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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 3rd, 2023

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  • Some people like tinkering. Big Clive has a series of videos on Dubai led bulbs. The government mandates that the bulbs be extra efficient and last extra long, so they are built with more filaments driven at a lower current. They run cooler and last longer. You can do a similar thing with American bulbs if you’re handy with a soldering iron.

    Honestly, with how poor many of these things are mass produced, opening them up yourself is practically a personal form of quality control. Whether you modify it or not I bet it’s less likely to die prematurely or burn your house down than those of a regular person who doesn’t open them 🤷‍♂️




  • I’d have to check my logs, but it was something like spring or early summer. Honestly though the solar cycle has a much larger effect on propagation, and right now we’re near solar maximum so things are really hopping. At the beginning of COVID we were just starting to come out of solar minimum.

    I haven’t been super active lately, so I can’t comment on how often you’d be able to make contact. But with some coordination it’s definitely doable. Especially if you get some decent metal in the air.

    You still have US citizenship? You might be able to do your testing in the USA over zoom and use a reciprocal license, though I haven’t looked deeply into it.


  • I had a similar but very different experience. At the beginning of COVID my buddy and I got our ham radio licenses.

    One of my earliest contacts was a guy in Japan, over 6000 miles away! Nothing between us but some wire strung up in a tree, and a couple of radios. Using the ionosphere to bounce our signals around the world.

    So. Stinking. Awesome.

    I’ve been hooked ever since.

    It’s funny because it’s almost the opposite of your story, you were using the amazing new technology and infrastructure to make the trip. These days we take that very infrastructure for granted.

    It’s fun to try doing it with as little infrastructure as possible!



  • It works! In the pot On the plate

    Not bad! Though I used Bisquick, for better flavor, and for the work involved dirtying bowls and measuring cups I’d rather just use a pan.

    In fact I made extra and made three pan sized pancakes in the time it took to make one big fluffy potcake.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great Idea and it totally works. If I were gonna do it again seriously, I’d get a dedicated pancake mix that uses just water, to maximize the simplicity, which is the goal I think.

    It was fluffy and delicious, though I will say a lot of pancake flavor comes from the crispy edges and the thinness of the cake and you lose some of that with the thick potcake.

    Glad I tried it, thanks to op for the idea!




  • I used to like the a400, had a few of them in service, but a few years ago I tried another one and it was terrible. Just… Slow… like an HDD. I did some research and apparently they changed something with the nand somewhere along the line. Did a bait and switch. I don’t remember the details but it annoyed me.

    I actually needed to buy a budget SSD just today, and I got a BX500. We’ll see how it goes. I know not to expect much from a drive without DRAM, but at least I know that going in.