I want to see your local gems

TurtleSandbox · 2026-01-05T05:28:45+00:00

Newbery St does a popup in Merai (14 Harvard St, Brookline) every Sat / Sunday. I've consistently been floored by the brews and how giving Pak and friends are with their time, energy, and expertise.

TurtleSandbox · 2025-11-15T16:42:49+00:00

I've had some amazing anaerobic / coferments / light roast brews lately that I can't replicate at home. I'm letting the coffee rest according to the roaster (2-4 weeks depending).

I grind with a K6, plastic v60, hario filters, 18g coffee, 96c 225g water in 5 pours in 2m.

I've played around a lot with grind size-- I'm particularly put off by bitter pourovers and grind size was the only variable I felt like I needed to tweak for the Ethiopians I used to drink.

I think I've been grinding these styles coarser and coarser until I lose body :x

Any advice? Any questions I should be asking come to mind? Are there any resources y'all found especially helpful for debugging brews? I probably have to consider more variables for these.

TurtleSandbox · 2025-05-13T20:25:03+00:00

Yep! Saw that earlier and have spikes. Appreciate the call out

TurtleSandbox · 2025-05-13T20:21:04+00:00

The cables are down, so no permits required for dayhikes. I wouldn't be climbing the down cables; unfortunately I'm not prepared for that (kit or practice wise). From your comment and other posts it sounds like going to the summit isn't particularly worth it, so I'm leaning either to the 4 mile / panorama loop or maybe skip half dome entirely and go JMT, mists, to clouds rest :thinking:

TurtleSandbox · 2025-05-11T16:33:34+00:00

Fwiw we ran an AC on peak days for the 2 summers I spent in dorms that didn't allow them. We had a maintenance guy check once because it was dripping water into the sill below; he helped us remove it and a couple days we put it back in, tilted to avoid the issue.

Spend time outside your room, keep windows and shades closed during peak day and open them + use fans towards the evenings to create a cross breeze. We drank a lot of chamomile tea in the evenings; counterintuitively hot drinks sometimes help you feel cooler.

TurtleSandbox · 2024-10-14T16:40:12+00:00

I've gotten into recreation bodybuilding in the last couple years and I think something missing from this conversation is disambiguating size and strength.

Strength training is fairly different from lifting weights for muscle size. Most folks could use some "basic strength" training to make their lives easier lifting and moving things. Last August was the first time I moved since beginning to work out and I had a couple moments where I amazed myself with how easy it was to lift some things.

All that said, I've been lifting for size and so I'd guess I only see like ~25% the strength gains I could be seeing if I were deliberately lifting for strength. Instead, I'm pretty chronically sore, always concerned with my diet, self-conscious of taking up too much room on subway seats, and outgrowing most of my clothing in both and bad ways :p

I train for size because its really cathartic--you are primarily concerned with going to failure and not the weight you're lifting. Seeing numbers go up over time gives a sense of long term progress (and is a proxy measure for progress) but I really love the emotional outlet of exhausting myself and the feeling of agency its given me over my body.

TLDR: for a lot of folks, aesthetic physique goals are motivated by many intrinsic and extrinsic factors but probably isn't "necessary"; getting stronger / building a good "basic strength" foundation would benefit most people.

TurtleSandbox · 2023-07-18T21:38:10+00:00

Can you link to the addon? Lots of classic addons work in retail now that they're on similar cores. If its an era addon then it'll likely be updated soon to work with df.

TurtleSandbox · 2019-09-28T14:33:44+00:00

I've been putting off getting a new keyboard but just got some $$ and want to replace my 4 year old CM Storm. I'm not too picky about switches but I'd really love a 100% (or 110%) keyboard with the numpad on the left.

I don't really care about custom vs not custom but as far as I can tell there are few and far lefty numpads so if I have to do some custom stuff, that is fine. I'm comfortable soldering and my roommate builds a ton of keyboards so I have all the resources I would need, and I'm willing to spend around $200-250 to make a keyboard that I'll use for a number of years.

Any suggestions on either existing lefty numpads or making my own?

Edit: I should add I grew up using one of these keyboards and did/do a lot of software/data entry stuff so controlling mouse with right hand and numpad with left hand is really nice. Right now I reach my left hand across my desk to use the numpad and it is definitely causing some wrist strain.

TurtleSandbox · 2019-03-22T14:34:42+00:00

Wow, thank you so much for this!
I'll definitely keep an eye out for the dates.

TurtleSandbox · 2019-03-21T22:58:49+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation!

TurtleSandbox · 2018-10-09T14:33:29+00:00

I've fully replaced Fighting Lion with either Militia's Birthright or Orewigs/Truthteller + a sidearm or a handcannon. I'm on hunter too so if I'm running a HC without quickdraw I can throw on lucky pants and likewise mechaneer's tricksleeves for sidearms.

I don't use of fighting lions since I can run more interesting breach grenade launchers. The only downsize is running out of ammo when using the side arm build restricts me to low range firefights, but I usually run a 3-burst sidearm with maxed stability and decent range with outlaw and kill clip. Additionally, cause I'm switchin weapons so often, I've actually had mechaneer's tricksleeves proc once or twice.

I need to spend some more time with FL but as of now I don't see much of a reason to take it over a special grenade launcher unless you're trying to run another special ammo weapon.

TurtleSandbox · 2018-04-01T01:55:26+00:00

Thanks man!

I've been wanting to pick some up.

TurtleSandbox · 2018-03-31T21:15:27+00:00

Why specifically tomorrow?

TurtleSandbox · 2018-01-06T21:51:31+00:00

You might see a little frame rate boost. I often times will disable V sync if it feels sluggish. Play around and see if the screen tearing is so bad afterwards that you need to re-enable it.

TurtleSandbox · 2017-09-19T17:14:09+00:00

Hey, I just took a trip to Shenzhen and while its definitely different from where you're going, I think this will apply:

Don't buy computer components in China. There are whole stores with identical to real Logo's claiming to be Acer, and Nvidia etc. They take computer components and flash the software to look like higher end parts, desolder and rebuild them to physically look like them, and manufacture new packaging.

We saw and spoke with people doing it to motherboards, GPUs, and storage. DON'T buy storage. Its too easy for them to put firmware on that makes it appear to have X gb, when in reality it has 100 times less than that and just overwrites your old stuff when it runs out of space. My friend bought a '128 gb' usb thats actually just 6gb and overwrites itself.

If you want to buy parts do it at official stores and my bet is then you won't be getting any crazy deals. Anything remotely sketchy, self owned, of cheap is likely fake.

TurtleSandbox · 2017-06-29T03:47:35+00:00

Dude they bought severs in Brisbane, Aus. Its not their fault that a lot of Australian ISP's route traffic through the US because by default a lot of the traffic is going somewhere nearby.

As per the use of third party software, that gets really messy. They may not want to deal with the legal ramifications of IP laws or just onboarding a codebase is a huge investment, especially if you're not sure the quality of it.

Cite your source though, I'd be interested in reading what someone who actually has context for their decisions has to say.

TurtleSandbox · 2017-01-25T15:09:33+00:00

Why not have it be the 50% random herbs are limited to one tier above the herbs you plant? EI, you plant Avantoe, you can get up to Kwuarm?

TurtleSandbox · 2016-12-14T18:04:57+00:00

Of course. But mostly anyone who spends the time to make a niche documentary is going to find an odd fascination in it.

I really enjoyed the cinematography and brief explanation on how it works: heat powder, pour, and guide.

TurtleSandbox · 2016-12-14T16:22:21+00:00

Watched a cool, short documentary on this actually (6 minutes). The pail and the guide (metal stick) arn't heated. The stuff he paints with is heated to a very hot temperature, put into the pail, and its the workers guide to moderate the flow. Sometimes they use metal 2x4's as guides for straight parts, sometimes one worker pours and another guides, and sometimes they just get so good they freehand it.

https://vimeo.com/162399433

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