A goddamn dishwasher. I used to wash a lot of dishes by hand growing up so it took until my 30’s before i realized that dishwashers are a wonderful invention.
Linux?
Lighting system as a wake up tool.
Have now been using a light or lighting system as a morning wake up for over 15 years. It’s life changing.
Lights start off dim and red/orange, and brighten very slowly to warm white. Works every time.
I wake up without the jolt of an alarm at home.
In fact - automated lighting in general - just so good.
Similar, but lighting system as a sleep tool. Lights start off warm white and slowly dim to amber / red, then off at the push of a button every night.
Last January I got a new laptop that blows my desktop out of the water in terms of specs. I was dumb and decided to get a budget desktop because of all the USB ports and the disk drive it has. It was something like $300-400USD. My current laptop was roughly $1000USD before tax.
Had to remove the complete spyware win11, but otherwise it’s been a great laptop (minus the few times I’ve either somehow broken MXLinux or broke KDE Plasma). Totally better than my old laptop as well considering I don’t need to constantly charge my new one to keep the battery from dying and it doesn’t have a lot of damage.
Bicycle technology. Suddenly I could travel three times the speed of walking for the same effort.
Semi professional wifi(networking) at home (TP link omada or ubiquiti) and just buying excessive amounts of access points in my home.
Fuck you, low wifi signal. Fuck you, crashed router.
My first very small mp3 player, something from sony. It was amazing.
My first digital camera, just being able to see your picture after shooting them. being able to delete photos was revolutionary.
My first wifi access point, having Internet at home without cable.
My first phone that could load msn messager. Also pretty cool.
A temperature controlled pod for my bed. I used to sleep so hot all night long, constantly moving to find the cool part of the bed.
Now I keep it like as cold as can be all night, and my sleep has improved 10x. Plus my partner likes it warm so her side is nice and cozy. Both of us are happier for it.
Switched my polyester comforter for a wool blanket. It’s so much better for temperature regulation.
Internal SSD with the operating system on it. No other upgrade I’ve made to my PC has ever been so substantial.
I have my OS on an NVMe drive and it’s one of the best decisions I made when building.
But the jump from SATA SSD to nvme is much less noticeable than the one from HDD to SATA SSD
When I got my first HD tv. I had previously been playing oblivion on Xbox 360 on an crt tv and when I setup the HD I was absolutely blown away by the clarity. I remember my stupid fucking ex-wife trying to tell me there was no difference between the two.
Many have had big impacts. Piano, phone, computer.
Affordable solar panels and batteries. With this we were able to life off-grid surrounded by nature.
Beetlecrab Audio Tempera is the most inspiring electronic musical instrument I own. I got it in April, and I’m still finding new ways to use it. It does so much.
Oxi One really is the hardware sequencer to rule them all. Though I’m sure you could get by with a Hapax or Deluge if you don’t mind spending twice as much.
Not a purchase, but Csound has always been an invaluable companion to my music making process. It’s also entirely free and open-source.
Setting up my own NAS and offside backup.
Big project for sure, but being in control of my vital backups was important for me. Additionally the up front costs is lower than the subscriptions I would have needed.
Off-site *
offside
Bone apple tea!
Google Home did when it first came out. Unfortunately, the quality has been consistently tanking since inception
I dont get why google home is getting worse. I would have expected it to get better end better
The problem with a product from any large corporation is you want it to get better, but they want it to generate more money.
It’s not an enshittification process where it’s becoming more expensive or features are going behind a subscription. It just understands less and less and can do fewer things apparently. Plus it’s quite inconsistent.
It still is enshittification as they run it on fewer and fewer servers as the investor money dries up. It’s revenue was supposed to be from finding out what people wanted to buy, subscriptions, or purchases of other iot devices, but it never worked out.
A while ago Amazon introduced plans for an AI powered Alexa.
Sure enough, the original one has got worse since. I can now ask the one upstairs to turn off the office light and be told there are no devices with that name. Yet if I go to the kitchen to ask the same thing, I’ll be told there are multiple devices with that name, and it doesn’t know which one.
So now I use a switch.
