So I kind of impulsively bought a Steam Deck OLED this weekend, I hadn’t really done much research and I haven’t really played any games in about 15 years.
Now I have to wait for it to be delivered and, I’m worried this is something I’ll use a few times and forget about it.
What’s something you impulsively bought and fell in love with?
Espresso machine. I was spending 8 bucks a day on lattes, and now I make them myself and stopped going to the cafe every morning, saving time and money. I also think it’s a fun morning ritual to grind the beans, measure everything, tamp, distribute, steam the milk, etc.
Btw I also impulsively bought a Steam Deck and use it way more than I thought, it’s amazing and you’ll love it!
Nice to both. What do you find yourself playing on your steamdeck?
Its great for acade-y and mindless games, I’ve been digging Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, Dredge, Balatro, Dave the Diver, and Talos Principle
I freaking love drg survivor game is so fun
Aside from smaller titles I’ve e been using it for sea of thieves, monster hunter world, and ffxiv with good results even though that last one took a fair bit of fiddling with. Impressed with it.
Sounds like you’re doing a lot of steaming!
Honestly, steam deck lol
It’s an odd form factor that people don’t really have much experience with, hence they don’t really know how useful it’ll be to them. To be fair to myself, I had been holding back on purchasing one until maybe a year after the initial launch, so I think I would personally describe my experience as a leap of faith.
In any case, it turns out to be a great little thing. There’s a lot of games in my backlog that don’t feel “desktop-y,” and therefore I’ve never played them, if that makes sense. But with a handheld form factor, now I have more motivation to go through those games. Emulation on the steam deck has also been great, for a similar reason. And sometimes I just want to be in bed than on my desktop. Or sometimes I’m just on the bus or waiting for something.
I think SteamOS also taught me how usable Linux was, and that’s been pretty instrumental in getting me to minimize my Windows dependence
My wife and I have our own separate ones. It’s such a blast and we also got gog/itch working on them.
Emudeck is fun too.
Are you using a controller friendly front end for gog/itch? I haven’t found anything that’s comfortable for using them
Heroic launcher supports gog
My collection is small enough that I just hook into steam. You can add non steam executables so then you can use your controller. You can even set up mappings. If you find a more all in one setup let me know.
Same, it’s the holy grail of gaming, such a great device that keeps getting better.
This makes me feel so much better! Its kind of one of my thoughts, playing the steam deck in bed, those evenings where you don’t really want to do much but also aren’t fully ready to go to sleep!
You’ve definitely given me some reassurance 🙂
Steam Deck is definitely one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. And I don’t play a ton of games these days.
An old RTS game called Darwinia, that caught my eye because of its box artwork, and wasn’t very expensive.
Turned out to be loads of fun. I really need to get that installed on my PC again actually, been a while.
Ooh that also reminds me of an RTS I impulse bought once and ended up absolutely falling in love with for a long time.
It was called Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends. What I most enjoyed was it’s unique factions: a clockwork/steampunk faction, an Arabian Nights inspired faction, and a Chariot of the God’s inspired Mayan/alien faction.
On the same note, I bought into the breach because it’s from the same studio as FTL. I played a few games and forgot about it.
I recently picked it up and I’m having loads of fun.
You’re in for a good time with that thing. Its also great if you want to do more with it as you feel comfortable doing.
As for my impulsive buy? Id say the same thing as yours, when the steam deck came out I immediately pre ordered it. I had been waiting for a good PC handheld experience for a very long time and Valve were the ones to show up unlike the very bad GPD Win I used a couple years prior.
The only thing I knew about it was that it was going to use linux so while I was waiting I started to learn about it and actually use it on my main PC over windows and I have never looked back since.
Haha same, after using the SD for so long, I started to question why I was still using the abomination known as Windows on my actual gaming PC. I switched 3 months ago and haven’t used Windows since. I realized that all I really used it for was Steam games and web apps, and Linux can do both perfectly.
Proton is really great.
7 watt blue laser I bought for shits and giggles. Didn’t realize just how stupid powerful that is. Now I feel like I have a highly effective long range weapon in a country that bans almost all kinds of weapons. It won’t blast through skin but I guarantee if someone points it at you and keeps it on you’re going to run, and FAST.
If I ever get bothered by illegal drones, I can also use it to destroy the camera from far away. One fraction of a second and any optical sensor is 100% toast.
One concern I have with those things is people casually using them outside. I mean, I’m not a big fan of heavy regulation in general, and I also think that lasers are cool devices, but even if someone’s got eye protection – which I would be using if messing around with something at that kind of power – and is not trying to aim at someone, it’s damned easy to flash that across someone else’s eyes, and that’s way outside of the range where your blink reflex is fast enough to avoid permanent eye damage.
I mean, most people won’t take a firearm and go blasting the thing randomly in a city or something. They register that they can mess up whoever the thing is being aimed at. But there are people who will be dicking around with seriously souped up lasers without regard for who might be downrange.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_safety
A Class 2 laser is considered to be safe because the blink reflex (glare aversion response to bright lights) will limit the exposure to no more than 0.25 seconds. It only applies to visible-light lasers (400–700 nm). Class 2 lasers are limited to 1 mW continuous wave, or more if the emission time is less than 0.25 seconds or if the light is not spatially coherent. Intentional suppression of the blink reflex could lead to eye injury. Some laser pointers and measuring instruments are class 2.
Like, that’s 1 mW that’s listed as the max for safe exposure before the blink reflex is no longer able to protect a human eye against permanent damage. You’re talking about a 7,000 mW laser, almost five orders of magnitude up the scale.
And that’s not even considering the fact that there are various reflective surfaces that can be hit, can be riccocheting the thing all over.
Like, at that kind of power, if a laser isn’t in some kind of confined case or something, that’s something where I’d want someone using it a room with eye protection on everyone in the room, only adults present (so some kid doesn’t yank off their eye protection or something), an access-restricted door, and a warning sign on that door telling people that high-power lasers may be in use.
Here’s a laser engraver that uses less than half of the power of that laser:
https://www.amazon.com/Bisofice-Engraving-Accuracy-Household-Woodwork/dp/B0BVVRFN5L/
You’re absolutely right. I don’t play around with that thing lightly - it actually requires a physical key to unlock before use. I also don’t intend to mess with wildlife or whatever, or risk any kind of fires. It’ll be used indoors, in a shielded basement, while wearing the appropriate safety gear.
Many years ago, some guy was trying to impress my girlfriend with his super powerful laser pointer by shining it on a building a few miles away. He shoved it in his pocket very fast when she told him he was shining it at a hospital.
An unkind part of me was pleased when less than 30 seconds later it was revealed that he forgot to do whatever he needed to do to prevent it from turning on accidentally, and bumped it, burning his pocket/pants slightly, and getting soot inside the lens.
Bread maker. A guy I worked with said he loved his and I just bought one with no research. It’s my favorite specialized appliance next to my popcorn machine.
Serious question. What exactly does it do to save time? My wife treats making bread like boiling an egg. Something you can do quickly and easily whenever you need it. So I’m wondering which part of it can be simplified.
It depends entirely on the type of bread. Soda bread/biscuits/etc. can be as simple as mix and bake, but yeast breads usually require multiple steps over the course of a couple of hours. Usually something along the lines of:
- Mix ingredients
- Knead thoroughly for several minutes
- Let rise for ~1 hour
- Press the dough flat again and knead again
- Let rise again
- Bake
- Let cool
The intermittent rise periods are what allows the loaf to expand and gives the center its fluffy texture. It’s not a terribly difficult process, just requires intermittent attention over a fairly long period of time. You may have heard talk about bakers starting their job very early in the morning; people traditionally wanted fresh bread in the morning, and it takes several hours to actually make (even if most of that time is just waiting), so bakers need to start several hours early.
A bread maker turns the long process into basically just “put in all the ingredients and press go”. It still takes a while, but doesn’t require any attention once it’s started. You can also just put the stuff in at night and have it start on a timer so it’s ready in the morning.
A $1 grand piano off of eBay. I had been looking around on stuff like FB Marketplace for a “real” piano after learning with a really basic keyboard for a while, and happened across a gorgeous 6’1" grand piano on eBay. It was reasonably close, the ad said it was in good working order, and they took very detailed pictures of basically every single flaw in the case. I called up a piano mover, and had them pick it up from the church, sight unseen. I was so worried that I’d made a mistake, given that the moving was still about $400, but I got insanely lucky, with a beautiful looking and sounding piano worth about $5k for basically just the cost of moving it.
Haunted piano?
So far, no ghosts yet! Only haunted by the vague odor of the church it was in before, so it kind of smells like an old lady’s house, but it’s going away pretty quickly.
What an amazing story! Its always amazing the stuff you can find second hand 😁
Over COVID I bought a new guitar. It had been probably a decade since I stopped playing and suddenly found myself with a lot of free time. This absolutely was the best impulse buy as it reinvigorated my love of playing and I’ve since made it part of my daily ritual. It’s done wonders for my well being and mental health.
Portable projector. I don’t have a TV in my room, but I use the projector all the time. I can point it on the ceiling or the walls. I can connect my hard drive to it, or stream to it. It even has access to apps so I can log into, say, YouTube directly on the device. I love it. It’s was something I kept saying I didn’t need (and it’s true, I would have survived), but it’s been a swell experience.
Tandem Showerhead, you can slap however much you want on it to luxurify the whole setup, and just seeing it installed was enough for my SO to start doing the thing where they start just leaving their stuff behind at your place to stealth move in.
That looks so cool. I might have to try that.
How has it been with staying place? Tension rods don’t always stay reliably. I’d prefer something permanently mounted
Most tension rods I’ve seen drop have been fixed up by just really making sure they’re really tightened up when you put them back up, but if you’re worried worried you could probably use a water resistant adhesive on both ends to give it a bit more hold up.
As for mine, it’s holding up pretty well on its own, even with me hanging shower baskets off it.
Steam deck.
A gaming computer that was the most expensive one they had. Beyond a faulty wi-fi adapter, it’s held up incredibly well and I can run pretty much anything on maximum settings and achieve a frame rate of 60 fps or more, even on RPCS3, which is a PS3 emulator that is known for being rather slow on most systems.
Literally the same, what a great impulse purchase.
You’ll love it!
I plan on replacing my laptop with it as well
A cheap beginner bass guitar. I was like man will I play bass even? I’m a drummer mainly but I also play a decent amount of piano bc my main drum things are drum set and marimba and I played synth for 1 season in drum corp. I got a bass because I wanted to actually try playing bass parts for songs instead of clicking them in. It does sound better (well, eventually it did) but it’s just really fun to play. Like I had also bought a $100 used guitar and I just find playing that a chore. I can play a few songs but I’m a permanent beginner and have no real interest in growing. The bass though? I play that like an hour a day and it’s actually cutting into my drum and piano time
A Casio G-Shock! It’s the only watch I’ll ever need. My Apple Watch has been relegated to being used for workouts only! It’s so nice to not have to worry about smashing my watch against a surface bc clumsiness, not having to charge it bc solar & no notifications of any type!
https://www.casio.com/us/watches/gshock/product.GW-5000U-1/ 🖤🩶🖤🩶🖤
If you sidegrade to a Casio F-91W, there’s a fun open-source project called Sensor Watch that repolaces the PCB to bring some nice features.
My watch can now tell me sunrise/sunset times, run 6 different count down timers, and act as a full dice set for DnD.
Full list of complications: https://www.sensorwatch.net/docs/watchfaces/complication/
Yep, got 2! And Casios are stupid cheap on eBay. My wife and I are a bit addicted to thrift store watches. She just got me a digital Citizen for $1.99!
