Month: March 2023

Could you recommend an Android phone in Russia? I need it for my mom. Just the basics. Otherwise, apart from the table about Androids, I haven’t heard much—around seven out of ten brands don’t ring any bells. Samsung or Huawei? I want one where you can’t accidentally mute it by gripping the sides and hitting the volume down button. Ideally, it should be available in stores like Svyaznoy, where they can set up WhatsApp and all that. Although that’s a minor detail, it’s more important not to buy junk.

After long-term use of the Apple Watch, here’s why to buy them:

1) to set alarms with your voice (“alarm 12:25”)

2) to set a timer with your voice (“ten minutes”)

3) to find your phone in the house

4) to decide whether to wear a jacket or not while standing at the door with the dog – the degrees on the watch face tell you

5) to answer calls while sorting out the garage (phone forgotten somewhere) and occasionally to make them with your voice (“call Masha”)

6) well, yes, to check the time and date

I don’t know why, but I turn on the workout mode when I exercise. Why I do this, I still can’t explain to myself. No special secret knowledge is imparted to me by the phones after processing all this.

Nadia, for one, likes to inquire about her watch’s (Amazfit) opinion on how her sleep went. Mine, for some reason, do not have this ability. Plus, her watch can live a month without charging, while mine need to be fed every night

How do you use your Apple Watch?

So, I am studying paints. I have a couple of dozen different colors, and it’s very handy to have a sample on hand that shows the mixture of two, or even better, three colors from this palette, in order to make fewer movements later to get the desired color. Yes, experienced artists may not need this, but I do.

And such a palette cannot be bought. Not at all. If you Google it, you find Color Wheels, Itten’s circles. But that’s not the same thing, when you are painting with real paints, not on a computer. The fact is that CYMK print colors are far from the same thing as colors from tubes. For instance, not all colors mix well with each other. The chemical composition of the paints varies, and the pigments might not be very compatible (resulting in mud — it can be used too, what color isn’t color, but it’s important to know that it will turn out this way). For example, an orange in printing is already a CMYK mix, not a pure orange pigment. It can be obtained from yellow and red, or you can use a ready-made color, which can be mixed with something else.

Beyond that, the color wheels sold on Amazon are all incorrect. For example, there is inexplicably a shade of blue lighter than BLUE-VIOLET and BLUE-GREEN in between them; moreover, the shade is such that you can’t even obtain it by mixing with added white. When mixing two colors, the mixture will never be lighter than the components. And adding white diminishes the brightness. Ultimately, it appears that one needs to think not in mixing RGB, but in mixing a couple dozen paints. And that is more complicated.

In general, I decided to create my own.

But here is the question — if I have squares of 1×1 cm, how do I dose the paint to get exactly 50:50? The internal diameter of the tube is 4mm, and it’s quite difficult to extract a little from there. Yes, you can extract it onto a palette, and measure with a palette knife. But I decided to embrace my inner engineer and make a dispenser.

I printed the dispenser on a 3D printer. It has a millimeter-sized hole, and it can extrude a thin “sausage” of the required length. I also printed caps for it. So, now this setup screws on instead of the original cap. Actually, I considered transferring all the paint into syringes, but in the end, this turned out to be simpler.

Interestingly, I wonder why paint manufacturers do not produce such a palette for sale. It would be very convenient for beginner artists. Paint manufacturers have everything needed for this. They need to mix their paints automatically in different proportions and apply them to a canvas according to the design — and you can create many such projects — color wheels, triangles, gradients, mixing white and black to each color in different proportions. Separate sets for portraits. I think there is a market for this. This process can be automated and released in small batches of Color Wheels for different sets of colors.

Someone should release a mirror with AI. Two cameras that record, send to the cloud where it’s analyzed, and what the mirror should say is sent back. The back cover should have a knob for adjusting political correctness and a male/female switch. Maybe make it over the weekend, we just bought a big mirror.

Walter Molino “Beating with Flowers.” 1958.

At our Wegmans, they cover up the potatoes for the night. Just the potatoes. Everything else is sold without restrictions. And it’s always been this way. Moreover, if you really crave potatoes, the organic russet potatoes in bags aren’t completely covered, and you can grab them without noticing they’re not for sale. The cashiers, I’m sure, will ring up any potato.

Update: they told me why. So that it can sleep!

I figured it out. Or rather, I asked. Potatoes deteriorate quickly in the light. To put it briefly. But more fully:

Potatoes, like tomatoes and eggplants, belong to the nightshade family, which contains the toxin solanine. Although these plants always contain some amount of solanine, the toxin increases when the potatoes are exposed to light. That’s why they should be stored in complete darkness. Under the influence of light, the skin and the flesh under the skin of the potatoes turn green. While the green color itself is harmless chlorophyll, the green color indicates the presence of solanine.

If one consumes enough solanine, the toxin can cause vomiting, diarrhea, headache, paralysis of the central nervous system, coma, and, in rare cases, death. How much is too much? It depends on the ratio of body mass to the amount of toxin ingested, as well as each individual’s tolerance to alkaloid toxins. A small child might need only a small amount, while an adult might need to ingest several green potatoes to feel the effects. The best way to avoid poisoning from solanine is not to eat green potatoes.

I feel like our gym made a mistake with the preposition

I wonder if anyone has conducted tests/experiments to study which type of memory in humans is developed to what extent – visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, gustatory, separately in terms of short-term and long-term retention, and how consistent such results would be with repeated tests on the same person during the same period of life, as well as how the situation changes if not specifically trained, and what happens if training what is already above average at the initial testing.

The test would look simple: you are asked to remember something, and in the next room choose from options. A shape. A musical note. A color. A smell. A texture. A taste. Plus all the same, but you need to remember the sequence of shapes, notes, colors, smells, textures, tastes. From two to N.

The cat is settling in