- I sunk deeper into the Apple ecosystem and bought an Apple Watch 8. I have been thinking about alternatives to my Fitbit since Google is nerfing the new Fitbit watches in favor of the Google branded watches. The Apple Watch does approximately what I want a smartwatch to do. I can unlock my MacBook with the watch. It's fine.
- I bought an Elgato Stream Deck XL. It was "on sale" and I was interested in some features. This is just a panel of digital buttons - essentially a bunch of programmable keys. The intended use for this is for live streaming and video producers - so you can switch audio and video inputs with the push of a button.
I use the same monitor for my personal desktop and work laptop. The main reason I wanted this was so I could play audio on my personal computer and control it without switching screen input. Then I discovered I can also program it to switch inputs on my monitor! I also programmed a bunch of buttons for the apps I use all the time. One to launch Lightroom, that kind of thing. There are more advanced tasks, and you can create custom profiles for different situations and applications.
This wasn't necessary, but it was fun to set up and use.
I bought desk mats. I have one for my at-home workspace, and one coming for my work desk. I originally got these because I thought my mouse was having trouble scanning my desk surface, only to realize that the mouse is just not working (new mouse arrived yesterday.) I almost always use my own photos for designs, and these are no exceptions:
One additional gadget that's involved is the AI tool I used to make them. None of these images were big enough to cover the entire mat, so I used Luminar Neo's UpscalerAI. So far, I have been happy with the result.
I also experimented with LUTs. I had to look up what LUT stood for, but I should have guessed: Look Up Tables. It's a way to alter the color of the image by shifting the color palette of the image. I added a tinge more color to the titanium, and I emphasized the reds in the paramecium.
I'm still using the Elgato StreamDeck - I have a couple timers, and I actively use it for playing music and switching monitor sources. No regrets on that purchase.
I never thought about speciation in Paramecia before, but now that I have, The last ones I saw resembled E width tennis shoes. These appear to be a B width in a Ladies slipper, and the cilia were far more visible in the last ones I saw.
__________________
“Logic is a defined process for going wrong with Confidence and certainty.” —CF Kettering
In an attempt to participate in the modern world, I now have a new Mac Mini M2, it may be the lowest end available but it runs modern stuff and doesn't have a fan, which is oddly more important than I used to think, after spending time with a fanless iPad I realized the fans on my laptop were making me insane. The iPad is fun (and we'll see if I can snap it out of its boot loop) but it's clearly a device for consumption over creation.
I'm going to pretend a light bulb is a gadget, It's getting dark earlier and the LED bulbs I bought from the hardware store have such poor light quality and flicker it drives me crazy. To the point where I put CFLs back into most of my lights.
Based on the review bellow I bought a pack of Philips Utra Definition 2700K. I also bought a pack of Ultra Definition with a light color dial at the bottom.
I've had them for a few days now and I'm impressed especially for a ~$4 bulb. The color and light feels like an incandescent. The adjustable ones also feel quite nice but are mostly for the day where there not the only light source. The downside is that they're 60watt equivalent, but since they're not really 60watt I have a few Edison bulb splitters to connect 2 or 4 bulbs to a socket.
Reminds me, I used one set of the hook/bow shackle to attach my car fob to the rest of my keys. It makes it slightly easier to detach my car fob, but it also lets my keys lay consistently flatter next to the fob, with a bit of extra weight.
I'm slowly converting my EDC with a color palette of green, brown and black with brass accents. I also recently purchased a new mini multitool: OKNIFE Otacle P1 as a Gerber Dime replacement and have been carrying that for a week or so.
It's fine, but I don't know if I'll stick with it. I put a paracord loop on the keyring, but it's made the flat phillips screwdriver unusable, and the key ring has a small point that pokes me when I try to dig it out of my pocket. I need to find a better solution, or maybe not have anything attached to the keyring. It's otherwise about a functional as a Gerber Dime, but maybe a bit nicer.
Speaking of bulbs, I got a "smart bulb" from Amazon because it was part of a Prime deal in which I bought an Aerogarden, and although it's neat that it can be controlled from my phone and changes colors and all, it is MUCH less bright in every mode except "soft white". Even "white", "daylight white", "cool white", etc. not to mention colors, are all like half the brightness of "soft white". I don't get it.
we replaced all the 1157 incandescent interior bulbs in the RV with LED equivalents, back in 2018. We used to replace at least one of the incandescent bulbs every outing. all of the LEDs have been going fine since the replacement.
I have an entire set of spares that are collecting dust. I wonder if the entire set will just give out at once.
There is actually a significantly noticeable reduction in power draw since using the LEDs.
__________________
“Logic is a defined process for going wrong with Confidence and certainty.” —CF Kettering
My assumption would be that the color-tunable light has a bank of LEDs which, all together at full brightness, come out to "soft white".
I once tried a philips Hue bulb and I was super annoyed to discover that it simply could not attempt green, at all. Like, they just don't even a little bit support that, or didn't in that version anyway.
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
A major issue with LEDs is color rendition (CRI) as you can throw together a Red, Green and Blue LED to make party light strips to produce the whole rainbow like little pixels but they suck at providing accurate color. Reflective color only works with the wavelengths you give it, so a spike in the Red, green and blue might look warmish orange but will only reflect those three color spikes. White LEDs use yellow and blue LEDs to fake white light and from what I understand (but could be wrong) use phosphors to smooth out the color spectrum, so in 'white light' mode the greens come heavily from the phosphors.
You might be able to get a more party version of the hue, for awhile (until the USB port broke) I had a moon night light which upon inspection had two sets of LED strips one RGB and one for the white light mode.
Related the dial a temp bulbs are an amusing gimmick although I think I might end up using them in either 5000K or 2700K making the dedicated bulb a better value. They have a couple very orange and very yellow filament LEDs in them so I presume the dial changes intensity from one to the other.
About a month in, and while I haven't thrown anything crazy at it, everything I have done, from editing and slowly organizing photos, to browsing the web to tinkering around in Blender, has been snappy and fast.
I was originally considering either 16gb of RAM or the bigger SSD as benchmark tests show a significant boost from the baseline for either, but it being apple there's no upgrading later and each option is a few hundred dollars, slowly pushing the price up into 'why not get a different computer' territory. I'm glad I didn't and instead spent it on bits and bobs like a harddrive and monitor.
If no one had told me, I would be surprised to learn this is the slowest machine apple current sells. I'm sure I could get it to choke and spin editing 4k video, but for doing general computery stuff it seems more than adequate.
i'm honestly surprised that they still even make machines with under 16GB of RAM, but if it's working, cool!
__________________ Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
That was my thought as well, but after looking at some benchmarks it would appear that base model with a faster SSD tests ever so slightly better than the base model with 16gb ram.
From my, incomplete, understanding, MacOS likes it's ram dynamic with lots of background swaps so that it can claim to have a bunch available for whatever program happens to be active at the moment (similar to iOS), making SSD speed matter as much as total ram, I would presume the same computer with 8gb ram but a 5400rpm hard drive would cough and sputter. Lots of ram is most important for tasks that need constant access to huge arrays like raytracing and video compression.
Also this is apple, they purposefully hobbled the lowest end to give reason to spend more, there's really no reason not to put 16gb in the base model except to push people needing it for video editing into upgrading.
My previous assumptions was that the hobble version was going to be nice but something I needed to baby to not hit ram limits, but the OS seems to be doing all the babying behind the scenes quite well.
I bought this knife from Temu for a few dollars as part of a $20 experiment to see if anything there was worth buying. (If you're okay with basically dollar store quality, maybe worth it.)
It's heavy and sturdy, but I'm pretty sure it's a counterfeit because the locking mechanism is missing. It isn't very useful to me if it's going to clamp shut on my fingers when I'm trying to murder someone cut open a box.
It's so weird, the row of little notches below 'black' should be the linerlock, but then you turn it to the side and it disappears, perhaps it's stuck?
Oddly enough on my knife the notches are just part of the side. Like there just for show.
You can see in the video that the liner lock also has a small ball on it as well. I'd guess that's the detent ball that keeps it closed, so the blade also just swings freely from open to closed?
This is like a riddle, I've been racking my brain trying to understand, perhaps it's a display model and it's meant to be on a motorized stand that opens and closes it?
Of all the things to remove and then fake, the liner lock is such an odd choice, there's nothing special or complicated about it, it's just a springy flap of metal.
Re: Gadgetry
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