In amateur radio, making an Earth-Moon-Earth contact. That means bouncing your signal off of the moon, basically using it as a satellite. You generally need a big antenna array to do it. Also you need a very high quality amplifier to receive since the signal you get back from the mood is very weak. You can hear an echo of yourself delayed about 2.6 seconds, since the moon is about 1.3 light seconds away.
EME Moonbounces do look like fun. Here’s a guy, I think pinging a friend off the moon.
That’s dope
Dude that sounds amazing and would be crazy to demo to someone.
3 other cool nerds to play board games with consistently.
I was going to say Glory to Rome but your answer is better.
Meanwhile, I keep ending up in rooms with board game nerds, and I only kind of like board games.
Are you calling yourself cool? That’s so not cool.
Self confidence is in fact very cool. And I’ll convince you over a game of Agricola.
I like your moxie. Very cool of you to be so graceful towards an unkind comment
Oooh, hey!! I have that game but haven’t played it yet. It looks freaking dope. Any suggestions? If I can’t convince my family to play I was just going to try it solo
It’s the “revised edition” if that matters
Cool is what you make it, dude.
Maybe he already has one cool nerd and is looking for a few more.
Well, my hobby is searching for historical religious artifacts, so…
Your Holy Grail is the Holy Grail
The Lost Ark of the Covenant actually 😁
So being the UK?
Sad lol.
In the typewriter community, the “holy grail” differs from person to person, but for me it was a 1930s Royal P equipped with a rare typeface called Vogue. Very, very rarely they’ll pop up from people who don’t know how significant that is, and that’s the only way to get one at a reasonable price - because those who do know what it is will ask thousands of dollars for it.
Eventually I found one for a comparatively cheap price (sub 1k), and the only reason someone else didn’t snap it up before I saw it was because the guy refused to ship it. Local pickup only. So I took the chance to drive the 10 hours round trip to snag it, and it sits proudly as the crown jewel of my collection:
Bill Lee: I gave up writing when I was ten. Too dangerous.
Hells to the yeah
Woodworking: An entire log of American Chestnut.
About a century ago, the species was all but wiped out by a blight that came from Japanese chestnut. Some three billion trees died. The blight actually survives in the forest living on but not damaging oak trees, so American chestnuts are struggling to reclaim their historic habitats. The species is critically endangered and efforts to rehabilitate the population are underway, including trying to breed large surviving individuals or to genetically engineer blight resistant trees. Logging is of course completely out of the question.
American Chestnut is an excellent lumber, with many of the properties of white oak in a faster growing tree. It is straight grained, hard and strong, easy to saw and split, rot resistant due to tannins. A fantastic choice for indoor and outdoor furniture, structural timber, even telephone poles. Reclaimed chestnut timber from old buildings is highly prized, and what woodworker wouldn’t love access to a few hundred board feet of freshly kiln dried American chestnut…if it was possible to ethically source.
A couple more things about American Chestnuts:
-Chestnut forests used to cover a shitton of the northeast before being reduced to basically nothing
-“Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire” is about the tradition of eating American Chestnuts in the winter…
-… Because for some, it was a treat. And for others, it was practically a staple food! They were an extremely abundant resource
-Seriously, look at the size of the original American Chestnut forest:
Farmers used to just let their critters loose into the forests to eat the chestnuts off the forest floor because there were just so many. Now I think every American chestnut tree alive has a name.
If I could time travel, I’d go see the chestnut forests first. I only learned about them a few years ago but I think about it a weird amount (maybe because I have a huge elm tree in my yard)
Like can you imagine entire states covered in them? I don’t think they were quite the size of redwoods but they were ancient and well-established forests. And it makes me sad that most people don’t even know what we lost because some rich asshole just HAD to have foreign trees on their estates.
because some rich asshole just HAD to have foreign trees on their estates.
Blight would have happened at some point. Global travel made it inevitable.
Christ, it’s ALWAYS the fucking rich assholes!
This is one thing that I really hope GMOs allow us to counter. We need chestnut trees back. Natural and farmed ones. Perhaps we will find a gene for blight resistance someday.
What is growing there now? It sounds like a pretty shitty situation.
Stumps and other trees. And of course, a ton it was leveled for housing/infrastructure/etc
Captainaggravated had some great info a few comments down about the remains of the forest if you want to know more!
The surviving forests are often oak, hickory, ash, pine. A different blight is working its way through the Eastern Hemlock, which are truly the giant sequoias of the East. Humongous old trees.
Also, corn, wheat, rice, tobacco, towns, cities, suburbs. Probably a third of the US population lives in that green area, to include Washington DC, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Altoona, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Memphis, Charlotte, Asheville, Atlanta…looks like it misses Colombia and just barely grazes Raleigh.
This is really interesting. A few years ago I bought this American Chestnut salt and pepper set. The guy who made it did tell me that he got the wood from a beam out of a barn built before the Civil War but I didn’t realize why. I just thought it was a really good looking salt Shaker and pepper grinder…
Why can’t they just be grown here instead of japan?
Because the disease has become endemic to American forests.
The American Chestnut was the dominant tree in the ecosystem of the forests of Eastern North America. Per Wikipedia, “it was said that a squirrel could walk from New England to Georgia solely on the branches of American chestnuts.” In the late 19th century, Japanese chestnut trees were imported, and they brought with them Asian Bark Fungus. American Chestnuts are quite susceptible to this fungus, and it largely wiped out the population.
The fungus infects the above ground portion of the tree, killing it. New shoots will emerge from the stump as the below ground portion of the tree isn’t affected by the fungus, but the new growth doesn’t get very far before the fungus kills it off again. We have no hope of eliminating the fungus from the forests.
So we’ve got these zombie tree stumps that will grow enough of a plant to keep the fungus alive and running (it also survives on other species of tree), but not enough to grow large and reproduce. There are some remaining adult trees here and there but the species is considered functionally extinct in the wild as it really isn’t able to thrive because this fungus is among us. So unless we can hybridize or otherwise breed fungus resistant chestnut trees, we ain’t got no American Chestnuts.
American chestnuts are also susceptible to ink disease and the Chinese Gall Wasp.
A lot of problems were caused by importing plants to North America; tumbleweeds aren’t indigenous, they’re Russian, and a massive fucking problem.
An extra upvote for “fungus is among us”.
Thanks, now I want one too. Is there any feasible way to start trying to grown some of these myself, while obviously attempting to prevent infection of my crop?
This would be an excellent question to ask The American Chestnut Foundation.
For example, in the headphone world, the Sennheiser HE-1 headphones are said to be like the pinnacle of headphones and most expensive, costing $59000 for a pair.
Edit: added image
The irony with those is that once you’re at a stage of life where you can afford those, you probably can’t hear anything over 14kHz anyway. At least there’s that sweet midrange!
I had the pleasure of using some at Sennheiser’s booth at CES a few years back. They sound VERY nice, but I don’t think they’re worth $59k. Maybe 8k or something, although I know a lot of the cost is in the tubes and accessories.
Out of curiosity, what would you plug those into to get the best use of them? I couldn’t imagine the headphone jack on my motherboard would be able to take full advantage of them.
They’re super special electrostatic headphones, so they have to be run with a special type of amplifier, and the one they come with come is absolutely insane, and is a huge part of the cost. Honestly, I bet you could cost cut the whole thing down to under $20k, but you’re paying a LOT of money for stuff like the fact that the amplifier case is made of marble and has one of the coolest boot sequences imaginable, where all the tubes and knobs rise out of it and retract back in so the whole thing is seamless. It’s very much one of those things that get built when engineers are handed a blank check and told “We don’t care what it costs, have fun”
where all the tubes and knobs rise out of it and retract back in
what the fuck
One of my favorite audiophile youtubers, Crinacle, just bought these headphones for 75k. Here’s the video if you wanna watch it
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Cadillac 16 energy imo. I think part of what’s wrong with the world today is all companies suck, have no fun anymore and don’t care if things are actually cool. I know it sounds stupid but everything is black, white, or grey on the road and everything is a shapeless blob. Oh you want nice headphones, or computer case, etc? Enjoy our exciting options of black or grey, and fresh new material of cheapest plastic we can make shiny.
That thing has an inbuilt DAC, as well as S/PDIF and USB inputs, so I’d imagine any device with enough processing power to play lossless audio files and has the proper drivers should be enough.
Any serious guitarists will let you know their holy grail.
It’s not any guitar; it’s another guitar.
None of the ones I already own sound good, though. Since it can’t possibly be me that is the problem, I need to purchase another, more expensive one.
I bought mine for $100!
I got it new back in the early 2000s but it had a flaw in the fretboard. I returned it for exchange but they discontinued it so refunded me instead. Telling this story to someone a decade later, they suggested eBay. I looked and there it was, bought it on the spot and had it in my hands a week later.
I have enough guitars but am now looking at other instruments. A cello is high on the list.
TTRPGs. A cleared schedule
And friends with matching ones
Gasp. The things I felt seeing this image.
Sorry it’s a potato. There must’ve been something on my phone lens.
White border tho…
I’m a photography nerd.
There’s a bunch of rare and expensive cameras, of course, so I could probably just say “oh, probably anything from Leica”.
But the real snobs go for turbo rare lenses. As a Nikon fan, I hope that I shall one day be allowed to the same airspace as the hallowed Nikkor 13mm f/5.6. The first ultrawide non-fisheye lens. 350 of these were made, each individually blessed by priests as they left the factory, or so the story goes. They cost an arm and leg - wait, in this economy, an arm and leg would probably be cheaper.
I’m a book collector, sadly most of the books in my preferred address are, and forever, will be out of my reach. My holy grail is The Magus by Francis Barrett (1801), it’s basically a guidebook to the occult. I’ve got a facsimile edition published in 1970 but I’ve never seen or heard of a original copy for sale - not that I’ve searched, I don’t wish to see an old man cry.
This post has some real The 9th Gate vibes. Love it. I hope you find your book someday.
I finally saw a Baltimore Oriole (bird) in real life at my feeder. Its was beautiful and vibrant and now I need to find another cool bird to look at.
I don’t care what the other nerds say. This is the Holy Grail for me:
Waaaaagh!
My holy grail is that i have an actually painted army
Respect
Elite Dangerous: the grail is the Fleet Carrier. Spent 7 years of non-grindy playtime saving up for mine.
If you got one is it the kind of ship you could use or is it to valuable to risk?
You can use it, and can’t really lose it, but it costs a lot of money to operate. (The carriers are about 3.5 burj khalifas long. They are huge)
Yes, as of now, you cannot destroy another player’s fleet carrier.
My upkeep costs are ~$15,000,000 a week, which is a good chunk of money but not too much of a hassle.
Got one, really couldn’t find a use for it, let it go. If you have a gaming group to play with on E:D they’re far more useful for everyone to keep their ships on and engage in group objectives. I generally do exo, so having to maintain that beast while I was out in the black wasn’t worth it.
Good luck getting one, it’s still kinda thrilling to achieve that objective.
I love taking my FC deep into the black. Just gotta pay my squad mates to load excess fuel and I’m good to go!
When the fleet carriers came out, I think I had mine in a week. Of course, I didn’t keep paying it off, I never really saw the point of them.
You just need to find a good freight loop. It’s actually pretty fun running cargo with no shield (but extra armor). I had an imperial cutter customized for cargo hauling and if done right, you made money at astounding rates.
It took a while to locate, but I found a loop between three stations that allowed me to essentially buy low and sell high at every stop on the route. Though one leg of the route was all cargo transport missions, and they always invited interdictions. If done right you can drop out of FS and then jump right back out before the other ship gets their bearings. With a ship that big nobody can stop you.
But it was scary a few times. I may have lost it once or twice…
My hobby is (or rather was) collecting Seiko watches.
I stopped buying watches, but my holy Grail would be “The” Pogue. The original 6139-6005 yellow face automatic chronograph worn by Col. William Pogue on the Skylab mission.
Other than the NASA issued Omegas, this was his personal watch that he just took with him into space, as NASA didn’t want the Astronauts to take their Speedmasters home and so they couldn’t train as much with them.
This also was the first automatic chronograph in space, as no one had tried before if they would work without gravity (surprise, they did, as momentum is still very much a thing in space).
Here is a very nice write up by a very knowledgeable guy:
https://www.plus9time.com/blog/2017/12/24/the-true-seiko-pogue-chronograph-6139-6005
Heard also gshocks were one of the few space rated watches for astronauts
To clarify, would you consider this specific individual watch the holy grail, or one of that make, model and spec?
Well, the ultimate holy Grail would be this individual watch
Second would be a “true Pogue” of the same spec and very close in serial number, although that would have to compete with a few other nice Seikos… There are so many out there. A platinum first Grand Seiko. A Seiko Spacewalk. A working and complete Seiko TV Watch (as seen in James Bond - Octopussy) 😉.
I do own a fine 6139-6002 yellow dial. However, that’s a later “rest of the world” model, with a more golden dial and different wording. Still nice, though. 😊
Mmm love a good space watch. Personal grail for me would be an Omega Skywalker X-33.
