What have you bought recently?


Klumpen said:
^ Balsa for Kenjutsu?
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Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū bokken. A bit shorter and with less curvature than those of other schools; also with its characteristic tip.

This one is made out of japanese white oak, uncoated but with a bit of camellia oil on it. It arrived this week from Japan.
 
I wanted to try trackball, so:
HUGE_a.jpg
HUGU_b.jpg
 
Unrelated patter, I went with trackball for a while due to wrist pains. The pain just wandered over to the base joint of the thumb :/
Now I use nothing but a trackpoint with a soft rim cap and I'm almost pain free. Health insurance should pay for Lenovo keyboards and OneMix PCs :p
 
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I used a trackball when I used to use my laptop in bed, and didn't really have a good surface for mousing on.

I've never really experienced wrist/hand pain due to the mouse I'm using. I did get a little finger pain when they first introduced scroll wheels, and I'm not sure if I've modified my behaviour or if my hands have adapted, but I don't get that any more.

The only really painful hand pain I've had is when I drag my N64 out of the cupboard and play too much F-Zero X on it. The orientation and motions my thumb needs to do with an N64 pad are so different to what they do with almost any other controller that I need time to adapt, and my thumb aches for weeks while my hands are transitioning over.
 
levi said:
The only really painful hand pain I've had is when I drag my N64 out of the cupboard and play too much F-Zero X on it. The orientation and motions my thumb needs to do with an N64 pad are so different to what they do with almost any other controller that I need time to adapt, and my thumb aches for weeks while my hands are transitioning over.
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That's funny. I couldn't ever replicate the precision in aiming, that I managed on N64 controller, on any other.
 
I guess it runs in my family, my dad also suffers from the wrist thing. He used to not use computers a lot; his motorvehicle and house hobbies using screwdrivers, hammers etc. probably did it for him instead. Curse you, genes


Got the cheapest soldering station available near me, and a *proper* light
cFwdmim (1).jpg



Edit:

Been using the station for a bit now, desoldering stuff from a wireless third-party PS3 controller, soldering female headers to the ribbon cable of the thumbstick board. It's quite different to the experience I've had with a 6€ electric iron, and my gas-driven one. The station heats up quickly and holds the temperature.
I've also tried a can of flux for the first time. If you are experienced in soldering you probably are facepalming now :)
This setup would have made soldering the Pandora EXT connectors a whole lot easier. Thanks again @WizardStan for sending me a few of those.
It's been quite a while since then... Jan 17, 2012, how time flies!
 
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Weird thing is - I tried shopping for a tube fixture/carrier? (whaddayacallthis) thing in our local hardware store, but 95% of all the tubes available were fixed all-in-one non-replacable models. You have to replace the whole damn thing when it fails. So~ you wanna go eco and buy LED tubes, but hey, when it dies you better replace the tube AND the fixture. Well, the mounting brackets can stay. Those 1% of all of the material. Guess it's another way to bind the customer to one particular vendor. Anyway it's a pile of BS.
 
ClockworkCoder said:
@Djoga'Ro That is a seriously sexy looking keyboard (presuming it's a Keyboardio). Want.
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Yes, it is and yes it is. Originally my plan was to get aftermarket keycaps with just big dots as labels and use it with the German Neo2 layout and and colourcode the keys according to categories like vowels, conconants, braces and such, punctuation, etc and change the colours, when I switch layers (with modifiers). Unfortunately, they dropped those keycaps. They sticked with dvorak, colman, Linear A, blank (no coating at all) and black, though. But as I understand it, those were only offered to backers, which I am not - was to late to the game.

Just the last days, I was "Fuck it, do it with wrong labels, then.", but I wanted to just shuffle the switch-scancode associations for US and emit UTF-8 codepoints for everything else, so that I could rock it with a us layout in the OS. I mean what have I an Arduino inside the keyboard for, right. It seems, after 24 years of USB HID a keyboard is still limitted to what a PS/2 kb could do - no emitting UTF-8 codepoints. (Well the device can register for more than one usage, but the usage keyboard hasn't evolved beyond PS/2.)

If your serious about getting one, you should pay attention to weither or not they have some in stock. When you read their backer updates, you'll come to learn, that ED's business with Form Action was rather a stroll in the park. (I think it was late 2017 or early 2018, that they figured out, where the cause of their problems was. And they're still affected by the aftermath. Highly dramatic.)
 
More spare logic chips, TTLs and some CMOS. I found a good and even cheaper local source of these (now there's a question: Newspaper or 40-50 chips? :) ). With this, I plan to get 3-5 of every chip accessible there to have spares for 8-bit computer repairing purposes and get a bit more of typical 00, 04, 08, 74, counters and 12x generators in different versions and of course 244/245 buffers.
For one of my old computers: A 160MB Mac SCSI hard drive. Already installed.
I have no idea why I bought this:
a. An interesting surge protector/power strip, with an unusual logo of the company which made the first PC in my country and disappeared shortly after. It could be understood, but the design seems to be licensed from French company Acar. What I found, there was indeed a license for manufacturing these protectors, in heavy, riveted casings, but not for this company. This however does not look like clone and even has license information. The only explanation I can think of is that the company which made them re-branded them to order.
b. A "Universal" brand tape recorder which I was thinking about connecting to ZX Spectrum. Seems to have some kind of mechanical problem: Plays with the same speed as goes fast forward. I need to look into it.
 
FiiO Fh1 IEMs, they sound really good. Though I don't have much experience with hi-end IEMs.
fiio-fh1.jpg
 
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docbroke said:
FiiO Fh1 IEMs, they sound really good. Though I don't have much experience with hi-end IEMs.
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just checked https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/fiio-fh1-dual-hybrid-iem.22884/reviews
and it seems they are really great! dynamic driver for bass and mids and the ba one for clear hights resolution etc. verry cool design for a good price.
so congrats!
i still love my fiio x1 with it's burr brown dac. with the hifiman re400 iem, it makes female voices soo sexy! ;)
lately i discovered that i'm a basshead and use my beyer dt770 pro and dt990 pro a lot.
on the pyra, i intend to use the audioquest dragonfly 1.2 dac.
 
If a tape plays at fast forward speed it usually means the pinch roller isn't pinching. In most players the fast forward mode uses the same power motor as the playback mode, just in the latter mode it keeps the tape as it rolls up properly tensioned. In fast forward mode the player deliberately keeps the pinch motor back on its armature.
 
rSl said:
just checked https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/fiio-fh1-dual-hybrid-iem.22884/reviews
and it seems they are really great! dynamic driver for bass and mids and the ba one for clear hights resolution etc. verry cool design for a good price.
so congrats!
i still love my fiio x1 with it's burr brown dac. with the hifiman re400 iem, it makes female voices soo sexy! ;)
lately i discovered that i'm a basshead and use my beyer dt770 pro and dt990 pro a lot.
on the pyra, i intend to use the audioquest dragonfly 1.2 dac.
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Thanks for that review link, it makes me feel like I have made a great choice. I specially liked the last review (by brooko), which favorably compared FH1 with much higher priced IEMs.
I will keep audioquest dragonfly in mind when I decide to get DAC. I am not sure though if I need one.
 
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rSl said:
just checked https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/fiio-fh1-dual-hybrid-iem.22884/reviews
and it seems they are really great! dynamic driver for bass and mids and the ba one for clear hights resolution etc. verry cool design for a good price.
so congrats!
i still love my fiio x1 with it's burr brown dac. with the hifiman re400 iem, it makes female voices soo sexy! ;)
lately i discovered that i'm a basshead and use my beyer dt770 pro and dt990 pro a lot.
on the pyra, i intend to use the audioquest dragonfly 1.2 dac.
Click to expand...
You're just as nerdy as me <3
 
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rSl said:
just checked https://www.head-fi.org/showcase/fiio-fh1-dual-hybrid-iem.22884/reviews
and it seems they are really great! dynamic driver for bass and mids and the ba one for clear hights resolution etc. verry cool design for a good price.
so congrats!
i still love my fiio x1 with it's burr brown dac. with the hifiman re400 iem, it makes female voices soo sexy! ;)
lately i discovered that i'm a basshead and use my beyer dt770 pro and dt990 pro a lot.
on the pyra, i intend to use the audioquest dragonfly 1.2 dac.
Click to expand...
I thought, the Pyra is expected to have very good audio quality on its own. ?
 
Djoga'Ro said:
I thought, the Pyra is expected to have very good audio quality on its own. ?
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it has a nice ti (they bought burr brown) dac and will have good speakers for such a small device. when using low ohmage iem/headphones it should be nice but
for higher ohm phones i guess a dedicated headamp is needed to amp them loud enough.
[doublepost=1570619068,1570618559][/doublepost]also i allready have the dragonfly dac around since some years now and want to use it because the pyra started it's life as "project: dragonfly" before it was named pyra. so i always wanted to do this imho perfect match. ;)
 
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