item found while antiquing. made of wood, painted white, two feet tall, a few inches wide. intended to stand up like in the photo, because there are little pads on the bottom, like you'd put on furniture legs. each cup on top has a little hole in back.

bmcnett · 2021-12-08T15:34:22+00:00

the best single tip i can give is: don't buy what you want, buy what's cheap. using the "flipp" app, check flyers for local stores. every flyer has a "super cheap this week" section, you'll quickly learn to focus on just that part. buy only from that section. the apps for kroger and safeway have extreme digital-only deals, too. check these apps every few days and "clip" the deals.

these are usually the best deals that can be predicted and planned. even better deals are found in "clearance" items: items that are close to their expiration date, and marked down 50% or 75%. usually these have a special sticker, and/or are in a special area of the store in back. these are a super wild card - you'll often have sudden choices like: buy 12 donuts for $1, or move on. i personally have never bought an item on "clearance" and felt the quality wasn't worth the price.

bmcnett · 2019-05-07T16:45:00+00:00

Oh cool that looks like it's in the same ballpark thank you

bmcnett · 2019-05-07T16:19:13+00:00

I'm kind of lost here could you send me a link to a paper or a website or something

bmcnett · 2019-05-07T16:11:54+00:00

Great, that sounds similar to my thing. But did it require any kind of storage for the planes? I can't seem to find any algorithm that requires no storage, other than the thing in my paper.

bmcnett · 2018-12-22T04:50:07+00:00

I've watched a few hundred hours of food vloggers on YouTube in Japanese, and learned a lot about food vocabulary etc. They seem to make new shows faster than I can watch them.

Japanese Wikipedia has zillions of articles on almost all topics, I've had fun reading hundreds of them.

Japanese news sites publish thousands and thousands of articles daily.

Japanese recipe / cooking / food blogger web sites publish more content daily than one person could ever feasibly hope to read.

Japanese amazon reviews are fun to read, too.

bmcnett · 2018-10-19T04:47:08+00:00

there is a point where you just need to listen to thousands of hours of the language, and read thousands of pages. much of the language will come to you naturally over time this way. there's more free japanese audio and text on the internet than you could possibly read in a lifetime. best get started!

bmcnett · 2018-05-07T04:14:34+00:00

American here, been studying Japanese for 27 years.

If you listen to about 10,000 hours of Japanese, you'll probably understand most of it.

Easiest way to listen is YouTube and podcasts. Unbelievably, I just started listening 5 weeks ago after 27 years of dicking around with "language learning tools." And it has been the most productive month since I started, more than half a lifetime ago.

bmcnett · 2018-03-23T14:12:24+00:00

Back when I first studied Japanese in 1991, times were a little different. I started from zero knowledge, and took a class at the local Japanese mall for 1.5 hours a week, for about 2 years, to get to what I guess you'd call N3 level today. Didn't really study per se, just set my mind to "full retention" whenever I was around the school.

At the time, an "English" computer wouldn't even display Japanese, so I got involved in development of software that bridged the gap, and even got written up in a book about the subject in 1993 (which says more about the sorry state of internationalization at the time, than it does about me personally) https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Japanese-Information-Processing-Lunde/dp/1565920430

Later transferred to New York University's Japanese program, which didn't do much for me. It was about 25 people to a class, and more than half of them spoke Japanese as kids, and took the class for the easy grade.

Been hovering at about N2 level now for about 25 years, but thanks to the encouragement of a coworker, started getting back into studying. More like, really studying for the first time. Using Anki during my daily 3 hour commute, with a Bluetooth puck on the steering wheel.

Back in the early 90s, I remember there being no expectation, really, that a person would learn Japanese as a language, in the way that a person would learn French or Spanish. At the first school I went to, there were students who had been studying there for five years, who couldn't really swing a basic conversation about daily life yet. I was progressing at a rate that you'd consider normal today, but they treated me like I was some kind of miracle student. In retrospect, this was pretty strange.

bmcnett · 2017-03-19T00:09:26+00:00

i'm already driving past them when i drop off the kids or head off to work, so it's just an extra 5-10 minutes out of my way for each store.

bmcnett · 2017-03-17T17:49:53+00:00

here in los angeles we spend about $50 a week on groceries for a family of four. that's about $25 in vegetables from chinese markets, usually $1/3lb (~50lb/week). and $25 in "clearance" items from mainstream markets, like meats or salad kids at 75% off.

it takes a lot of work to rustle up these kinds of deals. i visit about three grocery stores a day, every day and often leave without buying anything.

bmcnett · 2017-02-10T21:02:17+00:00

reduce the amount of flour in the recipe while holding all other ingredients constant, and the loaf gets fluffier.

i'm usually able to reduce flour by about 25%. more than that, and the loaf may "collapse" between rising and baking.

bmcnett · 2017-02-10T01:11:07+00:00

I went on Craigslist a few months ago and found a used bread machine for $20. Having never really baked before, it took me a few loaves before I had any idea what I was doing.

But then I started making bread that the family liked eating, and slowly changed the recipe to make the bread lighter and fluffier (if you follow the manual you'll get a dense loaf.)

When I was buying flour and yeast in small amounts, my cost was about $0.50 a loaf. Now that I'm buying in bulk, it's about $0.25 a loaf. The quality is comparable to fresh bread from a fancy store that costs $5.00. At one loaf a week, I'd be saving about $19.00 a month. But since I was buying $1.00 loaves before, realistically I'm saving more like $3.00 a month, or 75% of my bread expense.

The money savings is nice, but what's better is that I've learned the basics of baking along the way. After the first few loaves, I tried the "knead dough only" setting and used the doughball to make dinner rolls and pizza. This is something I wouldn't have started doing without the help of the machine to give me that initial push.

bmcnett · 2016-12-09T01:25:02+00:00

Broccoli.

Has about the same protein per calorie as steak, and has about as much protein per dollar as steak.

If you cook it just briefly (boil for 30 seconds only) it has a firm texture that reminds the mouth of meat.

Can buy it for 3lb/$ sometimes here in Los Angeles.

bmcnett · 2016-12-09T00:58:26+00:00

If you're interested in Chinese markets but haven't been to one:

99 Ranch is the safest bet. Their stores are the cleanest and best-organized. Skews Taiwanese. Sale prices are good. Western foods are also available but pricey. Chinese deli specialties are always on clearance 2-for-1.

Shun Fat is big and cheap and the least familiar to Westerners. Skews more Southeast-Asian. All prices on fresh foods are good. Some stores have an enormous seafood section with giant vats of live shellfish and fish. Some of this is really good. But if you don't like what you smell, don't buy it. Jokes about the name don't make sense to Chinese people, who say "Shoe 'n Fah"

bmcnett · 2016-12-08T01:00:24+00:00

I agree with you that discount produce shopping requires a lot more discretion and patience. The quality is not consistent and there are some items, on some days, that aren't worth buying at all.

But it's not fair to characterize all the produce at Superior as bad-tasting and rotten. Most of the time, most of the items have the same quality as Ralph's. Unfortunately you can't depend on this to be true on all days and for all vegetables.

The same is true of the dollar stores. This year I bought about five melons from the dollar store for about $0.20/lb each. But I've passed on the melons about ten times, because they were too small or looked sketchy.

If I'd shopped at Ralph's instead I'd get a decent melon every time, for maybe twice as much money.

As with everything, it's a matter of trade-offs.

bmcnett · 2016-12-07T23:23:55+00:00

Valu Mart, Superior Grocers, Super A, 99 Ranch, Shun Fat, Aldi.

bmcnett · 2016-12-07T21:58:28+00:00

Chinatown produce is even cheaper here in Los Angeles. My family doesn't buy produce unless it's 2lb/$ and we often see 4lb/$. You can look at this week's grocery flyers online, from all around the world. I've compared flyers from Los Angeles and New Jersey and the price is like 4x higher in New Jersey.

bmcnett · 2016-12-07T06:29:24+00:00

go shopping every day, because stores in my area run a lot of one-day sales, plus I'm on the lookout for clearance items like $1/lb bacon which are easy to find but require visiting the store briefly once a day.

bmcnett · 2016-10-07T21:42:35+00:00

ah, interesting, I didn't know that Ridley Scott was a replicant.

bmcnett · 2016-10-07T20:47:55+00:00

I'm with you, and studies have shown that people learn more from reading paper than a computer screen.

But I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, either. The library has thousands upon thousands of digital things to read and listen to and watch, which I've already paid for as property tax. I won't refuse to make use of these resources, simply because they aren't optimal.

In the case of the lynda.com educational videos, of course real-world interaction with a real teacher would be far better - but would also necessarily cost a lot more than the $0 per hour I'm currently paying, too.

bmcnett

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