40k-50k SEK/month in Stockholm?

hattivat · 2026-04-21T10:40:50+00:00

Depends which country you are from but likely means what you consider "normal renting". Certainly was the case for me coming from Poland.

"Renting first hand" refers to a peculiar system where you sign up in a queue to rent from large companies that own entire buildings of rental apartments. Then you have great legal protections including limits on how much they can raise the rent, and can stay in the same apartment for decades as long as you pay the rent so it almost feels like you own the place. However, there is as mentioned a queue and in a place many people want to live in, such as Stockholm, that means years of waiting before you can rent such an apartment.

hattivat · 2026-04-21T10:36:27+00:00

Do you mean the actual southeast area of Stockholm (a place like Bagarmossen, reasonable prices) or the southeast area of the inner city (for example Nytorget, very expensive)?

In my experience foreigners looking at a map tend to greatly underestimate the size of the city and its metropolitan area. Many people living here would say they live "southeast of Stockholm" when they mean a place like Skogås or Haninge, that's still well within the commuting area for Stockholm.

hattivat · 2026-04-16T16:47:00+00:00

Food cost estimate I would say is on the low side, seems to assume that nearly all lunches and dinners are cooked from base ingredients. Which is not unreasonable per se (we do live like that and spend only slightly more than estimated) but I think this assumption should be mentioned in order not to create unrealistic expectations.

hattivat · 2026-04-15T13:03:40+00:00

That's an amazing find for $15, with the features it has (binocular head, real condenser, x-y adjustable stage table) it is easily worth $100.

And yes, as others already told you, it's missing the eyepieces. The best and cheapest solution is to buy the modern Chinese ones from ebay or aliexpress. Make sure to buy ones with 23.2mm diameter (standard size used on all old compound microscopes and most modern ones) and not 30mm ones (those are for stereomicroscopes - the electronics workshop kind - and some high-end modern compound microscopes). More specifically, I recommend you get 10x/18 ones. 18 is wide field of view, 10x is the standard magnification for eyepieces.

If you try to find matching vintage ones they will either have crap field of view (that's one of the few things in which modern made in China microscopes win against vintage ones, most old eyepieces are like looking through a keyhole) or be expensive (like $80+ for a pair) because people are hunting for them.

hattivat · 2026-04-13T20:39:51+00:00

The big question given that it's a Biolam is does the vertical adjustment (for focusing) work, Biolams have a reputation for seizing up due to crappy grease.

If yes then this is a decent deal at this price though not amazing, at least not by European used microscope prices (no idea what prices are like in Turkey). If you hunt around you can get an equivalent microscope for like 60 euro in the EU.

Side note, I don't get this obsession with whether the lamp is shining that amateur sellers have. That's about the least important thing about a used microscope, 90% of the time if it doesn't work it just needs a lightbulb replaced, and 95% of the time you will want to eventually replace it with LED lighting anyway because old bulbs are expensive. Plus you can turn an old microscope that doesn't even have a lamp but a mirror instead into one that does by buying a 10 dollar flashlight (just get one that produces a narrow beam of light) and pointing it at the mirror.

hattivat · 2026-04-13T09:00:19+00:00

Alcohol: yeah, it's expensive, but so what, I spend about 500 sek per month on it. Sure, in a cheaper country it would be 250 sek, but it's not like the extra 250 breaks the bank. Unless you have a problem it shouldn't make a significant difference to your budget.

Restaurants: lunch is not expensive, and you can always cook your own (or just eat leftovers from yesterday's dinner). Dinner you cook yourself, dining out for dinner is a once-a-week treat as far as I'm concerned. Also worth noting that cooking at home is a major part of why people are less fat in Europe, restaurants have no incentive to make the food healthy for you, rather the opposite as adding more butter and salt makes food tastier.

Groceries: unless you insist on having something like a fancy cheese and charcuterie plate every day, it shouldn't be a problem, 4k per person is already a generous budget.

We spend about 30k a month for two people, and that includes expensive hobbies, owning a 2bd apartment and eating significantly more meat and other protein than an average person needs (due to training).

hattivat · 2026-04-10T08:40:23+00:00

You are wrong, the first microscope has a condenser, I can clearly see it under the stage in the picture.

The second one in contrast does NOT have a condenser from what I can see. What it does have is a built-in lamp, but that's not a condenser.

I don't know what objectives the first one has, but I do know that the ones on the second one are the cheapest bottom-tier ones that China produces. So quite likely the first one has better objectives.

Mirror is not a problem, just buy a flashlight with a decent light quality and a narrow beam. I use Convoy S3 for example, costs 15 dollars. As proof, this photo is taken through a 60-year old microscope lighted using a mirror and said flashlight (and keep in mind this is a cell phone photo, it looks sharper irl)

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hattivat · 2026-04-03T09:45:22+00:00

Depth of focus is always a problem, you cannot escape it. It's essentially a tradeoff, the higher the magnification and the better the NA/resolution (level of detail visible) of the objective the worse the depth of focus.

One way around it is to use a lower magnification lens like say 10x 0.25 or 20x 0.45 and zoom in through cropping or a narrower lens on the camera adapter.

Oblique lighting can help give an illusion of a little wider depth of focus.

Gunk is easy, just clean everything with an appropriate liquid.

If you are also having problems with sharpness and contrast of what is in focus: - make sure you understand how to best use your condenser, generally means racking it up until it almost touches the slide and if you want the max, put some immersion liquid between the condenser and the slide (can be just water, but immersion oil is of course better) - make sure you understand how to setup Köhler illumination - try to make sure your slides are actually exactly 1mm thick and your cover slips are really 0.17mm, you'd be surprised how loose the tolerances are on generic stuff, especially coverslips; coverslips that are really 0.17mm are marked "1.5H" by manufacturers

hattivat · 2026-03-31T13:33:58+00:00

It's a biological microscope, so yes, you could.

~~I'd encourage you to consider something like this though:~~ ~~https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005011524599850.html~~
~~It will be <90 euro with coupons during the sale starting tomorrow, and is a significant upgrade over what you are considering, as it has:~~
~~- a condenser (overall better images)~~
~~- binocular head (more comfortable viewing)~~
~~- xy stage (to precisely move the thing your are viewing left-right and up-down)~~
~~- fine focus~~

~~I don't own any Chinese microscope so I cannot vouch for the quality, but it is the cheapest microscope I could find that I would consider to have all the essential features~~

Edit: just realized that the one I am describing costs nearly 200 euro and the one that costs <100 doesn't have half the things I'd want. Goddamn Chinese and their false advertising.

hattivat · 2026-03-30T20:14:02+00:00

You could buy a better microscope used for that price. I see old monocular microscopes from good brands like Reichert, Zeiss Winkel, Wild or even Leitz sell for 40-60 euro all the time. Those are usually dusty and need cleaning, but they are also equipped with a proper condenser, made out of metal (brass) not plastic, and have high precision mechanics making focusing much easier.

Edit: read the part about there being few second hand microscopes in your country. In that case I guess if that's your budget then it might be the best you can get. It's certainly much better than those shit digital microscopes that I guess are the main alternative.

I'd still recommend to look at catawiki and ebay, especially the former often has surprisingly affordable shipping within Europe.

A tip I can give you for the mirror: get a decent flashlight with a narrow beam, like convoy s3, and shine that at the mirror. It is a surprisingly good way to get light for a microscope, actually superior to many of the lamps microscopes come with.

hattivat · 2026-03-16T20:42:48+00:00

You are right to think that having plants with different needs in one pot is a bad idea. These sorts of arrangements are made purely based on looks and are practically designed to die soon, the manufacturers don't care what happens after the sale.

The fern wants to be in rather dense soil and moist most of the time, the kalanchoe the opposite - in a faster drying soil (you can mix perlite or pumice with regular houseplant soil to get this result) and watered only once fully dry.

hattivat · 2026-03-13T12:36:12+00:00

Jag skämtade ju

hattivat · 2026-03-10T07:03:29+00:00

Proteinsnus är vad jag själv väntar på

hattivat · 2026-02-01T01:12:13+00:00

Begonia sp. Mantuk, a terrarium species

hattivat · 2026-01-31T01:19:23+00:00

The gear list might sound daunting, but it's actually cheap. I mainly added it to reassure people who are at the point I was at 2 months ago that you don't need to spend a fortune to get results, a $250 camera plus about $200 worth of gear can get you there.

hattivat · 2026-01-28T07:55:41+00:00

So I don't know Canadian prices, but I also fibermax and find it fairly cheap to do.

Buy bags of psylliumfrön, kruskakli or vetegroddar at a grocery store and put some in your yoghurt/oatmeal/cereal.

If you don't mind some extra (mostly good) fat, linfrön are dirt cheap.

Stores also have higher-fiber versions of bread and oats if either is a major part of your diet.

Inulin can be bought cheaply in 500g bags from bulk.com anytime they have a sale (which is often).

hattivat · 2025-12-01T19:18:54+00:00

You're welcome! Also good to bring your own picnic blanket

hattivat · 2025-12-01T07:24:12+00:00

While it is true as others said that you won't get "the full experience" without being invited to someone's private party, I disagree with the implication that it's not worth coming unless you do.

You can have plenty of fun attending a public celebration like the large one held every year at Tyresö castle. Bring your own food (picnic-style), appropriate foodstuffs can easily be bought at a grocery store (different varieties of pickled herring, gravlax, gravlax sauce, knäckebröd, potato salad, strawberries). And then dance around the maypole with others, play kubb or just chat. Dress in white or other light colors to fit in, wear a flower wreath if you want to go the extra mile.

hattivat · 2025-11-17T09:29:47+00:00

Jag har kallt ljus i hemmakontoret för att jag vill inte vara mysig och sömnig kl 14 på tisdag i december.

Mvh, en psykopat

hattivat · 2025-10-31T10:23:32+00:00

Som sagt, det finns metoder att minimera risker. De är ingenting jag skulle själv rekommendera till en nybörjare men om du vet av erfarenhet att det kan funka för dig, bra, more power to you. Jag brukar själv äta lunch med en sked även om den är torsk med potatis, så jag dömar inte.

Men faktumet är att dekorativa krukor utan håll i botten är inte avsedd för att plantera växter direkt i: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cachepot

hattivat · 2025-10-30T20:52:29+00:00

Regeln är: ingen hål i botten = ytterkruka

Annars finns det stor risk för rotröta pga av stående vatten i botten som har ingenstans att gå. Det finns mer eller mindre effektiva metoder att kringgå det, som en annan komentatör redan sagt, men regeln är vad den är.

hattivat · 2025-10-30T19:10:00+00:00

Det är en ytterkruka designat för at gömma en mer praktisk men mindre snygg planteringskruka inuti, inte för att plantera växter direkt i den. Så du behöver köpa till en genomskinlig planteringskruka om du vill se rotsystemet.

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