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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.
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!
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 Then, five seconds later, it’s totality, and it’s like the entire universe had been replaced by a magical fairy tale land.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wasn’t disappointed with Infinity War and Endgame
Infinity War was completely worth the hype. I wasn’t quite as enthralled with Endgame, but it wasn’t bad.
Endgame was absolute trash. Infinity war was almost a perfect action movie, but endgame was one of the worst letdowns ever.
Yeah Infinity War is probably my favourite in the turn your brain off genre of movies. It’s absolute peak, a culmination of everything that happened in the decade before.
The entire MCU was an absolute phenomenon and they executed it so damn well till the end of Thanos. I kinda miss the social aspect about talking with everyone about it. I know people got superhero fatigue because of it which never truly recovered but man it was fun.
Nah, not super hero fatigue, just MCU couldn’t continue to live up to the raised expectations after that. Especially with Disney deciding to shit out a ton of mediocre crap to bolster streaming content. There has been a constant flow of super hero media that is still great and adored by fans since. Like Invincible and The Boys and surely some others I’m forgetting.
My good sir, how can you be so brave and so wrong at the same time?
This isn’t hyped by normal people I guess but when I was looking for a better pillow, these custom-sized memory foam pillows seemed like a crazy overhype and a grab for money by physiotherapists. $200 and a year later, still the best purchase I have made for my bed.
Also, peanut butter. I hated peanut butter growing up and never understood how people are so obsessed with it. Man did I miss out for years, that shit is so good and so versatile.
Pro tip: crush roasted unsalted peanuts and have real peanut butter. You have no idea what you’re missing. The peanut butter sold in most places is hydraulically fractured, then the peanut oil is reserved and replaced with inferior soybean. Crushed (not fractured) peanut butter does not separate, and it is breathtakingly versatile in cooking!
How do you crush the peanuts? What tools do you use?
You can actually buy a peanut crushing machine! I don’t have one, and I can’t honestly see that anyone would want to go through the botheration of cleaning and maintaining but hey to each their own!
For me there’s a bulk food center that sells stuff out of bins by weight, and they provide the crushers for a minor extra charge, I believe it’s 11 cents extra per 100g
Every once in awhile I run out of peanut butter, but because I actually always have roasted unsalted peanuts, if I need to I can just bust them up or smosh them in my cast iron mortar and pestle
You can just bash some on a cutting board with a hard heavy thing… The little smashed up nuggets are amazing on different things like rice noodles, as a topping for curries, some salads
One of my favorite uses for peanut butter, and you only need like a tablespoon, is mix it in with a little bit of beef broth out of a box, mix in the peanut butter, some Thai chilies or whatever heat you like, spices to taste, and then you can parboil some potatoes and finish them in that sauce and it’s like this crazy… like dude just try it
I love peanuts so much!
Edit: I forgot to mention I was eating peanuts while typing this comment
This is commonly available most places afaik, just 100% peanut.
Yeah but it’s fractured
(I should clarify, not only does fracturing the peanut meal force the oil out, it kind of “cooks” the proteins and transforms them, which is why it continues to separate no matter how much you stir. And then it just doesn’t taste as good. I know I sound like a peanut evangelist, but it’s a different experience when you try fresh crushed)
crush roasted peanuts
fracturing “cooks” the proteins
Sounds like a lot of effort for something that might not make any difference? Only way to find out is to try I guess, but I’m too lazy :) enjoy your superior peanut butter, I think I’m good with the industrial stuff from the supermarket 👍🏻
And if you want a sweetener, use honey.
I ended up with an air fryer. It’s still just a convection oven, but I use it constantly.
What’s with these? Do they heat up faster? More convection means more heat transfer? I don’t get it
Both. The fast-moving air really does have an almost frying effect, and mine takes like a minute or two to get up to temp (and fits a whole pizza).
Yep, they are convection ovens on steroids when it comes to the amount of airflow.
I was firmly on team “LOL it’s a baby convection oven, big whoop” for years, but an actual purpose-made air fryer (not a toaster oven with air fry mode) cooks like an entirely different appliance.
I got an old ipod at a yard sale that still works. Its actually really good!
Miyoo Mini Plus - Its like a gameboy for emulators. Its really great playing my old games, but with save states.
Linux. not only learning the system gave me more knowledge, it helped me get a job and eventually a career!
A Dog - My dog gives me and my wife so much love its amazing. Hes a good boy.
May I see a pic of said good boy?
Oh my goodness he’s so cute!! I bet he loves his Lamb Chop!
Yes he does. He tosses it around for hours each day. We call it his game boy.
High quality kitchen knives. I’m partial to hand-forged Japanese carbon steel. So sharp. Maintains an edge. Easy to sharpen. Being beautiful is just an added bonus.
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.
