I loved my manual transmission cars, and wasn't even that bothered by the "1st-2nd-1st-2nd..." highway congestion that I'd encounter every now and then. But when my driving got to be a little more adventurous (lane and a half wide gravel forest service roads on steep hills) I reluctantly gave in and got an auto. Some day I hope to own another fun manual car...
Very nice designs. It's been interesting to see the explosion of headless, fanned-fret guitars over the last few years. Kiesel and Strandberg seemed to be the only places to reliably find them a few years ago.
Since someone already mentioned electric guitar, I'll go with: Petzl Grigri 2[1]
I was initially pretty skeptical of Grigris. Climbers have used far more primitive devices for a long time, why do I need a big, bulky hunk of metal and plastic to catch falls? But now that I have one, you'll have to pry it from my hopefully not cold or dead hands. I don't need to have a death-grip on my rope if my climber is hanging for a while. I can go hands-free on rappel to get stuck gear. Most importantly, it has certainly helped prevent some accidents that could have been catastrophic--one particular incident left me with a broken foot, but without the braking assistance from the Grigri, I may have instead walked over to a cratered climber. Best $99 I've ever spent.
While I agree with you, for toprope belaying I still like my old school Sticht plate. A round piece of steel with a rounded rectangle cut out the middle. You can lock off a climber and hold them indefinitely with barely a pinch.
Do you use an audio interface? What have you found is supported well by Linux? Saffire Pro 24 + Addictive Drums + Logic is what is really keeping me tied to macOS at home.
At work, it's probably JIRA. Tons of UI noise, text markup isn't what I expect it to be and nobody around here can seem to agree on what features should be used for a particular scenario.
Past work, it would have been Identity Finder by a landslide. Awful UI, awful support, super intrusive, a total pain to administer, just bleh. Glad I was able to wash my hands of that.
Personal stuff, iTunes. I genuinely like the interface (at least on macOS) but it's huge and bloated and doesn't do some of the things I want it to. If they ripped out everything that wasn't related to listening to your personal (local) music library, I'd probably like it quite a bit. I wish it would write metadata to file tags rather than its own database, but I forgo that if it got rid of all the other crap.
JIRA definitely comes down to implementation and policy. I've used it in places and it has been amazingly helpful as a developer, to the point I don't know how we did anything before it.. Then going to a place that totally misuses it and causes me to triple-handle everything.
If your company is large and you're looking at JIRA, pay a consultant to come in, set it up for your different teams and train people. It's worth the money, otherwise you won't see the benefit JIRA brings.
JIRA. OMG. It's really awful. Its UI is cluttered and inconsistent. Search is slow. It's impossible to find things. Markup syntax is horrendous. It's easy to make mistakes and extremely difficult to fix them.
Re: iTunes, I would love a separate Apple Music app for desktop. 95% of the time I open iTunes on desktop it's just to play music. It's cluttered with so much stuff I rarely or never use.
Agreed. I taught a CS club to 4th and 5th graders during college and they all loved Scratch. It's very easy to get going with audio, images, animation, etc., which got them really interested quickly. Even for older (middle school aged) kids I'd probably start with Scratch because it teaches most of the CS concepts you'd use in any other language, but doesn't require the tedious environment setup (editor, compiler/interpreter, etc.) that "real" languages need. Spark their interest using the concepts, then sprinkle in the boring parts.
Ditto, I was able to get a Leap from an office surplus store for my home office and I enjoy its adjustability better than the Aeron I had at my last job. The breathability of the Aeron is nice, but I don't have issues with standard cloth chairs anyway.
"Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult" is a great introductory book on early black metal scenes around the world. Most black metal works focus on the Norwegian scene (Mayhem/Burzum/Darkthrone primarily), but Evolution of the Cult has chapters on Rotting Christ from Greece, Sigh from Japan, the Les Légions Noire bands from France and a whole host of others.
