It was only after reading that I learned that the "Ferris Wheel" was named after an individual (George Washington Gale Ferris Jr, which is a mouthful!)

Definitely a good read though, and a book I've recommended to a few friends.

"Oh no" is so memorable, but it's also goes hand in hand in my memory with the "Oh ho" from the Worms games.

Both games have a lot in common now I think about it, tiny characters and interactive environments.

Listening to a Finnish children learn English there are some cases where they struggle and perhaps some of it is vocabulary, "fall" vs "fell", "freeze" vs "froze" (i.e. past tenses).

But there are lot more gotchas and I think pronounciation is one of the biggest gotchas. Finnish is a bad starting point as the language has very regular pronounciation, but hearing a child read new text it's obvious how difficent pronounciation is to learn for even everyday, commonly-used words.

> I just can not really see myself using or needing "warez" on linux

I remember switching to Linux around 94 and at the time one of the things that annoyed me was that there was very little commercial software to patch registration checks out of!

There were a couple of image-viewers, and similar things, but I fell out of the habit of decompiling random binaries, and stopped keeping up with the newere techqniques for a good few years. My reversing skills came back, later, but swithching to Linux where everything was "free" and source was mostly available really did change a lot of my computer-related hobbies.

Porting windows stuff to Linux would've been useful

Interestingly if you get an allergic reaction to apples you get that same reaction to cherries, something I only learned recently.

Paying a few hundred dollars for a watch is cheap, compared to the prices for mid/high-end mechanical watches.

Starting price alone doesn't give you the full picture.

After five years, Apple Watches are out of support, so even if they work their value goes to $0. The battery is gone by that time, new OSes don't support them, and their only destination is a landfill.

Mechanical watches can last decades, and hold some resell value at any age.

Sure, but when you are buying a mechanical watch, that is a Veblen good, not focused on utility. A $6 Casio will keep better time.

Watches are fashion, for most people, rather than a necessity.

That said there are definitely days when I wander out of the house with a watch and no phone. Fewer these days as I use an app on my phone to pay for bus/tram/train fares, but its still nice to be able to do things without the need for a phone.

The watches I wear are mechanical, and most of them are older than I am, made by companies that no longer exist!

I can see the appeal of smart-watches for some things, but I'm too attached to my (small) watch collection to ever consider buying one.

I made the mistake of looking at /r/sauna on Reddit once or twice recently, and there was a lot of people doing very similar things.

"I take my preworkout, do my exercise, then I sit for 12 minutes at 90 degrees in sauna, before three minutes in the cold plunge-pool at 8 degrees, before going to sauna again for 19 minutes and I finish with a seven minute warm shower".

Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna, and timing things minute by minute sounded exhausting.

I assume going to sauna takes an hour, it might be I leave it on for a couple of hours, but beyond that the minutes inside/outside are a mystery and I like it like that. Same story with being outdoors in a cabin/cottage. I might dig up some plants, or move the hammock around, but whether I get (literally) dirty is just down to whatever random things I've done that day!

Your comment reminds me of

The Hustle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

> Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna

You don't take your watch into the sauna! It's way too hot! I use a plain mechanical kitchen timer (outside the sauna). I've seen hourglasses that are designed to withstand the heat inside the sauna, but they're obviously not configurable to various increments.

More seriously: apparently studies show that using a Finnish (dry) sauna 5-7 times a week is good for longevity. You don't have to use them that way, but if that's your goal, it probably makes sense to fit it into your routine, and it's tough to do that without planning how long it will take.

Or people who can withstand saunas naturally love longer? Maybe even despite them?

If it's 90 degrees Celcius, I don't think you could sit there for an hour. If it's 90 american degrees, what kind of sauna is that?

I have a dodgy thermometer on the wall, and I tend to enter the sauna when it shows 80, by the time I leave it's usually been showing 90 for half the time. Celcius.

Perhaps we are missing some details with respect to humidity?

If it's a very humid sauna at 90°F, then your body can't regulate itself with sweat evaporation.

weird huh, in neither system does 90 degrees make for a useful sauna. that's either lukewarm, or cooking temp.

90C is a normal sauna temperature. It's on the hot side, but normal.

Right you are. It's little a bit warm for my personal taste, but sure, for a 10 to 15 minute session, ok. It was late, and I was thinking more of the 90F as not even as hot as normal outdoors for many parts of the globe.

It probably just comes from tweaking the routine. Maybe they started out at 15 minutes in the sauna and 5 minutes in the cold plunge, but found they were getting too hot in the sauna and too cold in the cold plunge.

> Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna, and timing things minute by minute sounded exhausting.

"Hey <smartwatch>, set a timer for 12 minutes" doesn't sound very exhausting.

You will now be subject to the whims of a timer in the future. If that's not exhausting for you, go for it.

I'm not subject to the whims of anything except what I just asked for.

I can also cancel it just as easily, if it's exhausting. Which--I'm finding it hard to understand why it would be.

I don't schedule my life like that at all, I kinda wander around all day. But the idea of a reminder that I specifically asked for? It's the only kind of reminder I want, actually. It'll keep me from the actually-exhausting habit of checking my watch or wondering how long it's been.

I don't use a sauna. In my imagination some people might prefer to stop their sauna usage when it feels right. That doesn't require checking a timer.

That's certainly how it is for me; mentally I think sauna is an hour, of 5-15 minute chunks inside the warm room, but sometimes it might be more.

There are days when I walk in and immediately nope-out after a couple of minutes, and that's usually a sign that I'm getting sick.

But when it stops feeling good that's the time to leave, or stop for the evening.

If your smartwatch doesn't burn your wrist in the sauna, it's not hot enough ;)

If your smartwatch's Lithium Ion Battery Pack doesn't explode and amputate your arm in the sauna, it's not hot enough ;)

Do you mean you literally sit in the sauna for hour?

No, you would be cooked, but I had a hunch that obviously people already tried to see how long you could stay inside and yes there was a competition in Finland exactly for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Sauna_Championships#2010...

I said "was" because 2010 was, in fact, the last edition of the event:

> On 7 August 2010, two competitors were removed from the sauna and brought to the hospital in critical condition after six minutes of 110 °C (230 °F) heat

And one of them died.

> His death was aided by his use of strong painkillers and local anesthetic grease on his skin.

I don't think anyone is capable to sit in a 90-100C sauna for a whole hour without breaks, otherwise with breaks I surely have been in a sauna for more than an hour.

Just this summer I was at a cottage by Vänern (the largest lake in Sweden), the sauna was built right at the lake with a pier setup for jumping into it, we had a party going late into the night where you constantly moved from the sauna into the lake, out of the lake, have chats, a beer, into the sauna again, rinse and repeat for some 8-10 hours. I have no idea exactly how long I was in the sauna but it was definitely more than a couple of hours in the whole affair :)

>I don't think anyone is capable to sit in a 90-100C sauna for a whole hour without breaks, otherwise with breaks I surely have been in a sauna for more than an hour.

Yes, I definitely do agree with that. I too love what you're describing - we have some of that in Poland too :)

However, I was not sure if we're talking about it - or some American version I know only from various memes - where people are coming in with phones and in shoes.

If you ever basta in winter, try bringing ice into the sauna. Smearing yourself with ice while in the heat is really nice :)

Generally I assume "sauna" will take an hour, or ninety minutes, but the process is pretty much:

1. Have a shower.

2. Sit in the sauna, and throw water on the stones. Stay there for 5-15 minutes, drinking a beer and sometimes listening to music. Depends on the mood what kind of duration I enjoy, and what kind of music I have. If alone music is nice, if with a friend or two then we have silence and conversation instead.

3. Come out and sit on the balcony, to have a little break.

4. If I still feel like it go back to step one, and have a quick shower before going back. Otherwise have a longer shower, and check that the heater is going to shut down soon.

> I assume going to sauna takes an hour, [...] but beyond that the minutes inside/outside are a mystery...

I understand that as the general act of getting up, starting the sauna, going for your clothes change, resting a couple times, going to the kitchen for water, shower, switch off, kitchen again, whatever... you've filled an hour of your time.

That interpretation does make sense. Just heating the sauna can take even longer.

I don't know about you guys but if I started timing my sauna visits, I would get MORE stressed out.

Saunas have hourglasses (usually a multiple of 5 mins)?

Sounds like typical geek stuff you see on any enthousiast forum. You should check the coffee forums.

Hey now! The C64 might have been technically better with sprites, etc, but the Spectrum was way more quirky and British.

Something about the scrappy underdog making awesome games despite the attribute clash, and having the terrible keyboard really set the vibe. Plus the Z80 processor was way more interesting than the 6502, and really set the speccy-folks up for the move to intel in later years.

Back in the day I don't think many would have switched from the Spectrum to the Commodore.

I'll always love the speccy because if it hadn't have existed I wouldn't have had a computer til the early 90's, family couldn't/wouldn't have spent C64 money on what was effectively a toy for noir_lord.

So in that respect it holds a special place in that my entire life/career changed the day I plugged it in.

On the other hand, I'd absolutely have traded it for a C64 if offered that trade even back then.