• 1 Post
  • 38 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 13th, 2023

help-circle



  • Custom keyboards took off because of mechanical switches. Back in the day people wanted mechanical switches because they last longer than membrane ones, and so you wound up with a bunch of companies producing relatively easy to manufacture mechanical switches. Those switches all felt and sounded a little different so you got people who wanted a specific feel and sound and it grew from there.

    There hasn’t really been the same push with mice because even really cheap ones work really well. Optical sensors are way harder to produce than key switches, and while there are a few different ones on the market other than dpi and polling rate they kind of all act the same - it kind of either tracks right or it doesn’t. There’s no differentiation unlike switches that are “tactile” or “linear” or “scratchy”. And because of size restrictions you can’t really have the same kind of switches as keyboards use for the buttons. And unlike the really niche keyboard people who do their own PCB and machine their own case, making a good mouse on your own from scratch is way more difficult. They’re weird shaped and it’s much more difficult to change things like optical tracking algorithms compared to macros on a 40% keyboard. You can do a run of 100 super niche keyboards and make it work, but just the injection molds for one mouse mean you need to make 10000, which stops it being a project and makes it a business.

    There are premium mice manufacturers, but in general they either are going super light, super ergonomic, or super functional - and honestly they have a hard time competing with a company like Logitech that can produce really similar features for a fraction of the cost and have a decent reputation to boot.



  • I believe you can change the scaling algorithm obs uses? Right click the source and go to “scale filter” is what Google is telling me, not at a computer right now. I think it defaults to bicubic which should be ok though? The switch does its own internal scaling a lot of the time and that can look pretty bad though, but unless you get into some serious shenanigans that’s basically baked in.



  • As far as I’ve found, they’re both right. You shouldn’t have to wash your mushrooms, but it’s not a bad idea if you’re not buying fancy mushrooms.

    The generic button mushroom variants you’re probably getting at the grocery store are grown in compost, which often contains some manure - ie poops.

    But before growing mushrooms it’s pasteurized. Mycelium is picky, and fairly easily out-competed by other stuff, so to make sure you’re just growing mushrooms and not bacteria you basically have to sterilize the medium they’re grown in.

    But those mushrooms are often grown in open beds, and harvested by hand. And that means they get that poop dirt right up on them. Will it immediately give you super botulism? Probably not but it’s still kinda ick.

    Fancier mushroom varieties from smaller cultivars are the ones that actually don’t really need washed and often shouldn’t be. They’re grown in highly sterile environments and they fruit out of a container, so they never touched the poop. And that’s if they even used compost - lots use straw or wood.

    If you do decide to wash your button mushrooms it’s not a big deal, they aren’t actually sponges, and they don’t absorb as much water as some cooking shows say. If they get soggy it probably means they’re old, try putting them in the fridge for a few hours uncovered. It’s basically a dehydrator.


  • We use a few Schlage connect zwave deadbolts, and they have been basically rock solid. We’re using them through Smartthings, but home assistant should work just as well. We have hardwired zwave light switches next to all of them, apparently that can help with the reliability since they will act as zwave repeaters in case the lock doesn’t pick up the signal first time - especially for changing the codes.

    Are they a perfect lock that no one will be able to pick? Probably not, but it’s a lot faster to just put a brick through your window no matter how good your locks are.












  • Ok I’m in a waiting room super bored so forgive my ridiculous takes, but the second one is probably a better logo even if the design is worse in a bunch of ways.

    So, first lets look at Morgan as a brand. It’s a known brand, but not exactly top shelf stuff. From what I can find, they seem to be trying to change that, moving into the ready-to-drink and doing a bunch of social media stuff. they’ve moved from using artificial vanilla flavor to real *Madagascar vanilla* which is definitely more marketable no matter if it actually tastes better or not.

    So as part of that they’ve redesigned basically all their labels and that means they need vibe with the modern upmarket design trends which right now are to use more type and negative space, and to ape design from the era around the 50s and maybe 60s. It goes with the current retro packaging design trend but doesn’t alienate older people like the 70s based stuff, which is usually aimed at a younger market segment. It’s old enough to feel “classy” even if the customer is old.

    As part of that, the large illustration doesn’t fit. Printing full color like that in the era it’s aping was expensive so it feels out of place, and you just don’t have space for it if you want a clean look. So it’s got to be way smaller. The old label has the illustration as basically the main focal point - it’s huge. The new one has it as a small design point. The illustration just doesn’t work at that size. On a little 50ml bottle it’s going to be like 4mm high. Here’s a photo I found.

    The new one actually reads pretty similar even though it’s like half as tall and only uses 2 colors. When it’s on a bottle that small and sitting next to Admiral Nelson and Lady Bligh which still use big full color illustratons on their labels can you tell which one is which?

    But here’s the thing, the captain isn’t even actually the logo. The logo is the name, it’s the same logotype. They didn’t change that. They changed the mascot. It’s pretty important to note that there’s a big difference. A logo basically is your branding. It needs to work at any size, in any medium, and be instantly recognizable. That generally means it needs to be pretty simple. The Morgan logotype works great as a logo, but the mascot until now really didn’t. You can tell because if you look around there are about 50 different versions because the big full color illustration doesn’t work more often than it does. The new one will.

    With all that defense I will say there are a few kind of dumb moves. The treasure chest is clearly a terrible idea. Like, if they were swapping it in on the non-alcoholic lines it would be kind of great but on everything it’s dumb. And I definitely would have fought for a puffy shirt instead of the collared one, if nothing else than for historical accuracy - I don’t think you can even wear shirts if the era unbuttoned with a collar like that. Edit- honestly they might be going intentionally anachronistic so that you can “cosplay” as the captain easily. Do the pose, hard cut to the captain logo, it writes itself. Which would be kind of clever but if that were the case I might have pushed the whole thing to be slightly more androgynous.

    Anyway, I keep seeing this take over and over again, that everything is moving to minimalist blobs for logos, and while sometimes there’s definitely a point (the cross branding for Google’s apps on Android come to mind) a lot of the time there done just like this - with two large copies next to each other. And when you frame it like that of course the detailed one will look better. But when your logo has to shrink to 32x32px on a crappy Android phone or be printed like 5mm wide in black and white the simpler one is going to look way better.

    Anyway thanks for coming to my Ted talk I guess.

    Tldr: the guy isn’t the logo he’s the mascot and the new one can be printed small.