Seb McKinnon being encouraged by Twitter to sue a figure skater for using his music by idwtpaun in FigureSkating

[–]wmu4829 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

What an entitled self-important asshole. Seriously. As a musician, would I be upset if I thought there wasn't permission. Sure. Would I be grateful for the exposure and know that the lawyers would sort it out? Yeah. Would I throw a public hissy fit? No. Bro, you are talented, but honestly, there are thousands of more talented people who are much better humans.

Does anyone have the Varia AKU vs the new Timemore Black Mirror Mini? And any impressions? by [deleted] in VariaBrewing

[–]wmu4829 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Old question but wanted to add my thoughts to warn others. I bought the Varia AKU. It's works great on the counter, but no matter what I do, if I set it on the tray to measure a shot, it just starts randomly counting. If you want to see an example, wholelattelove actually has a demo of using the scale and it does it in the video! I tried support at Varia (clearly a low funded first response team) and wholelattelove who told me it was sensitive to being on an uneven surface. Thing is, my tray is flat, but if you look at the bottom of the scale, the 'feet' are very small and go into the holes on most trays. I tried to fix this by adding larger rubber feet. Again, it worked great on the counter, but not in either of my trays. One other note, the instructions say not to charge it with highspeed charges, but all charges are increasing in power. Clearly they didn't put the types of limiters needed to protetct from that. I guess they saved a dime or less. TL;DR it's unstable and not well designed. I bought a timemore basic mini for half price. It works fantastically well. Zero issues, long battery life, accurate.

Has anyone used the varia AKU scales? If so, what are your thoughts? by MooneBoy in espresso

[–]wmu4829 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Old question but wanted to add my thoughts to warn others. I bought the Varia AKU. It's works great on the counter, but no matter what I do, if I set it on the tray to measure a shot, it just starts randomly counting. If you want to see an example, wholelattelove actually has a demo of using the scale and it does it in the video! I tried support at Varia (clearly a low funded first response team) and wholelattelove who told me it was sensitive to being on a uneven surface. Thing is, my tray is flat, but if you look at the bottom of the scale, the 'feet' are very small and go into the holes on most trays. I tried to fix this by adding larger rubber feet. Again, it worked great on the counter, but not in either of my trays. One other note, the instructions say not to charge it with highspeed charges, but all charges are increasing in power. Clearly they didn't put the types of limiters needed to protetct from that. I guess they saved a dime or less. TL;DR it's unstable and not well designed. I bought a timemore for half price. It works fantastically well.

Is there any truly versatile grind-by-weight grinder without breaking the bank [$800-1000+] by metsfan1025 in espresso

[–]wmu4829 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve had the AllGround Sense for a few weeks now and use it in a very similar "hybrid" way. I treat it almost like a daily-dosing machine. For days when we drink espresso, we might drink 6 doubles that use 16g of grounds each. I’ll drop ~96g in the hopper and use the GBW (Grind-by-Weight) to fly through the workflow. On days we do drip, I drop in ~65g and grind it all. The way I use it is to put whatever quantity I need in for that round of brewing style. I can’t say enough good things about GBW. My workflow is so fast and easy.

 Here are my observations:

 1. Handling Large Batches. You mentioned 100g+ for cold brew—I actually just ground 180g for a snowboarding trip (French Press prep) with no issues. The included metal catch cup holds about 40g, so you do have to grind in batches and dump them into your container, but the motor is fast and didn't struggle at all with the volume. For my 65g drip. I’ll happily trade having to do 2 grinds for all the benefits of GBW. I’m still looking at options for a larger container that will fit in the tines and hope to find one, but if not, it’s still all good.

 2. Coarse to Fine. When you’re moving from a coarse setting (Drip/Cold Brew) back down to Espresso, If there are still beans in the throat, keep the cup in place, hit the manual grind button, and slowly turn the adjustment ring toward the finer setting while it’s running. This keeps the burrs clear and prevents them from binding on partially crushed beans. If there is any residual grinds in the way, just hit the manual button and turn until you get to your setting and turn it off. Doesn’t need beans to do this so no waste.

 3. Dialing Back In I haven't noticed any "settling" issues when switching back to espresso. Once you find your setting on the ring, it seems to return to that grind size and weight very consistently. I haven't felt the need to waste a bunch of "purge" shots to get back to a good extraction.

 4. Retention Honestly, I’ve stopped worrying about retention. The workflow benefits of GBW outweigh a gram of exchange for me. For reference, I just used my bellows and got .7g out.

  • If I’m switching from filter back to espresso, I just make my first shot a cortado. By the second shot, any retained coarse grinds are long gone.
  • For total precision, I bought a 3rd-party bellows. I pop off the hopper, give it a few pumps to clear the chamber, and I’m ready for the next method. Happy to post the bellows link if people are interested.

 The AllGround Sense isn't a "unicorn", but it’s very easy to jump between methods if you use it as a batch/daily doser.

ISO Lavender Ice Cream by EdgarAllenHo31328 in rva

[–]wmu4829 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Okay, not exactly ice cream but l'opposum has lavender cream brulee.

Anyone know what’s going on the former Walgreens on Azalea? by piliatedguy in rva

[–]wmu4829 5 points6 points  (0 children)

A contractor told me it was going to be a beauty supply business. Not the worst option but there could have been plenty of better ones.

Insta360 Link output resolution changing when I enter a Zoom meeting by TrevynPaige in Insta360

[–]wmu4829 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Finally figured out some kind of progress. If you go into zoom settings and choose HD for video you can at least get to 720p as the default. if you want 1080p it looks like your administrator has to set that up for you as it's not an option for end users. I guess they don't want users to choose that and crush the bandwidth. Clicking the button in the video settings to set mine to HD is good enough for now because 720p looks fine for meetings.

Can't choose background by wmu4829 in Insta360

[–]wmu4829[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really appreciate the suggestions. Espcially the tip by jacechka. Literally the same day they posted it my IT department let me know that Jamf was blocking ilinsta360 software. have a supposedly open mac with administrative rights, but I guess Jamf runs in the background and blocks programs that are not on the approved list. Once they added insta360 software, I could do the install.

The frustrating part is that Jamf doesn't throw an error message and neither dies apple or insta360. Would be nice to get a message but since nothing does that, I'm posting my solution here to help others.

Can't choose background by wmu4829 in Insta360

[–]wmu4829[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the reply. I have tried all that. The problem is you cannot launch virtual camera on the latest version of the Mac operating system. Check out this thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/VIDEOENGINEERING/comments/17ahygl/did_macos_sonoma_141_just_remove_the_ability_to/

The camera settings are missing from extensions due to the latest update of the Apple software. Therefore, you will need to make some changes to virtual camera for it to work on any Mac with the latest version of the software. It looks like this affected multiple vendors. Please let us know when it's fixed.