Photos Latest Purchases Thread: v2.0

Sod it, push the boat out lol.





Flannelette and feathers. Can you tell I am a 70's child?

 

Surely the washing line is at least "new office adjacent"?

 

• High end oil filled radiator (my flat apparently gets cold -_-)
• Decent wok
• Decent cheaper connical burr grinder and french press brewer, thought I'd give grinding coffee a go!
  
• Coffee scales

 

Nolan Collection 21 Dischi (4K Ultra-HD + Blu-Ray)


Harry Potter 1-8 collection (Box 16 Blu-Ray 4K Ultra-HD)


IT 2-Film Collection


Pacific Rim

 

Bah.

So I have been struggling on with my Xbox 1x for media duties. Whilst wanting to eat my spleen because of the ads on YT. At home I have a Fire Cube, and I installed a app called Smart Tube Next. It was very easy, and not an ad in sight. So I figured wait for BF and get another one. Last cube cost me £79.99 on BF. This year? they have been kind enough to knock a tenner off of the higher price. Gits. Ah well, this should suffice.



My duvet set came today. It's more purple than pink, so I like it even more. Just one problem. As the pillow case flopped out of the package I realised it was enormous. Turns out it is a bolster pillow, 3ft. I then started to think about how awesome that would be. No lifting my head up and continually shifting the pillow sideways because I am right on the edge of it !

 

Just did the same with the firestick 4k, works quite well, just wanted Paramount Plus on my LG OLED that doesn't have an app and whilst I could do a sub via Prime video, there no scope to use an already active discount subscription whereas the stick can load the paramount app.

 

Last night was the last straw. I wanted to wait until next time I came over, but god. I had a over 1hr crime video waiting for when I went to bed. It must have showed me an ad every 2 minutes of it. Just utterly ruined it

I was a bit worried about getting one that doesn't output 4k, because I am using a Benq 4k monitor here as a TV. So was a bit worried how the stick would see it only offering 4k. That said it was cheap AF, £27? something like that. I just hope it doesn't start to crawl like all of the other sticks I had. The Cube is the only one that seems to remain really zippy as it gets older.

 

Its should be fine, I have a first gen FireTV box on an old dumbTV and it still flies along, though admittedly being old it doesn't run the latest supposedly improved UI that is not really an improvement

 

Mini splurge

Hand made Italian rubber rings


Clacky thing


Chonk of timber

 

I almost feel guilty about this...

My case can take 140 fans in the front but I have never used them. The original build used two 120s (as it still does) but they were black. It was so plain I added some 140mm light shrouds I got (the grey things) and it was fine. Problem is I had to poke holes through the filter to bolt it all in. Well now since upgrading my GPU and finding the fans were almost baked into the AIO it looks totally daft.



So I wanted to take out the halo things. Problem is like I said I poked 8 holes through the filter that came with the case. And they are expensive, man. £20 or more. I then found this on Corsair's site for £4.99 with free delivery.



@MLyons send my regards to your boss

 

The ads on YouTube are getting utterly ridiculous now. On a desktop I block the living shite out of them, but on my iPad and Apple TV that's not an option - I don't even think DNS-level blocking like PiHole works. I am not going to switch back to Android TV or Android tablets; I am absolutely done with the merry-go-round of hacks, workarounds, fudges, unsupported devices, OS distributions maintained by a teenager, etc.

For the amount of YouTube content I consume, I absolutely do not begrudge the cost of their premium service. I already support a handful of favourite creators through Patreon, and some have ad-free versions for Patreon supporters. The cost isn't the problem, the problem is Google's double-dipping when it comes to profiting from me. Even if they could absolutely guarantee that no data from paid YouTube subscribers is sold to advertisers, I wouldn't believe them: it's Google ffs, they are an advertiser, not a tech company, it's what they do. When the service is free then you are the product; but paying for the service yet still being a product to be sold really pisses me off.

One of these days I will just swallow my pride and damn well pay for a YouTube subscription to get rid of ads.

 

Had a look at those tyres, seems bike tyres have come on a long way since I gave up cycling. How much pressure can they take and is the rolling resistance really low?

 

It's too expensive. It costs more than Netflix, and let's face it in 99.9% of videos you are usually watching one long ad (a tech video for example or a "review" is just an advert) and then they have sponsor bits and everything else as well. It is pure ads. All of it.

I really wouldn't do it otherwise. In the discussion we had about it when I originally installed Smart Tube Next on my home Cube I did say I felt guilty, but was beginning to feel like a complete mug for not doing it. Because they ramped it up right about when I did that and it was beyond watchable.

As I said man, I went to bed at gone midnight to watch a *checks* 1:14:42 video. This one.



And it took me almost two hours to watch. And that was skipping every ad I could.

I read something last week (probably bs, but hey you never know) that YT may start showing you 7 or so ads before you can even start watching.

 

Right, the last of the BF stuff. My desk at mum's has sagged beyond belief. It was also damaged when it came, so it has never been great.



I only picked that because of the size and shape. It is plenty wide, and I can have headphones at each end. I can put my music ones on the hanger, but I still have a ROG Centurion 7.1 that I can't use because there is just nowhere to put it. Will be lovely to be able to have that at the opposite end. Not sold on the gaming mat, but already have one so I can leave that off.

 

PSI wise they are rated for between 85-130 which is ideal for me. Rolling resistance 11.9W rest of the data is here
https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/road-bike-reviews/veloflex-corsa-evo-tlr

Big reason I wanted them is the thread count, 320tpi, which is really really nice.

 

Just a smol item this time.
One of the USB3 headers on my mobo is right angled, but the cable would interfere with the rad fans if I used it.
The other one is the usual upright kind, but using that one interferes with any card fitted to the lowest PCIe slot on the mobo, like my Optane SSD.

Enter the solution - Apply this to the right angled header to direct the cable straight down through the mobo tray:-

 

Oops!
2 of these:-


A pair of these to sit on them:-


And one of these for the left stick:-


All of which will sit on this under-desk rail mount (with the correct mounting plates for the above):-