King Edward

I mean, yeah? Looks like Bateman Labs makes a great looking chair with solid wood that seems like it does the same thing? https://batemanlabs.com/collections/varmchair Or an even more budget option? https://batemanlabs.com/collections/attachable-lap-desk

It's an interesting product and it's super neat- but I am looking for more PC functionality- it's not uncommon for planning events happens on it- we currently use a chromecast to share screens, but I find that even with screaming wifi there's enough lag that it's not as useful as my wife and I would like. I guess home theatre is the main usage but its certainly possible for it to be used for regular PC tasks in front of a small group.

The reason I don't recommend trails to tourists(hiking alone or not)- and I know the locals will understand- is that during the summer, it's about once or sometimes twice a week(sometimes a day) our local Search and Rescue teams have to be called out to find the missing hiker. Despite our trails being super accessible and near residential areas, anyone can get lost really easily. As for transit- it's one of the best systems in North America and generally reliable enough to live an hour away from your work and meet your connections and the like. Which makes hotel/airbnbs far cheaper. The downside is that service ends relatively early- around 1am in most case.

Hi I'm looking at getting a NUC for a home theatre system. I've built a gaming PC in the past, but I'm a long-suffering Mac-user(I work in a field where the Win/linux offerings for software are hot garbage) and getting a second opinion doesn't hurt. I've picked the NUC for space saving, but I'm open to other ideas but the budget is in that realm of 500-700 CAD. My primary issue is that there are far too many iterations of the NUC to be easily searchable and find the options required. So primarily I'm looking for a specific NUC model recommendation or something else in that realm. I'm not against building the machine as that's always a lot of fun, but I'm not strong enough to straight up pick components on my own. A couple of notes as I'm sure they'll come up- Operating system- A clean install of Win10 would be preferable- having the ability of simply having a computer ready to go I find fixes a lot of frustrations with dedicated streaming boxes and issues like when Amazon Prime doesn't want to stream nicely with a Chromecast. Media will be primarily stored on a NAS that is connected by a gigabit switch and hardwired via cat6 to the home theatre PC, so I'm not worried about storage. The TV is a 55inch 1080p screen and I'm not planning on updating anytime soon- we don't see in 4k and at that size, unless you're actively looking for it it doesn't make *that* much of a difference- at least now when you're streaming media that is only 1080p anyway. I don't plan on mounting the NUC or whatever to anything- so that shouldn't be a consideration. I hope that's enough initial information.

I can't help with the first two questions, but I can help with the last. Honestly, it depends on your interests. If you want to get out and see the outdoors- Grouse Mountain (which is a free direct bus ride from the same place LTX is at) is a safe option if you're not familiar to the area. I don't generally recommend hiking in the mountains outside of Vancouver if you're not with or from this part of the world for a bunch of reasons. Don't want to get that far out of the city? Walk the Seawall- it's a 10km or 6ish mile walk around Stanley Park- There's the Vancouver Aquarium which is one of the better tourist traps in the city and located in the park. The other is Science World - which is located three Skytrain stops away from the Convention Centre. Theatre? https://bardonthebeach.org/ is some of the best in the city located about 20 minutes by public bus(and I think our public bike share actually goes that far now) from the convention site and is worth every penny. Honestly, Vancouver's big claim to fame is its beautiful weather in the summer and beautiful scenery. Spend an evening at the English Bay Beach watching the sunset around 9:30-10ish. Hope this helps!

A looong time lurker- but I'm a Vancouver-based fulltime live-events professional and *this* prompted me to post- please if this is far too ranty, by all means get rid of it, but oof this sort of talk drives me bonkers. 1. Holding events in the US only makes sense for a Canadian company if their merch is already handled in the US- which is why a lot of Canadian content creators partner with US distributing companies to handle their merch. 2. "Don't want to or Can't drive" are two different issues- You have six months to get a passport, considering you can get one in less than 14 days if you pay enough, this isn't a massive financial burden. The cost of attending any convention factors into anyone's desire to attend- the event creator determined Vancouver to be it's home. 3. Don't kid yourself, Vancouver's Convention Center is consistently ranked as one of the best in the world and is the largest in the pacific northwest- you can fit the entirety of PAX West in both the West and East buildings(minus the Benaroya at this point) and still have four hotels literally across the street with another 100k square feet of event space. By all rights, PAX West should move to a larger space, but they're not because Seattle is home for PA and have stated that explicitly for years. 4. Flights to Vancouver/Seattle are pretty comparable- again you have six months to figure it out. 5. Exhibitors don't care at all if an event is in Canada or not-there are expos in Vancouver every week in nearly every industry. Conventions often switch up locations because they're not tied to a specific area- more to a discipline. Pop-culture conventions like LTX, PAX or SDCC are more tied to specific locations because that's generally the best way of making it work when it comes time for staffing and relying on their network to pull it off. Exhibitors care about the venue and if there are hotels nearby. They care about the venue because it informs them what sort of services(freight handling, inhouse AV services, Power, other rentable space) they have access to. That isn't to say that the VCC isn't alone in this, but when the VCC has a massive reputation as being one of the best venues on the continent to handle major events- it makes their lives a lot easier.