The total eclipse. I was lucky enough to live in the path of last year’s. I now understand why people are willing to travel across the world just to experience something that only lasts a few minutes.
I think being in 100% totality would make all the difference. I was in like 60 or 70 percent totality and while it was neat, and I’m happy I got to experience it, it wasn’t insanely awesome.
It really is indescribable. Just to give you an idea, even five seconds before totality is boring. It’s day, a little darker than usual. Then, five seconds later, it’s totality, and it’s like the entire universe had been replaced by a magical fairy tale land.
It’s crazy how poorly photos convey the experience.
My photos don’t really convey the experience of watching it happen but I did get awesome pics last year. I had total coverage and got super lucky with the weather and didn’t have to leave the house. There are comments from me that has more details about how I got the photos in case anyone finds it interesting.
Oops lol just realized I just sent the link to my lunar eclipse photos, lemme fix that
This links to my photo vault that has my solar eclipse pics sprinkled in https://blog.machinations.space/photobombination/
These are my lunar eclipse pics with the more details https://lemmy.zip/post/34119331
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2914
I wouldn’t say five seconds before totality is boring; you can look up and see the tiny sliver of Sun as it winks out of existence, and see shadowy ripples on the ground from differences in air density. But that’s still nothing compared to totality.
Dang! I should’ve taken my kids out of school and driven them 100 miles to see the totality! I may never get another chance like that.
Huge difference.
As a kid I saw an annular solar eclipse (ring of fire) and thought it was pretty neat, but I wasn’t that excited for the recent total eclipse. Decided that I might as well just drive the few hours to give my young son the full experience.
WOW what a difference it made when that last sliver of sun got eclipsed. Incomparable.
Have you ever seen a sunset in 360 degrees around you, everywhere you looked?
I have.It’s worth travelling for. There will be more coming!
Yes, being in totality is a completely different experience. Imagine looking up at the sky into a twilight, where a black hole ringed with ghostly white light hovers eerily where the sun once was. It’s truly otherworldly
And the temperature and sound changes too. Also it’s pretty neat to be in a crowd for a moment of communal awe.
not even just the people, we were on the edge of a lake and something about the way the wildlife sounded just changed.
Would you mind elaborating on your experience? Why was it exciting ? What came through your mind at the time ?
I’ve seen a solar eclipse but I’m in elementary at the time and didn’t care for it. Now I wonder if it must have been kinda terrifying the old human thought their God was mad.
The sun is so bright that even when a sliver of it is still showing, it’s blinding. So a partial eclipse, even at 99%, just looks like the sun only a crescent instead of a circle. Oh and the shadows can look funny and you might notice it’s a bit darker.
Then you get to totality and it is something new. It gets noticeably darker, first of all, but in a different way than normal. Not like a storm or night, it’s eerie and hard to explain.
But you can also look at the sun without protection. And you don’t see any of the main disc itself but you get a clear sight of what’s around it: the waves of plasma coming off of the sun, moving while you watch.
After seeing totality, partial eclipses are now meh. In fact, once totality ended, there was still like an hour of partial eclipse left, but I didn’t care, it was time to drive home. I won’t even bother looking at future partial eclipses at home in the future, but I might fly out to a future total one. Seeing one made me understand how people who knew about them back in the day could use that to control those who didn’t. It feels profound.
I didn’t think Portal could possibly live up to the hype and I slept on it for a a decade. It did. Superb game
This was a triumph
I’m making a note here: huge success.
For the good of all of us. Except the ones who are dead.
So looking forward to that piece of cake
Linux and open source software.
Tested out a dualboot of Linux Mint about 2 years ago on a Windows laptop. Wanted to see how far I could get on 100% open source and free software.
I got far enough that I never looked back.
Same for me with Nobara Linux. Its been a year and a half and I’m so glad I migrated over.
An air fryer. Holy cow that thing is versatile and an amazing addition to the kitchen!
I ended up with one for free after years of not caring. What I found is that you cannot match their ability to turn the cheapest hot dogs into great hot dogs. That a kielbasa or smoked sausage becomes a work of art. Heat up a microwave burrito in the microwave and then crisp it in the air fryer. Perfect for egg rolls. Anything where that skin has to be crispy or have a bite to it is a great thing to throw into an air fryer.
Agreed! I probably use mine 10x more than my oven now.
Air-fryer
bone-conducting headphones
PSX
Firefly
Inis
Innovation
bone-conducting headphones
Very curious to try. I bought some surprisingly cheap ones to see if it would be worth spending more on them, but the ones I received said nothing about bone conduction so the ad was a flat out lie.
Air-fryer
Yes
Firefly
Yes
If you turn them up to high volume, they distort, buzz, and tickle on your skin. So only quiet to mid volume. The sound quality is medium-high(I’m no audiophile). Being able to listen to media and be aware of surroundings is excellent. Previously achievable with in-earbuds, only by doing the one earpiece dangle. Sweat/water resistant. 8hr playtime. Pretty wild.
So, I tried wearing earplugs with my Shokz. Disappointingly, the sound became very, very muffled. I don’t think that it’s true bone conduction, because if it was, then earplugs shouldn’t have had a significant impact on the sound. They’re still nice, just… Not as cool.
Firefly is solidly decent. It’s not great, it’s not terrible. It had real potential, and then got cancelled after 12 (?) episodes. Babylon 5 was arguably a better show overall, but I can see why Firefly still has a solid fandom 20 years later.
Interesting test. I just tried mine with my high fidelity ear plugs and it actually made it clearer when my music is at a lower volume. of course these aren’t meant to block out all sounds though.
With regular earplugs, its a little muffled, but I’m honestly quite impressed by how good it still sounds.
bone-conducting headphones
Do you have a specific recommendation? I’m interested in trying one
Not OP but I got Shokz OpenMove years ago, specifically because they use USB type-C to charge. . I use them daily at work and love them. Sound is good enough for me. I can hear music and stuff still going on at work. It’s like sounds being pumped into your brain with your ears still working.
Inis
Innovation
A man of culture.
Glad to see Innovation getting so much love after being on SUSD. It’s really a great game.
I’ve also enjoyed exploring Mottainai after everything in the rules finally clicked.
+1 on the air fryer.
+1 on Kaylee Frye
High quality audio equipment.
Yes, it’s an area filled with more snake-oil and bullshit than any other technical realm I’ve experienced, but with some knowledge (unarguably required on the part of the user) you can actually figure stuff out and get some ROCKING audio gear for pennies on the dollar.
Last year I got into electronic fix/build/mashup as a hobby, and a project I had in mind for fun was to turn a $10 Sirius Boombox that needed 8xD batteries and a wired AUX input, into a wireless BT boombox. I did it and it was fun as hellllllll. But it was not for the audio, it was for the learning. I repurposed battery cells and a charging board from a Shark handheld vacuum, and grabbed a BT board out of a scrapped shower speaker - made that work by “bolting it” onto a disposable vape battery/charger which draws from the main battery pak.
Well anyways… getting a taste of that deep, rich, penetrating audio made me realize I’d been sold THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LIE by the speaker business. That moment of looking at my Bose SoundLink and realizing I’ve been a fool for so long. The stupid Sirius boombox isn’t even that good now that I look back, but at the moment it was a HOLY SHIT moment for me. Running up to it thinking my music was distorting… but NO… it was actually musical details I’d never heard, and didn’t know existed.
Now I have a soul-destroying audio setup (for a small 1BR apartment) that I shit you not, cost me a total of $23. RXV581 Receiver, YST-SW011 Subwoofer and two Polk MXT11 Monitor tower speakers. People either discarded, sold, or donated. I got the Yamaha Receiver/Sub set because… get this… ONE of the surround sound speakers was dropped and it’s case cracked, so they threw it ALL away. The Polks were seen at thrift, first for $70 each, then reduced to $34 after a month… then one day muthafukkaaaaaaa $10 each plus tax.\
So yeah. Good audio. I had NO idea how satisfying it could be. I didn’t know what I’d been missing.
Same experience here with mid and high end audio collecting for both car and home.
What was that “holy crap I didn’t know what good audio was” moment for you?
50 dollar pair of Sennheiser over the ear (not cans) headphones absolutely blew my mind which lead to many a denon, electovoice, carver, klipsch, adcom, & cerwin-vega passing through my hands (i miss my “house” speakers (cobbled together and refoamed the woofers from 2 sets of 1970’s vintage D9’s and ran them with a 200 watt rms/ch electrovoice power amp as a bedroom dj for many a house party 😁🍻) not to say my current stereo cant thump, buuuuuttttt (i hear an old man in my head) “theres no replacement for displacement” way of thinking will probably lead to either a home theater sub or more car audio
Edit: and good taste in polk! I ran their 6.5 coaxials in the doors of my car with an Alpine 9855, kenwood power amp giving them around 80-100 watts and 24db/octave high and low pass filters (i cant recall the center freq of those crossovers but i think i rolled the lows off around 1500 hz and the highs around 4000-4500 hz)
Cool! 200 Watt RMS/ch yoooooooo
My 2nd experience, which happened to be headphones as well - a wired set of B&W I got for $2 because the cable frayed.
I’m on board with you there about the “displacement” idea. With engines technology can help, but with audio all the wave guides, custom boxes and tomfoolery in the world can’t get around physics. Bigger = better.
edit: re your edit. A big part of how I do … things… is to be patient and let them come into my life. Having been able to pick up so much crazy gear for pennies means I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I paid retail or even used prices. When the “bug” was first starting to bite me I decided to buy a used sub for $100 which was still a deal. I nearly cried when I saw the exact sub at thrift for $9. But hey, sold the one I bought and moved on so no issue. But yeah… I don’t have the money to buy everything I’d like but I’m becoming aware of what’s good and what’s not, and I enjoy the “saving” or “free” aspect very much. Plus I get to keep the constant upgrade cycle going and make a bit of side cash too.
I’ve been a frugal audiophile for my entire life. I learned long ago that you can find gear with excellent specs, without spending thousands.
These days, I’m mostly into guitars, and I’ve found the same thing to be true - there is no correlation between quality and price. I’ve seen great guitars that are dirt cheap, and I’ve seen expensive guitars that are mediocre. I put together an entire home studio, with 2 electrics, an acoustic, a bass, and a keyboard, a new computer, interface, mic, etc., all for less than $1500, and it all sounds amazing.
Coffee. My dad was in the navy in the 70s and you could tell by the tar he drank. Never got into it. Early 20s I got hired as a delivery boy for a coffee shop. A perk was that it came with free coffee drinks. Turns out I didn’t hate coffee, I hated the swill my father brewed. Good coffee was quite good.
I had a very similar experience when it came to beer.
I’m not sure where you’re from, but here in the UK almost everybody drinks instant coffee and that’s how I feel about it. It’s horrible, and the only reason people seem to think they like it is because they fill it with milk and sugar.
The US. In my dad’s time it was percolator brewed (the literal worst way to brew) or with low grade, super roasted. I drink medium roast or lighter and drip brew or pour over. Vast vast difference.
The Persona series has even brought up the idea you’d praise coffee more for its mature flavor than just to wake up. In some places, they drink it at any time of day.
Buckwheat pillow
Bidet
Tell me more about this pillow of yours please
Just a pillow that is filled with buckwheat. They’re like $50 bucks. Kind of bean-baggy. If you get one, you’ll put your head on it and think,“Damn, this is kind of hard”, but then you’ll adjust it to your head and have a great nights sleep. I kept hearing about them, then I needed to replace my pillow one day and figured,what the hell. Let’s see what this is about. Totally worth it.
They’re also absolutely OP in a pillow fight (I got one when I was like 10, and never looked back)
I didn’t see any of the hype for the Barbie movie (apparently they painted streets in London pink?), but I just went in and saw it. Awesome film
Also: A laser tape measure. I always heard about people ranting about them, and often thought “I get it I get it you’re a child who likes shiny things”, but I finally got one and it is one of my most prized possessions. I can now find out the distance to things like THAT.
Didn’t live up the hype: I caved in and got a mechanical keyboard. A nice one. Keychron something such. I now have a heavy clackety-clack keyboard. That’s it. The usual plastic 15 quid keyboards I get are only every so slightly less good. Don’t buy into this fad. It’s for ASMR fanatics and their heavy wallets
What do you use your keyboard/computer for and for how long if you don’t mind my asking?
I’m at my machine 12+ hours a day, coding, data analysis, grant writing, etc.
I might play some online games too
I agree and disagree with you. agree that it’s overhyped by fanatics of the hobby. I disagree because I got it for not dealing with rubber membrane keyboards. those truly suck dirt.
problem with getting in mkb now is the choice overload. it was a lot easier for me back 10 years ago. I’m not claiming it was better back then, objectively now is better because there’s more choice for your own needs and wants.
Counterpoint on the mechanical keyboard. I type heavily (as in, I hit the keys hard) and my joints are terrible. After a day typing on a shitty membrane keyboard my hands will be aching. A mech lets me find the right switch/dampener combo so that doesn’t happen
Wait, how well you like a mechanical keyboard generally mainly hinges on what kind of mechanical switches you get, and there are like over a dozen varieties of switches with very different characteristics. Did you sample a variety of at least the most popular switches and pick your favorite?
Yep, went with banana - purely for the clackety clack. I am a child
Got it, no worries, I was just curious.
I bought a mechanical keyboard back when this whole mechanical keyboard fad was in its infancy back in the mid-2000’s. Honestly, the main reason I bought it was because I thought the key backlighting was cool. It’s a nice keyboard, but I find a decent membrane keyboard (such as what I have at work) to work just as well for a fraction of the cost.
I suppose I can’t complain about the durability though, as it’s lasted nearly 20 years now.
Not too long ago I checked out the current state of what is out there, and it’s just nuts with all the choices. Not to mention all the fanatics that seem to like to build dozens of keyboards.
Interestingly, despite all the heavy customization of things like switches and keycaps, there seems to be very little ability to customize the layout. Many of the various compact keyboards out there make some interesting design choices (IMHO) about what keys they leave off, and where they distribute the keys that they decide to still include. I wouldn’t mind taking a short at creating my own compact layout, but that doesn’t seem to be what the hobby is about.
Mechanical keyboards are like guitars, you can play the same notes on a cheap one as you can on something custom made for you for thousands. Do they sound very different? Almost always, although the guitar needs someone who can actually play well, unlike the mechanical keyboard.
However, if you really really care and you really really know what you want out of either you can tweak absolutely everything about both. You want ultra soft silent keyboard? Sure. You want the most clickty keyboard with tons of pressure? Sure. You want something thocky but still has lots of flex? Sure.
Induction range top. Quick on, fine degree of control, quick off, little heat radiation. Better than gas. Only adaptation was flat bottom wok which
makes the working world go roundis not quite the same experience.Yea I got a separate plug-in induction wok because I just couldn’t get the flat bottom one to work well.
Keeping it clean with minimal effort compared to a gas range was unexpectedly my favorite part
PC SSDs when they first came out, I saved $ and splurged for 256 GB over 128 GB. In the first week I was slightly upset I didn’t save more $ and go for a big expensive 512 GB one. Immediately I was telling my other PC gaming friends it’s going to revolutionize PCs in general, and to get one ASAP!
Edit: I can’t remember shit for fuck, but the size I bought was probably quite smaller than 256 GB lol.
I remember going from a 2 minute boot time to under 40s on windows. That was all the convincing I needed
I don’t think there were SSDs that large when they first came out in the late 2000’s. I saved up for an 80GB one back around 2009, and it was an absolute piece of trash. It was fast when it wanted to be, but most of the time it would randomly stutter and just go unresponsive for several seconds causing the rest of the PC to hang up until it decided to start responding again. After fighting with it for too long, I replaced it with a traditional harddrive which at least behaved as it was supposed to.
It was several years later before I tried another SSD, buying a relatively inexpensive 120GB drive that actually did live up to the hype.
Hmmmm, I’m probably misremembering the size now that you mention it. I’m also practically incapable of remembering when something was, but it would have been around the late 2000s - early 2010s. I do remember it held Windows plus 1-2 games, and I juggled around the games I played most from SSD to HDD and back.
Naps
I was just trying to explain to my 26 year old son how a 30 minute power nap can buy you several hours at the end of your night. I discovered that about the same age, when I got a girlfriend who didn’t get off work until midnite, while I had a normal 9-5. A post work power nap could keep me awake later to hang out with her.
Crocs. I had avoided them for years until I went on a kayaking tour on Vancouver Island. Well, while they were ugly AF, they are one of most comfortable shoes I’ve tried that are just… Easy to slip on and off?
I’m legit scared to try them on, and be overwhelmed by how comfortable they are that I don’t care about their looks. But the fact they’re the shoes from Idiocracy is keeping me from ever trying. IIRC they weren’t even released to the public yet, and Mike Judge was like these are perfect, ain’t no way anyone would ever be caught dead in these ugly ass shoes.
I know I’m alone in this, but I loved and still love VR since htc vive
Maybe I’m missing years of video game discourse but I don’t know what you’re talking about being alone on this hill. I’ve been using VR since the Google Cardboard and as long as you temper your expectations it’s been plenty fine since even all the way back then. The experiences on the Vive and Index are a bit clunky but otherwise I have fun with them every time I use them.
I only have a Quest 2 and I still love it. I think we won’t see mass adoption until it’s slimmed down to just glasses.
I don’t think it can ever be that thin. There’s too many constraints: needs to block other light, needs to be at a comfortable focal distance, needs power and a processor, not to mention the input and audio components…
Augmented reality glasses, yeah I can see that.
Breaking Bad
I’m not normally a fan of dramas but after Breaking Bad I became a person that will sit down and not leave the couch if Breaking Bad is on.
Did you make it to Better Call Saul, yet? I think I liked it even more.
Yes, I agree.
