u/addiechavez

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Thanks everyone for the recommendations on my last trip post 🙏 a friend just asked if I could do a little jewelry shopping on their behalf while I’m there (they’re helping fund my poutine budget lol).

Specifically hunting for a nice tennis bracelet and maybe a diamond necklace. Not really looking for big luxury brands, more interested in good quality, fair pricing, and jewelers locals actually trust.

My route is still: Toronto → Niagara Falls → Kingston / Thousand Islands → Ottawa → Montreal → Quebec City

Any hidden gems I should check out along the way? Bonus points if you’ve personally bought jewelry from them and didn’t get buyer’s remorse afterwards. TIA!

I’m coming from the US and planning a 30-day Canada trip:

Toronto → Niagara Falls → Kingston / Thousand Islands → Ottawa → Montreal → Quebec City

Plan so far: hostels, train or bus between cities, and booking the longer legs early if prices look better. I’m also trying not to stay too far from stations or transit just to save a few dollars. Food-wise, probably groceries most days and a few proper meals in each city.

For phone/data, I’m still comparing a few options. Nomad seems like the easiest choices if I only need data. RedteaGO and Airalo have Canada plans with a local number, calls and texts, but I'm not sure which one is better.

Has anyone done this route without a car? Any advice on costs, transport, or general planning? I’m currently thinking around $3,000 USD. Enough, or am I underestimating Canada? TIA!

So i was looking into Nvidias RTX Spark recently and it just reminded me of apple silicon and amds ryzen ai max. Feels like the whole damn industry is moving in one direction which is sticking the CPU, GPU, NPU and memory into one unupgradable chip just for local ai stuff.  Performance wise it makes sense. Unified memory and massive bandwidth are great when you are running local LLMs, cant really argue with that. But the trade off is getting way too obvious now. There is literally no room for upgrades or tinkering anymore. Most modern ai pcs feel like completely closed systems compared to traditional diy builds. I have been using a geekom a9 max mini pc for a few months now and while cleaning the dust today i suddenly realized something. Even though this thing wont ever match the crazy bandwidth of those fully integrated socs, at least i still have control over my hardware. I can just swap the ram or storage when i need to instead of throwing away the whole setup. I dont think upgradeable pcs are gonna disappear completely but they are definitely becoming a niche side note in the cutting edge ai conversation. What do you guys think?

I’m in the middle of planning a pretty long train trip across Europe this summer — something like Paris → Zurich → Milan → Vienna → Prague, mostly by rail. I’ve always liked the idea of just watching the scenery change outside the window instead of dealing with airports every few days, so this felt like the right time to finally try it.

The more I plan it though, the more I realize how many small logistical things there are to think about. I already found out that even with Eurail/Interrail passes, some high-speed routes still require separate seat reservations, and apparently those can sell out surprisingly early in summer. So now I’m checking reservation rules route by route instead of assuming the pass solves everything.

I’m also trying to be realistic about transfer times. Some connections looked fine at first when I was building the itinerary, but after watching videos of stations like Zurich HB and Milano Centrale, I’m starting to think that a 20-minute transfer with luggage might feel very different in real life than it does on paper.

Another thing I keep thinking about is connectivity during the trip. I know cities will probably be fine, but I’ve heard signal can get spotty on cross-border routes or in rural stretches, and I really don’t want to depend entirely on random station WiFi for maps, bookings, or ticket apps.

So I finally going down the eSIM. Airalo was the first one I looked at since it gets recommended everywhere, but their Europe plans were more expensive than I expected once I checked the actual pricing — around €23.5-27.5 for 10GB depending on the package, which ends up being roughly $27-32 USD.

Then I started comparing other options a bit more closely. Holafly looked appealing because of the “unlimited” angle, but I couldn’t really find clear information about throttling. RedteaGO caught my eye mostly because they separate their Europe plans into Basic and Premium tiers instead of just pushing one structure. Their Basic Europe plan is extremely cheap (around $0.7/day across 37 countries), but speeds may get limited after 300MB, so it feels more like a light-use/maps-only setup.

At this point I honestly still don’t know which direction makes the most sense. Part of me thinks I’m over-planning all of this and regular hotel WiFi+moderate data usage would probably be enough anyway. Would love to hear from people who’ve done longer multi-country rail trips though.

Hello. I keep seeing tons of gift ideas for babies everywhere, but lately I’ve been thinking more about the moms

I’m trying to pick a gift for a friend who’s about to have her first baby, and I don’t want it to end up being just more baby stuff. I’d really like to get her something that still feels like it’s for her

btw, before becoming a mom she was really into traveling, photography, and drawing, so I keep thinking it would be nice to get something that connects back to that part of her.

for those of you who’ve been through it, what’s something you actually appreciated receiving for yourself? 

Any ideas, suggestions or links would be awesome. Thanks in advance!

Hello. I keep seeing tons of gift ideas for babies everywhere, but lately I’ve been thinking more about the moms

I’m trying to pick a gift for a friend who’s about to have her first baby, and I don’t want it to end up being just more baby stuff. I’d really like to get her something that still feels like it’s for her

btw, before becoming a mom she was really into traveling, photography, and drawing, so I keep thinking it would be nice to get something that connects back to that part of her.

for those of you who’ve been through it, what’s something you actually appreciated receiving for yourself? 

Any ideas, suggestions or links would be awesome. Thanks in advance!

Had a raspberry pi 4 running home assistant for two years. SD card started acting up, updates were taking forever, random freezes every week.

picked up a Geekom air12 for under $300 and installed HAOS on it. restored from backup, whole thing took two hours. Boot time went from 3 minutes to under 30 seconds. 40 integrations and it doesn't break a sweat.

Probably overkill if you're just running a few devices, but for me the reliability difference was immediate.

What finally pushed you off the pi, SD card, performance, or something else?