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Aug. 28th, 2022 07:44 pmOne of my computers started making the tell-tale sound of a worn out fan. Case fans? No. CPU fan? No. Power supply fan? No. Video card fan? Yup. Given that a replacement fan is much cheaper than a whole card, I've opted to do that. Except it's a specialized fan shipped from China. I've come to accept a lot of computer hardware being made in China, what's hard to swallow is buying individual items from there. The initial shipping time estimate was over a month so imagine my delight when it took "only" 2 weeks to get here. But the fan fits and works, the video card is missing only one screw, I paid $16 for the fan instead of $200 for a comparable card, so I'm calling this a success.
Surugaya's website is dangerous. Every couple of months, I'll go through the wishlist, pick out what's available to buy, place the order, and a couple weeks later, there's more, because they're always getting more in. Being able to get things from Yahoo Japan Auctions via Buyee is another dangerous thing. Most of it is usually cheap. Things like LaserDiscs, which used to cost $50 or more, are going for $2 each. Every now and then there's something that's rare enough to command a higher price but for the most part, it's a giant bargain bin. The combination of the low prices on used items and the dollar/yen exchange rate is great! Then the cost of shipping kicks in and oof. Things like CDs and doujinshi are lighter so the charges are more merciful, but for larger/heavier things, oof. And it's definitely not worth it to just buy one or two things.
I just want to point out now that of the stuff I'm buying from those sites, many are things that I have yet to find online in any capacity. It's a matter of how far down the rabbit hole do I want to go to find something. Well, I've hit the bottom of a few rabbit holes and still came up empty-handed.
Lego recently made an updated version of the classic Galaxy Explorer. It's longer, wider, bigger, more galactic, yet keeps many of the features and attributes of the original. This includes the back of the ship swinging open to deploy a small rover. The only thing missing in the newer version are the baseplates. A couple years ago, I found the instructions for the original Galaxy Explorer and found that despite never having the actual set itself, I already had most of the pieces to build my own. What parts I was missing could be found easily on Bricklink.
Taking pictures of Lego can be easy, or it can be hard. For the sake of taking a picture of a general area or complete model, the camera on my phone is good enough. But if I want to get really up close, like with minifigs, sometimes the only thing I can do is get out the DSLR and the macro lens and mount it on the tripod. When I need to be able to tweak settings like aperture, shutter, exposure, and so on in order to fill an entire image with a minifigure head and keep it all in focus, the phone camera just shrugs and says "that's way above my pay grade". If I really want to go crazy, I could get a probe lens.
https://www.venuslens.net/product/laowa-24mm-f-14-2x-macro-probe/
Someday!
Surugaya's website is dangerous. Every couple of months, I'll go through the wishlist, pick out what's available to buy, place the order, and a couple weeks later, there's more, because they're always getting more in. Being able to get things from Yahoo Japan Auctions via Buyee is another dangerous thing. Most of it is usually cheap. Things like LaserDiscs, which used to cost $50 or more, are going for $2 each. Every now and then there's something that's rare enough to command a higher price but for the most part, it's a giant bargain bin. The combination of the low prices on used items and the dollar/yen exchange rate is great! Then the cost of shipping kicks in and oof. Things like CDs and doujinshi are lighter so the charges are more merciful, but for larger/heavier things, oof. And it's definitely not worth it to just buy one or two things.
I just want to point out now that of the stuff I'm buying from those sites, many are things that I have yet to find online in any capacity. It's a matter of how far down the rabbit hole do I want to go to find something. Well, I've hit the bottom of a few rabbit holes and still came up empty-handed.
Lego recently made an updated version of the classic Galaxy Explorer. It's longer, wider, bigger, more galactic, yet keeps many of the features and attributes of the original. This includes the back of the ship swinging open to deploy a small rover. The only thing missing in the newer version are the baseplates. A couple years ago, I found the instructions for the original Galaxy Explorer and found that despite never having the actual set itself, I already had most of the pieces to build my own. What parts I was missing could be found easily on Bricklink.
Taking pictures of Lego can be easy, or it can be hard. For the sake of taking a picture of a general area or complete model, the camera on my phone is good enough. But if I want to get really up close, like with minifigs, sometimes the only thing I can do is get out the DSLR and the macro lens and mount it on the tripod. When I need to be able to tweak settings like aperture, shutter, exposure, and so on in order to fill an entire image with a minifigure head and keep it all in focus, the phone camera just shrugs and says "that's way above my pay grade". If I really want to go crazy, I could get a probe lens.
https://www.venuslens.net/product/laowa-24mm-f-14-2x-macro-probe/
Someday!
