Thursday, May 10, 2012

Do you support same-sex marriage?

I don’t see why not - to me it’s just a mutual acknowledgement of their relationship, and also has a legal framework behind it for dealing with things like death of a partner and things like that. Also, it reduces the welfare burden for countries with it, because two lesbians with children in a house would be able to each claim single mothers’ allowances.

So, there’s some new information coming out where they’re trying to fix the issue by dynamically adjusting the voltages fed to the screen…

there are now 2 OTA updates carrying the version 1.29.xxx

• 1.29.401.7 - released last week to Europe and today in the UK for unlocked handsets and the new update release today
• 1.29.401.11 - release today in Europe

This is one that apparently fixes the screen flicker problems.

It can take a number of days to bed in as the software monitors the voltage and adjusts itself to reduce the flicker over time. The new 1.29.401.11 update probably won’t release in the UK for a few days yet, I think it was about 6-7 days for the .7 release to become available (unless you’re rooted and like flashing ROM’s)

[Read More]

Well, I’ve had my HTC One X less than five days now, and I’ve already had to return it. The screen flickering issue that’s heavily documented on XDA-Developers has gotten too annoying and I need to start documenting my displeasure with HTC and Optus.

Basically there’s an issue with certain colour types/images where there will be a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) flickering of the brightness on that section of the screen. At times it looks like the drivers for the graphics hardware don’t seem to support an opacity overlay (it’ll happen on dimmed screens/gradients) but others it’s just on sprite graphics so I’m not sure.

Ok, so I’ve come to a few realisations this week:

• There’s too much stuff in my life
• There’s too many hobbies in my life
• I need to cut these down
• I am just not meant to ride a motorcycle in my current understanding of this
• I seem to be an alright shot, when it comes to Thursday Bowling Pin R/F shoots.

I bought myself a new phone today, a HTC One X. Nice phone, a little bigger than I’m used to, but this come with some bonuses to readability etc. Optus again, $60 contract, $9.95 for 1GB of extra data blah blah. Free 3G Home Zone thingy, which I’m not sure there’s much use for - if I have internet I have wifi, hence data. Maybe if I ever move to an area with crap mobile coverage it’ll be handy.

I got my Lord L6 razor today, and couldn’t wait to try it out. It’s my first non-cartridge razor, bought cheaply on /r/Wicked_Edge‘s good opinion among others.

I don’t have my shaving brush yet, the only missing active piece from my kit - I need to get/make a stand for my brush & razor in good time. I did my usual dodgy trick, improvisation, and just rubbed the Palmolive shave stick roughly on my face in the shower and gave it a good smoosh around to get a light lather up.

I was just reading an article by Jeff Atwood about how “Your App is just a Collection of Tiny Details“, all about how the automated cat feeders he’d bought five years ago had been updated, and how they’d been improved.

As I was closing that article, a popup appeared from GMail advising me of a new email. I dutifully followed its demand to open the email, and was presented with this.

So, I got onto the idea of Double-Edged blade shaving by cruising Reddit and ending up on /r/wicked_edge. Leisureguy‘s blog led me to Pureman to buy some things. I checked out some other shops but they didn’t have the range or prices for what I wanted. The fact that Pure Man is Australian (let alone, Brisbane-based, where I am!) is quite handy 🙂

I ordered the below:

• Proraso Aloe and Green Tea Shaving Soap
• Col. Conk Bay Rum Shave Soap
• Taylor of Old Bond Street Alum Block
• Gillette 7 O’Clock Super Platinum Blades
• Astra Superior Platinum Blades

When it all arrived, the box was kind of large, and had all these extra things in it! I couldn’t remember ordering them, but it seems they were free samples! 🙂

HPM has taken down the manual for these handy battery-backed timer devices, so I’ve recreated the documentation I could find here. We use them at work for a variety of power control situations, including turning off banks of 46″ LCD TV’s overnight, so they can handle a fair amount of power.

Catalogue number is either D817/2 or 817/2

Time Display

To change from 12-hour display to 24-hour display, or vice versa, press the CLOCK button and hold it until the LCD display changes.

So, while trying to get to the Right People ™ to fix one of our remote 3G IPWAN services, somehow I got through to a consumer-grade accounts person. The Telstra IVR is a horrible mess of “Uh, I’ll mash buttons until someone answers”.

After a few minutes of trying to convey the point, he decided to try and transfer me to a Bigpond 3G helpdesk person. Terrible idea, since they wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to deal with my Cisco 881G router, nor access to our service details.

Going for a real “Evil Mad Scientist” shtick today. I have been pondering some simple DIY projects for making my little living space a little better, and decided that drawing them up might be handy to visualise/work on ideas.

The first one’s a bit of a storage cabinet/shelf to sit over the toilet cistern, which normally wasted space full of dust.

Basically there’s two “legs” which hold toilet paper rolls on hinged roll-holders like you’d normally see in people’s toilets, but covered by a bit of a door so they’re out of the way. On top of the legs are a shelf or two for putting things away. While drawing this up I scribbled a few ideas down for how the toilet roll holders would work, and as I thought of the implementation steps the idea morphed into something significantly easier. (from a weird elevator-pulley idea to just a hinge)