Mosaic and Lynx on Sun workstations was how I started as well. Back then, there was a ton of open ftp access as well, wild.

It gets worse as the horse was part of a herd that came with the ranches he purchased to smush into a mega ranch. He wanted rid of the horses as they cost a fair bit to keep, so he was literally giving away something that saved him money and cost them.

Ham radio. Still at the discovery stage of whats what, thinking about what I want to get into, which means lots of fun learning about everything, as usual in a totally random manor. Trying to avoid getting sidetracked by the VHF/UHF stuff as it would just rapidly spiral out of control.

Just need to knuckle down and study for the foundation exam so I can actually get started transmitting. I think I have the QRP setup I want more or less nailed down that would tide me over till I can move up to intermediate later on. Would give me a nice QRP setup for travel and allow me to treat myself for passing my intermediate with a proper shack radio with a bit more power.

Just to give you another rabbit hole, you can also manipulate pretty much any data source, including Excel using powershell. I regularly use powershell scripts to mass import data that the script processes into an Excel workbook that the powershell formats. I find powershell to be faster doing this (if you use .net framework/LINQ, powershell sucks at large scale data object processing natively), especially if it’s large amounts of data, I typically process combined logs of over a million rows.

Special high gravity boots to stop him goosestepping in public

Levers can be the ultimate for long lasting as virtually zero parts to wear out especially the ones that require you to heat up the water yourself, but I would struggle to recommend one to someone coming from a bean to cup due to the difficultly factor. My first espresso was a Flair, having to get the temp, speed, and pressure consistent every time for every shot at 6am in the morning was a complete PITA on top of getting the grind, temp, and weight right for that shot. I soon switched to an E61 as its just push button in comparison.

Long term I want a lever like the Strietman CT2 but not till I get a Decent for everyday use.

Moka is to espresso as french press is to drip, they just not the same. Nothing wrong with them, but its a false equivalence. If you prefer moka then drink it, if you prefer espresso then drink that instead.

A good e61 based espresso machine should last forever as every part is replaceable and readily available. Something like the gaggia classic. Granted, they aren’t 30 bucks, but they are cheaper than any expensive bean to cup machine.

A more mundane one, but people on reasonably normal incomes living in a house that’s at least one order of magnitude more expensive than they could ever afford even if they purchased it twenty or thirty years ago. Its particularly bad in things set in expensive areas like London or New York or Tokyo. Like being able to afford a house in central London rather than renting a flat with three other people takes substantial money, you aren’t going to be afford that if you work in a supermarket.

You are very lucky with that water, saves so much effort and not a small amount of cash to sort it out otherwise.

Best of luck for your search for that god shot off coffee!

Sorry for the slow reply, wanted to take my time writng a response for you.

Is there any particular reason you are using two filters? The modern thinking is often centered around faster draws to get less astringency that is present in over extraction, can be seen as bitterness. If the water is sitting in the grounds for longer, everything else being equal, will have higher extraction up to a point.

breville batista touch Is this your only grinder, is it grinding for the pourovers as well? Its a great machine capable of some great espresso, but its grinder is its weakest link and holds it back. Even a cheap hand grinder like a KINGrinder should offer a noticeable improvement if you are not happy with what you getting and you have already walked through the workflow.

Is your water tasty to drink as is? Can you get hold of Volvic bottled water? That would be my preferred choice for a taste test, both as plain water vs. your water, and to make an espresso with. Obviously there are far cheaper methods to improve water, but as a quick and very simple taste test you cannot beat a one off using bottled water to understand if you can make improvements. Once you know if you can, then you can look at the most cost effective way to do so.

For your beans, since you buy from a local seller do they also operate a cafe? How does their cafe prepared drinks (assuming they actually do a good job with these) compare to yours? Its a good starting point to understand how good a cup a cafe can get out of your beans.

Audio quality is never going to be as good at the same price point because the wireless device has to budget for batteries, the wireless gubbins, aptx codex to license, and usually app development costs.

I have a dragonfly red so I can still use wired headphones with my phone, and its amp is far better than any modern smartphone, so it will drive some of the expensive that phones just cannot, like my Focal Clear OGs.

However I greatly prefer to use my Sony WF-1000XM4 for any public or mobile situation as they are the perfect form factor for that, and the sound quality is good enough that I am not going to tear my hair out listening to them for any length of time.

Isn’t this the plot of the next Toy Story film?

What’s your water and beans like? Do you grind at home already, if so what grinder do you have?

Its a trade off between knowing enough about the hobby to buy the right gear for what you actually need, is it a huge 3D printer? Something that prints really fast? Or may be you need something that can print multiple filaments like a Prusa XL?

Buying the wrong thing when its expensive for you can be worse than buying something cheap that you can learn from. Obviously not everybody needs this learning experience, but most people benefit from it.

Espresso is the big one I see people trying to go hard right out the bat. Typically they will by a Linea Mini or a Decent and then pair it with what has become a shit espresso grinder (as grinders have moved on massively since it came out) like a Niche Zero. Its like the opposite to what you actually need to make good espresso, and something like a Decent has such a deep configuration option working out what does what is very tough. If you aren’t actually using those options then why did you buy the Decent lol, its entire selling point is that level of configuration.

Espresso in order of importance is water quality > beans > grinder > technique > espresso machine. As long as the espresso machine has a reasonably consistent temperature and pressure, so a OPV and PID both calibrated properly, it will make good to great espresso, that’s all it needs. These start at a 1/6th of the cost of the two espresso machines I listed above, less if you buy second hand.

Ignoring his sex trafficking and exploitation doesn’t make it go away. I am also very doubtful his little pick up artist discord would go away by being ignored either. Lengthy jail time is the only way to address him and his brother

The latter every time. It’s made much worse as it’s almost always achieved via a leveraged buy out, saddling the business with huge debt and absolving the vulture from most of the risk. It’s used as a one way ticket to stripping the company of any value.

So this is obviously McDonald’s but manufacturing suffers a similar path:

1. Make high quality and respected product onshore
2. Get purchased by vulture capitalist
3. Lower standards to increase profit
4. Product is offshored to cover up falling sales
5. Quality nosedives
6. Once the customer base catches on sales nosedives
7. Lower quality even more and brand becomes a joke
8. Get purchased by mega conglomerate who collects brands like Pokémon
9. Rival product gets made onshore by a small team who used to work for you

See Doc Martin and Solvair or Hunter Wellingtons or any other of a large number of former halo brands. Filson is one going through this right now

Sway on ubuntu, as it’s my work machine. I will switch eventually when I replace the PC with a new one

At least it’s not on arch 😞