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Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

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Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#301

Post by adwi »

murm wrote: post #289

Really good heaphones. It's been years since I bought them and I'm still amazed almost daily just how good music can sound. I'll admit that the cost upfront was not exactly cheap, but if you divide the price by the useful lifespan (my previous headphones lasted for 8 years) it becomes a no-brainer.

Or the good enough classic Sony 7506s.

Studio mainstay of the last 30+ years. Comfy as hell. Accurate enough, if flattering. <$100. I have a 20 year old pair that got a few new sets of earpads but sound as good as day one.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#302

Post by xtiansimon »

Tongue scrapers (after coffee)

Nail brush (for when you really get our hands dirty)

Good spray bottles for household cleaners

Lanyard and Otter case for my iPhone—never drop your phone out of the house.

Eye protection/face shield for when working on machinery

Calfamo desk fan

Second monitor

Bamboo (free from a neighbor’s yard)

I could go on…

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#303

Post by tenfourwookie »

tmaly wrote: post #260
tenfourwookie wrote: post #100

I buy high mileage Honda minivans for no more than $3000 because they're dependable and cheap at high mileage. I generally get 100,000 miles out of them, so 4 mostly dependable vans and 400,000 miles for about $12,000. You'll lose $12K in depreciation alone just driving a new car off a lot. I've lived in them safely and comfortably for a total of about 3 years, living all over the western US from New Mexico to Montan…

Where do you look online for minivans like you describe?

Craigslist, eBay, used car dealer, etc.

Good luck finding one for $3K right now. Used car prices are silly inflated, and people are starting to realize they make dependable homes on wheels, once you take the seats out.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#304

Post by xtiansimon »

kamaal wrote: post #268
bxparks wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the quality of the photos from my phone to be terrible: wrong brightness, wrong color balance, wrong focus, wrong contrast, wrong orientation, motion blur, etc. The quality of the documents from the Fujitsu scanner is top notch. And the feeder is amazingly fast, specs say 20 ppm, which I think means 20 sheets, or 40 pages/minute. I also hate typing long file names on a phone keyboard. But if it works for you,…

Actually the scanning apps like Microsoft Lens are quite good. During the WFH situation, I've used it extensively to scan kids homework almost on an everyday basis, to send it to teachers. I've used it for documents too. And it works just fine.

I use M.S. Office Lens at work every week. You can free-crop photos, compose into PDF, reorder pages, etc and save to OneDrive which quickly gets a phone PDF onto my desktop. Brilliant!

OfficeLens also had an app you could load on desktops. I’m sure it was for tablets, but the ability to take a photo, free-form crop and save to PDF was fantastic. Alas, my old install of the app still works, but won’t convert to PDF anymore.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#305

Post by tenfourwookie »

mettamage wrote: post #261
tenfourwookie wrote: post #100

I buy high mileage Honda minivans for no more than $3000 because they're dependable and cheap at high mileage. I generally get 100,000 miles out of them, so 4 mostly dependable vans and 400,000 miles for about $12,000. You'll lose $12K in depreciation alone just driving a new car off a lot. I've lived in them safely and comfortably for a total of about 3 years, living all over the western US from New Mexico to Montan…

Could you show an example of the minivans that you mean? Or are all Honda minivans the same?

Honda Odyssey minivans that are about 11-15 years old, give or take. An arbitrary range, but that's where I roam.

I buy them up to 225,000 miles on the odometer, depending on the condition. Less is generally better. Prices start to jump a lot below 200,000 miles.

Also, my post makes it sound like I drive them to dead and then get another. Not so. I generally sell them and go back to being a muggle with a real life for a bit, then buy another. I've never actually killed a Honda. Haven't tried either. Got one to 357,000 and was still going strong. Zombie cars. Made to last. The older they get, the more character they have. Almost as loved as the Volkswagen van and far more dependable.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#307

Post by criticas »

corny wrote: post #130

Prescription glasses optimized for the distance to my computer screen. I was getting eye strain after even a short time in front of the computer. The new glasses completely solved the eye strain. I highly recommend it for anyone who is near sighted and uses a computer.

My benefits package pays for a pair of glasses every year, and my prescription doesn't change much. One year I get a "free" pair of progressive bifocals (with an upcharge of $100-200), the next a "free" pair of prescription sunglasses ($100-200 upcharge) or computer monovision glasses (really free).

So I budget $100-200 from my HSA per year for glasses, and have spares at home, the office, and in the car. When they're 5-6 years old, I donate them to a charity that redistributes them.

Not "tiny" I guess, but surprising luxury for $16/month.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#308

Post by tenfourwookie »

tenfourwookie wrote: post #250
yangikan wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you park in the night?

I find a spot in a national forest and make it my home for a week or seven. If it has decent cellular reception, I can stay there indefinitely, until I run out of supplies, usually water. No one messes with you in the forest. We woodsies know every Honda minivan also has 12-gauge shotgun inside, for squirrels, tasty, tasty squirrels, and errant humans crazy enough to walk up to your van at night. :) Just stay out of…

We have 188,336,179 acres of national forest in the US, most of it a short drive from Metropolis metropolis.

That's about 1.5 times the size of France.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#309

Post by n8henrie »

noahjk wrote: post #88
bxparks wrote: post #71

A Fujitsu S1500 ScanSnap, dual-sided, document scanner (now discontinued, replacement might be the iX1600). Completely changed how I manage my personal documents (e.g. financial, invoices, receipts, product manuals, medical info, business docs, recreation and hobby stuff, etc). Anything remotely important, I scan to PDF, which triggers automatic OCR that is reasonably accurate, then I upload the PDF to Google Drive,…

Does anyone have a suggestion for a dual-sided feed scanner like this which can be used to semi-automate document scanning and which is not discontinued? I've been thinking about this for a while but I don't know enough about the market

FWIW I also wanted something that was not discontinued, but I heard so many recommendations for this exact device that I eventually picked a used one up on eBay, and I've been quite pleased. Currently hooked up to an old RPi running Ubuntu 20.04; scans directly to a syncthing folder. Works like a charm.

Re: Ask HN: What tiny purchases have disproportionately improved your life?

#310

Post by wyclif »

gizmo wrote: post #285
wyclif wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood why Apple doesn't make the features Rectangle offers native to macOS. Snapping windows shouldn't require a third-party app, but yet here we are.

Microsoft patented it

MSFT patented snapping windows?
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