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Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

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Re: Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

#811

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

dharma1 wrote: post #510

I concur with the people who have mentioned robovac, instant pot, sony xm3/xm4, ooni pizza oven, MacBook m1 - all making my life better. Other things - door frame pull up bar, resistance band. Cheap, get a lot of use, don't take much space. One of those shiatsu machines with infrared - used one almost daily for a couple of years. Great for upper back/shoulder muscle tension release while sitting on the sofa in the ev…

> door frame pull up bar

YouTube is riddled with those falling out of the door frames and people face-planting or falling on their back. Are all those failures from improper install/usage or what?

Re: Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

#812

Post by efxhoy »

Speaker components, tools and plywood. I've just finished building my first speaker and it sounds FANTASTIC and I designed and built it myself. It's been extremely rewarding and I highly recommend everyone to make something physical yourselves. So much nicer than making anything appear on a screen.

My first box is a ported enclosure tuned to about 45hz with a cheap 15" driver and a vintage compression driver on an old cast-iron horn. It looks pretty rough, I can just barely move it by myself, but it's beautiful.

Building it made me:

* Calculate the enclosure volume and port tuning and selecting the appropriate drivers. * Buying amps and crossovers. I got a behringer ultradrive and a 4 channel PA amp * Draw a plan * Measure and cut the wood with the shitty circular saw I got (took me ages, came out not terrible) * Routing the holes for the drivers and speakons * Assembling: drilling, fitting, screwing, gluing, mounting T-nuts for the drivers * Finishing: Sanding, oiling, stuffing * Soldering connectors * Installing drivers * Tuning, adjusting crossovers

I started in august and just finished the first box. I have enoug materials for a 2*18" subwoofer and a 12" midrange horn to go with it. Overall I spent about 2000USD in plywood (18mm baltic birch), tools (cheapest I could get), drivers, DSP and amps. I hope to have a very nice little rig together by the end of summer.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

#813

Post by rmk »

- An M1 Macbook. It's really good. It's a bummer I can't run virtualbox on it yet. Otherwise quite satisfactory. - iPad Pro. Great for watching television. The sound quality on this is much better than the old (2013) iPad I had. - A flat-screen TV. I had a CRT television that I ditched over nine years ago and had gone without since. I gave in a bought one during the pandemic. It's good for the occasional movie and night-time viewing in general (you can veg out on the sofa while viewing the program).

Re: Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

#814

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

Lifetime Plex Pass + Synology NAS.

I have an unmanageable amount of media with hit or miss metadata and multiple devices I'd previously have to manually sync to. Now I don't have to worry about it.

Sunday NYT + New Yorker print subscriptions

Very tired of online media. It's nice to sit back and read printed media on paper.

I don't buy much.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

#816

Post by zaptheimpaler »

akudha wrote: post #807
kaypro wrote: post #30

Kobo Forma. I'm an avid eBook reader so the little things add up. Going from the Kindle to the Forma was a huge upgrade. Font rendering, warm light, larger form factor, and Pocket integration amongst a host of other little niceties make it pretty much a perfect experience for me. https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-forma

I have bought hundreds of Kindle books. Is there a (legal) way to read them on Kobo?

You can download the books on your PC and DeDRM them using Calibre. Not sure if its legal, but as far as im concerned i paid for those books and i should be able to read them wherever i like.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

#817

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

apexalpha wrote: post #606

A new LG OLED TV. I usually don't buy into hypes, but I got a great second hand deal on a 55" OLED and it has BLOWN me away. It's picture quality is insane. If I could only watch 4K Planet Earth on it and nothing else it would still have been worth it. I also bought a $200 robovac by Xiaomi, which is really convenient, especially if you have pets. Based on experience I will probably also splurge on a new MacBook is t…

OLED is expensive, but it's definitely worth it for movie watching.

I upgraded from a 10 year old 42" 1080p LCD to a 65" 4K OLED and it's so damn nice. Darker scenes in TV/moves are so much clearer without a backlight shining through everything and washing everything out.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

#818

Post by nickfromseattle »

I travel a bit, and my home office is the thing I miss the most.

Treadmill desk from imovr.com with dual monitors.

I lost a ton of weight walking 4 - 6 miles per work day.

Sometimes after work, I would bump the speed and watch a movie, getting another 3-4 miles in.

Re: Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

#819

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

nirav72 wrote: post #718

Bought a Ender3 3d Printer last year during the lockdown. It cost me about $150. Took me about 3 months of learning, lots of mistake, trial and error before I was able to get decent and useful things to print. But its a great starter printer and cheap. So far I got my money's worth simply based on the time my son and I have spent together tinkering with it and learning all about the 3d printing process. I think once…

The Ender 3 is the perfect entry-level printer. Cheap, but upgradeable.

I bought my Ender 3 last October, and since then, I've added:

- BLTouch

- PEI bed

- Filament runout sensor

- Upgraded motherboard with quiet stepper motor drivers

- Dual-gear extruder

Re: Ask HN: Favorite purchases of last two years?

#820

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

greyhair wrote: post #782

Ender 3 Pro. Unmodified other than a BL Touch. Just a bunch of fun. My first Dutch oven. I cook most the meals in our household, like 95%. I never have owned a Dutch oven. Misen had a Dutch oven on kickstarter and I picked one up. So far, very happy. You have to be careful how you heat them, but they cook stews wonderfully, and I braised a bunch of meatballs, then filled it with spaghetti sauce for dinner one night.…

> Ender 3 Pro. Unmodified other than a BL Touch. Just a bunch of fun.

I'd recommend an upgrade to a PEI-coated flexsteel bed. So much better than the floppy sheet that comes with it. The bottoms of your prints are smoother, and large prints come off the bed a lot easier.

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