsightly power strips, power bricks, hubs, excess cords, etc, and make my desk/office much more organized.
For my desktop: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09224KKPV
For behind my desk (which doubles as a recording space, so the disorganized cables bugged me): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014BMTQ34
I also used a lot of Velcro cable ties, and this monster of a power strip which fits inside the behind-desk box: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099NB3TTY
I went a little bananas on filtered water a while back and bought a giant Berkey. I love it. My family goes through an entire container each day somehow. We use it for cooking as well as drinking, but it's still a lot of water. I highly recommend it if you ever decide you want an even more thorough, longer-lasting, high-capacity filter.
For my desk, I got a really long (48 inches, 1.2 meters) power strip like you'd use on a workbench, and I screwed it to the back side of the desk near the top.
Cables hang down behind the desk so they stay off the floor and you don't see them.
It has 16 outlets, so there's one near whatever I want to plug in and I always have a free outlet.
you should look into a reverse osmosis unit which has multiple stages of filtering. I recommend Watts [1], easy to self-install under the kitchen sink. The company has been around for sometime and is even publicly traded.
Before buying that sign, here are places where I've found packages:
* My yard, helpfully hidden behind a flowerpot to fool thieves (and me)
* My neighbor's yard for some reason
* The sidewalk in front of my house
* Right in front of my outward-opening door, so that the package blocked the door from opening.
Ever since getting the sign (~6 months) all my packages have been dropped in exactly the right spot. I think the logos are important, because it draws the guy's attention.
- Safety razor. No longer do I have to buy $30+ cartridge refills but rather 100 packs of blades for ~$10
- A pickleball paddle. The game really is addicting and so far the community has been welcoming.
I'm still going through that pack... Managed to break one handle though =)
Pretty happy with it so far. Small learning curve.
Tools and hardwood which makes it easier to be in the shop (my garage) and not in front of a computer. When I'm in there all my life's woes fade away and always come out in a better mood than when I went in.
- Phone mount for my car
- Silicone wall protector for where my fridge door hits the wall
- Misting spray bottle for brushing my child's hair
- Mold/mildew removal gel (lysosome-based)
- Silicone cable holders for the edge of desks, nightstands, etc for charging cables https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07WQN3134/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_...
A weighted blanket (11 kg), after i had the chance to test one at a friend's. I'll miss it in summer when it'll be hot to use.
A Rösle (German high end kitchenware brand) salad spinner. Pretty expensive for 80€, but every other is either too small or crappy (and we have salad for breakfast almost every day). Ended up being worth it.
- Capture One for ca 200 usd (same reason as above, but replace PS with Lightroom Classic)
- The Belkin iPhone grip for continuity camera (iPhone is so much better than the potato webcam on my MBA)
For v1, this PR fixes saving: https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge_requests/1444. There very well be more missing code, things in file menus or tools that I haven't tried. But if you build wine with this patch, it should run and save.
With v2 they seem to have made the big shift to windows store, which probably requires a lot of winrt junk.
To run v1: 1. compile with this patch 2. run regedit and set the renderer to vulkan (see https://wiki.winehq.org/Useful_Registry_Keys) 3. install dotnet48 via winetricks (maybe corefonts too)
I spent a half dozen evenings trying to implement stubs and interfaces for v2, I've got it running, but it crashes if you open the edit menu for example. I'm not the best c developer, and honestly its too much work when there isn't some finances behind it. I have a job too aha. (not to mention wine makes it even harder because they require you write all the dll's in c, but most of the windows code is c++, so its a bit trickier to re-implement things from their headers)
This thread has some more details: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/166159-aff...
Made this change this year also.
Gymnastic rings seem like the perfect minimalist’s exercise equipment… the only thing is I have no idea where I would hang them.
-strong tree branch -basketball hoop bars -sturdy rafter -high pull up bar
It's an Emacs mode that can do anything organisation related. It can be a wiki, a calendar, a todo list, a list of reminders, a spreadsheet, etc...
The closest non-emacs options I've found are Obsidian and Notion.
https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulatin...
https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/
http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
This is a paid resource:
Like 50 bucks, keeps it's shape, keeps it's chills (regular pillows come stoves to me), keeps my head straight without folding a pillow in 4, keeps some support of my head why I tuck my arm under so I don't put much pressure on my shoulder.
Been travelling for 3 months and carrying it, makes every bed a good bed.
It's common to make meditation cushions out of buckwheat hulls now, they're the perfect mix of firmness and formability.
I'm looking now for another sleeve to split my pillow's content in two and have one for my bum, that way I can be comfortable when working from wooden chairs, which are most common.
A retractable USB-C to C cable for my backpack.
Replacement keys for my butterfly keyboard MacBook. It’s a drop in replacement that delays a new laptop purchase.
Warm wool socks and sweaters
Paperlike screen protector and metal nib for my iPad mini and Apple Pencil
A 3 meter long USB-C to C cable
That's a concern of mine. Once we go all cashless, how will we unlock the shopping carts? Here it's currently being debated if stores should be allowed to reject cash, I think someone forgot about the carts.
[1] https://www.nu.nl/economie/6219200/albert-heijn-neemt-afsche...
Or just abandon the system altogether.
That written, I'm also surprised there's any serious talk of going cashless there. We have plenty of cash-only businesses here that preclude any serious consideration of the notion.
Likewise :) If you've got access to a 3D printer, this works well: https://www.printables.com/model/167637-removable-trolley-eu...
> Replacement keys for my butterfly keyboard MacBook. It’s a drop in replacement that delays a new laptop purchase.
Can I ask for more details of this? Was it the Apple replacement, or 3rd-party/DIY?
Logitech unifying wireless mouse and keyboard. Really seamless to use between two computers and my monitor’s built in KVM while only taking up a single USB port. I even alternate between mice for ergonomics.
Window cat bed that attaches to a glass door that gets naturally heated up in the morning by the sun. My cat loves it.
- G3 Ferrari pizza oven with this tutorial[1] for original neapolitan pizza
- INIU BI-B63 25000 mAh Powerbank with 65W to charge my notebook
- TS 100 / Pinecil [2] soldering iron with open firmware [3]
- Baseus quad port 100W USB-C power supply (CCGAN100US)
- $5 Sinilink USB switch with wifi and open firmware [4]
- GL.iNet GL-MT1300 (Beryl) Travel Router with OpenWRT firmware
- Bühnen HB250 hot glue gun
- 10m velcro cable tie
- VAFOTON magnetic usb-c cable (USB-C Magsafe with 100W PD)
- $100 WLToys 959-B 1/18 RC Car with 70km/h / 43mph (aliexress)
- ANBERNIC RG353M retro handheld console (aliexpress)
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-jPoROGHGE
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eme_AUayLp8
I got a 3rd party MagSafe replacement, but I didn't trust the quality of the pins.
Sinilink USB Switch: Oh sorry, you meant link 4 (the sinilink usb switch). This device is cool. It has Wifi and a Physical ON/OFF switch... BUT beware: Without tasmota it is total trash and the firmware flashing process is very tricky (Tasmotizer + 1.27mm pin plugs). Can be used for Power AND Data, so I use this for my usb programmer, my soldering fume extractor, etc on my desk and on christmas I used it for my christmas tree LED, because it also has a cronjob possibily via open firmware in Tasmota, so I could turn off the lights manually but also it was turned of auto, if I did forget it. I also once used it for a little cooling fan, that had only be used on sundays for specific reasons :-)
Original:
Baseus 100W Power supply: I have a bunch of devices laying around requiring USB-C and USB-A (notebook, cell, powerbank, iPod, etc.) and I had one power plug so I was looking for a power supply, where I could put every cable I needed in. The baseus works pretty flawless with all devices plugged in...
On the $300 end though I got a walking treadmill for my standing desk. It is changing my life.
I'm about 2 weeks in and usually avg 5.5 miles a day. Words per minute is still 80 and accuracy hasn't suffered. Worked my way upto 2.6mph. I had to set the office temperature to 66 degrees F though. Worked up a sweat :)
FWIW: They offer a $20 gift card for a review.
i also recommend faber castell loom
Excellent build quality and grind for the money. A joy to use every morning and I expect it will last a long time. Their large range of models is confusing and takes some time to understand but with enough youtube reviews, you can decode it. Might be a bit over $200 in the US but I think I bought it at a discount to roughly be at $200 after currency conversion.
A common error people who love coffee frequently make is underestimating the value of a good grinder.
My first grinder was a regular bean chopper, and when I upgraded to a capresso I thought I was finally at a better place for fresh ground (at the time I though $100 for a grinder was insane).
I finally started looking for real high-end grinders (> $1k) because my espresso was still not up to snuff and all my barista friends kept telling me that the quality of my grinder was what was holding me back.
Funny thing was, even though I was willing to spend $2k on a grinder, supply chain issues had other plans.
Got the 1zpresso K-ultra and wow, each shot of espresso I pull now is a work of art.
Even if you're not an espresso person it will make any way you serve the coffee taste notably better.
Being manual is not even a big deal as it takes very little effort to grind coffee every morning. It's instantly replaced my capresso for not only espresso but pour over as well. I also have no plans to upgrade to a more expensive home option now.
It’s probably the online-bubbles I’m in, but I’d say it’s the opposite: A common error in people who love coffee but don’t drink espresso is overvaluing a grinder. Almost every cheap one will be okay as long as it’s a burr grinder.
Not all burr grinders are made the same. The more expensive ones tend to be more ergonomic.
I think one mistake some people make getting into manual grinding is buying a Hario Skerton (or one of its many clones) as their first grinder. That's probably one of the more poorly-designed grinders out there, despite the Hario brand.
Grinding consistency (not too many fines or boulders), which is also higher with certain grinders, also plays a big part in making sure that coffee's extracted evenly.
- Baratza Virtuoso (bought used). Our Encore was starting to be inconsistent after a few years, and the Virtuoso was a noticeable upgrade.
https://www.amazon.com/RumbleRoller-Texture-Massage-Self-Myo...
I've had lower back pain for 10 years now. Rolling on top of this for a minute once per day was painful at first but after 4-5 days it felt fine and I've had no back pain since. I believe it realigned my vertebrae. Now I roll once a week or so to keep things aligned.
I was already a believer in Talalay latex as a mattress material, which is what my current bed is made of.
I stuffed two queen-sized pillows to almost bursting with the LaNoodles. One I place in between my thighs, and the other is my normal head pillow. They are ridiculously thick but I no longer have knee pain or neck pain and sleep much better.
Looking forward to using it on fresh, green growth this spring since I had received mid-summer when the grass was already tall and dry.
Yeah real great for navigating around trees. And avoiding other natural plants that grow in the middle of grasses allowing them to flower and provide food for pollinators/arthropods.
This year I'm looking at getting a peening hammer and related tools to improve the blade. The one I have is quite soft. A second blade would be nice for thicker black-berry, bramble type stuff.
(living in a small flat, few things improve my quality of life like really good storage solutions; the ikea "norden occasional table" (https://www.ikeaddict.com/ikeapedia/en/Product/40245741/us-e...) might well be one of the best returns on investment in my entire decade living in the place)
If anyone from Meater reads this: Please add a feature to add a photos of the food to the cooks log.
Looks similar to the meater, with more sensors. Having insight into the true core temperature of meat has been a step change in my cooking ability!
You can stick the probe into a large potato. BBQ people call it a "sacrificial potato", when they put it inside their BBQ to measure the inside air temperature, before they even add the meat. The sensor at the tip of the Meater probe cannot stand hot (over 100C) temperatures, so it needs to be inside a food item. Whereas the sensor at the other end is meant to measure the air temperature of the oven or a BBQ.
You might get better value from a product like this
https://www.amazon.com/ThermoPro-Bluetooth-Thermometer-Wirel...
if you primarily want to measure the oven air temperature.
For me, most of the value from Meater comes from the app, which tells me how long to cook and then how long to rest. I don't really bother to look at the temperatures, I just do what the app tells me to.
- the recipe itself is wrong, however I assume you're using the same recipe you got success with in italy, though that requires that the devices are the same kind (e.g. stovetop v electric) and powered the same way
- the device itself is broken
- the coffee you're using is different enough that the recipe doesn't work, or possibly the coffee you get at home is completely unsuitable for moka (wrong roasting, wrong grind size, ...)
Maybe consider watching James Hoffman's moka series for an intro? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxz0FjZMVOl1Zot3qiJ-w...
I've tried different recipes, different beans, etc. Right now I'm on Illy espresso (got some on sale).
I hear your suggestions :-). The beans in Italy were basically beans in a tin, open to the air. But it was Italian air, Venetian salt seasoned air, and I was on vacation. Could've been that.
As you've already tried multiple things and covered the basics, I would suggest trying to find some sort of coffee enthusiast group around, or maybe a bit of a fancy / hipster coffee shop, with someone who knows their way around a moka pot who could help you diagnose the issue (whether it's in the device or its usage).
Seems a shame to have had a good experience, and to have bought a moka pot, and to not get joy out of it.
If you pour the maximum amount of water that fits inside, then your coffee will brew close to the boiling point of water, which is too hot and makes the coffee bitter.
If you pour less amount of water, then the coffee brews at a lower temperature.
The principle is that the coffee is pushed out by both the steam and the expanding trapped air inside the moka pot. The more expanding trapped air you have there, the less pressure you need from steam, so the coffee starts brewing earlier.
The key issues were
* clean after every use (just with water)
* don't fill too much water, the water will touch the coffee for too long and make it sour, aim for just below the pressure valve
* don't tamp down the coffee grounds, just fill to the line
* dont have too fine a grind on the coffee
it sounds like a lot but I'm making great coffee now, i couldn't figure out the aeropress somehow
With an espresso grind, the moka pot will struggle to push water through and you'll have a very bitter coffee because it'll be way over-extracted. Is that what you experience?
The wines at the tasting in the winery are always amazing… and then you get home and open a bottle and it’s… meh.
The Prismo doesn't really increase the pressure in the chamber you can have by that much.
Not just human either, the aeropress' plastic isn't built to withstand high pressures and it's going to buckle, to say nothing of whatever you put the press on.
Hoffman measured the prismo at 1.3 bars after adding a paper filter to the metal filter.
I love the Aeropress and have been rocking it since Obama's first term.
The AeroPress doesn't do real espresso, while the Nanopresso somewhat does. I never really got into the espresso that the Nanopresso produced though, while the AeroPress almost always makes a decent filter cup for me.
- programmable 6-key keyboard
- 10-pack of reading glasses
- mini tyre inflator
- rubber ice cleats
- low-alcohol beer
- sukang sawsawan
- boczekconsider upgrading to słonina in '24
I had success last year with braises too, like hong shao rou, but also barbacoa and even Texas chili. Maybe I need to work on my tofu this year.
You're right that boczek has more flavour, esp. the home-made version if you can find it (super difficult, imo). Usually the home-made boczek will be meatier/more smoky/more garlicky than, the store bought-stuff.
Słonina has little flavour, besides slight smokiness + saltiness. Normally it's used to highlight the flavour of the next dish or as a snack served with vodka. Similarly to lard, you'd serve it before the main dish to make the palate more sensitive towards any fat-soluble flavours. I'd say słonina is 90-95% fat plus a barely noticeable amount of meat.
The Siberian one I got though... had waaaaay more garlic and a little bit of pepper. It was lovely, but something I'd eat at the "caviar serving" amounts.
Useless trivia #123: it's likely a coincidence but in Polish "słonina" literally means "elefant meat" ("słoń" /swoń/, comp. the suffix -ina w. "wołowina" for beef, "wieprzowina" for pork).
> Maybe I need to work on my tofu this year
Smoked tofu is sooo good. I have some good kimchi + gochujang I want to cook tonight with pork belly, but now you made me think of replacing the meat with some smoked tofu I bought.
- This post was made by the 110% keyboard gang.
Any recommendations for low alc beers?
I’ve been drinking Guinness and Heineken, plus other ones occasionally. Best cold. Some have been sour and meh, but they are definitely getting better and better. See also low alcohol cocktails. I used to get grape juice made from wine grapes, fabulous.
On the more technical side of things, an Evoluent vertical mouse. Has made a massive improvement in my hand fatigue/pain.
Here's another shout-out for the dress shirts made by both companies, if one has need of dress shirts
I have a pair of QC20 wired earbuds that I have been using since forever. I have really bad hearing and ironically, I am very sensitive to loud noises (e.g., mowing, flying, road noise on road trips). I really like to have the best noise suppressing earbuds I can find.
Last year I tried many different wireless ones as my QC20 were wearing out. I tried Samsung, Sony, and Bose QC earbuds 1. The ANC (Ambient noise cancelling) in the samsung and sony were just not to the level of my wired QC20’s. The Bose earbuds1 were actually better at ANC than my QC20’s. I was shocked, BUT I had so many problems with 2 different pairs I had to return them. It was all software issues as far as I could tell, but they either stopped connecting to my devices, or the left bud stopped working.
Fast forward to the Bose QC earbuds2 coming out and I gave them a try. They are expensive, but the ANC is world class. The fit is also WAY better than anything else, including the earbuds 1. The nailed it. At $300 I would not hesitate to buy these again if I lost them.
I've been able to save a bunch of space and get rid of 99% of documents in my filing cabinet by making a digital copy and getting rid of the physical ones. Now when I get an important document I scan it save it to a few places and get rid of it.
I'm by no means a strong guy, but I've significantly increased the weight I can lift over the course of the last year. For me, it's really awesome. My biceps and triceps have also gotten way more defined and it's really cool when people notice. Feels good to see a more physically defined body in the mirror.
I started playing online video games with a friend and his son, and they do one exercise between each game. Pushups, sit ups, dumbbells, etc. After a 90 minute gaming session, I've also done one circuit of exercises.
I got the 5 to 90 lbs powerblocks (700 Canadian used..) but with the way they are built I'll be able to use them 50 years from now. Just a solid long term purchase.
My Kobo Libra 2 reader has been great. Although sometimes I wish I'd bought a Kindle or waited for the Scribe, because Kobo books often cost more than Kindle books, and it seems like Kindle has better sideloading support now.
Wall mount hooks. Now that they have nicer looking ones with drywall anchors instead of the old eye hooks, I've found lots of uses for them.
For books? Hasn’t Kindle always had amazing sideloading support? I think even over a decade ago you could just email your pirated books to a kindle.com email address to have them automagically show up on the kindle.
Caveat: My experience is from an older model, so that might have improved.
The standard advice I used to hear was to never wear synthetics in hot climates, because they'd be terribly uncomfortable! Instead you were advised to wear only natural fibers in the heat, particularly cotton and linen, because they were more "breathable".
What I also find interesting is that many of the 'new' synthetics, including the "Bamboo" derived ones, are basically updated versions of Rayon, a fiber that had a terrible reputation in the 80s and 90s (and was typically associated with very cheap faux-silk clothing that was hard to wash and harder to keep unwrinkled). Some of my older family members were shocked to find out that the high-tech synthetics were made from wood pulp in a manner similar (although obviously much improved) to the 'manufactured silk' of the early/mid 20th century.
High-tech synthetics came a long way and are robust as hell. I have little kids and they are little ruffians. None of the synthetic shirts ever buckled
Wet wool is still warm and dries _really_ fast.
1. My display cannot be adjusted high enough (this can be fixed by putting a book under the display).
2. Keyboard and mouse take up valuable space on the desk.
3. (most important) Display is physically closer and occupies more of my field-of-view. After a day of work this made me dizzy.
So now I'm happily using the keyboard tray again.
Which keyboard tray did you get?
The lowest setting on mine is 26.0", that's still too high? I would imagine a keyboard tray would drop it another 2-3 inches setting your keyboard below 24" from the floor.
Here's what I'm working with: https://ibb.co/MGqcpxc (excuse the mess and wires)
Ergonomics: https://uhs.umich.edu/files/uhs/ergo.pdf
I find the magnifier super handy to grab for reading tiny print on things like USB chargers. My reading glasses don't help in such cases even if I happen to be wearing them. I have 40x one too put it's more like jeweler's loupe with a very short focal length so less useful on a day to day basis.
I found that it ultimately ends up saving deskspace (since the device doesn't need space to move around). I found the device's size to be more comfortable for my hands than the small Logitech bluetooth mouse I was using.
I've never used an external trackpad. I have used the excellent Macbook trackpads.
I'd think e.g. "hold button + drag" is slightly more difficult on a trackpad than a mouse or a trackball.
Rather, I'd say that a trackball feels just as intuitive as a mouse does, whereas a trackpad doesn't feel the same as a mouse.
> How is accuracy?
As one of the replies to my comment points out, the particular model I got isn't very good at small movement. (Many people say they swap out the ball bearings & this helps a lot).
Practically, I found I was able to play games with it without affecting how well I did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_N_XB5XeDA (I haven't tried gaming on a trackpad; my impression is mouse/trackball are better suited).
When I absolutely need gestures, the laptop's trackpad is still there.
As for accuracy, after using a Logitech trackball for about 6 months, I'd replaced my gaming mouse with it for FPS games. The only thing that had a significant learning curve was precise placement of click-and-drag operations, and that was mostly training myself to let my thumb off the ball before releasing the click.
But, I agree that the out of the box experience, moving only a small distance is very 'sticky'. (Whereas, precisely moving to something isn't difficult).
I like the Relacon as a travel device vs. a larger trackball or small mouse because I can move my arm, hand, and wrist more, and more naturally, and still have the same control. I often find myself holding it across my chest or waist, and I can even type (not quickly, but still) while holding and using it. The buttons feel like the shoulder buttons on a Switch joycon, so there wasn't that much of a learning curve.
As much as I dislike the inability to host the bulbs locally, it has done wonders for my sleep. I set them to slowly dim over a 45 minute period at night and slowly turn on over a 45 minute period in the morning. I have consistently gotten 8+ hours of amazing sleep and fall asleep + wake up so much easier now than I ever have before.
Only a few years ago, one could program MagicLight bulbs pretty easily. It seems their newer versions use a different protocol that hasn't been reverse-engineered, so you're stuck using their crappy phone app. I would probably consider spending a reasonable amount on bulbs if I could self-host -- mostly because I want arbitrary control/fine-tuning of them.
Have you checked DigiblurDIY's Youtube channel, Discord server and subreddit? Some of these can run alternative firmwares like Tasmota, OpenBeken or ESPHome.
I work 100% remote so I also went for another Elgato product - a ring light - so my work video calls look a bit better. If all of your interaction at work is via video it seemed worth doing it well. My desk now looks more like a YouTuber's but it's all for coding.
Other than the pencil, maybe my Peak Design everyday backpack? I got the v1 used on eBay for ~$100 and I've used it for maybe two years now. It's still a decently student-specific purchase, though.
It's so easy to organize for all kinds of trips. I love the dividers, and I generally feel way safer keeping electronics in that bag over others.
Also, I bought a mechanical pencil (more specifically a lead holder, I guess) 20 years ago and I still have it and use it. They're such a great investment. Mine isn't rotring-nice, it's just a little blue staedtler thing, but it has been a great tool. It's essentially this one:
https://www.staedtler.com/us/en/products/technical-drawing-i...
The Kuru Toga’s point stays sharper than the rotring while I write, and always has the same edge. I wasn’t prepared for how well it’s “engine” works. It sits a bit more comfortably in my hand as well.
Aesthetically I still prefer the rOtrings look, feel and weight.
I found the HDMI input on mine didn't work but I figured out how to put Armbian on the TV box inside and so now I can turn it into a mini retro emulation console!
A $60 shaved ice maker attachment for my wife's KitchenAid mixer. Now she can make Snoballs any time of year. Seriously, if there's someone in your house who loves to cook, you need a KitchenAid mixer. It's a godsend, like Visual Studio Code for the kitchen.
(And I no longer inflict my code on this world, only powerpoints!)
DevonThink - My digital life has never been so well organised.
Omnifocus - My task management has never been so well organised.
BusyCal - My time management have never been so well organised.
Handheld Scientific BT-500 - Allows me to use my mechanical split keyboard wirelessly.
So far in 2023:
Nebo Notes - Allows me to write long form with Apple Pencil on iPad and convert it all to text afterwards far better than any other app on the App Store I've encountered.
Creative BT-W3 Bluetooth Transmitter - Was getting stuttering with Bluetooth headphones on my MacBook that was making them virtually unusable. Connected the headphones to this and I now have zero issues.
It's amazing how apple can't fix this issue, drives me insane. Never occurred to me to buy a bluetooth transmitter, but then why should I?
I'm at a level where my kindle broke down when I took it out during lunch (half of the screen updated, other half didn't), I just grabbed my phone, ordered a new one then and there and kept reading the book on my phone's Kindle app :D
I went from maybe a book a year to 20-24 books a year.
It's easy to keep always with you, it weighs the same even if you're reading Brandon Sanderson's latest 1600 page tome and it's always on the exact page you left it at.
And if you read longer book series that end in a cliffhanger, you can tap to buy the next one, grab more tea and continue reading even if it's 2 in the morning and you need to work the next day :D
Also: Kindle users should check out Libby[0] - it's like a public library but for eBooks, and you can probably sign up through your local public library. It's great for books that might be interesting, but aren't an immediate read.
Judging by this speaker being sold out in many big box stores before Xmas it seems a lot of people has a use for this.
In my case I have a small computer (asus pn51) that runs my dumb TV. When everyone else is in bed but I still want to watch basketball I turn this speaker on and perch it easily on my shoulder. I can hear it just fine but it's inaudible from 3 or more feet away. Everyone is happy. Marital bliss for $35 is a good deal.
And carving is so fun!
So after an abrupt breakup of a long term relationship, I decided to evaluate a lot of my habits and methodology for doing things and decided I wanted a new routine. I've put on a bit of weight over the years, and as most adult males on the wrong side of 30, I'd grown facial hair as a way to hide the features of my face that I was uncomfortable with. But I want to look in the mirror and like what I see, so to facilitate that, I shaved all the hair off and invested in a skin care and shaving regimen. I want to be more accountable to myself and decided that looking at my chubby face every day was a way to get motivated.
So while I now have a 4 part facial care strategy for my skin (cleanser, differin, moisturizer, sunblock), I also have a new shaving routine. My razor is nothing fancy... I've tried Dollar Shave Club and been disappointed because it has TOO many blades and gets clogged too easy, but I also really wanted a shaving brush.
So I picked up a badger hair brush and a set of Proraso pre-shave cream, shaving soap, and balm. I'd never used the product before but saw ads in old barber shops I'd go to as a kid. Shaving used to always irritate my skin, and I expected it to be doubly so because I hadn't set razor to face in forever. To my surprise, I had no irritation at all. Completely smooth and not a single nick or red bump. I don't think I've ever been more happy with a set of products.
At the same time, I was looking to eat healthier. And I love ice cream. So why not make a healthier version of ice cream without spending a fortune?
High end restaurants usually have one or multiple pacojet systems in them. Pacojets are basically glorified ice shavers that shave ice down inside of a small container. Restaurants use them by freezing ingredients in containers to make ice creams and sauces.
Well, the Ninja people created their own cheaper version in their Creami system. I've made chocolate ice cream by throwing some sweetener into a bowl with cocoa powder, agar agar, and coconut milk. I've made a sorbet by tossing a can of fruit into the container with juice or syrup, by tossing banana chunks into strawberry or guava nectar, etc. Really, its only limitation is that you're limited to the containers you have on hand and the ingredients. I even saw a recipe for pumpkin pie ice cream and I've made bananas foster sans ice cream and just tossed in some heavy cream for a nice treat. It's vastly more convenient than having an actual ice cream machine.
I'm a pointy-toed runner. When Saucony stopped producing my favorite zero-drop shoes (the Virrata), I bought a pair of Altras but ended up donating them after two short runs because it felt like I was wearing clown shoes thanks to that that broad toe-box.
That said, I definitely appreciate that the running apparel market has expanded to accommodate the broad diversity of human shapes and sizes.
[0]: https://keybr.com/
My item is a 65W GaN (gallium nitride) USB C/A wall charger. It can charge pretty much everything I own and is tiny compared to the Apple 65W charger. It has 1 Type-C and 2 Type-A but if you use more than one then the wattage splits (not 50/50 more goes to the C or one of the A ports).
I have a MX Master 3 is by far the best mouse I've used, proudly sits on my desk covered with Apple products...
I only really use it for CAD, most of the time I use the touchpad on my MacBook as I prefer the ergonomics of the keyboard+touchpad even when plugged into multiple screens.
Not every car has a magnetic drain plug. Most cars I've owned didn't.
Also, there's a reason you have an oil filter. The shavings don't go into the motor. Oil pump, maybe, but that's a given.
Also great for small engines.
Fry eggs in butter, add a little heavy cream, add half a lemon squeeze and salt
Yum!
Perma image: https://imgur.com/a/qVNMcQs
One limitation to be aware of is that the material in the lenses responds to ultraviolet light. Which means that they really only work outdoors. So you're still going to need a separate pair of sunglasses for driving.
A 30w phone charger. iPhones charge rather slow. This charger helps get over that. A lot of my daily routine is done through my phone.
You may be aware of this, but the recommended way to wear Airpods (especially the 3rd gen non-Pro?) is to twist the stalks towards your face to 'lock' them into place better.
(I discovered this when I was about to angrily throw out my new 3rd gen Airpods, as they were fatter than my original gen 1 model, and just wouldn't stay in place. I've never seen anyone else doing this [and I sometimes get comments from people for wearing mine oddly] but it's a game-changer.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/airpods/comments/qgqo5a/psa_if_the_...
Edit: this is for the Pros. The open non-pros seem like they would be safe for biking at lower volumes.
[0]: https://shokz.com/
The main things I use it for are frothing milk for lattes, making peanut and cashewnut butter and making soups of all kinds.
Seems to have quieted my snoring/sleep apnea to levels where people want to sleep next to me, and I can as well get a good night sleep. Sleep Apnea is no joke.
(I think this is a recommendation more for a category than a specific product.)
I was, however, disappointed to discover that when in duplex mode, sound quality drops from hifi to first generation gsm quality. As I understand it, Bluetooth still has no better profile for duplex.
Tape mouth at night with a short strip before going to sleep. Snoring eliminated. For real. Wonderful sleep for everyone.
I'm still using the old one during the week as it only takes a few minutes to swap.
I might follow you and just get a Dyson branded instead of aftermarket.
and a tushy bidet is one of the greatest sub-$100 purchases you can make. easy set-up and nice to be clean down there.
Thermapen (super fast spot temperature sensor)
Both have superior minimalist UX, very thoughtfully designed and really well executed. If you are into cooking, highly recommended.
I used to manage my parents' old-style security cameras, and now I realize what important features they lacked. It takes a lot for a system to catch people in the act, regardless of how high-quality your cameras are and how much disk space your DVR has, and convenience matters too.
As someone in a northern climate with a less-than-ideally insulated house its a life changer.
1. Point 20 - https://www.chestergrant.com/summary-breath-by-james-nestor
(In fact I have 4 litres of Bulgarian yoghurt fermenting as I type this!)
I work from home in a small open-floorplan house and being able to mask the sounds of everything else going on has been a welcome change :)
- water boiler: can get a basic one for less than 30 bucks, or go with a higher end one for 100+. either way, having hot water readily available will change your life
- kettlebell (20lb, 35lb): these go for like 30-40 bucks on amazon. there are a lot of compound movements you can do with kettlebells that will highlight various muscle imbalances you have. super easy to incorporate a few kb exercises into your workout routine
Privacy film so that I can leave more window blinds open on the windows facing the street.
Elastic laces for some of my shoes to make them slip on.
A silicone face scrubber for gentle exfoliation on a regular basis.
Honeycomb style seat cushion. Used for meditation, car, floor sitting, etc.
It's great for getting a breeze on nice days, without letting mosquitos in. There was one on the front door when we bought the house, wish I hadn't waited so long as it was super easy to install. Will probably get one for the door to the garage as well this year.
Making bread with a mixer is fun but takes a lot of time. With the bread machine there really is no reason to buy preservative and sugar laden bread from the store.
I'm very happy with mine ("Moulinex Pain Plaisir"), though I'm slightly annoyed some programs (kneading-only and baking-only) cannot be put on a timer.
Good standing desk - $500
Adjustable dual arm mount for monitors - $100
RTX 3090 to play with Stable Diffusion - $1000
Good reverse osmosis filter - $400
It forced me into the gym regularly for months, I didn’t have to think about what I’d be working out, and my trainer kept me honest, kickstarting a habit and confidence I’ve tried countless times to develop.
Of course, YMMV and some trainers are terrible, but I would have happily spent much more.
Walking mat for said standing desk. A coworker of mine swears by this, I'm still considering one. They even walk while watching movies on the TV :D
A proper working chair, your ass is going to be on it for 8+ hours. Don't skimp on it.
Steam Deck. Seriously. It made gaming fun again. My gaming PC hasn't been booted since September when I got the deck. I can only do one thing with it, play games. It's always suspended on exactly where I left with the game I'm currently playing through. I can use it on the couch, toilet, train, vacation or even when there is downtime at work =)
Similarly, a membership to a gym or other kind of physical activity (martial arts, etc.) that you’ll stick with is worth it to anyone who largely sits in front of a computer for work.
Pretty much anyone can also benefit from a few months of therapy. We all have baggage from our childhoods that can be overcome, and all of your personal and professional relationships will prosper as a result.
Coupled with a keyboard and mouse.
I don't have space for a discrete monitor so i have to rely on the laptop for it.
Using it makes it upright to eye level, making my neck pain go away
And using the computer like this you also get the benefit of a real keyboard that you chose yourself, and is easy to repair/replace, etc.
https://www.minidsp.com/products/acoustic-measurement/umik-1
I also got a FLIR infrared camera, which was a little bit more than $200 - but there are cheaper models that would have done the trick just as well realistically. My home was built 140 years ago, and some ability to inspect heat-creating things through walls has been useful.
Another really useful one in this price range was a Logitech MX ERGO trackball. I like how it requires less space and solid surface than any mouse. I also like the angle it puts my hand at. Multiple device support is good.
I bought a Fitbit Charge 4, originally to track my heart rate/steps since I've never owned one and always relied on my phone for time.
With my phone generally on silent and by not checking it so often, I've found my use of social media/apps has reduced drastically this year. To the point that I recently forgot my phone at home, something that I didn't imagine possible.
A wall calendar.
Felted house shoes (Kyrgies!!) that I didn't sweat in.
Wooden clothes hangers.
Humidifier.
Small storage containers
Expanded clay pellets for rooting plant cuttings.
Withings scale, connects to wifi, logs my weight with zero work.
Threw out all my socks and bought new.
Buddy had some surgery and would have been in a cone for 2 weeks (!!!), an utterly shit experience for both of us. This prevented that while making sure he didn't lick or bite at his stitches.
It wouldn't stop a persistent dog like a cone would, but I felt like it gave me enough time to observe the behavior had he bit or licked and stop it without opening the wound.
It's easily my best purchase of the last 5 years, except perhaps for my instant pot, which I use every day to make steel cut oats.
Also, to defray the higher cost, and for health reasons, my wife and I cut our afternoon coffee. Less is more.
(Update: After writing this I checked online and it turns out the Bambino costs $350, so not sub-$200, oops.)
My girlfriend wanted toe spacers and I found the exact same no-name pair on eBay for $4, compared to $10 on Amazon.
I used to feel cold in the winter, no matter how high I set the thermostat. Now I feel cozy with the heat barely running. I even think they cured my winter gloom. Turns out I was just loosing a lot of energy through my feet. ヽ(´▽`)/
Saw some people go as far as using a portable coffee grinder but that's a heavier toy
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B098W5RMF1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
https://www.harney.com/products/brew-in-mug-extra-fine-tea-i...
- Ultrasonic cleanser - used for pretty much anything including my invisalign retainers
- Sodastream
- Massage gun
All these things have made my life a lot easier.
I wonder why no one has made an open source Soda stream that connects to the big tanks right out of the box in a thoughtful way. Or better yet, a system for refilling the sodastream tanks from a large canister so that the sodastream can still sit easily in your counter.
You can get Co2 tank and parts from beer supply company.
https://www.morebeer.com/category/co2-tanks-regulators-parts...
plenty YT videos on how to put them together.
They are absolutely massive. The tank that holds 13kg itself weighs about 30kg. So the amount of force to 'dent' that amount of steel would need to be ridiculous.
The weakest part is (by design) the valve. Technically I rent the bottle and buy the gas. Each refill is an exchange of the bottle after which the bottle gets pressure tested, etc.
I also added a standard regulator to my setup because I trust it more than the sodastream, tho the pressure rating of the sodastream should be enough.
Then I got a tank of food-grade co2 from my local supplier. I guess welding grade co2 would be good enough as well, but as the price difference was non-existent it was a no-brainer.
When you get a regulator, make sure you get the highest flow-rate you can find as some of them will be problematic to get enough pressure for your beverage.
Mine does not go nowhere as high as the regular sodastream bottles directly, but the result is that it takes me an extra 10 seconds per bottle to get the same result.
[0] - https://www.co2supermarket.co.uk/adapters-for-co2-regulators...
Something is different - it's not that one was sold as 'air fryer'.
(I broke my oven door, rather than pay £150 plus labour opted to pay £280 for a new oven. That was a Bosch, certainly not the cheapest possible.)
Assuming you only look at electric fan ovens (the vast vast vast majority these days) more money buys you better insulation mainly. A brand too of course (maybe better R&D/thought gone into the controls/ergonomics etc. hand in hand with that) - but not somehow better food.
'Pro-level' ones obviously cost more, buying reliability & service primarily. Still not somehow better food, don't buy a commercial oven for a home kitchen.
There are costs - you waste counterspace and you need to own another thing. But "just buy a convection oven" isn't an option for a lot of people.
Honestly, if they didn't put separate fan temperature/time on the back of stuff (increasingly they don't actually, more and more I'm seeing fan only) I'd honestly never have known anything else existed. I've never lived anywhere with one, didn't see any for sale when I bought one (to replace broken one) a couple of years ago. (UK)
Personally I think I'd rather just replace the oven for one with a fan and grill, reclaim all that countertop, but at this point there is probably just a large cultural factor at play.
It's largely from disappointment - I assumed initially that they were designed to save oil vs. a deep fryer, that they blasted jets or misted oil over the food. That I think would be novel and interesting.
As it is, if you have an oven already, the RoI is too long to do it on a cost basis. Maybe there's an argument of time-saving as they pre-heat a smaller box quicker? Hardly takes long as it is, I think that's a stretch.
If you don't already have an oven, then yes, if the capacity is not a problem then it's a great option, they start cheaper than bigger ovens... Obviously I suppose.
(I suppose I shouldn't have generalised so much above - I was speaking from my experience in the UK. Other than perhaps a tiny studio flat (single room apartment, no separate bedroom) I would think it's pretty much unheard of to rent somewhere without one here; buying it would normally (almost always) be included, but if not there'd be an obvious gap where yours or your newly purchased one would go.)
Anyway, in the very first line of my comment I said it's the marketing that I have a problem with; I have 'tried' the marketing.
Air fryers should really be called individual ovens. They’re basically the same but more efficient
Do you get bothered by recipes that have you drizzle oil on vegetables and then roast them?
No queen has ever slept in my queen sized bed, nor am I aware of any rectangularly shaped queens. My airpods aren't made of air. When we combine words or even parts of words we don't produce meaning by simply summing the meaning of the parts.
Absolutely zero harm is caused by calling something an "air fryer" rather than a "countertop convection oven", especially since "air fryer" more easily conveys the idea that you can cook things like french fries in one reasonably effectively without deep frying in oil.
Apart from being clever marketing, I believe they use the word "fryer" to describe the immersion in a very evenly and highly heated fluid, in this case air. While not very different from a fan-forced oven, the design of a small chamber with a vented basket and high air circulation does create a more uniform thermal environment over the entire surface area of the food, than the usual convection oven with a flat tray.
I’d also recommend a TENS unit, can also be found for cheap ($20-40). Both can vastly improve pain management without relying as much on medications.
- tennis ball to massage my back by leaning with it on the wall
- laptop stand, external keyboard and external trackpad; for better posture during standing and sitting; trackpad is more comfortable for me than mouse)
- vitamin D supplements for the winter
- smartwatch or smart band to keep basic track of sleep and fitness; I went with Xiaomi Mi Band 6
- smart weight to keep track of my weight and set goals; I went with Mi Body Composition Scale
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BDQQVN2?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_prod...
This has been a total game changer for me, as I could never find a stand that would get the laptop up as high as I wanted. My posture has never been better!
Saved a bunch of money to spend on our house, honeymoon and shared projects, but sure, take the time out of your day to downvote somebody that views marriage differently than the downvoters.
Surely they have a monopoly on happiness that can only be expressed by clicking the down arrow.
I can only imagine the depths of their marital bliss based on expensive jewelry.
The ephemeral nature of a cheap ring is meant to evoke the importance of the intangible value of an invaluable relationship.
The stuff and the important relationship are intentionally separate.
- Small Korin Konro. To go with the charcoal. Use this all the time for grilling small amounts of meat.
- Pasta noodle drying rack to use for hanging kitchen wash clothes and dish rags
While Seattle doesn't get that cold during the winter, the combination of 40 degree weather and moisture sure feels colder than it is. And our office is constantly swinging between warm and chilly for some odd reason.
Having an affordable base layer is a big win.
• Decent running shoes ($180). My entire wellbeing is better thanks to them.
Firmware is a bit eh as is typical for Logitech, but being wireless, mechanical, having macro keys and media controls is a total win. Also sits very low.
It's been super practical for all kinds of hobby projects.
Contrary to (seemingly) everyone I liked the Touch Bar MacBooks. I barely ever used the function row, but the software that came by default wasn’t the best. But pock.app was perfect. It put alt-tab visually on my keyboard.
My daily driver is now a Mac mini, and Touch Bar MacBooks time has passed.
The stream deck replaces that functionality really well.
If you don’t have one, but think it could be helpful—it’s probably worth a shot. There’s nothing like a dedicated for a specific action.
One tiny remote does everything, and damn cheap.
An elegant little fidget/stress tool that is silent so perfect for use during meetings.
Origami pourover brewer. Beautiful, and it’s been a lot of fun trying to get better at brewing great coffee.
My previous keyboard was a Bloody B840 that I won at a contest at a PC gaming event (PDXLAN). The switches were designed to feel and sound like MX Blues (very clicky), but the frame of the keyboard would let out a terrible metallic ping with every keypress.
I replaced it with a Keychron V6 keyboard with TTC Silent Bluish White switches. Now the keys have a nice thokkish bump with each press. Much quieter, and I love the way it feels.
- Philips OneBlade (use it weekly and have not needed to charge in 6 months) $35
- Large desk pad $20
- Shooting hearing protection with white noise (drowns out pretty much all other noise while coding) $100
Desk pads are pretty nice too.
Also our dog hates walking in rain (he will refuse to move). Now he goes in the backpack, we put a scarf / other clothing over it and we can go on for a bit until we find shelter.
But as with anything, YMMV. Best to do whatever is comfortable for your dog.
Also got a Craigslist road bike from the 80s for ~$250 cad (less than $200 USD). It's needed a few repairs but has absolutely been worth it and impactful to the year.
Also a good compact air sleeping pad for backpacking. Haven't used it as much as I'd have liked, but its made a few moments much more pleasant.
Someday the same product will be controlled by a Home API and your phone and BTLE and cost $99/year for the app, but for now it has escaped the relentless march of "progress".
Small handheld electric screwdriver from Lidl was reasonable purchase for cost. Not too much use, but was semi-useful during a move.
1. I add rice, black cardamom, a little butter, water, and a splash of apple cider vinegar to a large saucepan.
2. Turn on high heat until on the verge of boiling.
3. Cover, reduce heat, wait 20 minutes.
I maybe save a handful of minutes by using a rice cooker. I don’t rinse, rice seems to have a better texture without it.
https://www.amazon.com/Cordless-Portable-Irrigator-Rechargea...
Basically I can waterfloss after eating and not have to pull out ortho picks and a toothbrush
1. Logitech MX Ergo Trackball mouse. I LOVE this thing. 2. Aftershokz Aeropex and OpenComm. I'm single sided deaf and these are the best I can get for listening to music or taking any calls. 3. Powered sunglasses, I can walk around sunny areas without squinting. 4. Books: the daily stoic.
Use to have cramps and pains in by hand, not nothing. Amazing purchase
Its over 200, but Sony XM4s are great. I use it without ambient mode and noise cancelling, i think its the perfect amount of noise cancellation at least when working from home, and still wanting to be aware of surroundings(family members, dog, etc)
We’re talking barely able to move around to normal daily functioning after twenty minutes. (I’ve used it for 8 hours in the past during very stressful periods. At some point I felt my muscles release like a muscle relaxer.)
Hope that helps.
Most people who own a dedicated DAC would probably be just fine using this IMO.
My automatic cat feeder will likely be the most useful of 2023.
I am clearly not the target market (I think?), but that marketing video on their home page “describing” what this is, has to be one of the worst marketing videos I have ever seen. I watched it and still have no idea what it does. I am guessing it allows you to switch the app that you are streaming? I give up…
https://www.elgato.com/en/stream-deck-mk2
EDIT: I am getting downvoted but I am going to leave this up. I am really not trying to be overly negative, but I feel like this is a missed opportunity for a company that has clearly created something creative that appeals to a certain market niche.
I know that sometimes it is hard for someone that is passionate about their product and wants to create good marketing material, but has a hard time describing things to those “outside” their circle. Hopefully they see this feedback and can use it to further expand their product’s reach.
- a global mute button
- a screenshot button
- a button to show/hide my terminal
- and a few others depending on the focused app
It presents an array of hardware buttons with small displays in them to let you do all of that easily in a live broadcast environment.
It's programmable key macros with visual key caps.
Becoming comfortable sleeping with a sleeping mask + ear plugs makes it possible to sleep anywhere.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KC5DWCC
These are inexpensive but they work well and I find the strap to be comfortable. The main differentiator vs some other brands is there is a big cup around the eyes. While sleeping (or trying to sleep) your eyes still dart around, and it is very distracting to have your eyelashes sweeping against a flat eye mask.
Another brand that is inexpensive and is even darker is from "Albatross Health New England". It completely removes even the small amount of light that leaks in, but it has to be worn tighter to get that seal. The main thing I don't like about it is when adjusted for my particular head size, the adjustment buckle is sitting right behind one of my ears and if I am on that side it is uncomfortable. But for $10 it is worth a try:
https://www.amazon.com/Adjustable-Blocking-Breathable-Comfor...
Upgraded to Mojave.
Works so much better than I expected. Feels much better than the touchbar macbook I used at work for 3 years.
Now looking for a good battery to keep it in shape.
(Posted from this very laptop)
I don't buy anything, but these basics helped. Things over that amount that I think would be meaningful - good vacuum, good screen, good chair. Renting dumpster to throw away junk.
It goes well with a High Density Foam Mattress. I never wake up with low back aches since I started using a mattress of this material.
There's ton of options out there but I bought all my bedding stuff from Italic.
2) Merino wool underwear by Smartwool (or Icebreaker). Trust me on this one.
https://theperfectbit.com/product/1-perfect-bit/
did wonders!
Bose noise canceling headphones.
* "Daros" by Dave Dobson https://www.amazon.com/Daros-Dave-Dobson-ebook/dp/B0946C153P - At the heart of the plot was a powerful artifact with different groups vying to gain access for different reasons. The humor, especially the chapter titles, worked well for me. Features mysterious creature, a sassy AI, a fast paced plot with good amount of action, etc.
* "Dim Stars: A Novel of Outer-Space Shenanigans" by Brian P. Rubin https://www.amazon.com/Dim-Stars-Novel-Outer-Space-Shenaniga... - Fun and filled with humor that had me laughing almost every page, especially enjoyed the slice-of-life feel in the first half of the novel
* "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" by Dennis Taylor https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/d... - read the first one a few years back, remember enjoying it, need to read the sequels...
* "The Shadows of Dust" by Alec Hutson https://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Dust-Alec-Hutson-ebook/dp/B08... - spacy fantasy featuring giant turtles as spaceships, not really sci-fi
See also https://thespsfc.org/2021-results/ Self-Published Science Fiction Competition, found Daros there
- Kindle
Never enjoyed a super quiet work desk so much.
I use an old Thinkpad laptop with its docking station, and some Intel NUCs as my homelab devices and the multihead systems. The PCBs of the Intel NUCs have a 14V power port that can be used with a small step-up converter from eBay. As the docking station is also @13.9V, the same step-up converter can be used for it, too :)
The monitors were a different story, because it was a bit more complicated. Had to test their PCBs a little before I found out how the power circuit works (so that I don't need ~230V there).
I did get a stand for it that pushed it over $200, but not strictly needed.
M5stack's line of ESP32 ucontrollers/peripherals
Stupid cheap mass storage
I’d also disagree that there’s no difference between price/quality of monitors!
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