Looking for some neat ideas/quality of life improvements aka lifehacks I guess
Scented candles in my office. Makes my work feel much more cozy and less stressful.
A P1 sensor. I have recently entered the rabbit hole of home automation. One of the things I care about, is to be as private as possible, so I went for Home Assistant.
A P1 sensor is a small thingumabob that you plug into your electricity meter and it measures electricity and natural gas use. It comes with its own webserver and it integrates seamlessly into my HA energy dashboard. I did not have to subscribe to any cloud service and as far as I can tell, it does not phone home.
Provided you live in a country that cares about transparency.
My meter has a single LED and a propietary optical connection that claims to alarm the supplier if used.
You can always wire up an ESP32 with an optical sensor that tracks the blinking of the LED. The meter should state how much energy is represented by a blink.
Example projectYep, I’ve got one of those going already! I’m currently working on improving the power consumption so I can run it off a LiFePO4 without recharging every week.
Ninja stars.
A good life hack is when you are being pursued place them into the ground in key spots where a pursuer might step.
Also work on throwing two ninja stars at once so you can increase DPS.
People down voting have no sense of humor.
Also ninja stars are legitimately so much fun to throw around if you have a safe spot to do it where you won’t wreck anything if you miss.
They are like throwing knives without the fiddly part.
They look simple, but it’s genuinely hard to launch them with the right spin to keep them stable.
just ninja star stuff
I mean if you are familiar with the mechanics of throwing a football correctly, or throwing a frisbee or you just are comfortable throwing fairly hard then it isn’t too difficult to learn to throw them.
Honestly a baseball pitcher doesn’t have to adjust their form much to throw a ninja star, they just have to work out the handgrip. An over the head baseball throw is perfect because the spin plane makes missing a little to high or low much more likely than missing left or right which is what you want anyways.
These are the ninja star shapes I have found most ergonomic, durable and plausibly sharpenable. They have enough meat in the blades that they can slam into a rock and be dented instead of chipping badly, and you can put a normal human arms strength into the throw unlike smaller ones that you have to gingerly throw unless your form is really good. The one on the bottom right looks kinda odd like it needs more teeth but it is the easiest to throw seriously hard (highest spinning radius to weight ratio) and you can easily sink it into wood all the way down to the base of the blade where the other two perpendicular blades finally halt it going any deeper. The top left one is surprisingly effective too and much more durable.
The big ones are way easier to feel the right rhythm to the snap in the throw as you can physically feel the momentum in the longer/heavier span of the wider ninja star where-as with smaller ones you just have to know the right form because you get no feedback on how to correct your form.
If you get a comically big ninja star then anybody can throw it fairly well because the wide span makes feeling how power builds up in a snap extremely intuitive. If you have ever had a moment where you pretended to be a ninja and thrown those three bladed metal brush cutters for weed whackers you know what I mean.
Also, be careful, they actually aren’t joke weapons at all and they are MADDENINGLY easy to lose because they just want to keep rolling and rolling. Maybe a try a magnet in a plastic bag on a string that you throw into brush when you lose one (like magnet fishing on land) it has worked for me before. You will lose them, it’s part of the ninja star life.
image source but you can buy these anywhere you can buy army navy type stuff
Cool, and by cool I mean totally sweet!
Caltrops are better because they require less precision to deploy effectively.
And they’re extremely effective on cars!
I don’t buy anything
Not really bought but I was gifted a used 3D printer (Ender 3 pro) from a print farm. Great starter printer and it’s solid and totally upgradable. It’s like a manual Jeep Wrangler from the in line six days and before. I can print anything to improve my life.
First great functional print was a wall socket cover plate with a HomePod mini shelf above it to get it off our kitchen counter. Projects sound much better since it’s no longer surrounded by stuff.
My wife then wanted a handle for a 20oz Yeti tumbler. Printed that and she loves it.
Little things, printed a tool holder for my 3D printer tools that fits on it and keeps them neat and out of the way.
Recently printed a computer monitor stand VESA mount to lift it up (I only have a short monitor stand). Spent $2.63 on the filament to print that. It’s freaking awesome.
Easily the best gift I’ve received in decades.
I’m still rocking a super old monoprice mini select. It’s been so heavily modifier and repaired at this point I probably should have gotten a better one. Small print area, no magnetic build plate, no auto leveling. It feels like a geo metro with manual everything.
I bought my wife a wooden yarn winder from Etsy. She got into crochet this winter and needed to ball yarn. It’s beautiful wood so it looks nice and now I don’t have to hold anything while she winds. It takes a quarter of the time and is high quality. Since it’s so manual it should last forever as well.
I’ve never seen a place that sells yarn not already pre-balled. Does she spin it herself?
Nope. There are three different types of yarn sold. See below:
TIL I’ve been calling skeins balls my whole life. Thanks!
I know right? New hobby new terminology.
I got a soda machine that uses packets of powder instead of a c02 cannister.
pop rocks?
sodium bicarbonate
Fun fact: the CO2 version can actually be made incredibly cheap if you retrofit a decently sized paintball CO2 canister to work with your soda machine (kits can be bought). The biggest difference is that paintball CO2 isn’t food grade, but it’s pretty common to dismiss this if that’s something you’re comfortable doing.
You go from spending however much (think I remember them costing as much as $50 for like, 12oz) on a SodaStream proprietary CO2 canister, to spending like $10-$30 every couple of months on a 20+ oz fillup at your local sporting goods store, and the one time $40-$60 for a decent sized canister that lasts forever. Seriously, I still have my canister from when I played paintball in 2008.
I bought an adapter and a 25 liter siphon tank.
I found a local gas company that will refill my siphon tank with food grade CO2. Because it’s a siphon it’ll transfer liquid directly into the SodaStream tanks.
I own five SodaStream tanks. I can refill them about four times out of the siphon tank.
The siphon tank cost $25 to refill at a semi local gas company.
I bought a mead kit from Golden Hive Mead.
Haven’t started yet. Need to get in touch with a local bee keeper for some honey yet.
👋 fellow homebrewer (do we have a homebrew community here yet?)
My advice: your first mead is probably gonna be more of a learning experience. Go to costco and buy a big bottle of honey (3lbs), mix it with a gallon of water, and some nutrients.
Most cost effective way to try it out without blowing a ton of money. My first mead was terrible, and i spent a ton of money on good local honey.
My second mead i spent even more on better honey and strawberries, to apply everything i learned. Came out amazing
Thanks for the tip! I might do that, cause yeah this will be first. What do you mean by nutrients? Is that something I should be looking for? I assumed everything I’d need should be in the kit (except honey) so I’d like to make sure.
So i don’t know what kit you have or what it came with but here’s everything I would use:
Equipment:
- Star San (make sure everything is sanitized, also don’t rinse this stuff out – “don’t fear the foam”)
- Airlock (and bung)
- Fermenter (I like big mouth bubblers, but your kit should have come with something)
- A spoon
Ingredients:
- Honey (I do 3lbs per gal)
- Water (I use store bought water, because I’m paranoid lol)
- If you’re using fresh fruit, pectic enzyme (this helps break down haze in the mead from the fruit)
- Fermaid-O (this is the nutrients)
- Wine Tanin (optional, for aging)
- Yeast (you can get some cheap yeast on Amazon – I used Red Star “Cote Des Blancs” for my strawberry mead, but your kit probably came with this)
Watch some YouTube videos to get a feel for the process. I enjoy City Stead Brewing, they have tons of recipes and helpful tips. Also, if you’re gonna bottle and stuff you’ll need wine bottles, a siphon and bottling wand, corks, and a corker. You can bottle in swing-top bottles, but I haven’t had good luck with those (apparently they’re not great for long term storage >.>)
Like i said though, for your first mead it’s probably best to KISS. I appreciate being able to get a feel for the process and then experimenting later on. I’ve only made two meads, but have made wine and a LOT of beer in the past – so if you have more questions just lmk!
A Bidet has got to be the most life changing purchase ever. Not even expensive either.
Do I go with the hand held sprayer thingy or the one that affixes underneath the seat?
You’ll want the one that attaches to the seat. Luxe makes really solid ones for very cheap; I’ve had mine for three or four years now, and it still works just fine. You can get some fancy ones with heated water, air dryer, etc but that’s all superfluous; The cold water alone isn’t bad after you experience it once and know what to expect. And the nozzle on Luxe brand bidets has a self-clean feature, so you can rinse the nozzle easily.
The number one thing to look for on the el cheapo ones is - does it look easy to clean. Where the Toilet Lid meets the Bowl and the bidet acts as a washer collects so much grime. It grosses me out so bad. You can’t clean any of it unless you take it all apart.
Under the seat.
While in our family we hate them and we’ll get rid of them to make the space more efficient 😅
Usually in North America bidet refers to a modified insert or toilet seat that includes a sprayer and a lever to control. It doesn’t take up any space at all. Definitely a stand alone bidet takes up a lot of space but they’re visually non existent in North America, although I certainly would prefer that to the sprayers.
Indeed, I’ve only seen one standalone bidet ever in the US. It was in an old mansion. Far more awkward than the modern ones that attach to an existing toilet.
Or a hand bidet that attaches to the side of the toilet with a thermostat to control water temp and pressure
In that case, that sounds interesting.
Americans don’t historically have standalone bidets, so they’re almost certainly referring to the type that attaches to your toilet seat. It doesn’t take up any extra space.
The biggest hazard with those is simply kids/pets. Because if you have a toddler, they will inevitably think it‘s the funniest thing in the world to turn the bidet on and watch it spray across the room. If you’re lucky, they might even turn it off after laughing at it. And the dial is easy enough for a cat to accidentally turn when jumping up/down.
There’s one in my kids’ bathroom. Can’t wait to reno the room and get rid of rid. Especially as the tub got a shit half broken tap but for some reason the bidet has a fancy working one. According to my daughter it’s there to flood the parquet and transform the room in a giant pool for her mermaid Barbie.
I’d love to have one if I had the space. My toilet is roughly one square meter. For illustration purposes, that size, only less grungy. These are leftovers from how they used to plan apartment buildings in the late 19th century in Vienna.
There are bidet attachments to add to a regular toilet
I love mine
-
Pomade stick. Looks kinda like deoderant but you use it on your hair. I have long hair and get flyaways like crazy, especially when I tie my hair back. Works wonders.
-
A stainless steel Casio watch. Looks nice and will allow me to tell the time at work since I won’t be allowed to have my phone on me most of the time.
-
Tiny refillable perfume bottle so I don’t have to bring a big glass bottle when travelling
Got myself a Logitech G502X and the Powerplay charging mouse pad. Now I can have my wireless mouse charged 24/7 and never have I think about plugging it or docking it.
The powerplay is a game changer. You made a great choice getting that thing.
I was able to afford meat twice this week!
The aeropress coffee maker and a coffee grinder. I threw my kurig machine in the trash after making my first aeropress coffee.
Bit of a waste if it was a perfectly good machine?
I would be creating more waste with the k cups if I kept the Keurig
I have been using the same reusable k-cup for years now, so you can get around that issue.
This is true. I still enjoy my aeropress.
I was in the right place, right time, found a solid, hardwood dresser at Goodwill for $30!
