Heheh. the others in my office made fun of me when I convinced the IT people that I needed a GMMK (full) frame with kahlil jade switches. I got my sweet sweet revenge by typing at something like 100 words per minute... it's not an open office but it doesn't matter...
although, they've since asked for 'accessibility' upgrades to theirs as well...
I feel that. I'm using an old Cougar mechanical keyboard for work still, just because it has the key feel I want. Other features are nice but if I don't get that clacky sensation I just can't write code.
Got the dygma raise last year with silent pinks and the tenting. It was a massive game changer. Of course now I’m thinking of diving into the 30% ergo keyboards and that looks like a deep rabbit hole
For most power-tool woodworkers, it's a heavy cast-iron table saw. Versatile, accurate, stable, repairable, adjustable, and powerful. Hand tool folks may not have one at all, or maybe just a little jobsite thing to rip big boards, and there's a few people who think differently and either use a tracksaw or build up a custom work table with something smaller as its core, but the vast majority of people who are "into" woodworking will have a cast iron table saw in good repair.
If you've already got some permanent floorspace dedicated, a cast-iron top Ridgid or Delta won't take up much more at all and the current versions are basically clones of each other, down to their integrated casters. If you're having to put the thing away as an actual benchtop tool, then yeah, something is a million times better than nothing, no doubt.
I have the job site saw... Setting up the roller stands to handle big rips is a pain. But if I find the space to build it into a proper outfeed table, I think it could be about 85% of the cast iron saw.
Yeah, going from no saw to yes saw is obviously the biggest move. Beyond that, going from an aluminum table jobsite saw to a beat-up but cast-iron "motor-hanger" import contractor saw (I spruced it up and added a fence roughly equivalent to the ones that came on the Ridgid R4512) was a bigger jump than when I was using the makerspace's big 3hp and 5hp cabinet saws with Biesemeyers. For me, that first jump from jobsite to contractor is the move where the value-add is worth it and you're not too deep into diminishing returns.
I'm currently on the spiritual successor (and possibly literal, depending on which factory in Taiwan they came from) of my "project" saw, a Sawstop Contractor saw. I think it's the only one on the market that still has an outrigger motor, but I see no need to spend the money to upgrade any farther. The weight, the ability to adjust back into square, the induction motor (versus universal), the standard 27" depth and 3/4" miter slots, and the ease of adding supprt and fence capacity. Even staying out of the Sawstop argument, you get all of that with the jump to a Delta 36-725, or even an old Craftsman 113 (with SOME sort of upgraded fence).
I’ve currently got two vintage contractor saws sitting in my garage: a Craftsman 113 and a Powermatic 63. Both have beautiful cast iron tops and both have misaligned blades that I’ve spent hours trying to fix. I have PALS installed on both and for the life of me I can’t get the trunnion aligned properly. (Yes, this is a cry for help. plz help)
It moves water. Not anywhere in particular, just makes it move within the tank. It does this job quite well. It sounds ridiculous when you try to explain it to anyone that's not part of the hobby.
my mom had one growing up. the person we got it from had a maroon clownfish that was full size. it would sometimes attack when my mom was doing stuff in the tank and even drew blood. she ended up trading it in to the dealer she bought stuff from and he put it in his display tank. youd think with now much she spent on the thing wed have had a generator of some kind but nope. i even suggested it. it sucked having to clean the tank after losing power for a week from a hurricane or winter storm.
Recently I entered the world of dip pens and got a set from Deleter: Dip pen holder, G-nibs, and the Black 4 Ink. The G-nib is the most common nib used in manga drawing. It needs some pressure to do its work, but it's flexible enough to do thin and thick strokes.
They aren't hugely expensive items - the nibs can be bought in large packs for a few dollars at stationary stores, and are made to last for a few months of heavy use each. The ink is a little more expensive. It's the kind of thing where the results are better in that you can get some really sharp lines by using viscous ink that would clog anything else, but also, you'd only use it if you're deep into working with ink and aren't satisfied with felt fineliners. It's just logistically harder to deal with keeping an ink pot secure on the desk, dipping the pen, cleaning the nib, putting everything away. Fountain pens are way more popular with collectors, but dip pens are workhorses and there's almost nothing to troubleshoot, just "how do I keep ink from blobbing on it" (scrub off the protective factory coating with mild detergents or just using the ink itself) and "how do I clean it" (rinse with water).
The other tool of that type is the kolinsky sable brush - sable hair is more springy than synthetics. I am on the fence about actually getting one of those, my rubberized-felt brush pens do a decent job of getting the elements of brushes that I want, and cleaning brushes is more annoying.
I'm into 3D printing, so for me right now the piece of kit I'm drooling over is the X1 Carbon by Bambu Lab. It has a lot of fancy features but what I most want is the 16-color mixer. It would be great because it would significantly reduce the painting overhead. I'm hoping to have it before the end of the year, if there's not something fancier out by then.
I'm patiently waiting for the cash free for the P1P and AMS. More colours would be cool but just being able to use a couple of different filaments without manually changing them will be wild.
Windsor and Newton Series 7s were my first expensive brushes. I'm rocking Raphael 8404s right now though and I've been a lot happier.
I'd say that the Harder Steinbeck Infinity series are probably the "you've made it" of mini painting with lots of little tweaks and QoL features, but my Iwata Eclipse has been a perfect work horse for me and may be a "pinnacle" for mini painting as far as overall value.
Not sure you've made it over there yet, but feel free to join us on https://kbin.social/m/minipainting. Always love to see more work over there!
I'll see if I can't get a good shot of something with my old camera to share over there.
Ironically my next big purchase will be a new SLR. Taking pictures or videos of minis to share is as big of a rabbit hole as painting them in the first place.
If you like working on old Japanese motorcycles with carburetors, you really really want to have a JIS screwdriver. A Phillips will "work" ... but it'll tend to want to cam out of the bolt head, stripping it, especially if the bolts are corroded in place after 40 years. A proper JIS screwdriver has a different bit profile, designed for use with those bolts.
"So just get one, how hard can that be?" I hear you asking. A real, quality JIS screwdriver is expensive, at least in the States. And the cheap ones are often not actually JIS screwdrivers at all. Another option is replacing JIS bolts with allen head bolts, this is very common. But if you are a stickler for keeping things as original as possible ... it's got to be JIS.
First Apple product I've purchased since the 2005 iPod Video. It does live to its hype for publicists/designers: Ridiculously powerful/optimized device for its form factor, P3 color calibrated 120Hz display covered by laminated glass, and with the support of software like Nomad Sculpt, Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher, Procreate, DaVinci Resolve, Pro Tools and Final Cut Pro.
I think the only thing we're missing is a hard-surface modeling package like Blender, and actually usable IDEs like JetBrains Rider, but this thing which is the size and weight of a magazine is already an amazing professional toolbox.
As a photographer who also did some video services, I simply cannot imagine doing work on that tiny screen and limited storage space without a full blown OS. I don't know how some of you do it.
It's super easy and comfortable, actually. The only thing that might bother me a little is iPadOS, which has been a little buggy lately. Otherwise, 13 inches of screen and storage isn't an issue at all.
The screen is not small IMO. If it is for you, you can hook it up to an external display via USB-C to USB-C/HDMI or wirelessly via Airplay and basically turn it into a laptop/desktop with all the bells and whistles like external sound cards, keyboards, mice, external displays, MIDI instruments, microphones, HDDs/SSDs, etc.
I went for the 256 GB model which always has 100+GB of free storage because I always archive the finished projects onto either cloud or my own server, and delete them from my PC/iPad. Storage has never been an issue for me for as long as I can remember, but the iPads go up to 2 TB of internal memory.
I think that my only frustration with this thing is that it has the same hardware as the iMac/MacBook, and only because of the OS I can't install desktop programs on it. In your case, what part of a full-blown OS would you miss if you were to use an iPad to edit photos?
I work on two 30"+ monitors; 11-13" for a secondary machine is fine, but if it's my main I want bigger, and if I'm hooking all that up I might as well work on a desktop system that has a much higher TDP limit; power and flexibility-wise I don't think a tablet is something I'd be happy to settle with. This is before I get to the OS even, where I don't like not working with a full-fledge file system and a command line. And proper multitasking too.
It's a very weird hobby, with a lot of second-hand sales among the practitioners once you get in, because there's no large-scale production of equipment for the most part.
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