• friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23·
      9 months ago

      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.

        • friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          9 months ago

          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.

          • Mac@mander.xyzEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            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!

          • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
            3·
            9 months ago

            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.

      • Nefara@lemmy.world
        15·
        9 months ago

        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

    • Semester3383@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 months ago

        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.

        • Semester3383@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          For sound reproduction, I prefer my wired Shure SE-315 with sound-isolating ear tips. But Shokz ar much more comfortable for all-day wear.

      • glinkstiddle@lemmy.world
        3·
        9 months ago

        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.

    • Evotech@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 months ago

      I love my Shockz #ad

      Pretty much the only headset I’ve been using on the go for the last 3-4 years

      • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 months ago

        Same, I got mine about 6 months ago and they are a huge game changer. Bought them originally to use while riding my escooter so I could still hear traffic, etc. I ride in about an hour each way to work. They’re incredible I can even still hear birds, but can hear my music totally clearly.

        Bonus is that I can wear them at work all the time now and still hear when people are trying to get my attention, and I’m not constantly removing them and losing them like I would with my earbuds.

        I also love the sound quality, which you’d expect would be awful, but it just sounds like there’s music playing in the room you’re in. Sometimes I forget that the music is just in my ears. Cannot recommend enough honestly.

  • tetris11@lemmy.ml
    303·
    9 months ago

    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

      • tetris11@lemmy.ml
        7·
        9 months ago

        I’m at my machine 12+ hours a day, coding, data analysis, grant writing, etc.
        I might play some online games too

    • tankplanker@lemmy.world
      51·
      9 months ago

      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.

    • toddestan@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 months ago

      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.

    • lagoon8622@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      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

      • tetris11@lemmy.ml
        1·
        9 months ago

        I had double-press issues a lot which were maddening, but I uodated the firmware and it went away

  • Canopyflyer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    9 months ago

    House on the Rock

    When I moved to Wisconsin back in 2006, House on the Rock was one of the first things I heard about from my neighbors to go see. My wife and I looked at the website and said “we’ll go see it someday.” Well, that day was about a month ago as back then we started having kids and getting used to living in a new place. However, over the past 19 years I’ve had people tell me that “you’ve got to go see it.”

    Now… I understand.

    Is that place a monument to a man’s ascent to brilliance?

    Or his decent into madness.

    There was stuff in that museum that I took DAYS to process and I still really am unable to understand what it was I was looking at. It took my family and I FOUR hours to walk through it. It could have been a LOT longer if we actually stopped to study more than what we did.

    I’m 55 years old and I’ve seen and done a lot things in my life… None of it prepared me for the sheer onslaught that is House on the Rock. Walking out of it I told my wife that I rather chaffed at the entrance fee when I paid it… Now, I’m not sure if they charged enough.

    If you’re ever anywhere close to South Central Wisconsin… Take a day and go see it.

    It doesn’t just live up to the hype… It so far exceeds it that trying to explain the place will never do it justice.

    • frunch@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 months ago

      It’s so cool to see this pop up here–i went there with my wife several years ago and we were absolutely stunned by it’s magnificence and sheer scale. I plan on going back someday and spending an entire day there knowing what we’re in store for. I had been given a recommendation to check it out by a local who ran a log cabin lodge that was about 1/2 hour or so from the House. That place really blew me away, glad to know other folks are out there appreciating it too!

      That carousel was insane, not to mention the amount of animated instruments and nickelodeons scattered about… The living quarters were so cool, if a little impractical. You could have the coolest parties ever in that place…

  • Codilingus@sh.itjust.works
    25·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • boiledham@lemmy.world
      16·
      9 months ago

      I remember going from a 2 minute boot time to under 40s on windows. That was all the convincing I needed

    • toddestan@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • Codilingus@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        9 months ago

        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.

  • Vandals_handle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    9 months ago

    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 round is not quite the same experience.

    • Jazsta@lemmy.world
      5·
      9 months ago

      Keeping it clean with minimal effort compared to a gas range was unexpectedly my favorite part

      • Vandals_handle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        I find it even easier than a glass top electric (what the induction replaced) I think it is because only the area directly below the pan is heated, spills are easier to wipe up and don’t get baked on.

    • burrito@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      9 months ago

      Absolutely this. An induction range was a game changer in terms of cooking and has paid for itself many times over. I lucked out and found a high end used one for $400 many years ago. When camping I use a portable one, and while not as good as a full range, it is still much better than any propane cooktop I’ve used.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      9 months ago

      Yea I got a separate plug-in induction wok because I just couldn’t get the flat bottom one to work well.

  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    9 months ago

    Yosemite. People told me about it for years, along with how it was full of tourists, so I avoided it. Eventually I did go and wow, it’s incredible. Seriously one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen.

  • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    9 months ago

    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.

      • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        9 months ago

        What was that “holy crap I didn’t know what good audio was” moment for you?

        • Shivering6658@midwest.social
          4·
          9 months ago

          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)

          • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            9 months ago

            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.

  • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
    212·
    9 months ago

    The first Marvel Avengers movie. Skipped it in theaters because it sounded too much like fans being super happy they got their team up movie. So many similar movies had been hyped up over the years, and the description was similar.

    Nope, it really was that good even with a sky beam and an enemy army that all died when the central ship was destroyed. The pacing, interteam conflicts, and clever use of Loki were all done extremely well and the movie holds up.

    • Klear@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      I rewatched it a while ago and it’s fascinating how it feels like a small-scale little team-up nowadays. Back then I was amazed how they managed to make a movie with so many heroes work while giving them all their moments.

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
      20·
      9 months ago

      Honestly, They shot for the stars and only made it to Jupiter… it was still a FUCKING GREAT game, just less than was promised.

    • kshade@lemmy.world
      1·
      9 months ago

      Bought it at launch and just couldn’t cope with the mechanics. Not a fun experience. But then I played it after 2.0 came out and now I have a favorite game. Never really had one before.