Is this related at all to Tiny Glade? Seems like a very similar concept, but shifted to a gritter, darker aesthetic (which is very cool)...the name must at least be a nod to it?
497 karma · joined April 5, 2012
So I encourage collectors to take this advice! Set aside anything you'd want your family to try to get value for, separate from what you're okay with them letting go.
(Possibly as a consequence of this, my collecting tendencies tend towards things with intrinsic value such as tools -- I tell myself that at least selling e.g. a hammer at a yard sale should be easier if you don't need to find someone looking for a one-of-a-kind mis-forged XYZ brand from October 1965... Definitely not expecting anything to be a store of actual value, though, and I'm sure my heirs will feel burdened no matter what they end up having to deal with in my estate)
One slight piece of feedback: it's pretty clear a lot of the text was output of AI. IME (and just _my_ E, of course), this detracts somewhat from the authority of the page, as it makes it seem more like it just came from a conversation with Claude, rather than from your knowledge filtered through building an app. Might be worth doing a couple of passes to tighten up and human-ize it a bit :). (since it's open source, I suppose I could always PR myself if you'd be open to it)
similar to how in Threads, the '...' icon (under which 'save' is hidden) is so small that half the time clicking on it just clicks the entire thread (opening it to view replies) -- sometimes I suspect they make the target extra small on purpose
or how on FB, some of the options in the menu are now under the AI generated content, which pops in just slowly enough to encourage misclicks as items shift under your finger
all to make some PM's numbers go up, of course...
Now: just overpriced crappy Google hardware that lasts 12 hours because of AI and who knows what else they shoved on there.
And nobody else makes anything close to what Fitbit made...
(Fwiw SDM ended up being a better alternative anyways... not looking forward to their eventual acquisition and shutdown :/ )
(My E39 M5 was one of the last user-repairable BMWs, but it's getting very expensive. On the other hand, it's driving a significant market for regular people designing and building replacement parts, whether 3D-printed, CNC'd, or homemade)
It's encouraging to hear you have had a good experience with it. Maybe I'll grab one if they ever go on sale!
Is there anything beyond your minor nits that you would caution someone like me about before buying?
So I'm wondering just how bad the experience of switching is now?
QGIS is free software, so it can be somewhat excused vs a billion dollar company. But they could really benefit from some UX expertise...
(I imagine it's a much lower cost to only handle 2.4GHz?)
(I used to call my senators and house reps about things, but it never got more than a polite "thanks, but I don't care" and now they don't even bother to reply at all)
Keycloak ended up being quite extensible and powerful, but the UI and data model both sometimes made things more difficult than they had to be... this could be an interesting project to look at.
One bonus (for us) for Keycloak was that it was JVM-based, meaning it was easier to integrate our existing JVM libraries. Though its use of Hibernate was frustrating at times, heh
I've recently been replacing some of the wiring in my house as part of a renovation, and I discovered that Leviton sells outlets with PD USB-C built in now! Not talking about the useless 2A USB-A "built-in" chargers of yore, now they actually have proper PD up to 60W!
They do also sell non-PD, so it requires some careful checking of the model numbers. And the 60W one is pretty large (the in-wall part) so it might not quite fit in an existing wallbox if it is a small one. But briefly: - T5636: two USB-C PD, up to 60W total / 60W individual or 30W each if both in use - T5635: two USB-C PD, up to 30W total / 30W individual or 15W each for both - T5634: one USB-C PD and one USB-A. USB-A is 10W and USB-C is up to 50W (even if both are in use) They also make T8xx versions of these that have 20A receptacles (NEMA 5-20R) but those are harder to find.
They also make other T56xx/T58xx which have non-PD USB-C, good for places like bathrooms where shavers/etc work fine on 5V.
I've found that putting a few of these around has eliminated a lot of the Anker chargers I used to have sticking out everywhere. They're completely in-wall and they leave both outlets free. If I need 100W for my computer, I'll still use a separate charger, but otherwise these are fine.
The only point they don't hit on your list is the ports facing down, but because they're flush at the wall, that means they don't interfere with furniture (any more than having any plug plugged into the outlets at all would).
If you're in Europe/elsewhere, not sure if other manufacturers make similar devices. I know Legrand makes some 30W PD ones in the US market, and as they're French, maybe they make them for others as well.
(I'll note that I agree with the general wisdom to store data in UTC; here when I talk about zones I'm either talking about user local machine time or display)
I mean, the folks who run the tz db definitely know what they're doing, it just never 100% clicked with my thinking.
I always prefer `US/Eastern` over `America/New_York` -- it seems more "canonical" to me. New York is _currently_ the anchor city for ET, but will it always be? The place I live (Boston) is currently on ET, but in the future it might be on Atlantic Time. If there was an `America/Boston`, I would use that to be safe, but since there isn't, it just seems better to be to be specific that I mean "Eastern Time" and not "whatever the time is in NYC"... At least then if Boston switches to a different tz, I could intentionally switch to "Atlantic Time" -- doesn't that make more sense? Versus I guess what I'd have to do, which is switch to `America/Puerto_Rico`? (I had to actually search that one, too bad there's no `US/Atlantic`...)
Like you, I have a bunch of books on various bookshelves in the house. I also have a number of collapsing cardboard boxes in my basement filled with books from my parents'/grandparents' houses. At some point, I really need to sort through all of these and figure out a) what even is there b) what do I keep to put on shelves and c) is there anything worth selling to a shop or giving to the library vs tossing? Complicating this is that many of these books are ancient, and even newer ones aren't necessarily in pristine condition.
I have an old CueCat lying around I was going to use to scan barcodes on books new enough to have them... that'll be tedious enough, but going through the rest manually is going to be a giant project (which is part of why they're still there in my basement).
I don't see it on the site from a cursory review (apologies if I missed it): do you support importing from ISBNs (such as scanned by a CueCat)? I'd also be quite interested in the machine vision aspect others have mentioned here (though since they aren't on a bookshelf, it would likely be individual photos of each book as they are pulled out of the box)...
Tying into that, I'm curious what the workflow for inputting books will be like, both for my boxes-o-books case, and for the general bookcase import case. I could 100% see myself using this if it was a nice straightforward brainless process I could bang out in an afternoon while watching a show, but if it's more of a manually-search-and-input process, I'm definitely going to lose patience before I finish them all :)
Tacking onto what others have said about automated labeling, that would be extremely useful too---especially for the books in poor condition, but even for the nicer ones, just so that I could get a handle on them all. I have a Bluetooth label printer that could be fantastic here...
I'll follow this project with interest for sure!
> The dynamic is found almost nowhere else, except maybe Boston
Definitely true, as someone who lived in the middle of Boston for over a decade. I once had to take a day's Zoom meetings from my double-parked car after an unavoidable morning appointment had me returning right when street sweeping was happening.
Living now in a more rural area, I need to use my car a lot more, but there's a lot _less_ stress from knowing I can just go at any time and return at any time and I'll be able to just move on with my life...
Long story incoming (blog post candidate? Hmm...)
Pimoroni is a fantastic supplier of hobby electronics stuff -- they're like Adafruit, but in the UK. Adafruit actually sells a fair amount of their stuff, but not everything. So I occasionally order directly from them (often adding in some items that are frequently out of stock at Adafruit, such as Pi 5 chargers).
I placed a big order right after the first tariffs were announced but before they went into effect. Pimoroni was having a big sale at the time, so I loaded up, thinking it'd be the last pre-tariff order I made. I elected to pay extra (not much) for UPS, since I generally trust them the most out of the shipping carriers who deliver to me (in Southern NH, right by the freight hub of MHT).
After my package arrived from overseas, it was "stuck" in a warehouse in a port city for several days. The UPS website claimed "your package is being cleared, but we have all the info we need so just sit tight"... After a few days of this, I tried calling up. After fighting with the phone tree robot (one of the few for which swearing didn't seem to get me a human, strangely), the front-line support finally told me that it was actually held up in customs awaiting more information. The support rep just told me to send an invoice and hung up.
That was the first strange flag -- sellers always include invoices on their packages, so why do they need me to send one? I hunted around for a more effective phone number -- a difficult task -- and eventually found the UPS small business customs office line (had to involve ChatGPT to help find the number, Google being useless now). After calling up, I was redirected a few times and finally got ahold of someone who actually was able to investigate for me. He found out that it was being held because US customs had classified some items (incorrectly) as needing additional forms (more on that below), and that I also would have to pay serious tariffs but only after the additional forms were filed.
The helpful UPS guy (who, it turns out, doesn't even work in that department, but had been pulled in to help because the tariff changes were causing a lot of strife) was able to link me to a website with more information and a place to upload forms and track info. The forms needed were: a vehicle import form -- apparently the US government thinks any pump being imported must be a vehicle part, even a tiny fountain pump for plant watering -- and a pesticide import form -- apparently RGB LED matrices are considered pesticides, because they seem similar to UV lamps I guess... And there was no way to reclassify the items (not sure if that's because I'm just a lowly consumer or what).
I sent this stuff over to Pimoroni, and the folks there were equally confused. But they eventually figured out how to fill out the forms and sent them back, and I uploaded them. UPS sent them along and satisfied the government, and my package was released to UPS. But by this time, the tariffs were in effect. And even though I had ordered from the UK, most of the electronics had been manufactured in China, and some contained steel made in Mexico, so the tariffs apparently applied.
On top of the tariffs, UPS was going to charge me excessive warehousing fees for the package being held up! Fortunately, my helpful UPS contact was able to get approval to get those reversed, since I was never informed that the package needed more info.
However, the story doesn't end here! The package was finally sent on its way and my friendly UPS driver showed up at my door with it a few days later, along with the bill. Unfortunately, it was the full bill including the warehousing fees! I had to call up a different UPS line (invoicing) and have them make sure the warehousing fees were taken off, then specifically have them call the local UPS distribution center to have them update it. This happened, and the next day the driver showed up...with the same bill.
Turns out UPS systems are poorly set up. The driver called up the distribution center and verbally confirmed the updated price, but his device would NOT accept anything other than the full amount listed, with no overrides possible. We worked it out, though: I gave him a check for the correct amount, and he gave me the package but did not mark it delivered. He returned to the distribution center, and from there they must have figured out how to override it, because finally it was marked as paid and delivered and everything was solved.
So I got my electronics. But the cost was $700 in tariffs due to manufacturing country (not even final manufacturing country, nor shipper country) and including vehicle and pesticide taxes for items that were not vehicles or pesticides. On a $1900 order. Plus nearly a month of time and countless hours wasted on the phone.
Suffice to say the next time I went looking for a part and saw that it was shipping from outside the US, I didn't buy it. So, intended effect of the tariffs, I guess? Though I couldn't just order from the US instead, because it wasn't available, so I just didn't order anything. Hooray.
It was shocking to see just how little information pretty much everyone had in this process (myself included), the complete lack of ability to correct blatant errors, and the "delay and rack up more $" strategies that seemed to be occurring.
Wrt the post here: I'm sad to see Adafruit get hit by this bill, and I'm sure their prices are going to go up as a result, but I'm definitely going to continue purchasing from them, and I hope they continue to stock items from elsewhere (including Pimoroni). And I hope to one day feel comfortable ordering directly from Pimoroni again...
Neat to see potential uses to help with colorblindness, but I wonder if this would ever also just become an attraction people could view just for the novelty. I'd love to try it out!