In amateur radio, making an Earth-Moon-Earth contact. That means bouncing your signal off of the moon, basically using it as a satellite. You generally need a big antenna array to do it. Also you need a very high quality amplifier to receive since the signal you get back from the mood is very weak. You can hear an echo of yourself delayed about 2.6 seconds, since the moon is about 1.3 light seconds away.
EME Moonbounces do look like fun. Here’s a guy, I think pinging a friend off the moon.
That’s dope
Dude that sounds amazing and would be crazy to demo to someone.
3 other cool nerds to play board games with consistently.
I was going to say Glory to Rome but your answer is better.
Meanwhile, I keep ending up in rooms with board game nerds, and I only kind of like board games.
Are you calling yourself cool? That’s so not cool.
Self confidence is in fact very cool. And I’ll convince you over a game of Agricola.
I like your moxie. Very cool of you to be so graceful towards an unkind comment
Maybe he already has one cool nerd and is looking for a few more.
Cool is what you make it, dude.
I’m a photography nerd.
There’s a bunch of rare and expensive cameras, of course, so I could probably just say “oh, probably anything from Leica”.
But the real snobs go for turbo rare lenses. As a Nikon fan, I hope that I shall one day be allowed to the same airspace as the hallowed Nikkor 13mm f/5.6. The first ultrawide non-fisheye lens. 350 of these were made, each individually blessed by priests as they left the factory, or so the story goes. They cost an arm and leg - wait, in this economy, an arm and leg would probably be cheaper.
Well, my hobby is searching for historical religious artifacts, so…
Your Holy Grail is the Holy Grail
The Lost Ark of the Covenant actually 😁
So being the UK?
Any serious guitarists will let you know their holy grail.
It’s not any guitar; it’s another guitar.
None of the ones I already own sound good, though. Since it can’t possibly be me that is the problem, I need to purchase another, more expensive one.
I bought mine for $100!
I got it new back in the early 2000s but it had a flaw in the fretboard. I returned it for exchange but they discontinued it so refunded me instead. Telling this story to someone a decade later, they suggested eBay. I looked and there it was, bought it on the spot and had it in my hands a week later.
I have enough guitars but am now looking at other instruments. A cello is high on the list.
For me with gaming (both playing and dev), a Steam Deck. Never wanted anything more in my life, seeing people have them and barely use them hurts. But I’m on long-term sick leave and live paycheck to paycheck, not able to save anything and it doesn’t look like that’ll change anytime soon. And it’s more than just wanting a cool thing, all I have is a shitty laptop from 2010 that barely plays 1080p video, and a TV I found outside that gets so warm that it’s hard to sit in front of for longer than two hours at a time. The laptop has no battery so it has to be used with the charger connected all the time and it’s too heavy to comfortably use anywhere but at a desk. I also have back and knee problems and having something like a Steam Deck would allow me to play and develop in bed or on my sofa and save me some pain.
Oh man that sucks
Can I ask you how old are you and why are you on sick leave? Your family can’t help you?
The Imperator-Class Titan is the largest mini in Warhammer 40k.
I have fantasized about using one of these in an actual game ever since I learned of their existence in 8th grade.
“mini”
Considering it’s got full on artillery emplacements, and a fucking house on it’s head, it’s kinda too scale with the other units.
I finally saw a Baltimore Oriole (bird) in real life at my feeder. Its was beautiful and vibrant and now I need to find another cool bird to look at.
have you already seen a scarlet tanager or rose breasted grosbeak?
Grosbeak yes, Tanager no. But it is on the list.
Woodworking: An entire log of American Chestnut.
About a century ago, the species was all but wiped out by a blight that came from Japanese chestnut. Some three billion trees died. The blight actually survives in the forest living on but not damaging oak trees, so American chestnuts are struggling to reclaim their historic habitats. The species is critically endangered and efforts to rehabilitate the population are underway, including trying to breed large surviving individuals or to genetically engineer blight resistant trees. Logging is of course completely out of the question.
American Chestnut is an excellent lumber, with many of the properties of white oak in a faster growing tree. It is straight grained, hard and strong, easy to saw and split, rot resistant due to tannins. A fantastic choice for indoor and outdoor furniture, structural timber, even telephone poles. Reclaimed chestnut timber from old buildings is highly prized, and what woodworker wouldn’t love access to a few hundred board feet of freshly kiln dried American chestnut…if it was possible to ethically source.
This is really interesting. A few years ago I bought this American Chestnut salt and pepper set. The guy who made it did tell me that he got the wood from a beam out of a barn built before the Civil War but I didn’t realize why. I just thought it was a really good looking salt Shaker and pepper grinder…
A couple more things about American Chestnuts:
-Chestnut forests used to cover a shitton of the northeast before being reduced to basically nothing
-“Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire” is about the tradition of eating American Chestnuts in the winter…
-… Because for some, it was a treat. And for others, it was practically a staple food! They were an extremely abundant resource
-Seriously, look at the size of the original American Chestnut forest:
Farmers used to just let their critters loose into the forests to eat the chestnuts off the forest floor because there were just so many. Now I think every American chestnut tree alive has a name.
If I could time travel, I’d go see the chestnut forests first. I only learned about them a few years ago but I think about it a weird amount (maybe because I have a huge elm tree in my yard)
Like can you imagine entire states covered in them? I don’t think they were quite the size of redwoods but they were ancient and well-established forests. And it makes me sad that most people don’t even know what we lost because some rich asshole just HAD to have foreign trees on their estates.
Christ, it’s ALWAYS the fucking rich assholes!
This is one thing that I really hope GMOs allow us to counter. We need chestnut trees back. Natural and farmed ones. Perhaps we will find a gene for blight resistance someday.
What is growing there now? It sounds like a pretty shitty situation.
The surviving forests are often oak, hickory, ash, pine. A different blight is working its way through the Eastern Hemlock, which are truly the giant sequoias of the East. Humongous old trees.
Also, corn, wheat, rice, tobacco, towns, cities, suburbs. Probably a third of the US population lives in that green area, to include Washington DC, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Altoona, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Memphis, Charlotte, Asheville, Atlanta…looks like it misses Colombia and just barely grazes Raleigh.
Why can’t they just be grown here instead of japan?
Because the disease has become endemic to American forests.
The American Chestnut was the dominant tree in the ecosystem of the forests of Eastern North America. Per Wikipedia, “it was said that a squirrel could walk from New England to Georgia solely on the branches of American chestnuts.” In the late 19th century, Japanese chestnut trees were imported, and they brought with them Asian Bark Fungus. American Chestnuts are quite susceptible to this fungus, and it largely wiped out the population.
The fungus infects the above ground portion of the tree, killing it. New shoots will emerge from the stump as the below ground portion of the tree isn’t affected by the fungus, but the new growth doesn’t get very far before the fungus kills it off again. We have no hope of eliminating the fungus from the forests.
So we’ve got these zombie tree stumps that will grow enough of a plant to keep the fungus alive and running (it also survives on other species of tree), but not enough to grow large and reproduce. There are some remaining adult trees here and there but the species is considered functionally extinct in the wild as it really isn’t able to thrive because this fungus is among us. So unless we can hybridize or otherwise breed fungus resistant chestnut trees, we ain’t got no American Chestnuts.
American chestnuts are also susceptible to ink disease and the Chinese Gall Wasp.
A lot of problems were caused by importing plants to North America; tumbleweeds aren’t indigenous, they’re Russian, and a massive fucking problem.
Thanks, now I want one too. Is there any feasible way to start trying to grown some of these myself, while obviously attempting to prevent infection of my crop?
This would be an excellent question to ask The American Chestnut Foundation.
For example, in the headphone world, the Sennheiser HE-1 headphones are said to be like the pinnacle of headphones and most expensive, costing $59000 for a pair.
Edit: added image
The irony with those is that once you’re at a stage of life where you can afford those, you probably can’t hear anything over 14kHz anyway. At least there’s that sweet midrange!
Out of curiosity, what would you plug those into to get the best use of them? I couldn’t imagine the headphone jack on my motherboard would be able to take full advantage of them.
They’re super special electrostatic headphones, so they have to be run with a special type of amplifier, and the one they come with come is absolutely insane, and is a huge part of the cost. Honestly, I bet you could cost cut the whole thing down to under $20k, but you’re paying a LOT of money for stuff like the fact that the amplifier case is made of marble and has one of the coolest boot sequences imaginable, where all the tubes and knobs rise out of it and retract back in so the whole thing is seamless. It’s very much one of those things that get built when engineers are handed a blank check and told “We don’t care what it costs, have fun”
where all the tubes and knobs rise out of it and retract back in
what the fuck
One of my favorite audiophile youtubers, Crinacle, just bought these headphones for 75k. Here’s the video if you wanna watch it
In the typewriter community, the “holy grail” differs from person to person, but for me it was a 1930s Royal P equipped with a rare typeface called Vogue. Very, very rarely they’ll pop up from people who don’t know how significant that is, and that’s the only way to get one at a reasonable price - because those who do know what it is will ask thousands of dollars for it.
Eventually I found one for a comparatively cheap price (sub 1k), and the only reason someone else didn’t snap it up before I saw it was because the guy refused to ship it. Local pickup only. So I took the chance to drive the 10 hours round trip to snag it, and it sits proudly as the crown jewel of my collection:
Hells to the yeah
I dream of one day finding an original Model M keyboard in a Goodwill or yard sale for like $10. Every time I’m in a thrift store I look over the electronics section JUST in case.
Also waiting for the day I find a random copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Sega Saturn. Only 20,000 north American copies were made, which sounds like a lot but in video game numbers is insanely low. I’ve only ever seen it in the real world once at a gaming convention and it sold for $1,500.
If you want the model M just for it’s feel you should check out Unicomp keyboards. They make modernized versions that feel identical according to a friend who uses one. Although they are way more expensive than 10 dollars.
I actually have had a Unicomp keyboard for a few years now lol. Feels great but I would love to own the original successor one day
Goodwill has competent people to notice and divert such things to online auction. You’re better off checking pawn shops in crappy towns/cities.
JFC I had that game! Only could get like six games for the Saturn in the US (nights into dreams, clockwork toy knight, a tactical RPG that had a big rabbit in the intro (sorry I forgot the name), owner dragoon, and virutua fighter). Dan I had so many super obscure games from the discount bin cause they weren’t popular new. Now everybody wants them.
Motivation. I lost it some time around 2015 and have been kinda just killing time before death ever since.
Have you tried killing time with some hobbies?
Yeah, but hobbies cost money and SSDI is barely enough to scrape on by.
Not really. I’ve been geocaching and that’s pretty much a free hobby. Hiking and birdwatching is pretty much free too. There are plenty of free hobbies out there.
Were you diagnosed with something at that time?
Oh I’ve been suffering suicidal ideation and depression since like age 7. 2015 is just when the Trump catastrophe made landfall.
Age 7, that’s very early. My son is 6 and a half. I’d be heartbroken if I found out he had those kinds of thoughts.
I’m sorry you have had to and are still going through that. I really hope the best for you. The world really isn’t offering much positivity right now for people suffering from depression and such illnesses, and it hasn’t been for some time. 😐
Love you. Take care. 🌊🌳🪺🏞️
Super subjective, but for my handtool woodworking, my grail is a pistol grip Stanley 610 drill. Do t know why, but ever since I saw one, I’ve wanted it!
As an old and broken skateboarder, I would love nothing more than a pump track within driving distance.
There are some great parks, but nothing with enough flow that I can just carve around to work up a sweat without have to push or climb a ramp to drop in all the time.
I have a backyard that i don’t use and i often think about how hard it could be to build one. The more i think about it, the more i realise that the answer is: very.
An extended mini ramp w some features I could build myself.
A pump track that would be any fun and not be totaly dangerous sounds like a massive project.
