is it weird i feel nostalgic for cfl bulbs now?
There's a shed where I live. It has electricity (ooh, fancy) and in there is a lone CFL bulb that's been in there for... 7 years or close to it? When turned on cold, it takes a good solid minute for the gas to charge so it achieves full brightness.
But once that gas is charged up...
...it still works. True, this CFL doesn't charge up as fast as it used to, but that electronic ballast is still doing its job 7 years later and the light still illuminates properly.
I remember back when CFL was a new thing. Everybody hated it, and I know exactly why. It was for two reasons.
First, early CFLs were unreliable because manufacturers were still trying to figure out how to make a ballast that lasts (they didn't, and failed too quickly).
Second, the color temperature was all wrong because they all had that bog standard fluorescent work shop light color. You know those 4 foot lights and what kind of light color they give off? Yeah, those things. Early CFLs had the same color temperature. Something like that is fine for department stores and garages, but absolutely awful on the eyes for use in the home.
Some time passes, the ballasts were improved, and thankfully the color temperature was adjusted to "warmer". Instead of that stark white/green-ish light color, now it was more yellow/orange, i.e. the "soft white" type. Okay, good.
But just when the CFL finally got to the point of being just right, LED came on the scene and displaced CFL seemingly overnight.
This of course made me wonder if household CFLs are still made now.
Oh, yes they are. Production of them never stopped.
And some of them actually look... cool? Have you see the triple tube and quad tube flavors? Looks kinda neat.
The quads in particular have the most variety for base type. Some are standard screw-in, then there's GX10Q-4, G24Q-2, and so on. I have absolutely no idea where these would be used, but I guess there are special applications where these pin type connectors are needed.
My favorite is, of course, is the standard "squiggly" spiral tube. I didn't like them back when they were new, but now I do. All the old ballast problems with them were fixed years ago, the color temperature is now correct, and they're visually more interesting compared to a plain LED bulb.
HOWEVER... the coolest looking household LED is what's known as the Edison bulb. Those things just look awesome. Possibly the best modern combination of art and function for a light bulb ever made.
Even so, I think there's still a place for squiggly CFLs. The CFL is one of those things that looked weird at first, kinda went away (but not really) when LEDs became available, and now I think they've come back around, stylistically.
fender standard stratocaster... yikes
This new guitar from Fender is not going over well, at least from what guitar players on YouTube are saying.
Yes, if you look up Fender Standard Stratocaster, this is a new model at the time I write this. You will see Fender on the headstock, and a price tag below that of a Fender Player Stratocaster. So what gives? Why so cheap?
Answer: The guitar is made in Indonesia. Not Mexico. Not America. Indonesia.
Is that a problem?
No.
The problem is that the price is a really big ask, especially when compared to a Squier Classic Vibe Stratocaster...
...but even more damning is something everybody forgot about. But I didn't.
Remember the Fender Modern Player Stratocaster HSS from 2012? No? I owned one personally, and it's a China-made Fender. That particular guitar was made every bit as good as a high-end Mexican Fender. It was honestly constructed very well. The sound didn't agree with me (which is why I parted with it), but it was HSS with push-pull to split the dual-coil to single-coil.
More importantly however is that the MP HSS "felt like Fender", even while being the lowest cost official Fender Stratocaster made at the time it was in production. Right weight, right look, no nasty stuff going on anywhere on the guitar, and just got it right. It was China-made but felt exactly correct. Again, it was just the sound (mostly the humbucker to be honest) that turned me off from it. Had the MP HSS been alnico V SSS with 250k pots, I'd probably still own it now.
Based on what I've seen in YouTube videos complaining about the new Indonesian Standard Stratocaster, the '12 Modern Player would absolutely wipe the floor with it.
In other words, China did a lowest-tier official Fender Strat better. A lot better.
To be very clear, Indonesia can in fact make a good guitar, and proof of that is easy to find. Just play a Squier Classic Vibe '50s or '60s Stratocaster. The only problem with doing that is it makes the Fender Standard Stratocaster, which costs more, look bad.
The only good thing about the new Fender Standard Stratocaster is that it's the lowest price to get an actual real-deal Fender branded Stratocaster guitar...
...and that's all I have to say about that.
adventures with a crusty old crucial ssd
In my mind, "SSD" doesn't translate to "old", but yeah, that storage tech has been around for a long time.
One of the oldest SSDs I have is a Crucial CT256M4SSD2 that I bought direct from Crucial themselves back in 2012. I don't remember how much I paid for it, but it probably wasn't cheap. This is what that 256GB SSD looks like these days:
Over the years, that Crucial SSD has seen several operating systems (which included several reinstalls), been in and out of several laptops, and still works just fine. It was even dropped on the floor once, and hard, but again, still works.
Even though this thing is literally 13 years old, it's basically just as fast as it ever was.
Do I still use it? Yes, but not regularly, hence why it's out of a laptop right now. And oh yeah, I'm keeping it because it's still a good working piece of computer hardware.
Crucial obviously still makes SSDs, which still includes the venerable MX500 and BX500. Both of those are older models, but damned good ones. The only reason I don't buy those is because I have a Samsung EVO 860 and 870 (which are also damned good).
What amazes me most about my crusty old Crucial 256GB SSD is the amount of punishment it has endured, yet still works. I have not been kind to it over the years, but it still keeps on truckin' just like it always has.
floating taskbar in windows 11? nope. in linux? yes.
Right up front, let it be known this is an out-of-the-box STOCK feature in any modern Linux distribution with KDE Plasma. No plugins or special programs are even necessary to do what you're about to see.
One of the most annoying things about Windows 11 is the taskbar. It's at the bottom of the screen, but that's not the problem. The problem is that you can't move it, nor can you resize it. All you can do is adjust the alignment of stuff to center or left and enable or disable auto-hide. That's it.
There was a way to get a cool floating taskbar in Win11 at one point...
...but no longer. Maybe it will come back, maybe not. Nobody knows for sure. And, of course, many rumors are flying about saying it will come with Windows 12 for whenever that happens.
Just as a guess, I thought hmm, can my Linux OS do this since I have KDE? Let's try a right-click on the taskbar and see what happens, and...
There it is. Floating Panel. Can I center and resize this? Let's try that, and...
Done. And this is just one of several ways I can do it. Float it, have it whatever color I want, text descriptions or icons (my choice), tall or short, any size I want right down to the pixel, any width I want, pick any SIDE that I want (top, bottom, left or right of screen), whatever alignment I want, set to be always in front or allow windows to cover it, auto-hide or not.
The taskbar restrictions in Win11 are infuriating. In Windows 10 you could at least get a smaller taskbar and position it to top, left, bottom or right. No option to float as far as I know, but you could at least, y'know, move the thing, resize the thing and allow multiple rows if you wanted.
I'm not saying switch to Linux, nor am I saying to go back to Win10 if running Win11 now because switching operating systems is tedious, even if just from one version of Windows to another.
But I am saying that Windows has some catch-up to do in the taskbar department. A floating taskbar is a thing people like, and should be a standard setting for Windows. And by standard I mean no crazy stupid registry edits or third-party programs needed to do it. Floating taskbar should be an out-of-the-box standard thing Windows ships with that the user can set. Linux can float a panel easily, and MacOS has had a floating dock for a very long time, so why can't Windows float its taskbar?
Years ago, people would have accused Microsoft of trying to copy Apple with a floating taskbar. But I'm absolutely certain Windows users would very much welcome that feature now.
Not only does that bar need to optionally float, but also be able to be resized and positioned bottom, top, left or right, user's choice. Microsoft needs to copy Linux here and not Apple, because Linux is the only environment that truly gets it right. Let the user configure the taskbar any way they want. I'm positive adding that feature in would be well received.
the most ridiculous usb charging cable that exists (and you'll want one)
Before I saw this cable, I thought of every type of USB connector type I've ever used. There's "the big rectangle" A type that everybody knows, the one most people call a "printer cable" B type because of it's notchy squared shape, mini USB (all my older Garmins use this), micro USB (smaller and flatter than mini USB), and C (which largely replaced micro USB).
Well, there's a cable that does more, and it's specifically for charging:
...the 10-in-1 universal charging cable.
Surprisingly, this thing is really cheap to buy.
If you have any one of those funky connectors on an electronics thing you own but your charge cable/block/brick is busted or lost, that's what this cable is for.
And by "electronics thing" I mean old smartphones, weird Bluetooth earphones, speakers, adapters, and so on. For whatever it is, chances are this cable has that connector you need to send power to the electronics thing you have.
The only thing I see missing is USB B type, but that's fine because I've never seen anything that uses B for power. Data, yes, but not power. I remember electronics things of the past that used some of the connectors seen. I also remember how frustrating it was when you lost the cord/charger for the whatever-it-was (most likely from accidentally throwing it out).
The connectors on a 10-in-1 are C, mini, micro, M300, DC2.0, DC3.5, DC4.0, 4s and a few others. It's probably true you don't know what connector type you need, and that's okay. It's more likely just from a visual you'll look at it and say, "Yeah, that connector is the one I've been trying to find."
Yes, this thing just looks stupid. But I don't think there's any possible way to make a 10-in-1 appear any better. Stupid as it may look, it serves a purpose. And that purpose is to get power to an electronics thing so you don't have to spend a boatload of money otherwise on a super-specific charger just to turn the stupid thing on.
Sometimes ugly cables are necessary to get the job done, and this is one of them.