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sshanky

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I have two Saeco Vienna Plus machines. These have what appears to be a pretty decent grinder built in. The machine brews a decent shot, but the electronics are probably not very precise (who knows the temperature, and the brew length is controlled by a basic potentiometer that seems inconsistent). ]I wonder if these are good candidates for some interesting hacks...Does anyone have any experience with these? I'd love to get a Silvia but I like the idea of the built in grinder.

I was wondering if anyone would mention these -- they're the best! We sought out the hawker centres, which have a huge variety of amazing foods. The same format was easy to find in Penang as well. You can eat delicious local food with the locals at great prices, and there is more than enough volume and competition to force low quality players out.

One of my favorites was "Vorlesungsverzeichnis" (lecture directory/course catalog).

Vorlesung = lecture

- Lesung = a reading (like a book reading)/lesson

- add "Vor" ("before" as in "in front of [a group]") and it becomes Lecture

Verzeichnis = directory

- Zeichnis = symbol, signal, reference, sign

- add "Ver" (hard to really explain what it does) and it becomes directory, index, register, list

So far I think the best value, even better than Costco, is Sam's Club. Bring them frames and they will trace them and measure your PD, then make you a pair of single vision Pentax lenses with AR coating, for less than $40. Add $60 and you have polarized sunglasses. This is for CR39 plastic which is optically superior to polycarbonate/high index lenses. There is also a great warranty, since Sam's Club will let you return anything practically any time.

You can find most frames for a few bucks on eBay, including popular brands like Ray Ban.

I have bought quite a few pair so far and am super satisfied, especially with the optical quality, compared to the competition's "HD" stuff.

I've been playing with Keybase for backups. It's neat because you don't need to deal with any proprietary APIs or scripts (but you do have to install Keybase). The backups are encrypted and can be accessed from another device as well either through your own account or as part of a Keybase Team. For now you get 250 gigs free storage.

Agreed 100%. This is a great way to get into electronics while also getting some coding experience. The Arduino intro kit has lots of great experiments and corresponding lessons. It comes with a breadboard, special wires that press right in, resistors, LEDs, switches, and more.

Let us know if you find one. I still have a couple hundred floppy disks with all these games somewhere, and often consider pulling out the whole system. But then I realize I have nothing to connect it to.

I recently got a few pairs of glasses from the most common optical retailer with their best lenses (Ray Ban Rox Plus in sunglasses and BlueIQ in the regular ones). I have a light single vision prescription (about -1.5 sphere and -1 cyl in each eye) but still, I find these are not very good lenses -- I see plenty of chromatic aberration on the sides (I guess they're both made from polycarbonate where I'm more used to getting CR39 plastic) and they both appear to have other abberrations in the plastic that I can see when I pass different parts of the lens in front of my eye.

As a photographer, I'm really interested in having excellent optics in front of my eyes, but I don't know how to achieve it. I agree with the comments above -- it's sucky that you have to make full .25 incremental jumps, and that the axis for astigmatism is still determined by me having to say "1" looks better than "2" and "3" looks better than "4", all done with antiquated equipment manually operated when it should all be readable right off the retina.

Couple this with high pressure salesmanship and no transparency at all about the lenses and it is obvious why it's so hard for the consumer to get this right.

Yesterday I learned that Sam's Club offers Nikon, Zeiss and Seiko lenses. Some of my favorite glasses I got in Japan for $80 and they included standard Seikos with UV protection and great AR coating.

I read about a program where owners of some Honeywell smart thermostats will be able to authorize their utilities to turn their AC a few degrees warmer during times of unusually high demand, in exchange for some sort of compensation. But this would be voluntary.

Can anyone elaborate on his comment on this sort of technology "proliferating to smart thermostats (no apps that let you turn your AC cooler when the power company dials it up a couple degrees)?

I've always been a big fan of BB's blog, and have recommended their approach to friends and clients for their own blogs and sites. Their data, plans, and progress are not only interesting to people who care about the industry, but it's also a window into the kind of people they are. Proud of their accomplishments (their backup servers, which they've open sourced), and their tools (like their server lifts).