The "New Toys" Thread

Yes the M1 is excellent. I have a Mini M1 already. This is also the first time in several decades that I don’t have an Intel based computer or any sort.
 
Yes the M1 is excellent. I have a Mini M1 already. This is also the first time in several decades that I don’t have an Intel based computer or any sort.
Yes, I just remembered. However, it's in the fanless Air that the M1's efficiency really shines through.

It's easy to used to this thing. My work laptop (HP Elitebook) with it's loud noisy fan, lousy battery life (4-5 hours max) and spinning hard drive (not sure about this, but it sounds like it) is starting to get very annoying after I have gotten used to my M1 MacBook Air.
 
I went on the Internet, and discovered /r/flashlight. Results:

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The "big" black one is the Wurkkos FC11, basically their "too lazy to do research" #1 recommended everyday carry light. About 12cm long, or the size of a whiteboard marker. Runs off a single 18650 cell, has an integrated USB-C charging port for it, and puts out a solid 1300 lm of light - or about the same as a halogen high beam. Watertight and pretty robust.

The silver one is a Sofirn SC01 keychain light. It's tiiiiny :) and runs off a correspondigly tiny, but still standardized and swappable 10180 cell - and amazingly also has an integrated microUSB port for charging. Output is 330 lm - so still ~7x of a typical smartphone LED flash. Also watertight, and the body is stainless steel - should not scratch easily in a pocket with actual keys. Only downside I've found so far - it gets quite hot when running on top brightness, and the on/off switch is by twisting the front part with some force - which is what gets hot. Still, for a keychain light, this is pretty perfect imho.

Most surprising to me is that these two didn't even set me back 50€ in total. There are other popular lights on that subreddit though... for now, I'm good. For now.
 
I went on the Internet, and discovered /r/flashlight. Results:

View attachment 3561810

The "big" black one is the Wurkkos FC11, basically their "too lazy to do research" #1 recommended everyday carry light. About 12cm long, or the size of a whiteboard marker. Runs off a single 18650 cell, has an integrated USB-C charging port for it, and puts out a solid 1300 lm of light - or about the same as a halogen high beam. Watertight and pretty robust.

The silver one is a Sofirn SC01 keychain light. It's tiiiiny :) and runs off a correspondigly tiny, but still standardized and swappable 10180 cell - and amazingly also has an integrated microUSB port for charging. Output is 330 lm - so still ~7x of a typical smartphone LED flash. Also watertight, and the body is stainless steel - should not scratch easily in a pocket with actual keys. Only downside I've found so far - it gets quite hot when running on top brightness, and the on/off switch is by twisting the front part with some force - which is what gets hot. Still, for a keychain light, this is pretty perfect imho.

Most surprising to me is that these two didn't even set me back 50€ in total. There are other popular lights on that subreddit though... for now, I'm good. For now.
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When I was a kid my Dad bought a spotlight for the boat and we thought it was impressive. He bought a new one that was cordless in the late 90s and that one blew away the older one by miles.

The first time i used them both was on on a camping/canoe trip. We used them on the last night when we arrived at the pullout well after dark. My van had fog lights at the back that were great for lighting up the immediate area, but we needed something that let us see down by the river(no, I did not live by the river). I grabbed the cordless one, pointed it at the ground near the end of the trailer and pulled the trigger, instantly ruining everyone's night vision. Oops! It got put away and we used the older one to finish up.


I can only imagine what is available now.
 
Heh. These are quite capable of ruining your night vision, and when pointed really wrong, your day vision too :cool: The good thing is though, all of the modern LED lights come with some sort of brightness adjustment.

On the FC11, there's a stepped adjustment with 4 levels or a smooth curve (press the button to turn on/off, long press to change brightness, double click for "turbo"/maximum brightness, triple click for strobe mode, and there's more "menu" too), with the lowest setting being "about what you want in a tent on a completely dark campsite". The SC01 only offers "low" and "high" by twisting the front - its "low" is probably a bit more than the FC11's minimum, but still fairly dim / usable without immediate night vision loss.
 
...and the base area is still not even a third of the size of the cargo rack (70 cm x 50 cm)... ;)
 
I can neither confirm nor deny that... :shifty:
 
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New fancy yellow shelf to store garage things rather than stack/pile them in the corner.
 
DeWALT branded! Did you win the lottery or something? :p
 
So I live in a flat where a single wi-fi access point should be more than enough, but my cable jack is in one of the outer corners and my bed is diagonally on the other side with a staircase in between. Lots of concrete.

I was browsing a local big box store and found a Netgear Orbi RBK752 Mesh kit with a 25% discount. The box had scuff marks and a "demo" sticker on it. No idea what demo means because everything in the box looked pristine including the way the cables were wrapped etc.

So far so good, except that the 30 day free trial of their "armor" security thing keeps pushing notifications that they've scanned one of my LAN devices and not found anything this time either. I have a feeling I won't subscribe.

One thing I really like so far is how the light (the only light on the thing) is OFF when everything is working properly.

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One thing I really like so far is how the light (the only light on the thing) is OFF when everything is working properly.
o_O what is this wizardry!?

... similar situation here, really. Only I run two fritz repeaters, one in the office and one 5m across the living room from the router, because it seems sonos wifi performance is the biggest garbage in the history of wifi. i can only get the damn amp to reliably work if i plug it into the repeater with a LAN cable (the rep gets perfect reception, 100% of advertised max speeds are at least "advertised" in its connection status, while the one in the office already drops down to about 30% of max).
 
Repeaters aren't known for stellar performance either, at least if you use wireless backhaul to the router. The speed effectively gets cut in half because the bandwidth the repeater has available to it needs to be split between communicating to the router and to the client. Mesh supposedly performs better, especially with a tri-band setup where there's one band reserved for the backhaul.

This Orbi setup is probably massively overkill for my relatively small flat, but I hate flaky wi-fi and I've lived with a dead spot in my bedroom for far too long now. Not anymore, I'm getting full bars everywhere and I have no problem bottoming out my 250/20 cable connection.

Also, while I haven't tried it yet, I assume that I'll have great coverage down by the car (and in the car) now instead of one bar and zero bytes per second. It's annoying when you're fiddling around to get some Spotify going before you're leaving.
 
Yeah, at least those Fritz repeaters are at least advertised as mesh devices - although mine don't support the reserved backhaul band. Then again, I don't necessarily need that, either... one of them is purely my sonos connector, the other mainly supplies my desktop PC, which, again, is connected via ethernet cable to said repeater. All other devices on my network I really don't care about the network throughput. well, with sonos i don't either, but that stupid thing just refuses to work entirely :|
 
I have *some* coverage down by the car (1 floor down from my bedroom, 10-15 meters, concrete building) but speeds are in the single digits.

Not what I expected.
 
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