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The diary entries of a little girl in her 30s! ~ Part 2
Dec 9, 2012 at 7:57 AM Post #3,226 of 21,761
Quote:
mosshorn said:
Idea: try cold brewing coffee and let her try it. My girlfriend has the same issue, she does 1lb of coffee to ~8 cups water. Leave it overnight, wake up in the morning and get some hot water (if you have a Zojirushi, ~175 is good for me, 195 some mornings, otherwise just leave water on a coffee burner), I usually mix 4-5oz of coffee concentrate and the rest water in a 12oz cup. She does around 2 oz in a 8oz. It has SIGNIFICANTLY less acid, which is what tears her stomach up. I know I love drip, but after about the 4th or 5th cup my stomach feels acidic.
 
Sometimes I feel I was made to work with liquids of all sorts. I'm a heavy conisseur of tea, pretty knowledgeable in coffee and mixed coffee drinks, and have a terrible urge to learn more alcoholic drinks. But despite being 22, it's not because I want to get wasted. The problem with espresso based drinks is very simple: the espresso and syrup itself. While I can make well over 2 dozen drinks from various methods of milk, to messing with syrups for long enough that I feel I do alchemy with them now, you still have two very definite flavors.
 
Now if only alcohol didn't have alcohol in it all the time T_T
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She's OK with cold brew, we've tried it before.
 
Whether any given cup of coffee will bother her is a case-by-case thing; any given style is probably okay somewhere; it's either going to be the specific beans or roast that bothers her, or the sanitation of the equipment is not up to snuff sufficiently.
 
Part of her coffee problem, too, comes from being sensitive to caffeine. She doesn't like the hard fast rush she gets from coffee; she prefers the slow lift from tea. For example, hand-poured coffee never causes headaches, for whatever it's worth, but it's far too strong for her to enjoy.
 
Successfully sweetening and flavoring coffee depends on the sugars involved. Dextrose and sucrose based sweeteners are usually more successful than fructose and glucose. Maple syrup is excellent in coffee, honey in coffee always tastes off.
 
For the most part, though, aside from a little cinnamon, I don't really like flavored coffee, and usually only add enough sugar to cut the bitterness rather than to make it sweet.
 
If you want to practice mixology, host a party. Start with simpler recipes and start experimenting as the evening goes on and your guests are less demanding :wink: . Remember: Whether professional or amateur, the best bartenders will taste but won't drink.
 
Quote:
compoopers said:
D5000 (wait just kidding What why are these so expensive all of a sudden? Discontinued = skyrocket price?? Are the new denons any good?)
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Because it's not made any more and the replacement does not have as positive a reputation.
 
Dec 9, 2012 at 8:01 AM Post #3,227 of 21,761
Quote:
kiteki said:
The first one you linked I don't think I ever heard for some reason, the second one yeah, Das Boot, yeah.
 
 
90's and Techno music, ya, here are some more, I had these on cassette tape and blasted them on my speakers when I was like, 16 ...
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Blumchen at 16 from a cassette tape, hmm. Born 1984? Oh you, young kid.
 
 

 
 
Quote:
a_recording said:
 
In some department store somewhere between the actual and the potential, yeah!
 
 
 
I think it's more likely he extrapolated from a long time doing mathematical risk analysis and his dissatisfaction with people trying to predict sudden catastrophes. So instead of trying to predict and prevent these calamities (which is what everyone generally tries to do) he's looking for ways of thinking that would enable us to be more resilient to these setbacks when they inevitably occur. The model he thinks makes sense is the organic model which we see in both individual organisms and across evolutionary biology: constrainted resources, stressors and other volatility increase fitness of the organism or of the species as a whole.
 
Now the real question is, does an organic model apply to economies, which seem to behave like organic systems with complex interdependencies?
 
He also applies it to other social phenomenon, like a dictatorship's attempts to crush an uprising tending to radicalise and strengthen the very thing it tries to oppress, or criticism of an author tending to spread the author's ideas. (If memetics implies that information behaves organically, then it should be subject to similar organic behaviour under stress).
 
He also suggests, interestingly, that taxi drivers are more resilient than office workers because an office worker can suddenly lose their job and be reduced to financial ruin (large unforseen shock); a taxi driver can have no fares for a night but recover the next day (constant small shocks). The office worker might accumulate large debts because of some illusion of security, the taxi driver is exposed and is constantly made aware of the insecurity of his income and thus makes compensations for it.
 
If that sounds like he's advocating some kind of insane survival of the fittest kind of ideology, he's not, because he points out that periods of recovery are as important as acute stress to these organic systems. Acute stress is good for people, chronic stress is not. So he advocates protecting the very poor so that there can be recovery, but giving no particular benefits to the middle or very high income earners.
 
It does relate to recent research that indicates that human thinking does not work on a 9-5 schedule, but that people tend to come up with solutions to problems when they aren't actively thinking about them. ie: periods of rest and apparently doing nothing, coupled with short periods of intense activity, tend to make people more productive and happy in fields which require creativity. (And almost all jobs require some degree of creativity).
 
He also claims that (and I would love it if Coq de Combat could give me some insight into this) that the Northern European countries have such high standards of living despite appearing to be what we call 'socialist', because they actually have very small and limited central governments; the money is distributed to very small and quite autonomous individual districts who tend to allocate resources in a gloriously chaotic and messy process where local people wrangle over issues like where to put a water fountain etc.
 
I'm always interested in these kinds of ideas because whenever I hear opinions from both ends of an issue, I tend to see the sense and value in both sides of the argument. Maybe it's the mediator in me but the theory that weds the two extremes but isn't unpalatable compromise is appealing to me.
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Well, he's not entirely wrong in his claims that we have smaller 'municipalities' that have power over the finances and so on. I'm not sure I'd like to call them so autonomous though. It's not a syndicalist or anarchist state where smaller regions would be totally autonomous. The state makes the bigger decisions and the smaller municipalities make the smaller ones. However, he's not entirely wrong either. As for how much it has affected our "high standards of living", I simply don't know. There are some theories as to why we survived the economic crisis as good as we did (although, we didn't survive it well enough - quite a few huge companies had to surrender, as you probably already know). One is regulation; we tend to have quite a firm regulation over banks and other institutions that could turn our lives upside down. banks aren't free to play around with money as they wish, and while it can hinder the economic growth (as in, how fast we grow rather than whether we grow or not), it can also help us when the banks start making the wrong moves - the results are not as severe as they would be if there was no regulation. This kind of regulating mentality is to be seen in most of the areas when it comes to companies. For regular people though, I don't know if makes such a big difference at all. Also...
Quote:
mutabor said:
 
In my opinion the Northern European countries have high standards of living because: 
 
1) population is small ( Sweden 9.5 million, Finland 5.4, Denmark 5.5, Norway 5), in comparison Great Britain has 60 million
 
2) people are generally disciplined, honest, hard-working
 
3) territories are isolated which helps to sustain stability 
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...mutabor is not totally wrong here either. We're small countries with some natural riches (Norway has gobs and gobs of oil in the sea, we have forests and iron, Denmark has beer) and not that many mouths to feed. Also, we are steadily evolving and developing and for the most part we're ahead of many other countries when it comes to technical growth (as an example: I believe a majority of people have ability to get 100 Mbit internet for a symbolic sum of money, some have 1 Gbit) even though our subways leave something to wish for. Also, higher taxes can be both good and bad in that it helps poor people survive at the same time as it hinders the really rich to become even richer - probably making the whole society a little more stable and balanced.
 
I don't know though, because there are probably myriads of different factors that made our countries what they are, all of them just as relevant and irrelevant as my own theories. I think saying that it depends on A or B would be over simplifying things and, in the end, probably counterproductive.
 
a_recording, I don't know if that made you more wiser about our countries over here, and I'm definitely no expert when it comes to economic models and political idealisms - however, I hope it helped to shed some light. Next time, ask an easier question, like How long is a string?
 
wink.gif

 
Dec 9, 2012 at 8:39 AM Post #3,229 of 21,761
Quote:
ardgedee said:
 
At what velocity and from which position of observation? You can get conflicting, mutually correct answers when you're talking about strings moving near the speed of light.
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At a just enough velocity and a relatively good position of observation. 
 
Dec 9, 2012 at 10:22 AM Post #3,230 of 21,761
Dec 9, 2012 at 4:42 PM Post #3,235 of 21,761
Quote:
coq de combat said:
a_recording, I don't know if that made you more wiser about our countries over here, and I'm definitely no expert when it comes to economic models and political idealisms - however, I hope it helped to shed some light. Next time, ask an easier question, like How long is a string?
 
wink.gif
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Thank you! I always want to go to Northern Europe and get the feel for things around there...
 
Quote:
ardgedee said:
At what velocity and from which position of observation? You can get conflicting, mutually correct answers when you're talking about strings moving near the speed of light.
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Quote:
coq de combat said:
At a just enough velocity and a relatively good position of observation. 
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Your nerd jokes wil be the death of you one day!
 
Dec 9, 2012 at 5:10 PM Post #3,238 of 21,761
I quit cigarettes (which cost ~$1.20 per pack here) around 3 weeks ago, then used Nicabate nicotine lozenges like a mofo, then I quit them around 9 days ago.  I had this clever idea to quit coffee at the same time and you know 'detox' heavy metals or toxins from my body but I haven't read up on how that actually works, perhaps tomscy2k knows
 
Dec 9, 2012 at 6:02 PM Post #3,239 of 21,761
A random thought enters my mind: all headphone driver materials reach a break-up point where they stop behaving like a perfect piston at high frequencies. You can tell with graphs like those at Innerfidelity where that break-up occurs; the frequency response plot is no longer a gentle curve but instead a jagged zigzag (generally preceded by one last big spike).
 
Kiteki and I discussed this briefly when we were talking about the driver materials for the FXD80...
 

 
This video from B&W selling their diamond (vapour deposited) tweeters explains the principle quite nicely.
 
I'm wondering if we can infer anything about the relative treble high frequency detail (and hence the amount of psychoacoustic information carried) by looking at the break-up points of various headphone drivers, or the way they break up. (I'm guessing that having large amounts of treble energy past the break up point is not the same as that treble energy being free from break up resonances)
 
The trade off appears to be worse performance at lower frequencies...
 
I'm curious because for instance, the new MDR-1R has a seemingly much later break up frequency (somewhere around 12khz) compared to something like the UE6000 or Momentum, both with break up frequencies seemingly around 5khz.
 
I suppose this should really go in the sound science section but I'm curious what some of you peeps might think about this as an additional way of interpreting graphs...
 
Dec 9, 2012 at 6:40 PM Post #3,240 of 21,761
Quote:
a_recording said:
A random thought enters my mind: all headphone driver materials reach a break-up point where they stop behaving like a perfect piston at high frequencies. You can tell with graphs like those at Innerfidelity where that break-up occurs; the frequency response plot is no longer a gentle curve but instead a jagged zigzag (generally preceded by one last big spike).
 
Kiteki and I discussed this briefly when we were talking about the driver materials for the FXD80...
 

 
This video from B&W selling their diamond (vapour deposited) tweeters explains the principle quite nicely.
 
I'm wondering if we can infer anything about the relative treble high frequency detail (and hence the amount of psychoacoustic information carried) by looking at the break-up points of various headphone drivers, or the way they break up. (I'm guessing that having large amounts of treble energy past the break up point is not the same as that treble energy being free from break up resonances)
 
The trade off appears to be worse performance at lower frequencies...
 
I'm curious because for instance, the new MDR-1R has a seemingly much later break up frequency (somewhere around 12khz) compared to something like the UE6000 or Momentum, both with break up frequencies seemingly around 5khz.
 
I suppose this should really go in the sound science section but I'm curious what some of you peeps might think about this as an additional way of interpreting graphs...
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What exactly are you asking? Your statement leaves a rather wide point of topic to be discussed. Those peaks and breakups you're talking about can usually be controlled, at least to a certain extent, by proper dampening. At least that's how I've always understood it when splashy treble is a problem. Take away the extra energy cause by the resonance and the upper sig sounds cleaner.
 
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