Nahvalur Original Plus in Matira Quartz with a Medium Steel nib, and inked up with Diamine Frosted Orchid. Absolutely stunning combination! Bonus definition of the word chatoyant.
Another one to add to the list of future purchases!
I just got an email from Casio Education saying that the next graphing calculator is coming next summer, and that prototypes will be shown off at the National Council of Teachers of Match Expo. I'm in the Chicago area, but tickets for non-members are way outside of my discretionary budget. If anybody is going, you'll have to fill us in!
The TI-nspire CX CAS was my first calculator with in integrated CAS, and it was a revelation! I was amazed that a handheld calculator could do symbolic logic, even though the technology goes back to the late '90s. I just never knew that it was a thing. The UI and software for the CX is almost identical to the CX II, though the CX II is more than twice as fast. The touchpad in the middle of the directional button was also improved quite a bit on the CX II. I still use this guy quite a bit, just because it is a special calculator to me. The CAS is not as full-featured as that on either the HP Prime or the Casio fx-CG500, but still powerful as hell. The CX also does not have the third-party support that the TI-89 Titanium has, but is many times faster than it and has the benefit of using a UI that was designed for its form factor.
The pen is an Asvine V200 Titanium M.
My new Asvine V200 Titanium with a medium nib arrived yesterday. The vacuum filler is much smoother than any of my V126s, and on par with my TWSBI Vac 700R. I also picked up a 30 ml bottle of Diamine Earl Grey, but the number of fills I'll be able to get with this pen is limited by the section being too wide to fit in the mouth of the bottle. I need to get different ink? Oh no!
Calculator is a TI-nspire CX CAS, and was my first calculator with a built-in CAS.
My wife got me this Hongdian 1851 for Christmas last year, along with the astronaut pen holder. Since I keep it out on my desk, it is the pen that I reach for most often. It has the finest line of all of my pens and I keep it inked up with iroshizuku murasaki-shikibu, which is an incredibly close match to the body of the pen. It has a lot of feedback without being scratchy, and is great to write with.
The calculator is a Casio fx-260 Solar II, which Kristi also got me for Christmas some years ago. It's the calculator that I grab most often since it is the easiest to get to. It's my little Apocalypse Calculator since it has no battery and is solar powered only.
Sorry the angle is a little funky, but this is one of my two workhorses, the Casio BN-20. This guy gets used almost every day, and is my primary source of truth for my calendar and contacts. It was released in 1998 and has 2 MB of user memory. The spreadsheet function is pretty rudimentary, and the only function that I don't have a lot of experience with. The expense function is the best expense tool I've ever seen on an electronic organizer. I run Xubuntu on modern hardware and can sync the data using Casio PC Sync through Wine and with a USB to serial converter.
The TI-86? It's actually a beast of a calculator when it comes to Linear Algebra. It handles complex matricies better than any other TI calculator with the exception of the Nspire CX and CX II. That said, I have never used one either, lending credence to your observation. I have passed up several auctions for them since the TI-8X line of calculators is not one that I actively collect.
It's like the difference between using a beautiful damascus paring knife to cut an apple, and using a Swiss Army knife to do the same thing. The Swiss Army knife will do the job, but the paring knife will feel better cutting it up. There realistically isn't anything that the electronic organizers can do that a smartphone can't, but the organizer was designed from the ground up to do exactly what it does, and nothing else. There is a joy to using something that was crafted for a specific purpose. Just like I have a bunch of calculators on my phone, I still never leave the apartment without a real calculator. And I've never reached for my phone when I've needed a calculator except for in an emergency when I was too far away from my desk.
That's gorgeous! Are there any converters that fit it?
I finally completed my collection of all six colorways of the Asvine V126 fountain pen. All of them have Asvine medium nibs, and I've been delighted with how well all of them feel in the hand and lay down ink. I'm also mighty happy with the inks that I've paired them with, although the shimmer in the Heart of Gold means that I need to spend more time on maintenance than the others.
I've been on it for about two years. It has helped me control my anxiety fairly well, but I can't really speak to weight effects. I have gained weight over the last couple of years, but I also started working from home and have had several major stressors during that span of time. Plus, I'm staring down the age of 50 so my metabolism is also slowing. I didn't notice any side effects from it at all, though, and it has been very well tolerated by my system.
I hope that helped, and good luck spinning the Wheel of Drugs!
I've been using Platinum Carbon Black for a while, and absolutely love it. Bonus points for it being waterproof.
That is a beautiful machine! It is in so much better condition than I am, despite both me and the calculator having the same manufacturing year.
I have been drooling on these for years. It would take winning the lottery for me to justify spending $2000 USD on one, though.
Thank you for the info! That is a really cool project!
No OCR, but it is heavily touch screen dependent. It's a resistive touchscreen instead of capacitive, so no multi-touch and a stylus is highly recommended.
I've had this guy for about a 18 months and it is one of my favorites. It is slower than the HP Prime and the TI-nspire CX II CAS, but still blows the TI-89 Titanium out of the water as far as speed goes. The huge touchscreen gives it a unique UI that is easier to navigate than the TIs. I've found that this is the best of my collection for linear algebra, and it is the easiest of my CAS calculators to use.
Does anybody else find it odd that the HP Prime stashes the vector field plots in the Geometry app instead of the Advanced Graphing app?
My 30+ year-old Casio fx-7700G is the oldest calculator in my collection. It's a little worn, but still works and gets used! It's been a wonderful companion over the years.
Several new inks and two new pens over the last few days! The Pilot Metro I've had for a couple of weeks now, but had been using the stock black cartridge that came with it while the Diamine Emerald got lost in the mail for a few days. While waiting for the Emerald, I got impatient and bought a three-pack of Diamine Green/Black, Writer's Blood, and Midnight.
I also wanted to try a Japanese fine nib, so I ordered the Pilot Lightive. I'd been getting really curious about Chinese pens as well, and at $11 USD, the HongDian 525 seemed like a great experiment.
First, the inks. All four of them are beautiful, but after seeing the Emerald, the Green/Black seems a little lifeless. Green/Black is still a lovely color and fits in very well with the rest of the trio, but the Emerald is exactly what I was looking for in a green for right now. It's an added bonus that it matches the color of that Retro Pop so well! The Midnight and Writer's Blood are also stellar inks. I can see why the Writer's Blood is such a popular color.
The Pilot Lightive is a wonderful pen to write with. I can definitely see the difference between the German fine of the Lamy Safari and the Japanese fine of the Pilot. For as fine as it is, there is very little feedback and it just glides over the paper. I've been using it quite a bit over the last few days!
The HongDian just arrived about twenty minutes ago, but I'm quite pleased with it so far. It has the same width as the Pilot despite it being sold as an extra-fine. It has a lot of feedback, but it's not what I'd call scratchy. It just lets you know that the paper has some tooth. It's a heavy pen, weighing in more than the Metro, which is a physically larger pen. It also needs a bit heavier hand to get the ink flowing. My other pens just need the weight of the pen, but the HongDian needs the slightest bit of pressure at the start of a line.
I'm excited to keep writing with all of my new toys!
I absolutely love this calculator, with one important caveat: I will never do integrations with this machine except as a test. Its integration algorithm tips over at ridiculously low speeds when it comes to edge cases. I find that it adds to the Sharp's charm, but it definitely affects its usefulness. Aside from that, this nifty little guy has a few features that you can't find on other calculators, and is arguably the best one out there for statistics and tables.
First of all, those buttons labeled D1 through D3 on the top row? Those are this calculator's super power. Programmable Buttons! Let's say that you're in Matrix Mode, and you are doing a whole bunch of stuff with matrices A and B. Typically, to use matrix A it's a three button journey: MATH -> 0 MATRIX -> 0 matA. Instead, you can hit STO D1 and it will let you assign matA to the single button press of D1. Any function from any menu can be mapped to one of those three buttons, saving tons of button presses if you get into the habit of using them.
Most scientifics don't make it too difficult to do base-n calculations, but Sharps make it the easiest out of any manufacturer that I've tried. They are also the only one that supports pental in addition to the standard hex, decimal, octal, and binary. Honestly, I've never had any reason to use pental, but if you're doing something that requires it, this is the only way to go!
It doesn't have any stats features that the Casio fx-991EX or CW don't have, but it does have persistent memory. Anything that you pop into the statistics lists or tables are retained after the calculator is shut down. This is a huge win over the Casios which clear everything when you switch modes or power them off. If you're working with stable sets of data over a longer period of time, this is a lifesaver!
For tables, the Sharp is also a clear winner. When making a table from a function, both the Casios and the TIs have a static value for where x starts. The Casios will only compute 15 steps, while the TIs will continue to calculate as you scroll down through the values. The Sharps not only do rolling calculations going forward, but backwards as well. It's a nice feature to have if you use tables quite often.
Then there's the not so rosy stuff. The aforementioned integrations being the most egregious. It handles easy integrations as well as any other, but when it comes to edge cases it falls down in a light breeze. Take int(e^-x^, 0, A), for instance. Every non-CAS calculator will crap out as A increases in value, but some are far better than others. The new Casio fx-991CW can handle A all the way up to 2.55x10^9^. Even the Catiga CS-121 can get up to 1500 before it gets inaccurate. The Sharp EL-W516T? 16. It dies at 16. Says that the integral is greater than one. It's embarrassing!
The other place that it distinctly craps out in comparison to other flagship scientific calculators is its SHIFT+SOLVE function. It will only solve algebraic equations with a 0 on one side. It won't solve integrations or derivatives like the Casio, and even the TI 36X Pro can handle equations with x on either side of the equals sign. With the Sharp, you need to perform the algebra to get one side equal to 0 or it errors out.
Overall, it's a great device that gets a lot of use on my desk. You just need to be aware of where it is is weak, and be prepared for those inaccuracies.
If you want to see a specific community that doesn't exist, then set it up and post some content! If you want the type of places to hang out that you had on Reddit, you need to create it, nurture it, and grow it. There's no guarantee that Lemmy will be the place to land during the Reddit exodus, but it is a place to land, and a damn fine one at that. Putting my money where my mouth is, if you ever want to talk about calculators head on over to !calculators@midwest.social
My second fountain pen was a Kuratake 13, and I love it! I've been using it daily for more than a year and had no problems with it at all. I've used it with Diamine Ancient Copper, Robert Oster Deep Purple, and Organics Studio Santiago's Sea. The only thing to be careful of is that it will get your fingers inky for the first week or so after a refill. The breather holes are above the brush and they seep for the first seven to ten days.