I am also a weird coffee person 
I enjoy watching James Hoffmann on YouTube if you haven’t seen his stuff.
Please don’t remind me about the collection of Raspberry Pis I have strewn about my house 
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Looks around at kickboxing gear, climbing shoes, Arduino kit, recumbent bike, embroidery… 
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…RPGs, computer farm, 3D printer, books, beer, bicycle stuff…
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Do cats count? I’ve eight living with me indoors at the moment and another two wanting to come in!
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That is a lot of cats. Pretty sure you’re obliged to pay the cat tax and post some pictures 
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Already done in the thread here about member’s pets, Felix!
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Just did the tasting last Saturday. I love his videos.
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I hadn’t watched any of his stuff, and I watched three of his videos this morning (“The Perfect Pumpkin Spice Latte”, “$50 Bur Grinders”, and “1 year After, Weima vs Niche”).
They made my partner very, very angry. We’re tangentially coffee people (we French press in the morning, and it took me years to convince her to upgrade from a hand grinder to a Kitchenaid bur grinder), but our tastes are, obviously, nowhere near as refined as his. But what really upset her is the sense of casual entitlement… “Oh, this grinder here costs 500 pounds, which is about 200 pounds more than this other one, but if you’re making espresso every day…”
Dude. Come on. That upgrade in your grinder costs a week of my salary. The grinder itself is almost a month’s pay if I don’t eat, drink, or pay my mortgage. And does it make sense? Sure. I’m positive that if I had a thousand bucks laying around, I could 100% get a great grinder and it would make my life a tiny bit better. But hells alive.
That stated, I was more depressed by his videos than angry (although I understand her anger). I love watching people who are really into a thing. That’s why I like watching SU&SD. That’s why watching people who are passionate about books or biking or running or whatever is amazing… I love when people are really excited about something! Alton Brown and food, or Karl Dockstater and Indigenous Rights, or my English professor and Shakespeare… but the baked in entitlement in this guy’s coffee is… bitter? It’s a bit bitter.
Maybe I watched three videos I shouldn’t have? Anyway. I don’t want to yuck your yum, he seems really cool and if I ever met him I would 100% ask him to play Skull or Galaxy Trucker or something (while offering him our humble French Pressed, locally roasted coffee).
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Every now and again I’ll get really into tech videos/articles. Before long I have to stop looking at it, because it seems like as soon as someone is successful enough as a tech-content creator or site then they lose a sense of the value of the thing. Most people can’t afford to drop £1000 on a new phone/camera/laptop/whatever, but apparently these days a £500 phone fits into the “budget” market?
I think overall Hoffmann is actually not-bad. There are a few videos of his that are pretty out-of-touch but often he’s down to earth about the more reasonable options for coffee-making. He could do with some more videos for budget-friendly options, and while it’s nice to see him enthuse about the expensive options it’s frustrating when his conclusion is “it’s expensive but worth having” rather than “it could be worth having but it’s too expensive”.
My recommendation for person-who-is-actually-understanding-of-budgetary-concerns-even-though-they’re-successful-and-established is The Low Spec Gamer on Youtube, who is great for anyone with a low spec machine that struggles to play AAA modern-ish releases on PC. He seems to have a real enthusiasm for making computers accessible financially, which is cool.
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As I understand it, once one gets a bit of popularity it’s not too hard to get a bit of free stuff. At which point one’s natural reaction is probably “hey, neat thing” rather than “but is this really worth N hours at minimum wage”.
SU&SD and especially No Pun Included have made some very good points about this kind of question, and I think most good boardgame reviewers now actively disclose how they got the thing.
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That sounds crazy. I presume there are genuine budget-priced phones, though? I think my phone cost me about £100 five years ago.
Admittedly, my phone is first and foremost an unnecessarily large and expensive digital alarm clock, and only secondly for text messaging and phone calls. I guess if I used it for anything else, I’d probably see some value in a fancier model… (or have replaced it after I dropped it and cracked its screen four years ago).
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Yeah, as well as disclosing how they got things, SUSD have been really good about downgrading a review of a game if it’s too expensive. And being realistic about whether the public should spend on other objects, such as the gaming table.
(I still want the ridiculous Go pieces, though)
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Yeah, I’ve got a second hand 5-year-old phone that was ~£120 for the original owner I think. I sometimes try catching up with what’s available for an upgrade but there’s a lack of info about phones that are sub-£400 compared to the abundance of enthusiastic videos on tech-Youtube about the latest high-end phones.
The other problem in the phone-space is that the market just doesn’t seem to be interested in the same things as me. If there’s a small phone with a very-good battery life that does Whatsapp/Messenger/email/podcasts I’d be happy to pay a bit more for it. Until then I’m waiting for my current phone to give up 
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Who wants a tour of some GUITAR PEEEDDAAALLLLSS?
Course you do.
Started with these boys. Boss - nice and simple (and cheap). Flanger was one of the first I got because I loved Foo Fighters - Breakout far too much at the age of 16. Then Delay, because Aurora. Proco Rat, because the first Foo Fighters album. Tuner, because I cared about how I sounded sometimes. Got the tremolo from a friend for cheap a while later. I hate tremolo. Why’d I buy a tremolo? They make me feel aurally motion sick.
Then came my first foray into more boutique pedals. Fuzz Factory, made famous by Muse’s Origin of Symmetry. Great fuzz pedals, but it has all the stabilisers removed. The amazingly unique sounds come at the expense of being found on a knife edge with ear bleeding white noise on either side. First rule of Fuzz Factory is: turn the volume down really low before you mess around with the knobs. You only make that mistake once. Then Clarksdale for a Tube screamer clone. It’s alright. Doesn’t sound great with my amp. Clusterfuzz for some old school 60s germanium and silicon transistor fuzz sounds. Nothing fancy, but does the job.
Then we have my current pedalboard. Yes it’s way too big. I had a dream of using ALL THE PEDALS. But then I found it’s really annoying when one cable is slightly out and nothing works. Or it makes a strange humming feedback noise and I have to go through pedal by pedal to sort out. Moral of the story? Get a small board and use like 4-6 pedals at a time. Maximum. I’ll get a smaller board when I can be bothered.
Anyway. Top to bottom. A 385, an overdrive based on a guitar nerd trend for turning cinema projection equipment into guitar amps. If it has a valve in it, you can turn it into an amp! Probably my fav overdrive for a standard always on sound. It just has that nice Lou Reed kinda sound to it.
Then there’s the Luminary v2 octave pedal. Makes a guitar sound like a bass, or a church organ, or get those weird Bends era Radiohead sound. It’s silly but fun.
Alpha Haunt, my modern fuzz sound. It’s good, but I haven’t figured it all out yet.
Lamplighter compressor. It does what it does well.
Data Corrupter - ever wanted a guitar to sound like a chainsaw chopping up a NES? Well now you can. Very fussy with the guitar and volume though. Too quiet, or not the right pickups, and it makes no sound at all. Seems to work better with humbuckers than single coils.
Ventris - my Swiss army knife reverb. Seems like everyone needs to commit to the Empress, Big Sky, or Ventris. I took a punt. It’s good, but crazily versatile. I should use it more.
720 - a looper for when I feel like Ed Sheeran. I can never get the timings quite right, which viscerally hurts my ego no end.
Tonal Recall - For when you need to spend £500 on delay. It’s a delay nerds dream. I’m too bad to make the most of it.
Grand Orbiter - phaser. Sounds good with everything. And I play it with everything.
Warped Vinyl - Weird reverby tremolo thing that can sound like warped Vinyl if you set it up right. Everything else is just warbly.
Deja Vibe - Vibrato pedal. Like tremolo, but cooler. Necessary for those Hendrix impressions.
Brothers - dual stage overdrive. It’s far fancier than it has any right to be. Want to play fuzz into overdrive, or overdrive into fuzz, or overdrive in parallel with fuzz? Well here it is. Why not just buy 2 pedals? I don’t know.
Tyra Kline - A clone of the legendary overdrive pedal that is the Klon. It’s fun, but can be kinda shrill if not used right.
Then my latest purchases.
Argo - Octave Fuzz. The other necessary ingredient for Hendrix impressions.
Jonnssus - Modern distortion and overdrive. I didn’t have anything for distortion except the Proco, so thought I needed more.
Dark World - crazy reverb type thing. Does weird stuff.
Wetter Box - this thing is MAD. It acts as a conduit between other pedals, so you can mix different pedals together however you like. In sequence or in parallel. You can even connect the mix to an expression pedal and use the pedal to phase between the different effects. I’d love to hear this used in a professional setting, it opens up loads of possibilities I’m too stupid to figure out.
And then there’s the pedals I forgot about.
Belle Epoch - models a classic delay sound. Less controllable than the other delay pedals, but it has character.
Bender - Clone of the classic Tonebender pedal, made famous by Led Zeppelin. Just arrived today, not tried it yet.
McCoy Wah pedal - everyone loves wah. Leave it half cocked so I sound like dire straits
Expression pedal - got this a while back to see how useful expression is. Should use it more.
…and this is why boardgames are my “cheaper” hobby.
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And here are my guitars. But that’s a story for another time
PS I found that Ben Ten toy sitting on a wall after a night out when I was a student. I’ve kept it on my amp ever since.
PPS I do own bed linen. This is in the spare bedroom. A grave to my social life.
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Amusingly, the one really fancy pedal I have is this:
It basically does two tremolo effects at once. One is the standard effect, while the other is a square wave, so it’s a sharp on/off effect.
You can also set whether each one is controlled by the knobs or the expression pedal, as well as how the effects are blended (or if you only want one of them). And it has two outputs so you can have it go left/right rather than on/off.
Other than that, my pedal collection is mostly distortion:
The Danelectro French Toast was my first pedal (note the missing knobs - they can only be adjusted with a screwdriver now). It does an octave up effect as well as fuzz. It sounds nasty and will pick up radio signals if not properly grounded.
I replaced that with the Marshall Shred Master, which I got in a tiny music shop for £30 second hand. Had a few Radiohead fanboys try to buy it off me.
When I played bass in one band, my sound was a combination of these two pedals to make up for our lack of rhythm guitarist. It was nasty. But in a good way.
Unfortunately, the Shred Master hisses a lot, so I’ve retired it. Got the Movall Scorpion as it was the best my local shop had at the time. Then replaced that with the Dr Green Black Death. Still working out the settings I want to use on that.
Other stuff: The Synth Wah makes weird noises. The AC Tone is a pretty good (especially for how cheap it was) amp emulator. The Trio auto-generates bass + drum backing tracks. The tuner is a tuner.
Guitars:
My main guitar - Vintage VS6B. Not actually “vintage” - that’s the brand name 
Just a cheap SG copy. Though it’s solid mahogany with a set neck. Changed all the hardware (and messed about with the finish, as you can see). Added the Bigsby. Bareknuckle Warpig in the bridge position. Built-in overdrive. The neck pickup is disconnected.
Random acoustic that was £55 because the finish was messed up.
Cruiser (budget end of Crafter) bass guitar (Interesting bits: active EQ and a bubinga top).
Cheap Telecaster copy (also by Vintage) that’s made of plywood and I’ve generally used to experiment on.
Cheap Mockingbird copy (I forget the brand) that is currently in bits as I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with it.
Epiphone Emily Strange SG. At some point I’m going to upgrade the hardware on this too. My newest guitar because I never had the chance to get one when it came out, but I found one cheap on eBay a few years ago. Secretly, I’m a 15 year-old goth girl.
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Just out of interest - why do people own lots of guitars? Do they actually sound that different or is it just you like the different designs and it makes very little difference to the sounds?
(I understand the difference between acoustic, bass, double stringing etc)
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Different sounds (people go on and on about the wood, etc affecting the tone, but mostly it’s the electronics that make the difference).
Different hardware/construction (things like the tremolo arm on my main guitar, or the fact my SGs have 22 frets, my telecaster has 21, and the Mockingbird has 24).
Different tunings (obviously live it’s way quicker to switch guitar than to retune, but generally your guitar will sound better if you’re not constantly changing the tension of the strings).
And sometimes (all the time) it’s just because they look pretty.
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I’ve been in a couple of bands, but they were 10+ years ago. One was kind of goth thrash, the other was punk with a very angry German singer.
There was also the band that sadly only had one practice session before scheduling and money problems meant we couldn’t sort out another. It was my friend’s idea for doing pop covers in a southern metal style. We worked out quite good versions of Black Velvet (Alannah Myles) and Call Me (Blondie).
Other than that, I’ve mostly recorded stuff by myself for my doom metal “band” (at various points it’s technically had other members, but we never practiced together). But haven’t done anything for that in ages. I keep meaning to write/record new stuff, but instead I just have a pile of vague ideas that I haven’t done anything with.
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