At home I currently used a DF83 with the SSP HU Burrs for espresso, a Timemore 78 for pour over. For travel I have a 1Zpresso J-Ultra for espresso and a ZP6 for pour over. In the past I have owned a Niche Zero, Eureka Mignon Brew Pro, Quamar M80 E.

Burr size ignoring the changes it makes to burr geometry has little baring on what you get out of the cup, espresso or pour over. The burrs themselves? Potentially massive differences, but their are caveats.

Water, then beans are the two most important ingredients to your coffee. Sure, a great grinder will get more out of bad beans than a bad grinder, but it cannot cover up that they were bad beans to begin with, they cant invent flavor for you, only reveal it. And no amount of great beans and grinder will fix nasty tasting water.

Also if you only really drink dark roast and not medium to light roast, coupled with a preference for an espresso with a ton of body, then ultra low fine production grinder/burr sets aren’t going to be giving you what you want and will make your espresso feel too much like thin tea.

Having said all that, the particle distribution of a grinders output is something thats been measured many times. Its quantifiable that a better quality grinder, something with a proper pre breaker like a Zernos auger, and just all round high quality will produce a lower distribution of grind sizes. It is going to provide a more consistent cup of espresso than my DF83, but then its £2.5k for the same setup, when I swapped my Niche for the DF83 and the DF83 was light years better than the Niche for clarity.

I have always loved the concept of computers like this one.

I have a picocalc on order but I am aware I am unlikely to make such a restricted use platform work for me day to day.

I also have a GPD MicroPC 2, its just about perfect for me for actual travel usage as its just a small PC, and when plugged into a docking station will drive 2x4k screens fine. It fixes everything I do not like about smartphones, I just want it smaller still but the keyboard is already a big compromise for me.

However I like the fact its based on a PI as it has a wide range of options for expansion and a large base of support to take it further if you need it to.

When my kids were kids it really depended on if they needed anything big. One year we would get them a macbook because they needed a new laptop for school but then it would last nearly five years so I wouldn’t have to buy another one for ages. Same for things like phones or consoles or. I always spent more on these big purchases as they normally last longer.

Now they adults I spend a few hundred for birthdays and Christmas. I like to get something they will actually use, will last, and is memorable. The best gifts show that you actually pay attention to their current hobbies or are something they would want but would rare splash for. Example would be for my sons birthday i got him a GBA SP style emulator and loaded it up with pokemon roms, official and fan, as I knew he had a few months off studying for his professional qualification.

Yeah I do not think he ever publish another one, we might get something like the Silmarillion when he dies put together by his estate, if he doesn’t have it all destroyed as part of his will.

Folio is the reason I downsized my bookcases, stop me spending so much money. I got rid of half my books, books I had no intention of ever reading again even the rare ones.

Yeah i am reluctant now unless I know the artist has finished the series. Wish I spent the extra for the folio versions of GoT series as those are at least complete and far nice

If I remember correctly they were doing an illustrated version of the book each year and then the series got delayed because they fell out with the orginal illustrator.

So it would make sense that this one would be shit, because even if its not AI errors like this are basic shit to get right, because I believe the dispute was over money.

Except in the UK you can’t as they don’t sell them. They also ended UK support for their smoke detectors as well.

I switched to opentherm hardware and its now on my HA properly rather than via the cloud.

I did get a good ten years out the Nest hardware, I consider that reasonable for what it cost. Sure old fashioned controllers last longer, but i want the smart features

Quality of the system is such a massive dependency here, I can well believe that someone watching old reruns from a shitty streaming service that is upscaled to 1080p or 4k by their TV they purchased from the supermarket with coupons collected from their breakfast cereal is going to struggle to tell the difference.

Likewise if you fed the TVs with a high end 4k blu ray player and any blu ray considered reference such as Interstellar, you are still going to struggle to tell the difference, even with a more midrange TV unless the TVs get comically large for the viewing distance so that the 1080p screen starts to look pixelated.

I think very few people would expect their old wired apple earphones they got free with their iphone 4 would expect amazing sound from them, yet people seem to be ignoring the same for cheap TVs. I am not advocating for ultra high end audio/videophile nonsense with systems costing 10s of thousands, just that quite large and noticeable gains are available much lower down the scale.

Depending what you watch and how you watch it, good quality HDR for the right content is an absolute home run for difference between standard 1080p and 4k HDR if your TV can do true black. Shit TVs do HDR shitterly, its just not comparable to a decent TV and source. Its like playing high rez loss less audio on those old apple wired earphones vs. playing low bitrate MP3s.

Currently use a Brita filter as its enough to take the chemically smell from my tap water. Espresso machine has a built in water softener that I change every six months or so. It isnt the most efficient way to do it but the machine does not have any build up when I have checked, my water tastes neutral and nice to drink if not amazing.

Long term I want to build in a proper water purification, strip, and remineralization solution into my mains supply when I get around to redoing the kitchen. UK is low risk for water contamination but we do have recent incidents of it happening so its not zero risk and I would rather not take the risk with the way our water companies are ran.

Wow, I just have never had that, it does make some sense as its cheaper not to have to offer them.

I know people piss in them thats for sure, and at the very least water is allowed to stand in them far longer than I would allow with my own kettle, I cannot stand stale tasting water residue.

I don’t think I have ever been in a hotel that doesn’t have a kettle, just seems weird to not offer one.

I cant help with the kettle part, but I can help with the pourover part. I use a Hario V60 drip kettle air (its not a kettle, despite its misleading name) for pouring while traveling as its resin so unlikely to break or dent, its extremely light weight, and can give a reasonably fine pour to a gush, if that’s what you need. It does take a little while to get good with it due to it being so light weight.

I use a food safe thermometer to track the temperature, that way I do not care what kettle I use, plenty of reasonably cheap folding ones on amazon and the like.

I would rather live on the streets than put up with that, I could not cope with it as I get woke up by people in the same house being quiet let alone noisy cunts like that.

Typically I get about six. Had a long weekend had did nine and half each day for three days straight, which never happens, then last night I got four hours and undid all that goodness.

I would like between seven and eight hours on the regular, just not going to happen unless I retire and live on my own as I am a very light sleeper.

Metallica still make a stack of money every year touring, however they could make even more money if they stuck Lars in a booth and charged fans $50 to punch Lars in the face.

Its been said that if Cliff hadn’t died in the bus accident, Lars would have been fired at the end of that tour, just if you didn’t feel bad enough about Cliff dying already.

What this chart is missing is the impact of the quality of the screen and the source material being played on it.

A shit screen is a shit screen, just like a badly filmed TV show from the 80s will look like crap on anything other than an old CRT.

People buying a 4k screen from Wallmart for $200 then wondering why they cant tell its any better than their old 1080p screen.

The problem with pushing up resolution is the cost to get a good set right now is so much its a niche within a niche of people who actually want it. Even a good 4k set with proper HDR support and big enough to make a different is expensive. Even when 8k moves away from early adopter markups its still going to be expensive, especially when compared to the tat you can by at the supermarket.

Does he put forward his case that he is the anti christ? As he sure comes across as someone who would want that. He has always felt like the sort of motherfucker who would read the Stand and identify with Randall Flagg

I would love to know how many owners actually ran out of fuel or near as damn did doing long high speed runs

That includes corners, which can be as low as 50kph, which will lower the average significantly over lap… Straight line they are approaching 340kph on the longest straights, but have hit nearly 380kph in recent history.

They would be a lot faster if they were allowed to tweak the gear ratios for each circuit rather than them being fixed for multiple circuits, and they didn’t have a fuel flow limit per lap. A twenty year old car nearly hit 400kph in non race spec.

Yeah it pushed me to finally put in an order, got to wait till December now as I’m in the third batch.

I wanted to wait till we had proof thst the graphics card would be updatable and a better one would be available as their AMD card is a bit too lightweight for me.

I would rather it had been a better AMD card, I have a 7900 xtx in my desktop, but i will take what I can get at this point, especially as I know I can upgrade later.