Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • Things are conspiring

    I’d kinda blocked today out to do my computer non-upgrade – well, case-upgrade, motherboard is kind of a horizontal movement. This was, of course, foolish. Foolish because whilst the board was meant to arrive today, early, and the case ‘before 10am’, this almost never happens. I mean, technically, the board was meant to arrive last week, but the expedited 2 day shipping from USPS took 7 days.

    So first up I tried to call our realtor who was meant to send us stuff to look at, and hadn’t. After leaving a message, I gave in and found other things to do.

    First up I had a look at the UPS I picked up for 7 dollars at Goodwill. Now they proclaim the test everything, so I had moderate hopes. Although it smelt a bit of hot component, which made me a touch suspicious. Still, I plugged it in – no life. I flipped it over, the battery was disconnected. Ah!

    Connected the battery. Plugged it in. No life.

    Oookay.

    Open the case, the hot component smell becomes more pronounced. Uh oh…

    IMG_20160411_093520

    I don’t even have to look hard:

    IMG_20160411_093542

    The voltage regulator has gone bang. So I popped in an order for one, it being only 50c (actually I’ve ordered 10, because that was the same price as ordering one and a 5th of another). Then John pointed out that in the photo the fuse F6 (right at the front) has also gone. So I need to bring it back in and do some more investigation…and work out what F6 should be.

    Still, the battery is 12.27 volts, which is a good start :)

    I could just take it back, but it is something for me to poke at.

    Still…

    Then I had a play an argument with KiCad. Not its fault, I’ve never really used board layout stuff, and I’m needing to learn – a lot. After some prolonged cursing (this tutorial I found is great, except that it seems to relate to a different version of KiCad, so occasionally, I’ll press button X and Z will happen, not Y. For example, a dialog box that doesn’t appear when I press it, or a function that’s not there, but somewhere else. Hopefully I’ll get it eventually).

    Then I hear the scuffling of the UPS delivery person. Quietly trying to slip away before I can spot it. I grab the box and pull it in, resisting the urge to open it immediately, I eat lunch.

    I can, I think, at least start transferring components into the new PC case.

    I open the box, slide out the new case and…

    IMG_20160411_124710

    Well, fuck.

    Some of the blanking plates are bent, there’s a snapped attachment lug rolling around in the case, and the front of the case is flapping off the front like a dying fish.

    So, refund request commenced, again.

    I’m beginning to wonder if anyone in the US can ship electronics. I order stuff from China and it takes a month to get here, but it’s well packed and arrives in one piece. I order something from within the US and it arrives smashed and broken. I am annoyed.

    …and then I rang the realtor who has been “snowed under” and promised to send us some stuff having leapt to do another search now and will, definitely, come and view the property that he wanted to show us today.

    Feh.

  • tastefullyoffensive:

    This should be a movie. (via Patrick Lenton)

  • badgerofshambles:

    timemachineyeah:

    Sometimes I think about the future of self driving cars and how everyone I talk to about that future is like “okay but in an emergency we’ll be able to take back manual control, right?” and I usually placate them by saying, yeah, that’s totally how it’ll happen, but actually we’re already seeing the opposite. Cars with “self driving” features like steering and breaking that kick in and take control from the driver if the driver is about to rear end someone or is in a dangerous situation because the truth is computers can think faster and have better reflexes than us and I think about this going into the future and how if the self-driving cars are able to share their data with each other and learn from the driving experiences of every car on the road soon we’ll have cars that are so massively experienced at driving and avoiding accidents and making microsecond decisions and partial degree turns of the wheels and being so damn precise that automobile accidents will be almost unheard of and that’s when we’ll develop the most wasteful hilarious extreme sport in history where a single human driver will go up against an arena of ultra smart self driving cars and just by driving around recklessly try to coral them into crashing into each other and I tell you I would watch that sport all day.

    Oh my god that is so much better than nascar, sign me the fuck up

    I couldn’t watch this. I’d be worried that any of these vehicles had developed any degree of sentience… We have enough trouble with the roomba being in servitude.

  • the-future-now:

    SpaceX just made history by landing a rocket on a boat — and that’s a really big deal.

    Follow @the-future-now

  • matters-from-ashes:

    theworldisconfused:

    ep0nine:

    saramcclarinet:

    brainbowunicorn:

    Sometimes I just start singing and my mom joins in

    Whoa…

    #don’t trust this
    #they’re probably sirens

    That, my friends, is the O Magnum Mysterium by Tomás Luis de Victoria. I would love to live in a house where people just casually sing music like this

    No. These people are, in fact, sirens.

  • cheynegel:

    cybergata:

    rina_takei   The window washer is back to play with Guinness

    I’d be willing to bet that this is the highlight of both of their days.

  • pattyfingersintheholywater:

    She’s a professor at my school.

  • Make Some Pocket Extenders for Your Pants

    rosalarian:

    quixiiify:

    So I don’t know about you, but I’m often frustrated by the ridiculous smallness of girls’ pockets. At a bare minimum, I need to be able to shove my cellphone in there – come on, pants companies! So what I started doing was making myself pocket extenders. I’ve done this several times, for pants and shorts. It’s great.

    I just got this pair of jeans, so I thought I’d show you how to do it. I kind of feel like it just hasn’t occurred to some of you that this is an option, so maybe now it will. All you need is your pants, some fabric (I just took a random piece from a scrap bin), a needle, and some thread (thread doesn’t even need to match the fabric since literally no one will see it).

    See? Ridiculous. Like, half a cellphone, or only 2.5?. Useless.

     So turn those inside out to expose the pockets.

    Figure out how big you want your pockets to actually be. I kinda go by whatever looks like might be right. I didn’t
    really measure them. Fold the fabric in half, so you have a pocket, and
    then fold it in half again so you can have two equal ones.

    Try to get the edges to line up enough, pin it in place, then sew up the sides! Are your stitches crazy uneven and wonky looking? Doesn’t matter; nobody’s going to see it. These are in the inside of your pants. The only thing that matters is that it holds up. So I double-did the corners, since those tend to get the most stress.

    Cut open the bottom of the existing pockets.

    Pin it in place, then sew around, joining the new pocket to the old pocket. I did this by keeping my hand on the inside, so I wouldn’t accidentally sew through the other side. Again, I reinforced the corners, and didn’t worry about what it actually looks like. Then I turned it in side out to make sure the inside was all joined properly.

    Yay all done! And the pockets are so much bigger now!

    Whaaaat I can fit my entire phone and entire hand and probably something else now, are girls’ pockets even allowed to do that?! Heck yeah they are.

    You are a goddamn hero.

  • Untitled post 12152

    songscloset:

    prideandpen:

    I really want to read their essay

    Why can’t we see the essay? I’d love to read it.