matias

[quote name='lilwoggy' date='09 July 2010 - 10:43 AM' timestamp='1278665016' post='474515'] okay, so after trying this method 5 times with the single big hole (start small with each sessions and gradually increase the hole size with a MYA poker until i achieve a good easy draw that pulls good smoke) I've definitely noticed a cleaner and stronger flavor, but i just can't get these huge clouds you keep talking about! I've smoked AF the whole time (only thing i can get my hands on besides herbal) and it's just not working for the huge smoke. I was getting better smoke with a normal phunnel method, or even a standard mya bowl, i dunno why it just won't work for me... any suggestions? [/quote] I have been trying this method with mizo and reg. nakhla and it works really well. On a bowl, the first session usually get me regular clouds but it's only when I am using a necro bowl that I get the big clouds. I guess that in my case the solid first layer that the first session creates then works as a better heat transmitter. I don't have any real clue though

I am interested in your phunnels... pics?

I don't know if this works with Mac / your browser, but try Ctrl + mouse click on the link. It should open in another window / tab

[quote name='mushrat' date='02 July 2010 - 12:51 PM' timestamp='1278067864' post='473753'] nope. i just used the bowl a second time instead of tying to figuer out how to use less tobacco. [/quote] Same here. And I would like to stress the fact that the second or the third or the fourth run are not in any way inferior to the first. Quite often the contrary. Of course I only smoke Tangiers, Nakhla and some Cleopatra and they let me do it. I have heard though that not all brands gave one this possibility. It would be interesting to hear other people's views about there experience in that regard.

Great thread and food for thought. As Eric would say "Now that's content!"

[quote name='mushrat' date='30 June 2010 - 12:46 PM' timestamp='1277894811' post='473389'] um. ok. so lets see what we can do about it. Care to elaborate on who was banned who shouldn't have been and why? who needs to be banned (you can pm me this one if you want) . and what we can do about the other communities? Look back and you will see what we talk about now is what we have always talked about, you have just been around long enough to notice the repetition. Heck go back 4 years and you'll see the same topics with different names really. Lets face it, there are only so many things you can talk about with a hookah. Design, recommendations of products, problem solving, and smoking stories. I've always liked the fact we don't have all the bs fluff you see on other sites. Here we talk about hookahs with sections for the other stuff. I still like to think its the more mature of the forums if you will where its the quality of our posts, not the quantity that matters. Keep in mind one of the other forums was started because we kicked a bunch of people causing trouble around here long ago and they wanted a forum where they could do what they wanted. It has since matured as well and is pretty much a clone of this site but thats how it started. The other was started so the owner could get free stuff from companies. It has changed hands but the quality hasn't changed much. and finally, the newest addition to the forums was started to give the vendor who started it a safe place to advertise in the event the other forums decided not to let him on. A legitimate issue in his case not because there is anything wrong with him as a vendor but because thats the politics of this type of venue. Im not taking this personally but I am willing to talk about what you see as problems and what you suggest as corrections. Because i feel that if you are going to complain about something, you should have a solution to suggest. [/quote] I really hate it when someone gives an answer 10 times better than what I could say, has 10 times the legitimacy I have to answer, covers all the important points and makes it impossible for me to dissent in any way. Please don't do it again Mushrat

Well, apart from the fact that I'd like to hear at least some criticism of the Republicans from the Scotsman, I think I can agree with most of what everyone said here. This being said, all this criticizing of politicians is very fine but a fact remains: the people elect them, the responsibility to change them and change the system is the people's. I know they are being brain-washed and "can't see" how they are being led on, but it's still their responsibility. Politicians polarize the people trying to make them believe in an enemy [read "Democrats", "Republicans", "Socialists", "Terrorists", "Illegal immigrants", "Enemies of America" (yes I know... there are people conceited and stupid enough to really think (as opposed to the lazy use of the word) that the United States of America are America, quite forgetting about all the other countries that form this beautiful continent), add other enemies at will]. If the people do not wake up to it, they will keep being screwed. Politicians are exploiting the "I can't be bothered to participate or see beyond my bigoted we-are-right-they-are-wrong, we-are-good-they-are-evil views " attitude. While this is wrong of the politicians, it is still the people's fault if they let them do it, especially as I am more and more of the opinion that this is because a vast number of people are putting "me" and "my own comfort" at the center of their consuming-centered life. I am saying this for all of our so-called democracies, not only the USA. So-called not because their institutional structure is un-democratic but because when the people stop participating in the "Government of the People", stop checking and questioning what their representatives do, democracy is broken. My take on it: do right at my level, check, participate, get involved, shout, protest, discuss, engage. When enough people do it, it will make a change at a global level. In the meantime, the fruits, as modest as they might be, can still be seen at a local level.

Shipping is 30 AUS$ for Australia. If any of you Aussies is interested, you can still PM me, it will probably be a couple of days until I start sending them out. I would still like this thread to be sent to the closed trades sub-forum, please.

[quote name='thecoalition' date='27 June 2010 - 03:34 PM' timestamp='1277645671' post='473030'] i can buy a kilo for 24$ locally. [/quote] Then package filling will be their destiny Could a moderator please move this to the closed trades?

well, I am not selling, just letting you pay the shipping You can have the strawberry but I do not think it would be very interesting cost-wise. Shipping here is stupidly the same price for anything up to a kilo, then anything up to 2 kilos etc... So the shipping price would remain at 23$ and I do not think that's a very competitive price for 550g of Nakhla. Everyone can work out their own quote here: [url="http://correos.es/comun/tarificador/Triptico_Tarifas_2010.pdf"]http://correos.es/comun/tarificador/Triptico_Tarifas_2010.pdf[/url] under [b]Paquetes internacionales - Económico[/b]

[quote name='porksandwich9113' date='26 June 2010 - 03:17 PM' timestamp='1277558257' post='472926'] Damn shipping costs! [/quote] I will second that. I would not have thought you could buy a kilo of nakhla in the USA for 23 US$ shipping included. If that's the way it is, I will just keep it to put in as a filler in other packages.

btw, strawberry is 350g unopened, 200g opened and in a polypropylene container

I have some Nakhla laying around that I can't stand. If you pick up the bill for shipping from Spain, it's yours. [list][*]550 g Nakhla Strawberry (container included)[*]450g Nakhla el Basha Grape (unopened)[*]50g Mixed fruits (unopened)[/list]For a kilo and under, shipping is around 23$ for the USA, 22 pounds for the UK. Up to 2 kilos it's an extra 6$ for the USA and 2 pounds for the UK How fucked up is it that shipping to the American continent is cheaper than shipping to Africa which in turn is cheaper than shipping to France or the UK?

[quote name='Arcane' date='10 June 2010 - 11:13 AM' timestamp='1276161191' post='471328'] ah....that's a great tip about moving the TVersity to another drive....i think i'll put it on the 250GB now... i was reading up on RAID 5...if one of the disks crashes, would i have to replace the disk with the exact same HDD? or can i just plop in any 500GB drive? lastly, expansion...if i wanted to expand my storage from 4x500GB to 4X1TB discs, would I have to wipe and rebuild the array? [/quote] It has to be of the same size and type: any 500GB with the same characteristics would be ok. A larger disk would work too but you would not be able to use disk space over 500GB. The array can be expanded dynamically if your controller allows it. If you are going to replace the whole 4 drives you can change them one at a time, rebuild the array data on the new disk, 4 times. In the end you get a copy of the array on the 4x1TB and just need to expand the partition to use the whole 4TB. Or you can mount the array on another computer, mount the new array on your server and transfer data onto it.

Raid 0 [list][*]Performance: Raid 0 gives you nothing because you are going to be accessing large files. Raid 0 gives you a performance boost when you are accessing files that are smaller than the stripe size.[*]redundancy is a bitch: you lose 1 disk, you lose data on all 4[/list]Raid 5 [list][*]Min. 3 similar HDDs so you're good. Parity and data are both spanned over the 4 drives. Parity takes up a storage space equivalent to one of the hard drives. It would mean you would 'lose' 500GB storage. But IMO that's a good tradeoff: 500 GB for 1.5TB of data insured against the loss of any one of the 4 HDDs. And it is redundant over time. If you lose one HDD you can rebuild parity and keep your collection long after your DVDs are scratched to death.[*]Performance: go Raid 5 only if you have it at hardware level. Software-based RAID 5 is usually slow. Writes are not very performant but reads are, regardless of the size of your files. But reads are boosted, regardless of the size of the accessed file. IMO, that fits your case as you do not really care if there is some overhead at write time[/list] VLC transcodes. I don't know TVersity, but it sounds good. VLC seems to support DLNA with some tweaking (my own media server is down for maintenance until I get the money to put it back up so I can't test it) but the tweaking part means headaches, so it's better to stick to a solution you know works. I like dvd shrink to store my DVDs. You can strip off all the fat and keep the meat at any compression level suits you. Major win. conf files: what I meant is keep all the configuration data you can away from the OS partition. For example, I do not know how TVersity stores it's catalogue, but it is good if you can store that or those files in a partition that won't suffer from reinstalls and has redundancy. Another example is keep your "My Documents folder" away from the OS and store it on another partition. Same with email archives etc... It makes reinstalls much less of a headache and means the work you put into cataloguing is pretty much going to last long term. In Win world, reinstalls are just something that will happen, sooner or later. So are HDD fails. It is not a question of whether there will be a failure, but of "when" and "are you prepared?".