Does a Hello Kitty bandsaw count?
No. That’s the coolest shit I’ve ever seen
I actually did the paint job myself. Bought an old saw that needed some new paint, so I decided to have some fun with it.
Are you actually a wood scientist, and, if so; can I pick your brain?
Nice saw, BTW!
I’m actually working on a PhD in the field. Whether that officially makes me a “scientist” I cannot say. But I have actually studied and done research in the field. Ask away!
Rock and Roll!
What cheap woods are the most impact resistant for splintering and splitting?
What is the best way to cure wood to prevent splitting without a kiln? Slap a heavy coat of latex paint on a log/burl/root and let it sit 6mo/year?
What are the most machinable hardwoods? (In particular as regards tearout, warping, and tolerance of thin sections)
In your opinion, what is an available underappreciated or interesting wood to work?
I’ve had a burl with the ends coated in truck box liner spray for almost a year. I’m cracking into it this winter to make a bathroom sink for my house. It hasn’t seemed to crack at all. It’s in a storage shed. Protected from the elements. It will be interesting to see what’s inside.
I bought a used rusty school bus. Six years later, at least I know how to weld now. Sort of. I also learned how to survive hitting my head on a large steel C-clamp nine times without suffering any brain damage. Additionally, I learned how to survive hitting my head on a large steel C-clamp nine times without suffering any brain damage.
Six years later, at least I know how to weld now. Sort of.
The most important part of the Dunning Kruger curve! And welding is a fantastic example. You go from “this hot melty thing is scary” to “dang, I can make metal stick to itself!” to “that weld looks kinda professional” to “holy crap there’s a whole science and art to this I will never have the time to fully learn”.
Is your school bus now something usable? Would love to hear about a successful impulse buy!
My skoolie is semi-usable, basically just needs the utilities (electric, propane and water) hooked up. I bought a house two years ago and that has suspended work on the bus completely. Someday …
I bought a pallet of computers at an auction at a local college for $250 a year or two ago. HP Elitedesk GenIIs specifically (4th Gen i5, 8GB of RAM, 256gb SSDs, and space for add in cards and more drives if needed) I did not expect my throwaway bid to win but it did. So now I have a bunch of computers. I have some projects in mind, but honestly I’ve mostly been tossing them to friends and family when they need a computer for something. Eventually they’ll all be allocated, sold and given away but it’s certainly taking a bit
You can’t like connect them together and make an AI server with them?
I’ve not seen freely available software to split such a workload across multiple machines, but realistically if I did I’d be looking at less performance that if I just got a single used datacenter card (like one of the Nvidia Tesla cards) off eBay for the same price and popped it into a computer, or if I got a single much more modern server.
I can however cluster them in fun ways for redundancy! Most hypervisors support clustering so that VMs can be migrated to another host if one needs to be taken offline for anything, or if one unexpectedly powes off the others will continue the workload. Or clustered storage where it spreads the storage across multiple hosts for redundancy as well as speed. I definitely want to get some of those old 25GB or even some of those 40GB infiniband cards and run a glusterFS or Ceph cluster to really see what clustered storage can do (I ran a Ceph cluster in a lab in college but it was over a gigabit network so everything was painfully slow)
But those projects will account for only about a dozen computers at most, so I have to find more projects and more willing people to have these systems foisted upon
This subject is dear to my heart, because I realized that part of my conservative upbringing taught me money is the important thing and that emotions are worthless and dumb. If you spend money on something that makes you happy but does not provide commensurate utility or return on investment, it is by definition a dumb purchase. Treating yourself is a waste of resources and therefore makes you a bad person. Maybe unless you are debt free and fully funding every retirement and college account you got. (note the unspoken implication that it’s cool for the rich to do whatever they want)
As I have spent decades reverse engineering the instructions for my brain, I have recently concluded that not only do I thrive when building and creating things, but having the perfect high-quality tool that is great at what it does right down to the sensory feedback can really enhance the experience for me.
I’ve spent a bunch of money expanding and upgrading my collection this year, and I haven’t regretted it once. But I’ve spent even more on the materials just in the months since!
That’s not a conservative upbringing/mentality… That’s a capitalist mentality.
The only thing I can really say about capitalists is that they’re some of the worst people I’ve ever known, and I’ve known a few of them.
Very religious people (usually conservatives) are generally quite kind and generous. If they follow their religious book, that tracks. Since most religions teach about tolerance, acceptance, and understanding. Like the legend Fred Rogers; May he rest in peace.
Usually very liberal people are about basic social services for everyone, and programmes that support DEI. They want everyone to be on an equal playing field and they want that playing field to be, at a minimum, allowing all people to independently be able to live, have reasonably good health, food to eat, and somewhere to live.
Meanwhile capitalists always focus on the money. Who is paying for all of this? They don’t want their money (via taxes) to go to people that are less than them. Anyone who makes less or has less is “losing”, and they’re “winning”. All capitalists want to be on top, and they don’t care who they have to trample to achieve that.
There are exceptions of course, on every one of these groups. For example, Bill Gates who donates a lot of money for good causes. He still has plenty of money, but honestly, he gives away a lot. By no means do I mean to imply that any billionaire is good; in this case Bill is just using the wealth he has to do good. He’s clearly someone that made a lot of money doing capitalism things, and yet he believes in helping others.
The capitalists I have met are some of the most argumentative, vocal, and toxic people I’ve ever met.
Good on you for getting away from that mentality and finding enjoyment.
Agreed, and your wording is excellent.
I really enjoy Ramit Sethi’s take on this; he encourages what he calls living a rich life. Yeah you should look to your financial future but you have to balance it with your life now. It’s sad when you’re limiting yourself out of fear. He’s an advocate for spending where it brings you value (and only you can decide that), and aggressively cutting out the things that don’t.
He’s an advocate for spending where it brings you value (and only you can decide that), and aggressively cutting out the things that don’t.
That’s an excellent way to put it! Sometimes I feel like a weirdo for actually pursuing the things that bring me happiness. Like that makes me the eccentric one. So many seem to be on a boring yet miserable autopilot, trying get the things they’ve been taught they SHOULD want.
I bought an old boat in Amsterdam (3000€), did some reparations (500€), replaced the engine (1500€), paid the local tax (600€ x 3years). I had fun with it. No regrets. Then I was moving back to my country, I couldn’t find a buyer… so I lowered the price to 1500€.
You were great, old boat. But not a great investment.
I once asked my dad if he’d ever buy a boat. He asked me why he would want to buy “a hole in the water to throw money into.”
I heard this 1000 times, together with “the two best moments in the life of a boat owner are the day you buy it, and the day you sell it”
AND don’t forget that B.O.A.T. is actually an acronym for ‘break out another thousand.’
Vehicles are notoriously not investments except for some incredibly exceptional cases. Glad you enjoyed your time with it. That’s the best you can hope for.
My pregnant wife asked me to get her a fountain Coke Zero from Costco the other day… I paid for the thing and waited patiently for my empty cup. When I approached the dispenser, I found that all three Coke Zeros were out of order. I had no choice but to fill it with Diet Coke. It was the lowest Costco experience of our lives.
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I realise that it’s probably a highly technical question, but is there a difference?
Coke Zero is a newer diet option formulated to taste similar to original Coke, with the presence of a mild artificial sweetener flavor that is more recognizable to those who are sensitive to the taste. Diet Coke, on the other hand, was created decades before they had decent sweeteners. While it still has a sizable following of people who like it, Diet Coke tastes nothing like original Coke, and has a flavor more akin to the smell of hot plastic.
This is pretty consistent across all brands now, at least from those that I’ve tried so far. The new Zero versions are much, much closer to the original formulas.
Coke Zero is the formula marketed to males who do not want to be on a “diet”.
It’s got some extra flavor extracts as far as I can tell; a more robust and “spicy” taste v Diet Coke
A blank 10cm by 10cm square piece of aluminium. About 2 cm thick
I think I wanted to know how it felt. Like, the vibe of aluminium
Add a tungsten cube to begin a collection.
That sounds completely logical to me. Did having a hunk of aluminum answer the question for you? Or did it only drive a more insatiable desire to hold elemental materials?
I did a coop at IBM many many years ago. My project used a 1" thick slab of aluminum that was about 3’ x 4’ and it was so much fun to just touch that thing. We also had CADCAM which was not at all widespread in the '80s. It was so much fun to design parts and send them to the machine shop electronically and have them show up on a cart outside the lab the next day. Quite a shame how far IBM has fallen since those days.
A convertible that I had have tuned to the max and foiled and re-seated to my liking in my favorite colors. It looked awesome in my head.
Then my pimp-mobile came. And I always was the center of attention. Which I, a very private person, highly disliked but gloriously failed to predict.
Also it was horrible to drive for >30mins because you basically had your nuts on the ground and felt every Lil pebble on the road.
Few months later I sold the car and bought one which basically made me invisible. One that only >70yrs olds drive here 😁
I drive a roadster myself. Recently I’ve noticed that to get out of it, I have to lift my left leg up with my arms and set my foot on the ground, otherwise I get a sartorius muscle strain. I now understand why used roadsters are so cheap: there is only a tiny window where you’re old enough to afford one but young enough to actually get in and out of it.
Lol yes. That too. It was no fun to get in or out. On top of that enjoyment I’m 2m and ripped two jeans while getting out. Up to that point I never saw the appeal of SUVs 😁
I am currently surrounded by empty cardboard boxes from all the jars I bought because I wanted to make a bunch of preserves because I have a supply of free apples. Slow cooker is currently on warming up 5L of pureed apples that I will make into chutney.
If this was a dumb purchase or not depends on who you ask.
I don’t think you’ll make a profit, but maybe you’ll make some friends.
That counts as a great purchase in my book!
I would trade sourdough starter for homemade chutney.
I bought healthy food that rotted away, and took a significan’t amount of my income. I now only eat slop again.
Most of it I just didn’t know how to prepare proper, was stored badly in the shop itself, and I could not find all the ingredients for. It was expensive as fuck too.
The Tofu tasted like fish, and made me feel nauseous.
So, don’t try to min-max your diet if you live in a shithole I guess.
At least the slop is cheap, and caloric. And I still have peanut butter left over.
I have a few more: A solar battery called blue wave that does not charge from the sun. The panels must be fake!
A solar lamp with the same problem, a working portable solar panel that is only useful for battery packs/mobile devices and I never have the time to actually use (although it will be good in emergencies).
A plastic bike helmet that would probably increase injuries due to awful design.
Bought a small fridge with no freezer compartment when there was one of the same size, with a freezer compartment that was just objectively better for the samepeice.
Gmod, years after it was no longer popular, just because I finally could.
So now, all my money is devoted to basically pleasing my brother, and bailing out my mother. After that, I will hoard like a dragon, after he has his PC (not buying alat after), and her debt is settled (plus a few small things to make life easier).
Eat the healthier slop.
Add leaves to it, eat a fruit sometimes.
I keep buying more synthesizers while I already have more than enough. I buy more than I play with them.
I grew up obsessing over synths in the '70s and '80s (I listened to Yes, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis etc.). Now I’m a programmer who writes (more accurately wrote) software synthesizer apps, and I find it amusing that my cheap smartphone from ten years ago has orders of magnitude more sound generation power than those keyboard-based beasts from my childhood did.
That being said, I would probably be willing to kill somebody to get my hands on an original Moog to play around with.
Yeah those Moog’s are insane. But the Behringer clones are also super nice. And imo nothing beats the sound of an analog synth. With those new Behringer clones you also have a USB connection supporting midi, so you can mix them very well with any DAW.
Something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vjAeTh4DnY&list=RD1vjAeTh4DnY&start_radio=1 ?
No I don’t have money for the real ones. I mostly have Behringer clones.
Stop. If I start browsing modular synths I will be broke
I wouldn’t know the difference. Yours still looks nice though.
Thanks!
Original synths from the 80’s cost thousands. Behringer started to clone them, as the copyrights expired and those expensive old machines haven’t been made for a long time. Those copies cost 100 to 500 euro’s each. Only a few bigger ones cost a bit more. So the difference is either spend 5000 euros for a 40 year old device or 300 for a new clone, including community tweaks and a 3 year warranty.
Some of Behringers stuff is quite decent, especially for the price.
My dumb shit is all homemade.
$19K in watches. Now I have a kid, and I am straight salary. In hindsight, I would be perfectly happy with the least expensive one. I’m a mechanical engineer, and they really interest me. But they were not smart purchases.
That’s a rabbit hole I managed to avoid. I lived in Shanghai in the 00’s when you could still get nice counterfeit mechanical watches there. Then I got a nice Seiko mechanical watch but no matter what I did, I just didn’t love the auto-winding function. Then came the solar watches from Seiko and Citizen which were relatively cheap. Now I’m here with a smart watch and never looking back.
Edit: also an engineer.
I admire the engineering of the solar, too. It’s really cool that the Eco-Drives don’t even look like they have a panel. Are the dials like, micro perforated or something? I’ve never taken one apart. And the fact that you can store them for like, 6 months and they’ll still have a charge is very nice.
me sitting here with five Casios, a Ball, a spring drive Seiko, a Bulova Precisionist, a Brew, and probably one or two I’m forgetting about: yepppppppppp
Hell yeah! Nice collection.
My co-worker has something similar. I wonder when he will figure it out?
Probably around the time they need to get serviced and it costs as much as a Seiko dive watch and takes like 6 weeks.
I never liked Breitling too much. If you want a good cheap mechanical watch, just go with Seiko, you get a good amount of quality for your money. Everything more expensive is an asset just like buying gold.
Oh, let’s not add the Seikos to the list. I have plenty of those. SKX007, SRP775, and like 5 or 6 I’ve built with Seiko NH-35 movements. I have a watch with a Seagull ST19 movement. I have some vintage ones, like a Timex Viscount and an Elgin Sportsman. But all of those are $500 and under (mostly under 200) and I don’t look at them as dumb purchases.
As a watch and mechanical enthusiast and fellow engineer myself, I read your comment and well you are certainty right, you gotta live a little haha
You sure do! And I love them all. I love modding them, I love wearing them. Love learning about them. I’d say my Seagull chrono gets equal wrist time to the Breitling. I try to keep everything in rotation. Except the George Stockwell trench watch… I’m afraid it might be a touch radioactive due to the radium.
Oh yeah that one I probably wouldn’t wear haha. Would you care to share some of your mods?
Sure!
Here is my SKX and an Invicta Pro Diver.
SKX has new hands, dial, chapter ring, crystal, date wheel, bezel insert, and crown. And I ended up doing an NH-35 swap on the 7S26. So basically, just the case is original now.
The Pro Diver has new hands, dial, bezel, bezel insert, high domed acrylic crystal, and I ground the crown guards off.
Thank you very much. Its a shame that you are the only person posting into MechanicalWatches lol
I nice steal-able asset you flaunt on your wrist, to boot!
TIL about watch insurance. What a wacky world we live in.
True, but they are all insured and you can always report the serial number to a database so it gets flagged if it pops up somewhere.
Yes what I meant by saying it’s an asset is that you should not wear it. The Seiko is already expensive enough to get stolen. Either way when you have watches in the price category shown above, you also have insurance for your watch. Especially when you wear it.
RPG books I know I won’t ever play. I ran D&D for two years during the pandemic and now I’m here reading Pathfinder, The One Ring, Legend of the Five Rings, Fate, Savage Worlds, and so, so many Mausritter crowdfundings.
Would you play a game over the internet?
Just bought a Brothers B&W laser printer. I need to print something maybe twice a year.
