Posts by Zzyzx
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You know, I've been kind of fascinated by Russian watches since I first learned of them. But, for some reason, the price of the basic Vostok amfibia has increased somewhat steadily over the last year or two. Maybe it's a Eurozone-Rouble thing, or just the sellers I'm looking at. I don't know.
That being said, they're still only €129. But I used to see them running around €109 and then going on sale for less.
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Mainly I'm looking at poljot24.de
I suppose there are a couple of benefits to paying a bit more there. Julian checks out (and I think somewhat regulates) the movements. Oftentimes you get an extra strap or two. He's willing to service the watches after purchase. Plus he's got a great selection of less-common watches. Frankly, I've heard nothing but good things from him.
But I'm still enamored of the accuracy and relative light weight of quartz (G-Shock). So I don't think even curiosity and quirkiness are enough to get me to purchase a Russian watch right now...
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I just really like the Russian engineering philosophy of "If it ain't broke don't fix it. And if you need to fix it, a rock will suffice." Like, there's just something admirable about recognizing your own industrial shortcomings and then finding (relatively simple) workarounds to it.
The part of me that eventually wants to buy an old car to work on is the same part of me that is tempted by a Russian watch just for fun. On the other hand, I suppose working on a Russian watch instead of a car is ultimately a bit easier and probably more environmentally-friendly... But watches also (in spite of joking) don't respond well to being fixed with hammers. Whereas an old car could...
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Cool, good luck. Do you mind sharing what business field you're going to be working in? I'm just curious.
Hopefully it can keep you rolling in
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That's pretty cool. I enjoy looking at architecture magazines and reading up on some of the movements. Of course half the time I don't know what they're writing about...
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Sounds like Swabians, cf. "Kehrwoche."
On the other hand, this country is one of the most densely-populated countries in Europe. So our wilderness is oftentimes less wild than in the US and trails, etc. are quite well-maintained. In my experience, many Germans who have never been to America simply can't comprehend the distances involved. I knew a couple who vacationed in San Francisco and wanted to take a flight to Hawaii "for the afternoon." Drive three hours in almost any US state and you're still in the middle of the state. If I were to drive three hours from my home, I'd have definitely left the state and maybe crossed a couple of states.
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Speaking of the feeling in the crown, winding the movement, etc. I have to say I've had a somewhat contrary experience to the past few comments.
I've owned a Tissot Le Locle with a fairly standard ETA-2824, and a Longines Hydroconquest that I think has a higher-end 2824? I've also seen some people claim the 2892. Longines switched things up now and then, but also slapped their own alphanumeric on the movement, and I haven't popped open the caseback to check. Anyway, I also owned one of the early 4r36-equipped Seikos as the same time as the Tissot.
Honestly, the 4r36 had a much more satisfying tactile feel to winding the crown. It felt like there were actually gears meshing. The Tissot and Longines has that "bag of sand" feel that Hornet mentioned. Not a huge deal, because I don't hand-wind anyway.
However, the 4r36 also clicked satisfyingly into the first and second position. And when changing the day/date it also had a satisfying feel of gears clicking. When I change the date on my ETAs, it's barely a click at all. And finding out if I've managed to pop it into the first position is just guessing, really. Especially on the Longines with a screw-down crown. I've popped it out and thought it was in the first position only for it to not be out far enough, and I've accidentally popped it out too far and stopped the hands. It's guesswork at best.
Like, there's alternately almost no feel to the movement and a somewhat disturbing grinding, grainy feel to it. Since I've felt the grainy feel in more than one movement, it seems to be just the way the ETAs are.
Now, the 4r36 wasn't as accurate from the factory as the ETAs. And beyond the movements, the Seiko had the typical alignment issues. But for the same price (Tissot) and less than half the price (Longines), Seiko made/makes a movement that just feels far more satisfying to manipulate.
I've owned a Tissot Le Locle with a fairly standard ETA-2824, and a Longines Hydroconquest that I think has a higher-end 2824? I've also seen some people claim the 2892. Longines switched things up now and then, but also slapped their own alphanumeric on the movement, and I haven't popped open the caseback to check. Anyway, I also owned one of the early 4r36-equipped Seikos as the same time as the Tissot.
Honestly, the 4r36 had a much more satisfying tactile feel to winding the crown. It felt like there were actually gears meshing. The Tissot and Longines has that "bag of sand" feel that Hornet mentioned. Not a huge deal, because I don't hand-wind anyway.
However, the 4r36 also clicked satisfyingly into the first and second position. And when changing the day/date it also had a satisfying feel of gears clicking. When I change the date on my ETAs, it's barely a click at all. And finding out if I've managed to pop it into the first position is just guessing, really. Especially on the Longines with a screw-down crown. I've popped it out and thought it was in the first position only for it to not be out far enough, and I've accidentally popped it out too far and stopped the hands. It's guesswork at best.
Like, there's alternately almost no feel to the movement and a somewhat disturbing grinding, grainy feel to it. Since I've felt the grainy feel in more than one movement, it seems to be just the way the ETAs are.
Now, the 4r36 wasn't as accurate from the factory as the ETAs. And beyond the movements, the Seiko had the typical alignment issues. But for the same price (Tissot) and less than half the price (Longines), Seiko made/makes a movement that just feels far more satisfying to manipulate.
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I'm back to wearing my Longines over the G-Shock.
For some reason, I always go back to analog. No matter how practical digital is. No matter how many "categories" the G-Shock "ticks." (Not to open up that debate again.) For some reason, analog just keeps my attention...
For some reason, I always go back to analog. No matter how practical digital is. No matter how many "categories" the G-Shock "ticks." (Not to open up that debate again.) For some reason, analog just keeps my attention...
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Why join now, when you can join later?
Wait a minute...
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Honestly, maybe the only Rolex I actually like.
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I suppose my list is fairly simple:
Lightweight, not too large, robust, accurate.
I'm currently re-watching "Band of Brothers." In the first episode Winters consults what seems to be an A-11 watch. Never got into "The Pacific" for some reason though, even though I wrote a thesis paper on the naval war in the Pacific. I think it may have been that it was easier to follow "Band of Brothers" because that storyline followed one group of people. Introduce too many characters and names, and I start to forget who is who and why they're doing what they are. I may have to give The Pacific another try though...
Lightweight, not too large, robust, accurate.
I'm currently re-watching "Band of Brothers." In the first episode Winters consults what seems to be an A-11 watch. Never got into "The Pacific" for some reason though, even though I wrote a thesis paper on the naval war in the Pacific. I think it may have been that it was easier to follow "Band of Brothers" because that storyline followed one group of people. Introduce too many characters and names, and I start to forget who is who and why they're doing what they are. I may have to give The Pacific another try though...
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A collection of sticky proportions sounds... uncomfortable
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I'm honestly not sure there is much of a "cure" for flip-for-profit other than hoping for the hype surrounding watches to die down. Kurono tried that thing with only selling one of their releases to women and it was kind of a mess. But part of me thinks that this is just the end result of mass social media capitalism. Everything becomes the next big profit. We know the cost of everything and the value of nothing anymore.
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A while back I was thinking about this and how it's really just the old human impulse to seek out power. And now that our power demands are increasing and technology is increasing ahead of them, it's the impulse/seduction of power in really all definitions of the word.
Gedankenmusterwiderspruchlichkeit could fit. Literally "thought pattern contradiction-ness." Although it's not exactly a real word in the sense of being in common use. The beauty of German is that you can just slap words together to make a new one, but that doesn't mean that it's a word that gets used.
I like how you used the criteria list that you were arguing against to shoot @bth1234 down. There's probably a very long word in German to describe exactly this circumstance but I can't think of an English word or phrase.
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It is actually a rather dynamic thing!
For a while the longest German word in common usage was the German version of BSE (Mad Cow Disease) due to an outbreak in... Poland, I think? However, that's over so our word for BSE has "fallen out" of common-use dictionaries.Of course there are (probably multi-volume) dictionaries that keep no-longer-commonly-used words in them.
A fun German party game is to sit in a circle, have one person start with one letter of the alphabet, each person adds a letter until a word is spelled. The fun part is you can call BS on the person before you and, if they can't think of a workable German word that includes their letter, they lose. Since you can just keep adding words on, you can get some really long words. I won once with the equivalent of "can opener hand crank."
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