Personally, I’ve had phfactor.net since the late 1990s, started back when they were the only game in town, and they’ve frog-boiled me out of a lot of money. Today, I finished the transfer to CloudFlare and urge you to consider a move yourself if you’re still with Network Solutions. Doesn’t need to be Cloudflare, there are plenty of others, but for $8 a year I get caching, DDOS protection plus domain registration and less bullshit in my inbox.
That’s worth sharing.
Postscript – this blog post details how to use your EdgeRouter to update CloudFlare’s dynamic DNS. Nice! That saves me the second no-longer-free DNS service that I used to use from Dyn.com.
Dyn got bought by Oracle, and needless to say I’m not ready to give my credit card to them. I like the simplicity of having Cloudflare do registrar, dns and caching.
I had a grandmother who was an East-coast debutante. This read by AHP places them as a societal solution and resists further simplification. Highly recommended read!
Imagine yourself a sea captain, sailing from port to port with cargos of food. Which ones are a risk?
So a cargo of pistachios seems harmless, doesn’t it? It’s totally not – they can suffocate you, set themselves on fire in two different ways and might, for bonus hazard points, explode.
Cashews? They’re covered in toxic irritant irushiol, which has to be burned off before they’re safe for consumption. That’s why you’ll never see cashews in-shell.
I learned both of these and more at the latest issue of The Whippet, which I recommend to you. S/he finds interesting stuff.
I like restraint in watch design – clarity, legibility, smaller cases that wear more comfortably. I also value accurate timekeeping. There have been some recent releases that hit that intersection nicely, so why not share in case others are interested?
Seems to be selling for about $1800 with availability in September 2021. At nearly 2k, that’s edging into Grand Seiko quartz prices; quite a big step up from the more mature models with radio control. For example, the Seiko SBTM313:
Photo credit: Seiko
or the SBTM305, with a dial closer to that of the Astron:
Photo credit: Seiko
Solar powered, similar in size and style, but radio set (5 band) versus GPS. Sakura has them for just under $450. 1/4th the price!
From the competition, Citizen has multiple offerings. I like the Attesa line, in particular the CB1120s:
Photo credit: Citizen
That’s the reference CB1120-50F, a 37mm titanium beauty, also available with baton markers and/or white dial for about $450.
Photo credit: Citizen
That’s the AT6070-57L. Nice, and I like the day-date for everyday. Maybe 600$.
I bought the CB1120-50F above and have had it about six months; it’s stellar. Best radio reception I’ve ever seen, beautifully made and just a wonderful, zero-attention watch. It’s easy to recommend. The SBTM series is a pretty direct competitor and I find the green-dial 313 rather attractive.
At 500 bucks, you’re talking expensive quartz, with competition rampant including the Apple Watch. The 2k for the Astron is mighty hard to swallow, given the super niche differences in usefulness – the difference is being able to get time sync in places without radio reception. Australia/NZ, polar areas, South America. If you live there, probably worth it. If you live in Europe, North America, UK or Japan, why bother? Radio sync, in my experience with maybe 15 watches, gets you within 0.5 seconds and sometimes closer – as mentioned the Attesa is best-ever and dead synced to NTP, radio and GPS references.
I should also note that the CB1120s have non-standard lugs, meaning you’re basically stuck with the bracelet, which is usually a thing I consider a deal breaker; in this case I loved the watch so much I bought one anyway.
On an unrelated note, I wrote this post on my iPad, not too bad as an authoring experience so I should be able to post more often.
Ever since the late 1990s (yeah, I know), my coffee purveyor of choice has been Whiting Coffee, in Albuquerque NM. We found it while attending UNM and have been customers ever since. I make coffee in a Bodum insulated press, and their French roast is superb for that – complex, flavor rich, light acidity and no burnt notes. And their prices have been excellent.
As a side rant, most French / espresso roasts I’ve tried are overcooked cheap beans, thin on flavor and strong on burnt. Yuck. Whiting actually has a really good South American mix of beans they use for theirs.
Anyway, until now you had to telephone them, tell them what you wanted and they’d include a paper bill with the beans. As of June 2021, they now have a website! Where you can order! I’ll save you a browse and just direct you to my favorite: https://whitingcoffeeco.com/order-online/ols/products/1-pound-espresso-french
For years, I read the absolutely amazing ‘Do the Math’ blog by Tom Murphy, a UCSD physicist carefully explaining so! many! things! (Energy: generation, storage, usage, loss. Details of his lead-acid solar/battery home setup. So much more)
Now the good news – his dormant blog tells us that he’s written a textbook based on on that work, and even better its been vetted and revised and best yet? Free online and inexpensive if you want a print copy. I cannot recommend this enough. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2021/03/textbook-debut/
