27 May 2009
Having stumbled through to my mid-twenties on a archaeic mix of personal music technologies such as "tapes", "minidiscs" and "listening to music through speakers in the privacy of my own home", about 5 years ago I got my first MP3 player. The play in question is a Cowon Iaudio X5 (which is very good by the way, especially with rockbox) but over time the battery has been dying and a year or so ago I managed to drop the mean time between intermittent failures on the disk to about 2 days by unceremoniously propelling it across the office in a cable-tripping-over incident. Instead of buying an iPod I decided to have a go at fixing it:
New battery (ebay) : £10.
32Gb CF card ( MyMemory) : £45 (it was on sale currently seems to be about £60).
CF- 1.8" Toshiba adaptor ( LinITX) : £10 .
Opened case, removed drive, de-soldered old battery, re-soldered new battery (make mental note, buy a new nib for soldering iron and some flux, curse EU for banning lead solder), reassemble.
Charge, test, play, woop.
New battery (ebay) : £10.
32Gb CF card ( MyMemory) : £45 (it was on sale currently seems to be about £60).
CF- 1.8" Toshiba adaptor ( LinITX) : £10 .
Opened case, removed drive, de-soldered old battery, re-soldered new battery (make mental note, buy a new nib for soldering iron and some flux, curse EU for banning lead solder), reassemble.
Charge, test, play, woop.
27 Mar 2009
One of the most annoying things about our new house is the flapping letterbox, we are quite high up (175ft anyway) on a relatively exposed spot and the wind makes it flap continuously.
Fortunately I ordered a big box of Neodymium-Iron-Boron supermagnets a while ago from wondermagnet :
.
I was able to affect a successful repair by supergluing two connecting magnets to the flap and the letterbox respectively:
Prompt snubbing of those people who claimed that owning 100 assorted supermagnets would never be of any use for anything.
Fortunately I ordered a big box of Neodymium-Iron-Boron supermagnets a while ago from wondermagnet :
.I was able to affect a successful repair by supergluing two connecting magnets to the flap and the letterbox respectively:
Prompt snubbing of those people who claimed that owning 100 assorted supermagnets would never be of any use for anything.
22 Mar 2009
I do realise that decoration is very boring, but this will not stop me from inflicting my enthusiasm on you (and other people):
Dave the plasterer came and did a fantastic job on our fireplace :
There is something about taking a bag of powder and some water and making things which are not flat or solid-looking, flat and solid looking which I am unnaturally excited about. Either that or I've drunk too much tea (plasterers seem to drink a lot of tea).
Dave the plasterer came and did a fantastic job on our fireplace :
There is something about taking a bag of powder and some water and making things which are not flat or solid-looking, flat and solid looking which I am unnaturally excited about. Either that or I've drunk too much tea (plasterers seem to drink a lot of tea).
18 Mar 2009
Last year Marina and I converted a few hours of frivolous time-wasting into a paper about visualsing answer set problems in 2D.
I've had a 3D block puzzle (which has belonged to the lab since I have been here) sat incomplete on my desk for the last couple of months and after a couple of hours of tinkering with the original visualisation code, I can now visualise problem solutions in 3D:
from
to:
Much joy; I no longer have 6 pieces of randomly shaped wood sat on my desk. Hoorah.
I've had a 3D block puzzle (which has belonged to the lab since I have been here) sat incomplete on my desk for the last couple of months and after a couple of hours of tinkering with the original visualisation code, I can now visualise problem solutions in 3D:
from
to:
Much joy; I no longer have 6 pieces of randomly shaped wood sat on my desk. Hoorah.