• 4 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • So let’s say you want to buy a painting for your house. You’ve got a few options. You can go online, look at various items and choose to buy it. You could go to a gallery, look around and decide to buy whichever one suits you.

    But crucially, you get to what you’re buying before you commit to the ownership. You may not own the rights to the paintings (its probably a print), but you know what you’re getting. Why would I pay for a movie if I don’t know whether or not it’s worth it.

    Netflix, Hulu, amazon, etc. Are like galleries. They have an entrance fee and that’s ok. But what most of them don’t have anyway for me to actually buy a copy. Netflix movies require you to pay month over month to maintain access. So you are forever required to go to their gallery.

    Like your friend, I’ll pirate to watch a movie and if I like it, then I’ll buy it. I try to buy physical discs, but they are becoming more and more rare. I pirate because I want ownership. Subscription models work because they are more convenient than physical purchases. But that convience is getting smaller every day.

    There is a few reasons why I want physical copies. License deals expire and thus the content may disappear from the service it’s on. My internet may be out. Yes, I can download, but that requires inconvenient forethought and you’re always limited in the number of downloads and quality of those downloads. Having a large collection of movies in my home means I’m never without option.

    Basically, I pirate because I’m not going to buy something that I don’t know if I want it, and because I’m a doomsday prepper who has no other option 90% of the time.





  • The best beginner guide I’ve found is bcae1. It’s just some dudes blog, but he made it up as a basic electronics lesson plan with a focus on car audio. It’ll help you to get a really good idea of how everything works together. I still regularly use the site as reference.

    On YouTube, there’s a channel called Car Audio Fabrication . He explains alot of stuff very well and will give suggestions on what equipment to buy. He puts a lot of focus on making a build look clean and professional.

    For home stuff, parts express is the defacto DIY audio store. They have a lot of resources on their site from blog posts, how to guides, and even customer projects.

    Crutchfield is easily one of the best sources for both home and car. Excellent customer support, virtually unbeatable. Lots of resources like parts express (maybe more). They do tend to carry more mainstream products. Which is fine. It’s all quality products, but I do find that you’re often paying more for Crutchfield. Both because a lot of their products carry name weight and are more expensive because of that, and because their customer support is good enough to warrant a little extra.

    For car stuff, since I do competition grade builds, I like sounds solutions audio and Down 4 Sound. D4S’ owner is very active on YouTube and Instagram.

    Well, that’s a lot of good places to start. Electricity is magic. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s not. Even after you “understand” it, it’s still magic. The last link up give you is for Sparkfun. They’re a retailer like parts express and Crutchfield with excellent guides/resources and community showcases. They’re focus is on low voltage electronics like arduino and raspberry pi.

    Anyway, have fun learning. If you have questions, feel free to DM me. I love talking about this stuff.


  • I build loudspeakers, both home and car. But, mostly car subwoofers, amplifiers, head units etc. But also home speakers for home theaters.

    I absolutely love it. Music is a big passion of mine (despite never learning to play an instrument). I love it because every project has so many challenges. I love electrical work and designing a system from scratch and then getting to see it actually work iis awesome. It’s like little engineering challenges all throughout. Very engaging for me.

    There’s also a lot of wood working involved. Making a functional piece of furniture and getting to expirement with different techniques is a lot of fun.







  • Don’t buy cheap daily use items.

    Shoes Mattress Car TV Computer

    That doesn’t mean buy the most expensive thing. if you rely on this thing to get you through the day, get yourself something of quality. Do your research. Often times, buying the more expensive thing now, can be cheaper in the long run.

    Secondly: Use mental health professionals. Go to a therapist, psychologist, or anyone else trained to help people mentally. For years I advocated for my employees to seek help. I built work schedules around their appointments. I could tell that it help or productivity as a team. I did this for years. Finally, this year, I went to see a therapist myself. I’ve been having depression problems for a while but I never took my own advice. Now, just 4 months later I’m doing way better. Not perfect, but I can tell I’ve made very good progress.



  • Look at Fiio. They’re a Chinese company that makes pretty good quality mp3 players. They have some expensive models but also a few for less than a hundred bucks. I’ve owned two of them now and love them.

    You can just drag and drop files onto a microSD card and then the player will recognize that new files have been added. It’s super simple to manage and no iTunes or other software required.

    Edit: The M5 and M3 pro both use a proprietary OS. The M6 is android based so you can also load Spotify/YT music/tidal/etc. These models are all touchscreen. If you want one more old school without the touch screen, they’re m3k model is still on aliexpress. And they used to have models with scroll wheels (I dont remember the model number) that I’m sure you could find used on ebay or something.