What has brought you joy?
Companion to the last question :)
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PRK eye surgery. Does this count!
I love my modular synthesizer, although the cost of it is not good value for money so probably can’t count as my best tech purchase.
My sim racing rig has the same issue, it’s bought me thousands of hours of joy but is prohibitively expensive.
My ergodox mechanical keyboard is a solid contender. The original model, Hand built, cherry MX clears. It’s lasted easily 10 years and I hate typing on anything else.
But I think it’s probably my headphones. Beyerdynamics DT770 pro’s. They sound great, they’re super comfy, and not terribly expensive. I’ve had them for probably 10 years and I see no reason I won’t have them till the day I die
Nice, I also mentioned my DT770s. They’re basically invincible.
Edit: I also had the original ergodox with mx clears, sadly I never could get used to the layout so I passed them on to a friend.
I bought a Lily58 DIY kit a couple years ago. I don’t think I could ever go back to using a full keyboard. It’s just so comfortable. My shoulders aren’t tense anymore. My hands aren’t bent out anymore. I’m not scrunched up like a ball when I type. Then switching layouts to Colemak-DH was another plus. The two things combined really helped my body relax in front of a PC.
My Fairphone 5, because it has allowed me to break free from Google and other big tech companies by letting me install whatever I want on it.
And my good old Thinkpad.
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Yup I just got the FP6 and I am really happy with it.
Nice i have a fairphone 4. Such good phones!
Steam Deck, hands down. It rules being able to play PC games in bed with my partner by my side.
I was on the fence when it was first announced (just because i had heard the reports about steam machines back in the day) but when I found out you could open it up and upgrade the storage yourself I decided to bite the bullet.
I have never regretted the purchase. I immediately stopped gaming on my (Linux) desktop and have been gaming on the Steamdeck now (almost) exclusively for the past like 3 years. I’ve upgraded the storage (64GB to 512GB) and replaced the thumbsticks when the old ones fell apart.
Tl;dr: Agree! Steam Deck no regrets!
Its sooo gooood!
I thought about getting one but took to long to decide and now they are not available anymore :(
Noise cancelling headphones are incredible, using them in a noisy airport eliminated 80% of the discomfort of travelling
Yup. Autistic and noise cancelling headphones help me in all kinds of environments I wouldn’t be able to deal with otherwise. Including the airport!
I still need to find some good NC earbuds though. The Bose quiet comfort are fantastic but unfortunately known to stop working repeatedly (I’m about to get my 6th pair replaced through warranty over about 18 months!)
noisy *office
discomfort of *coworkers
(except you Sean, you’re okay)
mine hurt my ears after an hour. it doesn’t happen though when I turn the noise cancelling off.
Some noise canceling is better than others. If you get a chance to try another set, see if it still hurts
i’ve had three pairs, three brand. same effect.
i think the noise cancelling is just too loud on the airplane.
My old casio watch works after a decade of use.
My old kindle just got a new battery but its over 14+ years old.
And my CPAP is probably the thing that does the most work for me.
what model Kindle? I’ve always kept a few kindle 4s on hand as backups :D
only thing I don’t love about it is the microusb connector, I’ve dreamed of doing a type c conversion but it’s harrowing taking one apart
I think I either have a 4 or 5. Theres a website that has the batteries. NewPower99.com I got Amazon Kindle D01100 Battery Replacement Kit with Tools. Everything was mostly easy except the glue amazon used was HARD to get off the old battery! It was super stuck. Had to pry off the old battery and that could have gone bad. Risk of Spicy pillows. But it has many weeks worth of battery now.
Its my favorite ATM and its pretty old. I wish I could get another one OR get the screen replaced. I have a couple of spots on mine over the years of usage. I read on it almost every day. Its the only ebook reader that can work with ALL the text from https://wanderinginn.com/ . I bought the ebooks but my eyes hurt reading on the laptop for a long time. Plus I want a break from the same area of the house I work at. The new KOBO cant load more than 10MB of pure text. But the old kindle can!
I cant imagine transferring it to usb c. GL if you do decide to do it! I personally would get a small microusb to usb adapter and call it a day.
Portable battery powered bidet.
Gotta keep shit clean
Wait…
Does it have a water tank attached to it? I presume you fill it up at the sink before travelling down to brown town?
Mine does. It’s a little cup that screws on. Some varieties allow you to screw on your average disposable plastic water bottle.
Do you carry around a separate water bottle for your taint cleaner, or do you just refill the one you have?
I have one at home. I couldn’t imagine traveling with one. That’s what wet/baby wipes are for.
I don’t use the water bottle kind. I might switch to one because it’s less unusual to be seen filling up a water bottle in public versus a tank or cup.
Mine is a cup that screws onto the device, and acts as a cover when not in use. It’s relatively compact, about the size of a flashlight. I keep it in my backpack or purse.
It does have a small water tank, but you hardly notice it. They’re pretty discreet.
As an avid Clone Hero player (Guitar Hero but for PC, essentially) this was such a huge upgrade to me from the Wii guitars I had been using for years.
Oooh nice!
Something I am very curious: how do the guitar controllers compare against each other? I’m saying this as someone who has been buying and reading up on quite a few rhythm game controllers (DDR/ITG, Taiko, more esoteric things) and knew of the whole slew of comparisons/tierlists between controllers… I knew close to nothing about Clone Hero controllers for high-level gameplay so
I’ve only ever used this one and the Wii guitars from World Tour. The CRKD is nicer because:
- support for many more devices without any special adapters (I used it on my Switch at one point)
- reactive LED lights
- quieter strum bar
- overall nicer design without a big wiimote-shaped hole
I play Clone Hero a lot but just casually, so I can’t really speak to anything about latency or stuff like that. I can at least say in all aspects it’s on-par or surpasses the Wii guitars.
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Another one for the Steamdeck pile. Honorary mention to the SNES mini I got my hands on years before that, which is what got me back into gaming.
My over the ear earbuds, probably. I use them daily, they’re good for normal music or videos and they dampen sound and don’t fall off so I can drum with them in. It’s been a lot of fun just jamming to tunes.
I like the ones made of soft rubber. You can wear those for hours without discomfort.
over the ear
earbuds
They go in the ear like normal earbuds but they hook around the back of the ear so they don’t fall off when I’m drumming.
I see. I wouldn’t call that “over the ear” but I guess I can’t change the terminology of the headphone industry myself.
my lg g2, best phone i had. still using it as a daily driver after more than a decade
recently a used panasonic cf-rz6, extremely lightweight/tiny machine and runs linux perfectly
Had the Nexus 5 version and loved it.
I loved my lg g2, but a tiny scratch ruined the touchscreen sensor after a couple of years. My literal “perfect phone” would be the lg g2 form factor with a newer SoC and GrapheneOS on it.
yeah, sadly the issue is coming to mine as well since about 2022. right now the dead zone is in the upper area above the keyboard and below status bar, so it remains usable… but if it kills the keyboard, i’ll have to switch :(
g2 with modern specs would be wonderful
A portable power supply.
Enjoy the looks of envy when the people fighting over an outlet notice you’re plugged into your tiny, little power supply.
How big of a power supply are we talking?
- Not a purchased by me, but the mechanical watch my grandfather gave to me some 40+ years ago. It was his watch, and was already used when he gave it to me, but it still works great today.
- A good stack of quality paper (don’t get me started on watercolor paper).
- The humble pencil, B2 or B4. This may sound like a joke but despite its age and it being so low-tech the pencil is still an unrivaled piece of technology that even Apple can only try to mimic with its expensive Apple Pencil.
- My most recent purchase, and a lot more ‘high’ tech than the pencil: a pocket Sony voice recorder, from the 90s. It uses standard AA batteries (that will last for weeks if not months), it needs no monthly subscription, and no online access, it fully respects my privacy, there is no ads in it, it uses MP3 and can record on either its internal memory or use SD cards, and it… works great with Linux. I love it.
Theres a somewhat famous artist that is in my local area. He did a talk about paper (like papyras and all other kinds). It was fascinating! Over 40 people showed up to his talk.
Papers in all its forms is fascinating (and amazing) :)
Even more so when one start realizing how many forms it can take and has taken (animal skin ‘paper’, anyone?). Happy to know people showed up to listen to the talk!
