#i really try and eke as much longevity out of my things as i can within reason;;

[andmaybegayer]

You pretty frequently mention going to great pains to dial in your devices' power consumption. Is this just to minimize your electricity bill? Increase the longevity of components? Shits and giggles?

Power and power dissipation is a topic that is near and dear to the hearts of many electrical engineers because it has so much potential to create and/or solve problems. There's three main reasons why I care about it for my computers, though.

Lately it's that power is heat, and heat requires cooling, and cooling tends to be noisy. My desktop is currently a little 20 liter ITX deal I had lying around handling a potentially 300W heat load from a 91W CPU, a 150W GPU, and other misc. heat sources in there. There's a single 120mm liquid cooler and however you'd categorize the GPU cooler which double as the only air intakes, and a tiny exhaust fan plus PSU set up as exhaust.

With a little careful undervolting of both these parts you can keep your performance identical but cut about 80W off the heat load, which means you can run fans slower and reduce noise. Undervolting has really good returns for this kind of thing, since power consumption changes by the square of the difference in voltage at constant resistance. This case has very little sound deadening, so cutting a few dozen RPM off the fan speeds can make it much quieter, which makes it less annoying to be in a room with.

Before that, I was in the Supercomputing Competition, where you get a 3kW power budget, and that's actually where I picked up a lot of these tricks. You burn power exponentially as you get closer to the high end of most processors' frequency range, so with careful tuning you can get a good fraction of the performance out of hardware without demanding nearly as much power as it would normally use. This stack can peak out at 5kW but we held it under 3kW for the full run of the competition, with lots of custom power monitoring and control scripts.

Before that, I had one laptop, a big gaming thing with a teeny battery, and it was a pain in the ass to take to university because after a few years of use I could barely eke two hours out of it. Undervolting, figuring out switchable graphics on Linux, running on the command line and getting finer control over the backlight let me more than double the battery life as long as I was doing basic notetaking or light programming. That got me through a lot of network theory and digital systems lectures until I finally acquired a more business-style laptop.

I still like to optimise power and thus battery life on my laptops so I can stay away from the wall for longer. With appropriate adjustments my little dual core business laptop can push out eight hours of light use or movies, and I recently discovered there's an extended replacement battery for it with about 20% more capacity that I might try and get my hands on.

It also just tickles the part of my brain that likes optimization. I don't do overclocking and so this is my opportunity to push hardware to its limits, not in terms of performance, but in terms of how little power it can run on.

[nighttimepixels]

I have some questions about what you use to draw & animate with. It's been about two years since I've animated anything & about a half a year since I've gotten the chance to do digital artwork. Now that I'm living with my SO & going part time to finish my basics (collage) don't have access to the school tablets. I want to get one of my own to not only keep up with my art but so I can draw where ever I go. Plus it's been so difficult to draw Because I keep wanting to animate it & make it move.

hey there! i’m guessing you mean more about my tablet and that sort of thing, if i’m reading your message right. life. i also definitely understand the struggle to make art when you don’t have access to tools you’re used to, or even that just make it mildly possible to make art with any ease.

i actually work on an old hand-me-down Wacom Intuos 3 - a blessing i got to upgrade to after having an even older hand-me-down drawing tablet. i actually still have that one too - because honestly, for my personal experience, i have a couple things that heavily weigh my hand when making buying choices:

1) if it’s not horribly broken, keep squeezing life out of it (until it becomes a significant pain or detriment to your work/yourself)2) when a new thing needs to be bought, buy smart.

basically, i don’t have... spare money. at all. i’m really lucky in my situation right now considering health issues and the like that allow me to be alright despite that, but still - sometimes i do have to buy new things, like in my current situation where i basically had to drop most of my savings to build a custom computer (1- more affordable to get what you need with custom building and 2- can’t do the work i need to do because my current 5+year-old laptop keeps crashing or stalling out).

so, that said! when i do need to upgrade to a new tablet (at least if that happens in the near future), i’m probably going to get a Wacom Bamboo One tablet. it’s around $60 depending on location/seller, it works very well and very reliably, it’s a good size (while still being on the smaller end, so you can pop it in your bag if you need/want), and it has great reviews. i feel pretty comfortable recommending it, too, because i do a really obscene amount of research before i buy pretty much anything, not to mention there’s a great number of artists online that use it - and for affordable yet quality tablets that will last, the Wacom Bamboo One is definitely a great choice. i highly recommend shopping around though - read reviews, look for what you like, etc... the Bamboo is fairly no-frills, ie, there’s not a lot of buttons/etc... but personally, because of the first tablet i ever had (0 buttons) i never got used to using them, so i still work mostly just in using the tablet’s surface as drawing and my left hand to use keyboard shortcuts as i go.

if you’re interested in drawing a lot, i definitely recommend getting a tablet.

sorry for rambling a bit! hopefully this helps - essentially, if you want to draw a lot, and you want something affordable and quality, i recommend that Wacom Bamboo One tablet... but if you can afford to spend more, or want to, then definitely look around! there are a lot of fantastic options (and man, i mean someday, if i can ever make a living out of art, i’d love to try out a drawing tablet with a screen to the actual art program, oof). good luck, ya cutie!!

[sonipanda]

And hello new brand! I have seen this company pop up a few times on my social media and it’s not until now that I get to do a review for them!

They were kind enough to send me 2 samples from their classic range; the black and the nude, so I thought it was best to start off with the black (of course) and then save the nude for another day 😉

Now if you haven’t heard of this brand before, I managed to get a bit from their website about them, and the link below will take you there for more information!

About I See Your Legs

”In many ways, I love simplicity in life. Also when it comes to wardrobe essentials – such as classic tights. I was frustrated by two things in the legwear market: too many choices in an unfit lifestyle packaging. The mission was clear: to develop trustworthy high-end classic legwear packed in a smart Danish Design packaging to fit the legwear lovers lifestyle. I believe that by bringing practical values into packaging we inspire and stimulate the use of legwear in our fashionable society, where legs are considered attractive and physically appealing regardless the gender or culture. That’s how we got started – let’s evolve together from here!”  Mette Søby Lund, Co-Founder

– taken from their website

The Spec

Colour: Black

Size: 1 – XS/S

Denier: 20

Materials: 88% Polyamide / 12% Lycra

Price: €15

Website: I See Your Legs – Classic

  My Outfit

Keeping it sassy today with a formal black dress, black sheers and my two-tone heels! I thought why not (as the weather is now starting to warm up so I thought I would get my darks out the way with first before I go all playful!)

I left my hair down, added small gold hoops and ready to roll!

My Deets

Dress: H&M

Tight: I See Your Legs

Shoes: EKS Gradiant Court Shoes

Earrings: Dorothy Perkins

  The Review

From The Website: I gotta say there is a lot of information and images to accompany this. I have never been so impressed with how much you can find out about the pair you’re buying!

Tights Features

20 Denier

Double-covered LYCRA®

Sheer body from top to toe

Flat seam

Cotton gusset

Reinforced toe

Shaped leg

Ironed

Super-comfort waistband

The waistband is 4cm wide which is strengthened further with a 4cm finger band below it.

Our legwear waistband is knitted with stretch to have a soft customized fit, for an everyday lifestyle.

Packaging Features

Laser cut

Minimalistic design

Gold metallic finish

Waterproof

The golden bag by I SEE YOUR LEGS is Danish Design. Your experiences and product practices counts.

The laser cut grants you an instant opening.

The golden bag is small and flexible to easily bring along with you, anytime, anywhere, a pair of legwear.

Inside the bag, the legwear is carefully folded around our brand card.

Thank you for reading. Be ahead of the game, enjoying the I SEE YOUR LEGS legwear!

4K YARN – ITALIAN FINEST Composition: 88% Polyamide / 12% Lycra

Double-covered LYCRA®

to ensure the high-end luxurious matt look

to ensure the long lasting usage over time, and strong resistance to external factors

to ensure we have the softest feel from the legwear industry

The 4K spiral count of the Lycra yarn used in our Legwear TO GO article 20 DENIER: 4.050

2.100 counts for the first spiral and 1.950 for the second one

The tights have an even matt appearance, with a slight sheen.

    The Packaging: I haven’t seen anything like this before! Cute, shiny and WATERPROOF! I mean like how awesome is that?! And with it being that small and cute, these can easily be popped into your handbag or gym bag without it looking so obvious!

So the front is quite plain; straight to the point basically and then the back goes into a little more detail:

“I SEE YOUR LEGS brings you the solution to easily carry along tights with will secure your outfit at any time.”

“Sheer Body / Flat Seam / Cotton Gusset / Reinforced Toe / Shaped Leg”

You can always find a massive lowdown of it all on their website (I only put a snippet above)!

So to get in, these have a laser cut opening, so all you do is tear and you’re in. Now it gets interesting … These are rolled up, and when you unravel, you find their cute business card inside. I swear I am really liking this!

The card states: “Congratulation to have purchased an original I SEE YOUR LEGS product! These simple instructions will help you maintain the quality and fit of the tights unchanged.”

Once rolled out flat, you can see these are shaped to the feet and legs, which means these are gonna fit great on the legs!

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  Getting Them On: so hosiery gloves at the ready and let us scrunch and roll! I always do to make sure that I can get an even finish on the legs and not pull up too much or leave material hanging near the ankles.

As these are made to your clothing size, you should get the ‘perfect fit’ … And I have to say I really and truly did!

Oh and let me mention that these smell just like Trasparenze tights; they have this newness smell to them. It’s hard to explain but when you purchase your pair, you will know exactly what I mean by this! – And this scent lasts all day!!

  On The Legs: oh boy! I am in love… Like you think they’re just sheers but wait until I tell you what they feel like…

So the denier is 20, and it’s a lovely look on the legs. My legs were covered evenly with my weird patchy markings.

The finish on them are matte, but they do have a subtle shine to them in the light which I really love. I love matte on the legs as it gives it that slimming look, and these just looked perfect against my dress today!

Now the fit… Perfecto! No falling down, no gapping, no tightness anywhere on the legs, feet or around the tushy. I am loving how well these actually hug the legs. Throughout the day, I found that they stay put and don’t wiggle around (this can happen when your legs are cold or dry so anything they rub against will move them)!

Now the feel – something a lot of people don’t tend to notice but plays a big factor for me! I have to like the way they feel on my legs; I don’t like grainy, I don’t like rough, I don’t like irritation from the yarns where you feel the need to itch all the time …

And you don’t get any of that with this pair!

I love the way these feel; soft, silky, smooth, irritation free and the hands can easily roam without any worry of getting snags.

Now speaking of snags, I have to say the quality is amazing; they haven’t snagged at all during the day and I have to be honest; I have been pretty rough with them to test this out. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not indestructible but they are a decent quality pair if you’re after durability and longevity!

  The Toes & Ankle: so these are reinforced, as you can see with the strip going across the toes, which I love. Not only is it practical, but it gives that little touch to them, so if you wanted to wear with peep toes or open toe shoes, it would look pretty ‘vintage’ I like to say. Not many people are fond, but I think they are pretty cool!

There is plenty of wiggle room around this area, and not once was pressure applied against the toes (meaning the tights weren’t pulled too tight so the toes are aching) which I am certainly glad about!

Around the ankles, you have a lovely smooth flush finish against the skin; no wrinkles or extra material floating around this area. I hate it when hosiery does that!

  The Waistband & Gusset: and it only gets better. This is on the lines of a Wolford waistband – no kidding! It is so comfortable I actually forgot I had one on my waist!

It’s a nice thick sturdy band which lightly hugs your waistline, and has enough elasticity in there to keep it from loosening after stretching a good few times. I did put it to the test today by pulling them down and up, stretching the band width ways and length ways… I was impressed!

The tights are sheer from toe to the band, which is perfect for those who wish to bare as much leg as they can!

The gusset is a normal-sized one (around 2-3 fingers put together) and isn’t blended into the hosiery (meaning it’s white and not black), so you can easily go commando if you wish with ease.

  My Thoughts?

Blessed is the word I am after; that I actually have a pair in my collection! I have no idea why it has taken me so long, but I am so glad I got the chance to review them!

I love the fit, feel, quality, durability and certainly how they look on my legs. You wouldn’t think a simple plan pair would be that good, but trust me you can tell a good quality pair on the legs!

Right, I have to try out the nudes tomorrow. I was gonna wait a week or so, but now I need to get them on the legs!!

I See Your Legs Classic Black And hello new brand! I have seen this company pop up a few times on my social media and it's not until now that I get to do a review for them!