"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
This lil walking stick/chair combo is really cool. Bad knee means I sometimes need a cane or walking stick to get around, and STANDING around can be a real pain, so
(The “Ta-Da!” link above isn’t an affiliate link; I benefit from posting it only in warm fuzzies. *heh*)
Of course, I don’t know how many folks would want one at the $190 price. I got mine at my fav “fell off the back of a truck” store, so. . .
At any rate, I really like mine, even though my only choice was blue. ¯\_(?)_/¯
New Kindle Paperwhite.
Pluses:
The display is excellent. Perfect, IMO, for reading (and since that’s much more than 99% of what I use a Kindle for, just about perfect for my purposes).
The size is very good. Easily held one-handed for long periods of time.
Does indeed appear to last longer per charge.
Waterproof (well, water resistant).
In the 32-gig version, much more room for books than my other Kindles.
Minuses:
Navigating to my library of books sucks a bit. Much less straightforward than any of my other Kindles.
No auto-orientation. Not a really big deal, but it is a minor inconvenience.
I have yet to get it to sync up properly, and navigating to :last page read” in other registered devices has yet to work.
Just navigating to a different page or location in a book is clumsy.
All-in-all, the pluses far outweigh the minuses for me. The negatives are themselves only minor irritations, and are few. The positives are all things I was looking for.
Some 40 years ago, when we were “young marrieds,” before our first child, we purchased a nice set of “waterless” cookware. And it was nice, with but one flaw that made itself known over the next 20+ years: the pseudo-bakelite handles were not really all that durable, and as the less-than-durable handles (including the pot lids) failed, replacements. . . weren’t. Available, that is. Still, some components remain useful.
Fast forward to today when I was looking for a way to “fry” eggs in my air pressure/fryer/sous vide/slow cooker (love these combo appliances, when they work). Ah! The lil cups for the steamer/egg poacher add-on to the waterless cookware set! Yep. All six of them fit very nicely in the cooker. I love it when past and present come together to make things work well.
Had a guy ask me where I got the “30,000 emails erased by Hillary Clinton” info, because the last he’d heard is was maybe a couple of hundred. I think I have located where he’s been living:
Romanian Cave Sealed for 5.5 Million Years is Unsurprisingly Full of Strange Creatures
. . .but for many reasons, I really like this commercial.
. . . live like this:
Come on, folks. It’s only ~$6K. Xmas is coming. . . *heh*
And there’s not even a T-Bird in sight.
Well, I got my mother online today and she sent her very first ever emails. Her 89th birthday celebration is tomorrow.
Fun.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that my first gen Kindle Fire is just fine and dandy for the uses I have for it. One thing that did stand out, though, as a usability PITA from the beginning was the onscreen keyboard. For typing, not much fun. So, one of the first things I did was to locate some conductive foam in my stash of junk, urm, parts and equipment and make some styli. They worked and were a help, making “typing” on the Fire almost Good Enough, and easily OK for typing brief notes in books.
But actually buying a stylus? Fuggedaboutit. All of ’em I found on the web were too much money, once I’d made some from castoff junk, urm, parts and equipment for essentially nothing.
Page forward to today when I was standing at the checkout at our local “fell off the back of a truck” store and saw mini-styli (with handy lil 2.5mm/3.5mm plugin tethers) for a buck apiece. Since my home made styli have long since become well-worn, I picked up a couple. They work quite well, but “mini-styli” means using something about the size of a pencil nub, so. . .
At the same “fell off the back of a truck” I buy a particular ball point pen that has a Parker-compatible refill. A buck apiece. Cheap and useful, since I have more than a few Parker (and Parker compatible) ballpoint pens. While the barrels of these cheapies are fairly nice bamboo tubes, I junk the barrels and keep the refills handy. (Where “junk the barrels” means “put ’em in my stash of someday useful stuff” *heh*).
Do you see a convergence coming up here? Right. I just mated one of the mini-styli to one of those spare bamboo tubes (with a handy pocket clip already installed!) and have a pen-sized stylus that works a charm and even clips nicely to the leather case my Fire regularly occupies.
The smaller surface contact area of a stylus really makes a difference when using the onscreen keyboard, and the more normal pen size of the bamboo barreled (with the conductive part protruding for index finger contact) stylus is just right.
Rabbit trail: it’s also a wee tad easier using TeamViewer on the Fire with a stylus, well, for most things. Pinch-n-zoom isn’t all that improved. *heh* I do kinda enjoy accessing the Win8 Media Center compy with TeamViewer on my Fire. Comes in handy sometimes.
Ecoprojecteer My paternal grandfather would feel right at home with this guy, too. (Short rabbit trail: Granddaddy could build anything, it seemed, with just hand tools, ingenuity and a little blood and sweat. “Blood and sweat? Yeh. It’s a tradition in my family that any time one of the men does a wood working, mechanical, plumbing or electrical project of any kind, SOME blood must be spilled. *heh* Oh, none of us have yet lost body parts or required surgery for our injuries, but the “blood sacrifice” tradition has held up pretty well. Meticulous care and safety equipment, etc. seem to make no difference. If there’s a knuckle there to be barked on a bolt, it’ll play doggie. :-))
Anywho, back on point, they guy has a bunch of really fun, interesting and CHEAP TO BUILD projects detailed on his site. Love it. This one inspired me to wonder if I could build a cardboard wading pool… 😉
Gottaloveit.
*heh*
Actually, having one of each–a BioLite CampStove and a BioLite HomeStove–would be that “burning desire”. We have a propane powered camp stove for emergencies, and our outdoor charcoal grill (yes, I do make some of my own charcoal) can even–HAS even!–be used in a pinch, but these are doubly useful lil devices. Want. Going on Wish List.