Said different grounds would most likely be a willful twisting of the "anti cruising" laws and ordinances in effect in many states and cities in the US.
finds themselves in a social circle or job environment hostile to Linux.
Ugh. Tell me about it.
I haven't tried to run the latest Corel graphics suite in Wine recently, but the last time I did it exploded in my face so spectacularly I think my eyebrows still haven't fully grown back. I really need that to work for... work. Basically everything else I already use is FOSS anyway.
That is patently false.
...Sometimes we also complain about Facebook or Tesla.
You're conflating the tuner with the antenna. The person you replied to, however, is correct including the comment about the digital tuner boxes (which convert to an analog signal for old TV's) being available for free during the analog to digital changeover back when.
Any piece of metal will work as an antenna, even for receiving digital broadcasts. It might not work well, but there is no magical difference between a "digital" antenna and an "analog" one, and since digital television is transmitted over pretty much the same original frequencies as analog was, old analog antennae are already quite well tuned in size and shape to pick up modern digital signals.
You just have to plug your 1940's antenna into a 2009+ or so television. The antenna itself doesn't "decode" anything. It just catches radio waves and passes the waveform along to the TV or tuner box. I still use the old 60's era rooftop antenna that cane with my house, but plugged into my modern TV and it receives digital channels just fine.
His glasses are different in every scene. No consistency. It's subtle in the first few, but in the last shot they're a totally different style and shape and have a crossbar over the bridge that wasn't present in any of the previous scenes.
I was sitting in a diner the other day and one of their TV's was apparently, for lack of a better word, tuned to that Samsung TV Plus service. I watched it play the same Kia ad four times, back to back. Not in separate commercial breaks. All in one commercial break where the same ad was played four times consecutively.
Just like you, I have to say they found no success in making me want to buy a Kia.
"But we need your generous donations and tithes to continue to operate our house of god!!!"
God, huh? The all-of-creation in 6 days guy? The water to wine guy? All the fish that swim in the sea and beasts that roam on the land and birds that sing in the sky? That guy? Seems to me he'd have no trouble magically causing a church to spring forth out of the ground for you if you're so damn devout, then. At the very least he could keep all his bisops and deacons and popes in clean vestments without having to put it on the congregation's dime.
No? How curious.
Carefully watch the kid's glasses.
Now you can't unsee it. You're welcome.
Retailer who offers one of those 0% financing schemes, here. TL;DR: It's from processing fees paid by the retailer and punitive interest after the 0% promotional period lapses.
The lender makes money in two ways. One, a percentage fee is charged on the financed amount, but it's not paid by the customer. It's paid by the retailer. For us it is a little under 2%, similar to the fees most credit card processors charge. So as soon as you make your purchase, the bank instantly skims 1-point-whatever percent off the top. You don't see this, though. It affects the retailer's bottom line, not yours.
Two, the 0% interest rate is a promotion which provides specified limited time in which to pay off the balance. If you do not pay the outstanding balance in full by the end of the promotional term, the bank whacks you for a monstrous interest rate on the entire original transaction amount -- not just the remaining outstanding balance. In our case this is damn near 30%. Look carefully at the promotional signage and literature. It will always say "0% INTEREST FINANCING!!! ~for~ ~12~ ~months.~" That 12 months is important. That's the end of the promotional terms, after which you pay aforementioned buttload of interest.
And then, the minimum payments on the bills they send you are obviously deliberately structured to trick you into failing to pay the entirety of the balance by the deadline at the end of the promotional period.
If you're talking 0% introductory rates for general purpose credit cards, the answer is right there in the name. Those are introductory rates designed to entice you into signing up and using the card, but they're never permanent. Eventually that introductory rate will expire and you will be left with an interest bearing credit card. Possibly a lot of interest. Even if you pay your bill 100% on time every month without fail, the bank still makes money in percentages and processing fees taken on every transaction from every single retailer where you've swiped that card. The bank issuing the credit card can continue to comfortably make money even if no one pays any interest, ever.
Oh boy. I can't wait for this to backfire in a spectacular and completely predictable manner.
"You need to buy this special heater pad to break the screen adhesive!"
No, I think you will find that in fact I don't.
...when he will find himself standing in a hardware store confronted with a wall of bird feeding accessories. This is, I'm told, some kind of twisted coming of age thing. Up until now you've thought about two, maybe three birds in your entire life. Tops. But then, bang: Suddenly the topic of a bird feeder is vitally important. It's serious business.
There's a snag, though.
"What about this?" She'll ask. "It's so cute, like a little tiny house. And it's only $14.97!" It's not even sold yet and you can see it's already falling apart. The wood's split, and clearly nobody taught the children in that sweatshop how a square works. Or a clamp. There's a gold sticker on the bottom, half peeling off. It says 'Made In China.'
"Come on, I could make that in about 10 minutes with crap I have lying around my workshop."
"Yes, dear," your wife will say, while patting your arm.
This is what 300,000 years of evolution has brought us. Countless generations worth of genetic fine-tuning, passed down through mitochondrial DNA, veritably ensured the delivery of that precise response. The woman has watched you rebuild transmissions, heft Labrador sized rocks over your head, and replaster the entire house. But this, this thing consisting of no more than five ratty planks of wood, elicits a sarcastic "yes, dear."
This is it, isn't it? Men, Mars. Women, Venus. Every single one of those dumbass 1950's stand-up routines, distilled. It turns out it was all true. Well, part of it, anyway.
But some things are a matter of principle.
This is a bird feed suet cake holder I literally made out of offcuts and random crap I had lying around on my workbench, in ten minutes. Using nothing -- nothing, I say -- other than my compound miter saw and cordless drill. And a spot of wood filler, because there was a gnarly knot hole on the plank I wound up using on the top. It's held together with Spax screws and you could probably also use it as a jack stand for a bus.
Parameters drafted: Zero. Measurements made: Zero. Components purchased: Zero. And spending $14.97 on a ramshackle piece of shit? Studiously avoided.
That's right, "Velcro" is a verb now.
I was on a three day adventure ride this week. These fuckers kept wanting to come undone, but firmly stick themselves to the lining on the inside of my sleeves instead. This is deeply irritating.
In keeping with my usual tradition of harping on about the dumb shit I design and slap up on Printables:
https://www.printables.com/model/862518-cat-shelf-bracket-for-smartykat-paw-perch-or-build
These brackets solve a specific, but major, usability issue with the aforementioned brand and model of cat accessory widely sold at Walmart, Amazon, Chewy, Pet Smart, etc.
Conversely, there's nothing stopping you from screwing your own piece of wood to the top of a pair of these and arriving at roughly the same result without shelling out 30 of your hard earned Washingtons.
Cat tax paid:
I'll bet you a nickel I'll never pull this off again.
~~'Nother Pen Disorder~~
New Pen Day!
Look, I have a bit of a... thing... for pens with two specific attributes. Italic or oblique nibs, and retractable fountain pens. I haven't seen anyone make a combination of the two, but.
Here's a retractable that is, at least, very cheap. Which is kind of unique in its field, because I'll bet you most of the other options you can name are pretty expensive. The most budget friendly I know of so far is the Majohn A2 Press, which will still run you $30. More if you want one of the nicer variants.
This, however, is the Oaso K016 and it'll run you less than ten bucks. I only learned about it recently. Maybe this is old hat to some of you. But I'm going to talk about it a lot now, because that's what I do. Look, just count your lucky stars that I don't crank out 30 minute long youtube video essays instead, okay?
It is cheap and very cheerful, and aimed squarely at schoolchildren. It comes in a variety of plasticky colors, but I had to get the "Deep Sea Green" because green is, clearly, the superior color for most things. The grip section is kind of a dusty forest green but I'd call the body section more of a seafoam sort of color.
This pen comes in the below pictured rather garish packaging, which is labeled almost entirely in Chinese. Which makes sense, considering this pen is apparently manufactured (per the box) by "Shanghai Youshang Stationery Co., Ltd."
This is made to appeal to the Asian market, and if all that didn't tip you off the kawaii mascot certainly should. The box, by the way, says:
And at the bottom:
I'm paraphrasing some of these. The rear:
The rest is rather self-explanatory except:
The bottom lists the manufacturer's contact info, and claims that the product documentation and photography was done in Shanghai. No surprise there.
At the very bottom: "Write The Future." I thought we were supposed to fight the future?
Anyhoo. This is indeed a retractable fountain pen.
I said that already. It's a very basic model, all things considered, and pretty much every component except the nib and pocket clip are made out of plastic. One thing that jumps out at me about this which is different from all the other retractables that I own or have handled, is that it is not upside down. Or rather that it is upside down relative to all the rest of them. When clipped to something the point is downwards, as opposed to the Pilot Vanishing Point, A2 Press, Platinum Curidas, and Lamy Dialog which all clip with their points up. This is more like unto a ballpoint and the inverse of most fountain pens -- even non-retractable ones. But it does keep the clip out of your grip area for people who hate that sort of thing. Time will tell if this turns out to be a bad idea from an ink retention standpoint. Maybe don't carry this in the pocket of a really nice shirt.
The K016 unscrews as you'd expect, and the nib assembly remains captive in the grip section. I was a little surprised to find that in addition to the four blue cartridges the pen came with, it also had a fifth empty one already installed inside. So I dutifully filled this with some black Sheaffer Skrip ink I had lying around.
The grip section is slippery plastic, but has three flat sections giving it a somewhat triangular profile. You're not going to mistake it for premium, but at least it's not tapered down its entire length ready to squirt out of your grip like a watermelon seed. Like some pens I could mention. (Pilot, I'm looking at you.)
There must be some way to get the feed and nib out, but I'll be damned if I can figure out how. I haven't messed with it with too much gusto because I don't want to break it. Yet.
You install the cartridge the usual way via pressing it against the tube on the end of the feed. But that illustrates that the clicker mechanism is not in fact in the business end, because the whole thing squishes down against the spring when you do so. The K016 has a very stout spring in the nose and amount of force you have to apply gets progressively greater the further out the point goes, culminating in having to give it an alarmingly hard shove to get it fully deployed. That's a little strange. But it springs right back out -- whatever ratchet that toggles between the deployed and retracted position is on the other end, under the button.
The exposed nib is very short, extremely stiff, and is supported for most of its length with the solid plastic feed:
The nib is a 0.5mm so you can quibble amongst yourselves if this counts as a "medium" or a "fine," but I will say as a habitual italic nib user that it's annoyingly fine by my standards. It is stainless steel, and while the online description claims that it is "iridium" I'm not entirely certain I believe this for two reasons. One is the writing feel, and two is that the package doesn't actually mention that anywhere.
Something about that 3.4mm diameter cartridge rung a tiny bell in my brain as well. That's because I measured one just like that while doing some home research on this thing the other day, vis-a-vis compatibility with the Zebra "V Refill" for the V-301. Well, those are the same as these. Totally interchangeable; this is indeed the same old China Standard cartridge that is currently flooding the East Asian markets.
The K016 has this in the end for sealing off when not in use. It's a little different from the usual mechanical trap door arrangement in the fancier retractables. Poking it with a paperclip reveals that it is in fact rubber. I suspect this accounts for the bodacious shove you have to give it to get the point out, since this'll surely add a whole bunch of friction to the equation.
It also introduces the possibility that over time the rubber could perish. So there's a fun thought.
But I've spent all of these words without talking about the only thing that really matters in a pen. So, how does it write?
Well, it writes.
I'm damning with faint praise, I am. But you are definitely not going to mistake this for a premium pen. The nib is decidedly scratchy and catches frequently on ordinary paper, which made inking my doodle at the top of this a real chore. The point is very sharp and very stiff, leading to no expressiveness whatsoever. The ink flow seems to be much lower than average, such that the Sheaffer Skrip I'm using which is usually very prominently black comes out almost grey because it's spread so thinly.
This is not a pen that rewards variations in stroke, and it punishes writing quickly. You have to scribble pretty fast to get it to actually skip, but I did manage to do so (it's visible at the end of my scroll in the headline image) but the faster you write the thinner and less defined the lines get. This is a pen much more at home methodically plonking down katakana, not racing across the page in cursive.
Maybe it'll work better with the ink it came with. I'll try that later and see.
The point is also too fine for my liking but that's my problem. I don't do fiddly little glyphs as small as possible in neat boxes. I do big spiky seriffed letters, a lot of them, fast.
What's everyone's problem, though, is that it seems very sensitive to both rotation and angle against the paper, and getting either of these even the slightest bit outside of the very narrow zone that it likes makes the output even worse. Further, since so little of the nib's length sticks out, the bottom face of the grip section cruises really close to the paper at all times. I could see it would be definitely possible for a user with small hands to naturally hold the thing at an angle such that the plastic hits the paper, which is sure to cause some grief.
(What that sticker says, by the way, boils down to "Kindness Tip" and "Don't Point Your Pen At Anyone." Stab, do not the crab.)
But on the bright side, this pen is so cheap that you won't have to hire out a hitman if somebody steals or breaks it.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13318099
A Very Specific Object. You may or may not recall from my post a couple of days ago about the surprisingly competent (and very cheap) Jin Jun Lang JL-13A that one of its points of incompetence was a design that allows the latch to strike the blade, like so:
Well, sure I put a stop to that.
This half-gram piece of plastic slots right into the handle like so:
And means the latch will only swing in a 180 degree arc such that it stops just short of the tip of the blade.
It works the other way, too.
Grab it here:
https://www.printables.com/model/811990-latch-no-strike-spacer-for-jin-jun-lang-jl-13a
Solving real world problems for a hilariously tiny number of very specific people. That's how we do around here.
My eye's not twitching. Your eye is twitching.
Alright, kiddos. Play time is over. And by "over," I specifically mean the opposite of that, and it's time to play with pens and photography equipment.
So today I got out four things, if we're counting. Thing one is my illuminated photo box. That's right, this time y'all get to float in the Infinite Expanse. And two stacked macro focus shots. Luxury!
Thing two is the Platinum Curidas, with a medium point and in "Urban Green" which is really more of a translucent turquoise. The Curidas I think at the moment is my favorite retractable fountain pen -- admittedly, out of an available selection of not very many. Other contenders I can think of off the top of my head are the Pilot/Namiki Vanishing Point and Decimo, which I have; the Mahjohn A2 Press, which I also have; The Lamy Dialog, which I don't. Oh, and also these things, which are ubiquitous, but crap. Jury's out on the Oaso K016, which I haven't seen in person yet. I can neither confirm nor deny whether I have one of those coming in the mail already.
Where was I? Oh yeah.
Here's the Curidas' party trick:
It goes blep. It goes un-blep. Click the rather long plunger on the tail and the point retracts into the body. A trap door closes over it, obviating the need for a cap.
Platinum make a lot of noise about the Curidas being the successor to their "Knock" pen from the 1950's, which is now an utter hen's tooth. You're unlikely to get your hands on one of those.
If you're a habitual disassembler, the Curidas has you covered. It breaks down into this selection of components (and you can pull the spring out as well). The clip is removable and my pen came with a little tool in the box to assist with this, which wasn't immediately evident because all the instructions were in Japanese.
The engineers who designed this are surely showing off, because it has not one but two bolt action mechanisms inside, both of which are arguably unnecessary. The first is the bolt-and-twist to remove the metal sheath over the cartridge:
And the second is another bolt-and-twist to insert or remove the nib/cartridge/feed assembly into the nose of the pen:
Never mind the coin. I was just using it to keep the round parts from rolling away.
The nib is steel and it's pretty stiff. Very little of its length is not supported by the feed beneath. If you like a flexy bendy line-width-changy feel the Curidas is probably not for you. The "medium" nib is in fact the widest, and it's a little fine even for me. I like a nice bold in-your-face line, which is why I usually write with an italic nib anyhow. Available sizes are medium, fine, and extra fine. I would probably find the latter two nigh unusable.
The Curidas is not an expensive pen, at least compared to its other name brand retractable brethren. You can score one for a little over $40 from all the usual suspects. Compare to $160-ish for a Vanishing Point or over $300 for a Dialog and you can see how having a humdrum nib on it can be excused.
Thing the third.
Look, fancy inks are problematic for me. I almost exclusively use my writing tools in a professional environment, so I can't deviate too far from somber and stolid blacks, blues, and just barely maybe some greens. I got this Diamine Blue Lightning shimmer ink in the mail the other day and this is really about as far as I can go in the vibrancy department.
I like this stuff in theory, even though I've only been using it for a single day so far. Out of the Curidas and its little nib the effect is really more sparkly than "shimmer," but maybe it'll do better once I put some of it into one of my calligraphy pens.
Thing the fourth is today's Bonus Ballpoint, which is an OLight O'Pen Mini. This is a compact bolt action ballpoint writer with an aluminum body, here in anodized forest green. This is aimed squarely at the EDC crowd. It's pleasing to fiddle with, a diminutive 3-1/4" long, and if you hand it to a member of the unwashed masses they're unlikely to manage to fuck it up.
At work I always have two pens. I keep a ballpoint or rollerball or something handy because you should never, ever hand one of your fountain pens to a client, stranger, or layman because they're likely to do something to it you'd rather they didn't.
Spring is here, the air is clear, and the boid is on the wing. So here's a pen that's cheap and absoid, a pastel plastic thing.
It is the first warm spring day of the season, so on a lark (ha) I grabbed this out of the Pen Bucket. These don't even get a slot in my pen holder. I bought this as a pack of I believe eight at Five Below for $5. They came in all different pastel colors, but among them this green one is the superior choice. Each was included with a cartridge of different colored inks roughly matching the color of the pen bodies, which is watery and very transparent, and comes in a cartridge style I don't recognize:
As before these are all taken in my office at work which has terrible lighting for photography. Sorry about that.
The exposure didn't do it justice, but the ink this came with is a very transparent, very light sort of plastic-easter-grass green.
All eight or however many came in the pack have these same unremarkable steel nibs which, if we're keeping score, would probably be called a "medium." They're not terribly nice, but they do write albeit with some skipping if you're fast and not careful (visible in my headline picture). Neither the pen, nor the nibs, nor even the packaging bore any kind of brand name or maker's mark aside from "manufactured for Five Below." It did not go as far as to specify by who. We'll probably never know.
The bodies are all injection molded and if I had to guess I'd say they're ABS plastic, complete the world's most Fisher-Price cap and pocket clip. The clip is molded in, not terribly well designed, nor is it removable. When it breaks, that'll be it. The knurled part on the end looks like it should unscrew but it doesn't. Curiously, the cap does not have an anti-choke hole. But the pen body does. (Obviously putting an anti-choke hole in the cap of a fountain pen would be a dumb idea, but that hasn't stopped manufacturers of cheap and nasty examples from doing so anyway either via the old monkey-see/do or possibly out of an overabundance of caution, and with predictable results.)
But as the refrain goes -- whaddaya want for 63 cents each?
Bottom of the barrel: Scraped!
Somehow her navel is visible through the tube dress as well. Perhaps it just made out of Saran Wrap.