Nas systems like Synology, u can store photos, files, or anything without public cloud services.
dedicated nas systems are pretty overpriced imo, often costing as much or more than the drives you put in them. much cheaper to build your own. depending on your needs, this can be as simple as a raspberry pi plus an external hard drive.
I have a usb ssd attached to my router.
They are overpriced based on a system you can build yourself, but the target audience for a NAS is someone who doesn’t want to spend days googling guides when a hard drive craps the bed or the os glitches. When I think of how much my NAS was, what I have stored on it and how much I use it, it is probably the best value for money thing I own.
not that expensive, i got a secondhand synology ds218+ which is based on intel x86 architecture, it costs about 100 usd. campared to raspberry pi, it provides docker support. i deploys teslamate, homeassistant, and openwrt.
If you are a pc enthusiast I’m going to say you need a sensor panel. I built one myself, 7" lcd display and driver board costs less then 30€ and the result is incredible. I always look at it for any sort of reason it has temperatures, FPS, cpu/gpu/ram usage, network bandwidth… I always know what’s going on!
Having a screen is one thing, but what kind of software do you need for it?
I’m using AIDA64 Extreme, the paid version ha a sensor panel feature that is so good that I can’t explain, so here some photos:
- How it looks in the case: https://ibb.co/4N9jJXV
- Screenshot of the last iteration (changed font and moved some elements): https://ibb.co/YBPFZwz
- Purple variant: https://ibb.co/92LQtpn
I used rainmeter to do the same thing on my 2nd monitor for free if anyone is looking for a software solution to this :)
MangoHUD
Got any good sources for getting started on something like that? I use software for this but I keep it up all the time so it’s probably worthwhile for me to get a separate device at this point.
if you draw or photoshop, a wacom screen is a life changer. not an ipad pro or surface, a 20"+ wacom cintiq on a solid desk is still light years beyond anything else out there. also, if you edit video, a usb shuttle wheel with mapable hot buttons makes cutting much faster than click and drag. really good speakers are important. lastly, get the best chair (with a headrest!) you can afford.
What about a table like that for 3D work or CAD? Do people do that?
I did, mostly for painting 3D textures directly on models (Z Brush etc). I knew a traditional animator that converted one of her old light tables with a Cintiq. It was pretty badass.
+1 on the good chair. I’ve spend 500 Euros and don’t regret my decision.
But why the head rest? Any source I’ve had (including a ergonomics specialist I’ve had a short talk with after buying the chair) said that your head should much rather move freely.
I got pretty severe shoulder and neck issues from sitting in Aeron and Mira chairs doing production graphics. Lots of pointing and clicking. I found an old gaming chair in a storage closet and haven’t had the same issues at all. Never looked back. Ergonomics should include what kind of work, duration, repetitive stress, monitor size, height, distance, body type etc.
Cintiqs are nice. I’ve been thinking about getting an additional Intuos Tablet though - sometimes drawing in the Cintiq ends up with me drawing with my face 6-8 inches from the screen, which is just reinforcing my near-sightedness. That, and sometimes drawings get skewed because I normally draw with the monitor tilted back at an angle. :T
I think I’d like the option to switch back and forth. Anybody have any advice or thoughts?
I use my Cintiq, keyboard, and mouse. I was able to build mine into my desktop with a tilt feature that goes from 80 degrees to almost flat. For some reason having it sunk into the table makes it easier for me to draw for long sessions. Your mileage might vary.
While I guess not technically a gadget, a nice footrest is surprisingly comfortable when sitting at the computer a while
I highly recommend anti-fatigue mats and adjustable desk! Alternative between sitting and standing.
Long periods of sitting is bad in general.
Dude, definitely. I’m a standing desk evangelist and have 2 at home lol
Right now I’m using a soccer ball, great to fiddle with too.
Hmm, I might have to try this
A good chair. I know it’s not technically a gadget but if you’re spending half of your day on the computer you should spend on a good chair with proper lumbar support. Your back will thank you.
Buy a used Aeron chair on Craigslist or something. I’ve gotten 2 of them like this and love them. They last forever and are extremely comfortable.
A Mira works well too and doesn’t get as much attention as the Aeron, so will be cheaper.
Good call out. Aeron’s are twice the price and the Mira is a great chair too. Tech startups LOVE to splurge on high end chairs and then they liquidate when they go under. That’s how I’ve gotten mine.
There are a few companies on eBay that sell refurb Aerons. I got a like new on for $400. Not exactly cheap, but waaaaay less than retail and comparable to the fancy “gamer” chairs.
Just don’t fall for those “gamer” chairs. They’re designed to look pretty, not to be comfortable.
Most gamer chairs are fine but they’re overly expensive. My chair is just a high quality office chair I grabbed from a local store. Super comfy and relatively cheap.
Nah they are pretty comfortable actually. Just expensive cause Gamer™
It’s not just about comfort, it’s about it not messing up your back long-term.
A bean bag is pretty comfy, but if you work in one 40h a week, your spine will be dust within a year.
Unfortunately the best chairs are even more expensive than gaming chairs. As an example, Herman Miller’s Aeron has been rated as one of the best designed chairs for over 2 decades and costs over a grand. Imagine that with gamer tax added to it: basically no one would buy it. So they simply don’t make chairs of that quality level to sell to that target demographic, it would not make economic sense to.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, they’re pretty comfortable if I say so myself
The issue is, yeah they’re comfortable, but they’re not comfortable in a good way for your body. You slouch and fuck your spine up. Also you look like a teenager, do you have a racecar bed too?
do you have a racecar bed too?
I fucking wish
do you have a racecar bed too?
Why do you hate fun?
I have fun, whilst sitting on a super comfy chair made to be adaptable and ergonomic so I can have fun for longer without fucking up my body. 🤷♂️
With a gaming chair, you’re also overpaying for bad posture and bad materials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yhc6mmdJC4
It just makes me think ‘kid that got scammed and follows trends to fit in’, not ‘fun’
Gamer chairs are the same chairs you’re buying but more expensive.
Gamer chairs are worse for you than office chairs. They’re designed to look “cool” but most of what they do is kill your back.
They’re just cheap shit. I don’t buy cheap shit, I have a premium chair that I bought used for a fraction of the price, cheaper than a “gamer chair” 🫣
Someone should make a chair that’s designed to be slouched in without fucking up your back.
When I was last shopping for a chair, a “gamer” chair was, by far, the best chair that I could find for my size (average height, but stocky and overweight). None of the chairs at my local office store went up far enough for my knees and the arm rests did not support my elbows at table level.
I am sure that their are high end office chairs that would fit me, but I did not want to do much research. I had just read a good overview of gaming chairs from Ars Technica and just went off of that.
Every chair I have had at work has the same problem. At one job, they had ergonomics experts come in to help set up our desks at a new office. The expert sat me down, fiddled with my chair, and apologized because it was hopeless.
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Completely agree. I got a Steelcase for a steal on Craigslist and it has been the best chair I’ve ever owned.
Large desk mat comfy chair good keyboard wrist rest decent 1440 monitor
Monitor arms and/or a standing desk. Monitor arms free up so much space on your desk and having a standing desk is just good for physical health especially if you work from home.
Headphones. I don’t wanna listen to your tik toks on a bus.
So open back, right?
I wish you a merry diarrhea 😊
Aren’t those for studio work though ? Rather than for daily usage?
They’re really great sound quality, but usually pretty bulky. I was joking because they let sound out very easily, so it wouldn’t be much better for other people than phone speakers.
Not necessarily! they are great for at home, especially if you have a kid or grandparent you have to be able to hear. Not so much for the bus though
Are there any good(less bulky and good sound quality) open back headphones for using on the bus (or commute) ?
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend open back for commute as you can hear everybody else and everyone else can also hear you. They are very much moreso for at home use.
I would add that a pair of good ones is a world of difference for everything you might use them for - music, gaming, movies. Now good != expensive, good headphones can be had for under 50 bucks, great headphones for around 100-200, anything beyond that you are venturing into audiophile waters with very diminishing returns.
What’s your recommendation ?
For the cheaper end, Koss is a great point to jump on, KSC 75, Porta Pro (these are my go to for moving around, including running in the rain) and Kph 30i are all great options. Worth noting that these will not provide much in the way of isolation, they are relatively open.
There are also pretty good cheap in-ear options (IEM), but i will not comment on these as I absolutely despise this form factor, personally.
For a potential endgame, with a price bump, you can look to something like Sennheiser HD560s. These are what I use at home, they are a great all-rounder, by reproducing the sound spatially very well, which is amazing for gaming, but also immersive for music and movies. For music (well, sound in general, of course) they are what is known as neutral, so they do not excentuate particularly any part of the frequency curve, they reproduce music roughly as-mixed, with great resolution of individual instruments, in my experience they really make the vocals pop.
A mouse with programmable keys on the side. It’s so convenient combining control keys with mouse movements in one hand.
I’ve had Shift+W programmed to my thumb button. Way more relaxed way to sprint in most games.
I have a mouse with 6 buttons on the side and it’s great for gaming. When I used to play fortnite I had all the building mapped there so I could do all my building with my right thumb and it wouldnt distract my left hand from movement controls
It’s certainly great for gaming. I didn’t expect it would make things so much easier on everyday use as well.
Get the Logitech G600 and have essentially 24 buttons on the side (12 + a “shift” button to give each of those 12 a different command).
To be fair, I only use about 6 of those buttons, haha.
If the software allows it you can have a button that changes between mouse modes with different button mappings. Infinite buttons
I guess you’d have a mode for entering the name of a mode then. Like vim. A whole mode that’s just navigating your collection of modes.
Ngl I’ve thought of doing that if it ever gets to >4 modes.
MMO mouses for programming
Are they useful outside of gaming ?
They have come in handy while using design software
can you give some examples where it would come handy?
Yeah sure.
Whenever I’m working on a big photoshop file and I find myself using a tool very often, I bind the side buttons to that tool. At minimum I always keep the redo, undo buttons binded to the mouse.
Whenever I’m browsing the web I have forwards and backwards binded so I don’t have to move my mouse across the screen to go back a page.
It’s all trivial stuff but it makes my workflow slightly more fluid. I initially bought the mouse for gaming, but it has been super useful for me outside of gaming
A deej mixer
https://www.instructables.com/DEEJ-a-Physical-Volume-Mixer/
This looks awesome
I used a Kinesis Freestyle 2 split keyboard for my software dev work, and it eliminated the ulnar neuropathy I was experiencing in about a month.
I’ve been using a Kinesis Advantage for most of my career. It’s safe to say my wrists would have flamed out years ago if it wasn’t for that keyboard.
A good mouse and keyboard are probably a good start.
Upgraded my setup to logitech MX Keys and MX Master 3 and oooooh boy, it’s so much nicer than the cheap rubbish I used before
Get a multi port USB charger. I have some from Anker that have 2 usb-c ports and 2 usb-a ports. Can charge everything from my laptop to all my gadgets.
You can’t have enough usb chargers.
I just bit the bullet and got some from Anker. Gonna have so many fast charging stations, I’ll finally stop dragging the one good charger around behind me everywhere I go.
One of my best purchases is the Anker 543 charger:
- 2x USB-C and 2x USB-A ports delivering up to 45W.
- Plugs into socket with an AC cable instead of built-in prongs. Lets you plug it into tight areas where a wall wart won’t fit.
- AC cable is a removable figure 8 attachment, so if it breaks you can replace it cheaply without buying a new charger. You can also buy an extra long AC cable to get power further away.
- Power supply is compatible with 240v and 110v AC. If you’re traveling, just buy that country’s AC cord for $5 instead of all those shitty attachments that travel adapters come with.
I once bought a couple of 6 or 8 foot charging cables from Anker. My gf and I could both zone out on our phones on the couch then. Before that one of us could hunch down at a time if we needed to look at something on the phone.
It was just interesting how nice it was to be able to be on the phone while it was charging, and that we had two of them.
For maybe $15 apiece or $20 for the pair, it was a lot of value for the money.
Since we’re on Lemmy, USB jump drive so they can reinstall a new distro of Linux every ~3 months
I’ve got like 5 of these. Only one of them has a Linux distro.
I’ve been telling myself to stop distrohopping for 7 years.
I’m addicted to optimizing my OS
Do it with Ventoy https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
I use ventoy all the time! But not all ISOs are compatible with it, I’ve found. Fedora, for example, and OpenSuse are not compatible with ventoy.
Wdym? Fedora 38 server and workstation worked fine for me. Might be your drive?
I tried Silbertblue, and it failed. It could be the drive, though. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Ventoy is great. I have a bunch of useful Windows ISOs like win 10 and 11. I also have a bunch of useless ones like Win XP and 7.
I have many useful Linux ISOs and I also have an Android ISO for some reason.
A great tool 🔥
WinXP isn’t compatible with ventoy. At least, it always BSODed for me. Did you have any luck?
I haven’t actually tried, I honestly mostly use it as ISO storage for VMs.
Where in the process does it BSOD? If it’s before you reformat your storage I could try it on my computer, otherwise I won’t.
XP installer loads, welcomes me, then dies. For me, at least, it was before I even had an opportunity to enter any information for the installation.
Keyboard. It’s got hotkeys for the most used characters. It’s so much faster than manually drawing each character in Paint.
Wow, my MS paint workflow is feeling attacked right now.
You don’t have to use every shortcut you know.
People need to think too, and the less repetitive one’s workflow, the less time one has to think.
Time efficiency gains assume practically infinite cognitive resources. Normal human workflow is think/execute/think/execute. Jobs that are only think/think/think/think are unnatural and fuck up your brain. Especially if you think of reality as a sort of test suite you can run against new neural patterns to weed out the ones built on unreliable patterns.
So you do you bro. You take your time on those precious chars. I do recommend you learn chinese in that case though, or Egyptian heiroglyphics. You get a lot more information out of each bmp file that way.
I haven’t used CJK languages in a long time, but for a while I was running a Japanese version of Windows NT and for text input there was an option to draw the character in a small paint window.
