My son recently made a pen in his high school shop class and absolutely loved the process. With summer approaching, I've been toying with the idea of setting him up with his own pen-turning station rather than the typical summer job route.
Here’s where I could use your expertise:

Lathe Choices: I'm looking at a couple of options from Harbor Freight—there’s a $300 model and a $550 variable speed one. How crucial is variable speed for a beginner? Would the basic model suffice for starting out, or is the upgrade worth it in the long run?

Chisels: I don’t want to cut corners on quality, especially for cutting tools. Any recommendations for brands or specific tools that are good for beginners but can also handle more advanced projects as he improves?

Essentials List: Besides the lathe, what are some must-have tools for pen turning? I already have the basics covered with a table saw, miter saw, dust collection system, and drill press.

Learning Resources: Any favorite videos, books, or other resources that could help both of us learn more about pen turning would be greatly appreciated.

I want to encourage him to sell them, but I'm also completely fine if they end up as Christmas gifts for the family. I’m excited to encourage my son’s new interest and would really appreciate your input on how to create a great setup for him. Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions!

If you think you might be interested to read with us, please name between one and five books you find intriguing and think others might enjoy. We will later have a voting thread so that each nomination gets an equal shot to win votes with no early nomination advantage.

Please feel free to nominate both fiction and nonfiction and consider nominating a diverse selection of books and authors. Books should be 600 pages or shorter. The first books in series are fair game for nominations if they tell a complete story.

If anyone is curious about the timing, we still have two books to read from the original nominations, but I will be traveling a lot this summer and may not be in a position to manage a nomination and voting thread then, so I want to get this sorted earlier.

Sorry about the headline. (not really) I know it doesn't make all that much sense. The thing is, I bought a Dubreq Stylophone Beatbox (review here) and it's really quite fun to play around with. At its core, it lets you record and play your own rhythms in a loop. It sort of feels like an unholy mix between a musical instrument and an editor.

The problem is that I can't save as an editable format (midi or ... whatever) or import new instruments, so while its great fun and quite powerful (I composed this) I still feel the need for something more flexible. Also, I accidently borrowed it away, so while I still "own" it, I don't actually have it as such.

So, are there any other thingie which (gonna repeat the headline here) are fun and intuitive, yet still grants me some more power compared to what is offered by the Stylophone Beatbox? I don't mind if it is a program of a physical thing.

EDIT: Thanks all! I had expected one, maybe two suggestions, so, wow! This is pretty much a new world to me, and I'm floored that there's so much music stuff available. I'm slowly beginning to get some sort of overview of it all.

Voting closed

The Cannes Film Festival is in May and I thought we should find four movies related to Cannes to watch in May. Maybe a bit of a risk since it isn't exactly full of well known mainstream movies, but I promise there is more to choose from than French arthouse movies. The criteria is simple, the movie must have been presented at the Cannes Film Festival at some point.

On the official website you can browse through all movies that has been in competition over the years. To narrow it down there is a list of all the Palme d’Or winners or more broadly every movie that have won any award at Cannes. This list all movies that have been in competition per year in alphabetical order

Rules

• Have been in the official program on the Cannes Film Festival in any year
• Not one we have done before
• Only one nomination per user
• Please only nominate if you intent to participate
• Upvote the post(s) with a nomination you would like to be picked for discussion next month
• Please state the title of the movie clearly on the first line, and add any additional general comments in the next paragraph to keep voting simple

In case of ties in the number of votes, random.org will decide. Voting closes Sunday.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

The wife and I are trying to plan a little road trip this summer and we can't even pick a direction so far, let alone a destination. We're realizing part of the difficulty is that we value spontaneity over planning our vacation.

Some of our best times on vacation have been totally serendipitous - like pulling into Pocatello, Idaho and finding out it has a Museum of Clean, which sounds very quirky. And it was. But also quite entertaining as the founder toured us through some of the many ways that people have engineered things to keep their homes clean over the past century or so. Thats not something we'd ever plan ahead to see but it was a fun and entertaining afternoon.

Or pulling into Rawlins, Wyoming and finding out it has the Wyoming Frontier Prison, which is preserved as a museum with lots of interesting stories of its former prisoners. We toured the cell blocks, cafeteria, showers, and then got to into the 'death house' where the hangings took place. And its the first and last time you'll ever get to sit in a gas chamber!

Looking back though, we've missed some great things too. Like getting to San Francisco and realizing that tours of Alcatraz have been been booked up for weeks. Or finding out that we were a few days early to see all the bikes in Sturgis. Or that if you dont have a destination in Iowa, all youre going to see is miles and miles and miles of corn. And then more corn. Oh well, better luck next time? Or better planning?

Which are you, a detail planner or a fly by the seat of your pants vacationer?

Happy birthday, Tildes! Thanks again to @Deimos for making the best little link aggregator community on the net, and keeping it running so well. And thanks to all you lovely people for all your worthwhile contributions here too. :)

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

All previous Save Point topics

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

No, I don't just mean "I don't really like my clothes" or "my clothes aren't universal enough" or whatever. I literally have almost no clothes: maybe like 5 T-Shirts in total, 2 pairs of jeans, some socks and underwear. The issue is not just with me disliking my clothes - the issue is that half of the time I'll wake up and find out that I have zero clean clothes to wear.

Luckily, this is not a financial issue, and I can afford to get clothes. However, I have absolutely no idea where to start. Most of the information online exists with the assumption that you already have some sort of a wardrobe that you want to expand. I tried just going to a mall and going into every clothing store, but I end up not liking most of the stuff there and only buying like a single shirt. I know that that's how most people buy clothes, but again, those people usually already have enough clothing, so buying a single shirt is fine for them.

At this point, even just thinking about any clothing-related activities immediately trigger severe anxiety and dread in me. I feel very lost and don't know what to do.

Can anyone please suggest what to do in a situation like this?

Edit: I live in Russia, so well known brands aren't that easy to buy

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Albums typically release on Fridays. This is a thread to discuss week of April 26, 2024 releases that have recently arrived on our doorstep, or been announced for the future. Feel free to share albums, singles, EPs or reissues that have caught your eye and interest, or share your thoughts about any new music that you've had the chance to listen to this week. I suppose let's try to keep the focus mostly on stuff that was released or announced this week, since we already have a "What have you been listening to?" thread.

Discussion Points
Is there anything you've been looking forward to listening to?
Any releases that have surprised you?
Have you listened to any new music recently? What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past? How does their latest work compare?

Links:
Pitchfork - Out This Week
AllMusic - All New Releases
Stereogum - New Music
Shreddit Release Tracker
New Metal and Hardcore Releases - Lambgoat
Heavy Metal Album Release Calendar - Heavy Music HQ
Upcoming albums - Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives