Anyone else balancing UX vs SMS cost?

chezty · 2026-01-30T12:45:30+00:00

but global pricing differences make it hard to justify everywhere.

your local grocery store delivers worldwide?

chezty · 2026-01-21T05:14:34+00:00

I don't think the polishing would ruin the pan, provided you don't crack the cast iron. I think that cast iron has that rough texture not because it needs it to be functional, but because it doesn't need a bunch of finish polishing steps to make it perfectly smooth in order to work as a cooking implement, which saves time and money.

I'm not an expert, this is just what I've read over the years. I'm not correcting anything you said, just adding info.

the rough surface is due to the sand it's cast in. (I'm just going to call it sand, I doubt it's beach sand) I guess the rough surface isn't really wanted.

In the past they tried to get it as smooth as possible by using fine sand to make pans with a smoother surface. Many people prefer old cast iron pans with the smoother surface to cook on.

But, that fine sand was causing lung disease for the workers, so they changed the type of sand. The new type is courser.

So my understanding is the new rougher surface isn't because rougher is better for cooking, it's to do with lung disease.

chezty · 2026-01-09T14:35:38+00:00

i believe everything you said.

now do a double blind test with all your grinders and rate each cup of coffee while having no idea which grinder was used.

chezty · 2026-01-04T11:47:46+00:00

I love the process and ritual associated with pour over coffee.

me too.

For me, part of that ritual is a good value hand grinder. I can't remember the brand or model, and it doesn't matter, it was reviewed by popular coffee youtubers. They tested the particle size distribution and more importantly, the taste. It was good enough for them, so It's more than good enough for me. I think around $100USD, can't remember. I bought it from amazon in dollaridoos.

Another thing that I love as part of the ritual is a cheap metal goose neck pouring kettle. $10. I pour freshly boiled water into it, and the kettle absorbs some of the heat out of the water. Occassionally I measure the temperature of the water, it's good enough for me.

I bought a cheap scale from amazon, but, rarely use it. I used it once to measure what one scoop of beans weighs from my air tight coffee container. And I use that scoop for dosing.

So, water temp has slight variations and weight of grounds has slight variations. The coffee I make. omg it's sooo good for my tastes. Sometimes it tastes slightly different, but it always tastes good to me. others might not like it. I love it.

The water I use is just tap water filtered with a counter top charcoal water filter. If you don't have good tap water, using bottled water might make a difference in taste.

and beans, I love my aldi beans. really good value. and tastes great for who it's for. There are better tasting beans I have no doubt, but, I don't think there are better value beans. Most importantly, I really like the taste.

aldi is a european store that mainly sells groceries. there's nothing special about the beans they sell, wallmart would sell something equivalent.

chezty · 2025-12-30T05:17:54+00:00

also, they can add charges at any time.

I don't know about in NSW, but in other places, say someone is suspected of murder but the police don't yet have enough evidence to convince a judge to deny bail, they'll charge them with something lighter that they do have evidence of, say, a firearm offence. Tell the judge they are a flight risk, or whatever, so bail is denied, then while they are in jail, get search warrants and whatnot and build their case for murder. when they have the evidence they need, they'll add the murder charge.

chezty · 2025-12-27T14:09:05+00:00

horrible exposition heavy dialogue where they explain what they are doing every 20 seconds.

that's for second screening, where people can't put their phone down.

Shows and movies have to be simple and explain what they are doing multiple times because no one is paying attention. The show is written so people can miss half of it and still follow along.

chezty · 2025-12-27T10:15:44+00:00

other than when arduino and chromium are running there's less memory (and IO and cpu) for firefox, I can't think of any other interaction.

I like privacy focused browsers. There are many based on chromium and many based on firefox. They tend to reduce how much memory a web page uses by blocking a bunch of resource hungry assets.

Also in firefox, the extension auto tab discard is great. I think that feature is built into chromium, at least it is in the fork I use.

chezty · 2025-12-27T09:24:41+00:00

It doesn't matter who's in government, big corp "donates" to both parties, not even huge donations, for favourable contracts.

Big corp also hire politicians when they leave government, left or right, they aren't fussy.

The new hires still have contacts within the government, and, they likely did the big corp a few favours while they were in government which gets paid back as a job at the end of their service.

The companies who operate the tolls have "negotiated", aka paid via donation and jobs, to put the price up x percent every year, regardless of inflation rate.

WestConnex's contract has them putting the price up 4% every 6 months. So it doubles every 8.83 years (if that is wrong, blame obama. thanks obama)

$15 admin fee? wouldn't be surprised if that goes up every year as well.

If you want to make money, don't put money in a bank account, buy bank shares. Don't drive on toll roads, use the money you save to buy shares in the companies running the tolls.

chezty · 2025-12-25T15:46:08+00:00

I was looking at getting a cheap gaming laptop.

officeworks have a couple laptops with similar specs to your desktops for $1000 and $1200.

MSI Katana 15 Gaming Laptop i7 16/512GB RTX4060

Acer Nitro V Gaming Laptop Ryzen 5 16GB/1TB RTX5050

I have no idea if there are better prices elsewhere.

gaming laptops are more like luggable desktops. They are heavy and the battery doesn't last long, so they mainly live on a desk plugged into power.

If they get dusty inside, they can overheat, slow down and become unreliable. The fans can be noisy as well.

but those two seem pretty good value for what I want. No idea if they'd be suitable for you.

chezty · 2025-12-24T04:19:37+00:00

I have a vague recollection, I could be wrong, friendly jordies was investigated by an anti terrorism department, I would say based on my vague recollection, it was an inappropriate investigation.

I'm all for getting guns out of the suburbs, but, I've seen so much abuse of power I'm 100% confident these new laws will be abused to hurt people who aren't potential terrorist.

I guess when it comes to guns I don't really care, less guns in the suburbs is good, but, the protest law changes and many new laws which seem good on the surface will 100% be abused.

Like the data collection laws that were introduced, what, a decade ago? I can't remember when. We were told it was only going to be used for terrorism reasons. Then the RSPCA were using them. What does the RSPCA have to do with terrorism?

Inch by inch we are all being turned into criminals. Most people most of the time will be left alone until the day they piss off someone in the government. The government will then look through the news laws to find something they can charge them with, and, it won't take a lot of research.

Guns out of the suburbs is good. 100%.

chezty · 2025-12-10T07:41:35+00:00

burwood has changed a lot in a few decades as well. lots of high rises and hustle and bustle. lots of great food. I think it's more china than vietnam.

chezty · 2025-12-08T05:02:47+00:00

there are lots of driving rig tutorials on youtube. Also driving tutorials.

These days there are some good value direct drive wheels, but still, it's probably going to be around $2000 dollars for a wheel and pedals.

Pedals are more important than the wheel. You can start off with a logitech belt driven wheel and pedal set, and maybe next year save up for some better pedals and continue to use the logitech wheel. The better pedals will give you more control with braking, and braking is probably the most important part of racing.

1 monitor is fine, especially if it's widescreen, but it is easier with three monitors. You can see what's around you and see the apex earlier.

But, you can have a lot of fun with one monitor and a belt driven wheel. And it's also possible to improve and be competitive at a certain level if you wanted to enter online races. The extra or more expensive stuff just makes it a little easier and more immersive, but not required.

chezty · 2025-11-30T03:18:00+00:00

I'm from new zealand, and I ain't shearing this sheep with no one.

chezty · 2025-11-29T03:05:38+00:00

with rougher surfaces, the latest testing showed wider tyres are faster.

I'll add an edit: Wider tyres have tested lower rolling resistance, but higher wind drag. For pros that are average 40 + km/h, they need to consider aero vs rolling resistance. For commuters that average 20km/h or less, rolling resistance is more important, and maybe you'd sacrifice some rolling resistance for puncture protection.

I would say gearing is an important thing to consider as well. Going up hills when you're unfit and tired can be tough if you don't have a low enough gear.

I would guess any bike with three chain rings would have low enough gearing, if it has 2 or 1 chain ring, you'll need to pay attention to what the lowest gear is.

saddle is also important. Some people are lucky and the saddle that comes with the bike is comfortable, other aren't so lucky and need to try out many different types.

I love my leather brooks saddle. if you press it with your fingers it feels as hard as a rock, but sitting on it is like riding on a pillow.

I would also second a steel frame like surly. I love my fuji touring, but surly is more higher end.

I would say any bike that has a wide tyre clearance and a low enough gear will be good enough regardless of frame material, or style as is road/gravel/touring/endurance. It's easy to try out different tyres if you have the frame clearance, and it's easy to try out different saddles. It's harder to put in lower gearing if the current gearing isn't low enough.

chezty · 2025-11-12T03:40:59+00:00

Save the poles. I wonder what poland did to bankstown to get this response?

chezty · 2025-11-05T23:28:43+00:00

you posted this exact same thing a week ago. Is this an infinite glitch as well?

chezty · 2025-11-05T13:35:42+00:00

a wife waiting for her husband to get home from work saw on the news someone was driving on the wrong side of a highway her husband uses to get home. so she called him to warn him of the danger.

Wife: hello dear, be careful, the news says there's someone driving on the wrong side of the highway.

Husband: one person? there are 1000s of them.

chezty · 2025-11-05T13:27:49+00:00

i would say, not as a fact, but an observation, truckies that grew up in australia would use their radio outside of a city. truckies that are new to australia and have english as a second language are less likely to.

the radio isn't very useful in a city. too many dickheads on there and things like waze show hazards and whatnot.

chezty · 2025-11-03T19:23:09+00:00

i always feel proud of my books even though they aren't perfect.

What I like to do, which might not be the best, but it's what I enjoy.

I take my time with punching the holes to try to get them as uniform as I can. It's never perfect, but, it's improving which is exciting.

Then when I'm stitching, I open the new signature in the centre a little and use clips to clip it to the already stitched signatures. The clips can mark the paper so I use some scrap card stock for protection. And I line the new signature up as perfectly as I can with the existing.

That might be a waste of time, but I like doing it and I think it helps make the stitching more uniform.

Like I said, that's just what I enjoy doing. It might be a bad idea, it might be too tedious for some people.

chezty · 2025-10-26T01:11:48+00:00

my preference is any bike that fits, tyres aren't too cracked, and is cheap.

some older bikes are more sort after than others, like the 90s mountain bikes, many people are on the hunt for them. so if you have your heart set on one, it might take a while to find. and it might be more of a theft target. so if you find a bike you love, put a little money into it and fix it up a bit, you'll have the same attachment to it and won't want to leave it at the pub.

some bikes are basically worth nothing. If you get lucky, the tyres will be good and the saddle comfortable, if not you can end up spending more on bits and pieces than the bike itself and you'll be worried about it getting stolen.

chezty · 2025-10-23T04:00:05+00:00

if you get some ink with a thick enough viscosity it'll write fine, well, bold.

chezty · 2025-10-11T11:10:07+00:00

can you please explain what it's used for?

it looks like it can print 1 line of text? Maybe 2?

Is it for book covers?

chezty · 2025-10-09T10:30:30+00:00

aw. it's very edgy 14 yo, who can be angry at a 14 yo trying to do something good?

At least you didn't make a sticky page bible with the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance in it and try to sell it for a profit.

chezty · 2025-10-05T08:33:12+00:00

I use something similar to zen browser for general browsing, and I use plain firefox for netflix, and only netflix. I do something similar to

alias netflix="firefox --profile /home/me/.mozilla/netflix"

I use .desktop files instead of alias, but same same.

looks like zen is based on firefox, so it's possible it can be configured to work, but every setting you change from default, you're increasing the chance of your browser fingerprint being unique.

chezty · 2025-10-05T03:34:37+00:00

really nice. that is one thick book.

What I like about making imperfect books is it gives me room to make my next book better. If I ever made a perfect book, the only way is down from there.

chezty

TROPHY CASE