Storm Gods buy shit...
Jan. 31st, 2014 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pheloniusfriarI keep forgetting that the crazy good folks at Alchemy Mindworks (the people who have the world's best image processing and management software, including GIF/PNG/MNG animation stuff) have a products review site. Literally, they write reviews on the shit they have purchased for themselves, and the site is called Storm Gods (<-- yes, that's the link to the page). As they say: Storm Gods is an independent product review. It features reviews of things we’ve purchased to run Alchemy Mindworks, and for our own amusement and the detriment of our eternal souls. For the most part, it’s a very positive review page, because we research the stuff we buy to death before anyone lets a credit card see daylight. Anyway, if that's the sort of thing you like to read, there you have it (it's truly one of the less traveled corners of the Intertubes, so if you're bored of Facebook or Tumblr you can go play there for a while). Now, I know Alchemy Mindworks are a bit crazy when it comes to copyright laws and what whatnot, so at the risk of offending their delicate sensibilities, here is an excerpt from a review they did this month, specifically the introduction (the title is a link to the specific review):
Bunn MyCafé MCU Single Serve Coffee Brewer
The technology for brewing coffee seems at times equal to that of placing people on other worlds, or at the very least of letting them pretend to be there… with convincing 3D graphics and surround-sound. A kettle full of hot water and some ground-up beans doesn’t begin to cut it.
Single-serving pod-based coffee makers offer a number of salient advantages to more traditional coffee-tech – bereft of simmering vats of antediluvian brew, they promise a fresh cup every time someone stabs the Start button. They also allow every cup of coffee to be of a unique blend, for those coffee illuminatae who can really taste the difference. Finally, entirely lapsing into somnolence between sessions, they can save a lot of watts by not keeping anything hot while they’re idle.
Unfortunately, early expressions of pod coffee systems suffered from dodgy engineering, incompatible proprietary pod structures and oftentimes stratospheric pricing for their consumables. The eco-left frequently embraced them as a new axis of evil for littering the planet with their discarded – and largely unrecycleable – plastic containers.
The only positive thing most users of those early pod coffee makers had to say of them was that they typically suffered terminal pump failure and reverted to e-waste shortly after their warranties expired, allowing them to be remorselessly updated with newer hardware. Admittedly, a short working life usually isn’t one of the bulleted features displayed on the packaging for these things.
To read the rest of the review, click on the link above :). My point being that the writing (even on the product pages and license agreements for products from Alchemy Mindworks) is always entertaining and clever and worth a gander (and yes, Steve Rimmer, the company owner, writes novels and records music and all sorts of other stuff). My favourite being their shareware notice: Should you fail to register any of the evaluation software available through our web pages and continue to use it, be advised that a leather-winged demon of the night will tear itself, shrieking blood and fury, from the endless caverns of the nether world, hurl itself into the darkness with a thirst for blood on its slavering fangs and search the very threads of time for the throbbing of your heartbeat. Just thought you'd want to know that. You have been warned ;).
Bunn MyCafé MCU Single Serve Coffee Brewer
The technology for brewing coffee seems at times equal to that of placing people on other worlds, or at the very least of letting them pretend to be there… with convincing 3D graphics and surround-sound. A kettle full of hot water and some ground-up beans doesn’t begin to cut it.
Single-serving pod-based coffee makers offer a number of salient advantages to more traditional coffee-tech – bereft of simmering vats of antediluvian brew, they promise a fresh cup every time someone stabs the Start button. They also allow every cup of coffee to be of a unique blend, for those coffee illuminatae who can really taste the difference. Finally, entirely lapsing into somnolence between sessions, they can save a lot of watts by not keeping anything hot while they’re idle.
Unfortunately, early expressions of pod coffee systems suffered from dodgy engineering, incompatible proprietary pod structures and oftentimes stratospheric pricing for their consumables. The eco-left frequently embraced them as a new axis of evil for littering the planet with their discarded – and largely unrecycleable – plastic containers.
The only positive thing most users of those early pod coffee makers had to say of them was that they typically suffered terminal pump failure and reverted to e-waste shortly after their warranties expired, allowing them to be remorselessly updated with newer hardware. Admittedly, a short working life usually isn’t one of the bulleted features displayed on the packaging for these things.
To read the rest of the review, click on the link above :). My point being that the writing (even on the product pages and license agreements for products from Alchemy Mindworks) is always entertaining and clever and worth a gander (and yes, Steve Rimmer, the company owner, writes novels and records music and all sorts of other stuff). My favourite being their shareware notice: Should you fail to register any of the evaluation software available through our web pages and continue to use it, be advised that a leather-winged demon of the night will tear itself, shrieking blood and fury, from the endless caverns of the nether world, hurl itself into the darkness with a thirst for blood on its slavering fangs and search the very threads of time for the throbbing of your heartbeat. Just thought you'd want to know that. You have been warned ;).
