There's tons of mentions of celebrities, good and bad stuff, Tv shows, Movies, actors, gossip.. real world, real brands, real stuff..

then there's Logan and Tucker playing ICE PRO..

Were they somehow not allowed to name an EA game title or something?!

Maybe I'm just upset that there's no hockey game for the Switch 2...

I'd even love something like Mario Strikers but on ice 🤣

I'm new to using Calibre and am more than a little frustrated.

It's most certainly a user error, but it's incredibly frustrating to be the stupid user and not getting any useful help from the tool.

I want to grab the information from Goodreads, but when I search for Metadata, I simply get an error thrown at me, asking me to be less specific..

I mean.. searching for "The Deal" very much results in the book by Elle Kennedy.. But for some reason, my search was too specific with the title and the author, and nothing else?

Is there a simpler way to easily search and assign metadata, using just the title of the book to throw out results from Goodreads to select from?

>
calibre, version 9.11.0

>ERROR: No matches found: <p>Failed to find any books that match your search. Try making the search <b>less specific</b>. For example, use only the author's last name and a single distinctive word from the title.<p>To see the full log, click "Show details".

>

>Running identify query with parameters:

>{'title': 'The Deal', 'authors': ['Elle Kennedy'], 'identifiers': {}, 'timeout': 30}

>Using plugins: Goodreads (1, 8, 3)

>The log from individual plugins is below

>

>****************************** Goodreads (1, 8, 3) ******************************

>Found 0 results

>Downloading from Goodreads took 0.09308362007141113

>identify - start. title=The Deal, authors=['Elle Kennedy'], identifiers={}

>Querying: https://www.goodreads.com/search?search_type=books&search[query]=The+Deal+Elle+Kennedy

>No goodreads id via ISBN

>Failed to get raw result for query: 'https://www.goodreads.com/search?search\_type=books&search\[query\]=The+Deal+Elle+Kennedy'

>

>********************************************************************************

>The identify phase took 0.20 seconds

>The longest time (0.093084) was taken by: Goodreads

>Merging results from different sources

>We have 0 merged results, merging took: 0.00 seconds

I've done roughly 30 Mega M2 raids over the past two days. Always using my max mega Ray for the boost to M2 candies (the type advantage against M2X is not relevant with raids this ridiculously easy)

The game holds your hand like mommy on the playground

When you join the lobby, your mega is in the last spot..

The game picks counters for you.. never the best possible ones.. but again, these raids are so damn easy, you don't need the best possible counters anyways...

After maybe 10 seconds, M2 puts his shields up, and the game AUTOMATICALLY switches to your Mega. And:

Your Mega has FULL charged attacks right away..

All you really need to do is:

Hammer away at the point of your screen where the charged attack is, and it will instantly break a shield on M2..

There's a tiny chance that M2 will be using a charged attack WHILE it puts up shields.. Read the damned texts and:

DODGE

You get Bonus points for dodging.. it's super easy.. you should really try it!

Unless M2 had Ice Beam, my Mega Ray was able to easily stay alive the entire fight. I was so brazen, I even put it in the first spot once and still made it the entire fight..

In every single on of those M2 raids, even if we had 20 people in the lobby, there were times where the number dropped to 14 or so, because so many people had all their mons faint during the fight.
Meanwhile, I never had to revive more than 2 of mine in the end..

In the worst case scenario:
M2 uses Ice Beam before the shields, and the damn attack hits right as MRay is put in.. Cannot dodge.. (I experienced that charged attack Super-GAU exactly once in 30 SM raids, but my Ray didn't instantly faint, courtesy of being max lvl, I guess..)
And if your mega faints, just return to the lobby, revive it with a max revive, and rejoin to break your shield.

Yes, it's a stupid mechanic that forces rural players, LIKE ME, to spend money on remote passes, because we cannot possibly get more than 2 people together to attempt a raid.. (and that's usually fine by me.. with my brother, I can duo anything except for the Primals and those damned Super Mega Raids..)

There's plenty of ways they could fix this:
- let us power through shields more easily..

- Have super effective charged attacks take away half a shield, maybe?!

- Let us break more shields if we revive our mega and re-join

- have the shields disappear again after 1 or 2 minutes automatically

- all your mons faint and you revive and re-join

- you leave and re-join

- you mega-evolve another mon and re-join

just something..

I joined a Mega M2 X raid remotely, 10 megas in lobby.. (12 players.. why not block people from joining if they don't have a mega at all?!)

we were left at 4 shields.. couldn't do shit about it.. everyone left the raid, even though we could've probably strong-manned it anyways.. by the end, M2 was at 30% HP left.. it would've been an easy win..

I even tried those things mentioned above.. couldn't destroy another shield..

This super mega fail is the biggest nuisance since G-Max raids with wooloo turds!

And the fact that you lose your fckng Remote pass has me hyper aggressive out here!

I live in a shithole village with 4 other players (have never met one of them)..40 minute drive to a small town where I've seen a single other player in the past decade.. 70min drive to a small city where I met 2 players once..

these game features are an absolute PEST!!!

and all they have to do is:

give us global lobbies you can join from an active gym with the mon you want to raid and your daily raid pass..

that's it... let people living in remote places enjoy the game without forcing them to fckng spend money!!!

the touch runs you through a tutorial at the beginning, telling you to set the grinder to 30 and just look at how long it takes for the first drop to come out of the portafilter.

(if it's below 8-12s, it asks you to grind finer)

I played around a fair bit, set the inner burr to 4 (from 6) and my last bag of beans had me at 20-21 grind setting to get within those 8-10s and to a nice 1:2.5 - 1:3 ratio within 25s (default time) with the single filter basket..

the coffee was good, Espresso not so much..

I just switched beans and got like 1:6 in 25s..

eventually, I was at 5 on the grinder to get 8s before the first drop, but then it took 40+ s to get 1:2 ratio 🤣

when I went up to 10 on the grinder (always cleaning and flushing the grouphead, and "purging" some powder with the grinder after adjusting) I got a nice 1:2 ratio, but the first drops after 4 or 5 seconds . (it is NOT too watery, though..)

so,

TLDR:

Does anyone care about these 8-12s to first drop or do you simply use a balance and dial in for 30-35s total time?

(I honestly don't understand this extraction time yet.. the Touch doesn't pre-infuse or anything.. it just begins pumping.)

I live in a tiny village.. Not a chance to find Giovanni at a stop.. Never haven't fought him from a Balloon..

Visited a small city yesterday (1 hour return drive by car) with 50+ stops and gyms..

guess what, no Giovanni in the 2 hours I was there..

such a fcking stupid change to fck the rural players even more!

Thanks for Super Mega Stupid raids and G-Max remote battles...

Oracle Touch here

Love playing with the thing, got a balance and the output of Cappuccino is fantastic..

Espresso is a work in progress, but I'll get there one day..

However, when I have my ratio dialed in.. (single dose filter with roughly 11g, although I'll need to work on that again.. want that lower - outputting roughly 30-35g of coffee, which will evolve over time, pinky promise) I need the grinder set to about 10 for the extraction time to be around 8s, which is fine..

the Espresso, as mentioned, is oily, black as my soul, and bitter like hell.. (the beans, I know.. on it..)

but what also annoys me there, is that the coffee gets splattered all over the beautiful machine. Some of it does not even reach the cup, it just splatters off the spouts of the portafilter...

is that normal? do I need to raise the cup to basically cover the spouts?

do you guys use one of those clips on top of the spouts to avoid this? (just saw something in a video)

looks like this, not sure if you can buy this separately, or if you need to replace the spout?:

https://outwestcoffee.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/closeup.jpg

Posts about machines stopping to work after a short time are very common here.

We just got our Oracle Touch this week, so I am curious..

The manual says to:

- backflush 5 times before shutting the machine off, every day! (that's 2-3 minutes of just "brewing" the cleaning insert, then cleaning the tray out)

- store the milk wand in the milk can filled with water to avoid clogging

- clean the portafilter with hot water after every single pull, to avoid build-up of oils

- clean the bean hopper, burrs, tamper fan, etc. "regularly"

do all of you follow these instructions?

do issues occur more often for those who do not invest this much time in maintenance?

Got the Oracle Touch at a massive discount and wanted to set it up before gifting it to my wife on Friday.

(set it up as in: dial in the settings so she can start her birthday with a Cappuccino)

I followed the instructions to a T, and could not for the life of me get 8-12s extraction times..

was down to 15 grind size and still, the espresso comes out after 5-6 seconds.. looks like crude oil, tastes incredibly bitter..

I changed the tamper setting and got the powder down from 22g to around 19-20g

(using the MHW-3 Bomber mini cube scale)

Single espresso yields around 100g of liquid.. 🤯

(incredibly bitter liquid..)

How do I reduce the amount of liquid? go even finer with the grind size?

at grind size 10, I got it to around 9-10s for extraction, still a ton of liquid in the cup.. still bitter..

disclaimer: my beans are not "roasted 5 days ago", but they work great in the pour-over, or a stainless Bialetti.. and even the French Press.. it's a relatively light roast (rated 2/5) that the manufacturer classifies as a Lungo.. tried the Espresso beans first, but I never liked that one before either..

(the coffee does not come out bitter with any of my other methods)

Water is 2/5 hardness.. grinder delivers relatively consistent amount of powder, tamper works pretty well, too..

Edit: I switched to the single filter, but realised that my adjusting the tamper position was a bad idea.. got 7g of powder only, and 110g of bitter coffee in an Espresso (single espresso)
😑

Looks like I need to find better beans for the Oracle, huh?

This is about Lightroom Classic 15.2, but it also applies to the past 10 years of Lightroom Classic.. or 20 years, really..

Been a Lightroom user for nearly two decades now (Lightroom Classic) and recently cancelled my Photo sub due to the massive price hike and because I didn't use PS nearly enough to warrant the cost.

Either way, I've been unhappy with performance as far back as I can imagine, but it's gotten ridiculous recently.

We're talking multiple seconds to even load an image while clicking through them in the develop window (or the Library), despite creating 1:1 previews..
Edits take forever and I just hate it at this point.

My workflow is very simple: RAW files from my D850 or Zf into Lightroom, do some simple editing, maybe some healing and masking with portraiture, some profile corrections, etc. But recently, I don't even bother anymore, since I can barely navigate between files to do culling..

Here's my (watercooled) system:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core

GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6900XT 16GB

RAM: 32GB DDR4 Kingston Fury Renegade 3600 MHz

SSDs: 2x M.2 Samsung SSD 980 Pro 1TB, 2x Samsung SSD 960 Evos

Sys: Win 11 Pro 64 bit

You probably agree that this should NOT be slow to work with Lightroom?!

(Lightroom Classic runs on one of the 980 Pro M.2 SSDs, as does Windows. I usually have RAW files for editing on the other (non-system) 980 Pro, or the 960 Evos)

I recently created an empty Catalog (on my M.2 SSD) and it was exactly the same..

GPU is activated (even after 20 years, you still cannot auto-activate an AMD card..) and I have the Camera RAW Cache set to 15 GB max (on the M.2 SSD)
I render 1:1 previews upon importing and discard them after 30 days.

I've tried all the useless recommendations you can find all over the internet when you search for "Lightroom is slow"..

Should I just delete all Adobe stuff from my Computer (PURGE the mofo!) and re-install it from scratch?

(I feel like Adobe should do the same.. hire someone to write the entire code from scratch, instead of adding more and more trash to the decades-old lump that they are dragging along..)

I'm considering buying an espresso machine for my wife's birthday and stepped away from the likes of a Lelit Bianca, because I know that we would like to have some simplicity.

we are a Pour-Over Household drinking large cups of coffee with lots of milk, usually. (talking 300-500ml cups here, lol)

But we do love and enjoy proper Cappuccino and Latte Macchiato whenever we're going out.

Right now, I could get the Oracle Touch for the same price (it's being discontinued) as the Dual Boiler (not the Oracle Dual Boiler!)

From what I've gathered the Dual Boiler is a great machine and the Touch is basically the same, except for the integrated grinder, touch menu and pre-save recipes?

The Grinder gets some bad reviews, but we could use our standalone grinder that is most probably a lot better anyways?

(We would need to tamper ourselves, then? But the machine can work without the grinder included in the recipes? Or would that rule it out entirely?)

Is there any reason to get the Dual Boiler at the same price?

Does the Touch add a lot of simplicity that would make it worthwhile, or is the Dual Boiler just as easy to master for those typical drinks?
(we don't need 10+ recipes.. Espressos, Lattes, Cappuccino, and Macchiato are all we care about, really)

I hope my ramblings are at least somewhat coherent..

thanks for the help.

P.S.: We're talking 1'000€ and I'd rather not exceed that budget.

Avid photographer here (Nikon, what else) who has been glancing at binos for too many years..

a few years ago, on Safari, I longed for a pair for the very first time.

(having a 500mm lens on a DSLR was great, but pretty cumbersome to wield to just observe wildlife.)

What am I looking for?

something to bring on vacation, when visiting the family's hut in the mountains, something to look through with my son (we do live in the mountains and have deer, badgers, and hares and the likes in the neighborhood)

ideally bright, large field of view, and good magnification..

I keep reading that 8x42 was ideal for all-rounding..

The Monarch M7 8x42 costs significantly more than the 10x42 (although almost 30% higher than the price was a year ago.. so I'll be patient..)

There's also currently someone selling the Monarch HG 10x42 for 50% more than a brand new M7 10x42

(599 chf vs 400 chf)

bought half a year ago, so plenty of warranty left.

I would rather just spend 300-350 (last year's price on the M7), but at the current prices, I cannot help but wonder if the HG would be worth it...

I probably wouldn't buy another pair.. ever, so the price isn't the main issue (but the steep increase in price compared to a year ago bugs me!)?!

is 10x42 too difficult to handle, despite the very wide fov? (as wide as older 8x42 designs, actually)

The Vortex Viper HD costs significantly more here than the Monarch (around 500 bucks), and the Zeiss Terra ED is much more expensive (over 500), too, to put them into perspecitve.

(and I'm a Nikon kid... that counts, too)

Nikon Monarch HG 10x42 for 599 (slightly used, with all accessories, box, and only 6 months old)

Nikon Monarch M7 8x42 currently 430

Monarch M7 10x42 currently 390

those are my options..

I'm not a birder, nor a hunter, but we're also not sneaking up on game to watch them up close..

Safari (hopefully again some day), Whale Watching (from the shore, cannot afford those tours, lol) and watching wildlife at home in the alps..

10x magnification, thanks to the large field of view?