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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   4231 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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What purchases have you been extremely satisfied with lately? Can be large, small, regular or extraordinary, for yourself or as a gift, whatever.

For me:

-- I love my 97lb kettlebell. I'm having so much fun.

-- I bought a NEBO cap light at the hardware store, although upon googling to find it for this I'm realizing I overpaid. It's really convenient, in the heat lately I've been trying to walk my dog for a long walk before the sun comes up and again after it comes down, I bought it to keep the red light on when I walk her to avoid getting hit by a car. I've never had a good clip light before, it's so far superior to a strap on headlamp.

-- I like cool mint Zyns on long drives. I don't use them daily, but I find them very nice when I'm tired and bored, the nicotine perks me up, and the flavor is sort of nice with a diet coke without eating anything.

-- Lately I've been living off of frozen fruit blended with cottage cheese in the vitamix. It hits my frozen treat desire in the summer while being fairly high protein.

What about you?

Huh, I've never tried doing real cardio with zyn. Does it raise your heart rate a lot? Do you use the 6mgs?

I bought a 22 lb weighted vest/plate carrier. Really great for running and rucking, and most fun of all: it adds a layer of immersion to the mil-sim shooter I play on the Quest and turns my gaming sessions into nice workouts.

At least you'll already be running when people yell "are those level IV plates?"

Lots of weird looks but it hasn't happened yet!

Not me, but a friend bought an Insinkerator instant hot water dispenser. It actually makes their kitchen more functional and luxurious, unlike traditional "luxuries" like stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. You can start steeping tea immediately, make instant oatmeal instantly, and cut a decent fraction of the cooking time for pasta.

I'm a musician in my spare time, but I live in a tiny apartment with my girlfriend - no room for my guitars or even a practice amp. I was browsing a guitar shop in Adelaide in February and I spotted one of these Traveler guitars - extremely compact guitars designed for people on the road. I bought this one. This guitar is tiny: 71cm long, 13cm wide (a typical full-size guitar is 101cm x 38cm) and weighs only a little over a kilo. But its scale length is very slightly longer than my preferred guitar when I'm in the studio, so it's not like I'm cramping my fingers playing a half-size guitar. One of the ways they achieved such a small length is by integrating the machine heads into the body of the guitar, so there's no headstock. The tone from the guitar is very respectable, considering how small the body is. I can plug the guitar into my recording interface connected to my laptop, lay down a quick demo, then stash the guitar under my couch when I'm not using it. It even comes with a removable laprest so you can play it sitting down. Best of all, it set me back less than €400, and I got it on finance.

Nylon pot scraper on Amazon. My life is changed. I absolutely hate the Brillo pads and similar products wear out quite quickly. The scraper on the other hand never scratches but is just the right hardness to get rid of a surprising amount of gunk from pans without getting caught in a brush or sponge that would need periodic cleaning. Seriously, incredible purchase. You wouldn't think big deal but, big deal.

Also, and I'm fully aware this is like the stupidest looking thing of all time, this cell phone holder. The metal bit is actually really really bendable, so you can use it as a stand like the tripod things for Zoom calls, etc. but with way more flexibility of where to put it and height as well (works for on top of a desk without a weird too-low angle). You can fold it back on itself and put it on your stomach (better than neck) to watch a video laying down in bed (the holder rotates for easy wide-video too). Sometimes I find myself needing or wanting to film something that requires two hands, so then (and only then) I'll do the neck thing. I have used it while cooking as a stand too, or in a pinch it can also be shaped around an arm rest or chair back (used for a family photo once). It's big and solid, which is actually a plus.

Both of these items I have had at least two friends purchase based on my recommendation and both really like them.

Quick coupling hose connector. They're not that expensive and I don't have that many faucets or hoses.

What the heck do you do with a kettleball? I've heard so much about them being fun or people using them a lot. What makes them fun? Do they replace going to the gym for you?

For the most part, what you do with a kettlebell is repetitive explosives. You can also do more static exercises with them, like squats and presses and rows, and that's fine, but not really any better than a barbell or a dumbbell for that. In my mind the snatch is the king of all kettlebell exercises, the swing is the starting point (I've done the 10k swings in 30 days thing a couple times), but the ultimate expression of the kettlebell as an exercise tool is the 5-10 minute snatch test. The rounded motion, bringing it between your legs for the swing snapping the hips and pulling it through then swinging back down, provides a much more natural motion than the stiffness of a barbell or a dumbbell for reps. I can do 50 reps of KB snatch much easier than 50 reps of barbell snatch, much more graceful and with less chance of injury.

Sometimes I'm a kettlebell focused guy, sometimes I'm a barbell focused guy, sometimes I'm really into rock climbing. I'm mid at any of them. For me it's just one more thing I do when I'm in the mood for it, but in all honesty I think with one 24kg kettlebell you could get into better shape than most people do with a full gym. I'm just not that kind of minimalist.

Do you ever live your 97lb kettle bell over your head and scream "You have failed me for the last time!"?

No, but I did name it Erica, after a girl I dated who weighed 97lbs.

This has long been a tradition with warmup weights on the barbell for me, each weight between a pair of 25s and a pair of 45s+5s is a former lover. But this is the first kettlebell I've ever had that is person sized.

I got a star projector that puts pretty colours on my ceiling, it makes a much more aesthetic room imo.

I (by which I mean my wife) got one like that for my niece, it plays lullabys and projects stars on the ceiling. Her and her little brother have both gone through phases of refusing to go to bed without it. It was really a neat item.

Canon EOS-R5. Excellent camera body.

Bought a $10 Hario cold brew pitcher for my fridge. It's easy to use and the coffee is pretty good. I used to dick around with a $40 Filtron and its gnarly cloth(?) drip filters, but maintenance was a PITA. This is so much easier and ~90% as delicious.

I always just make cold brew in a half gallon mason jar, but for $10 that isn't bad.

Whenever I make cold brew, I don't get why other forms of coffee exist. It's so easy, requires no expensive equipment, comes out perfect every time.

In reluctant defence of Amazon, I bought a cheap HDMI to VGA adapter/converter from one of those brands with a weird Chinglish brand name and it worked flawlessly with no noticeable latency. Very satisfied with that one.

I've also been expanding my tool collection with cheap tools from Lidl, which while not the best are far better than I had assumed such cheap tools from a discount supermarket would be and more than adequate for the light duty use a casual DIYer like me subjects them to. Really handy for filling out the gaps in my kit without spending top dollar for something I don't have many uses for but struggle to do without. It's the only shopping experience I can find these days where I feel like I'm leaving good deals behind instead of trudging around six different shops or a dozen different websites that fail to offer a single appealing purchase between them.

I bought an apron. I was tired of getting grease stains on my clothes from cooking. I tried buying a couple on Amazon but both the expensive and cheap ones were low quality. Finally I went to a local catering supply shop which had a huge selection to choose from, all at reasonable prices.

The enshitification of Amazon continues.

I cobbled together a home gym from various suppliers (Half rack, FID Bench, Barbell, 100kg of weight plates) for a really reasonable price. Goodbye gym fees.

Home gym master race. It's so far superior.

I do go back to my old climbing gym weight room about twice a year to try to hit a max on the jerk or snatch, because I don't have a proper safe drop space or enough bumper plates at home.

Do you work remotely? I'm full remote, and I've thought about making a home gym, but then the gym is one of my few excuses to leave the house, so I'm worried I'll end up with cabin fever.

I'm kind of the opposite, my job involves a ton of driving around and meetings on an unpredictable schedule, so the home gym helps me keep on schedule because it's A) always open and B) zero commute time.

I also don't like showering at the gym, so there's that.

Olympus E-M5 mk3 camera and a couple of pro series lenses (12-45 f4 & 40-150 f4) for it. They’re a great combo of high quality and small weight. Life is too short to lug subpar or too heavy gear with you. They do say the best camera is the one you have with you, afterall.

The downside is that photographers are some of the most disagreeable people on the planet and there’s particularly a vocal subset of Micro Four Thirds users who like to gaslight everyone and eg. claim that the combo I have or the newer model don’t exist.

Seafoam fuel additive. I have always thought everything like this was bullshit...I was wrong. Seafoam will fix engines. I've recently used it on two lawnmowers, one riding tractor, and a generator that I would have otherwise had to take apart, one of the lawnmowers I did take apart and clean the carb etc...the seafoam pushed it over the edge afterwards into a useful machine. It is now on my list of mechanical must haves.

Adding wide, convex rear-view mirrors (both interior and exterior) to your car makes changing lanes on the highway absolutely stress-free. This image is only slightly exaggerated: with a wide, convex interior rear-view mirror, you can watch through the rear window and through the right rear passenger window simultaneously (especially after removing the headrest from the front passenger seat).

Why is this not standard on every car? It seems so obviously superior.

Under the relevant section of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (a set of regulations issued by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration), only the passenger-side rear-view mirror is permitted to be convex. (That's the reason for the "objects in mirror are closer than they appear" warning.) The interior and driver-side mirrors, on the other hand, are specifically required to be flat ("of unit magnification").

Some cursory searches (1 2) of the Federal Register do not reveal any discussion of the rationale behind this particular rule. However, one other discussion appears to be related. On vehicles that are heavier than five tons, the passenger-side rear-view mirror cannot be convex, but is required to be flat like the other two mirrors. Way back in year 2000, AM General, the manufacturer of the Hummer H1 (with gross weight of 5.15–6.05 tons), requested that this rule be changed to match the rule for passenger vehicles. With typical government alacrity, NHTSA took five years to reject the request:

Despite public commenters' expressions of support for a convex-mirror option for the vehicles in question, the agency remains concerned about the difficulties that drivers may encounter in correctly judging distance and speed of approaching traffic if the vehicle is only equipped with a convex mirror. As stated in the Request for Comments, although convex mirrors are permitted on the passenger side of light vehicles, the agency still receives complaints from consumers about these mirrors. "There have been other problems associated with the use of convex mirrors that include double vision, eyestrain, and nausea."

Thanks for the effortful reply.

Seems like it's a hodgepodge of regulatory fuckery and legitimate but probably outlier issues with vision, distance judging, etc.

I await the day where full self-driving car manufacturers have to confront regulatory bureaucrats who ask questions like, "Can the AI use flat mirrors during lane changes, or would it prefer convex ones?"

especially after removing the headrest from the front passenger seat

Surely the passenger would object?

In approximately 98 percent of my trips, there is no passenger. I keep the front passenger seat's headrest in the rear seats' footwell, so that, in the rare event that I do have a passenger, the headrest can be reinstalled in just a few seconds of toolless effort. Your situation, and your vehicle, may be different.

As an alternative to removing the headrest, you can just fold the seat back so that the headrest doesn't block your view.

Huh. That's pretty neat.

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