Safety Valve

(Originally posted on Google+, Apr 5 2016.) Been quite annoyed lately with the crap digital TV box we have. Or, in particular with the remote control. It was glitching a lot, only reacting to about 20% of keypresses - felt like the keys were giving up or the IR circuit was flaky. To switch channel, you had to press it repeatedly and swear a lot. Well, technically, the swearing was optional. And actually, it was my wife who was most affected by the problem, since she's the one who watches TV in this house. I was mainly being annoyed by proxy and because I'm the one who has to try to fix the problem. Today, I tried again. I checked with the camera on my phone that the IR lamp seemed to work - and I noted no glitching. It reacted immediately to all keypresses. So I cleaned the front of the TV box to make sure the receiver wasn't being blocked. Then I tried it out - and it worked surprisingly well. No problems at all in fact. It behaved just as when new (still a crap box, b...

(Originally posted on Google+, Mar 24 2016.) If you've played the classic point-and-click adventure Grim Fandango, you probably remember the Department of Death building where the game starts out. But did you know that it was based on a real building? The place is 450 Sutter Street, San Francisco, and it is covered in Aztec Art Deco, for real. On my recent trip to SF, I had the opportunity to check it out. Was not disappointed. Would have been nice to be able to go up to a skybar or similar though. Preferably with the option to go onto the roof and feed the pigeons while carrying a balloon animal looking like Robert Frost. For more details, see http://grim-fandango.wikia.com/wiki/Department_of_Death Also, I always thought that the hidden elevator (spoiler warning) in the pavement in the alley behind the DoD was a contrived idea that someone made up just for the game. But these are actually common in San Francisco - see the last picture. They are used to bring stuff in from d...

(Originally posted on Google+, Oct 15 2015.) Got myself a new mug to match that keyboard.

(Originally posted on Google+, Sep 30 2015.) So I got myself what has to be the nerdiest bluetooth keyboard in the world: http://sinclair.recreatedzxspectrum.com/ Quite expensive too, for a bluetooth keyboard. But build-wise, it's a perfect replica of the ZX Spectrum we know and love. Feels exactly right and has the correct key labels. Which means that used with a decent emulator, it recreates the feeling of typing on a real Speccy (without resorting to blind hunt-and-peck which is generally the case if you use a PC keyboard). And after some fiddling with figuring out how to unlock the full bluetooth QWERTY mode as well as the Speccy-specific mapping, I can confirm that it works as advertised as a generic keyboard for Android, iOS or Windows. I only had to ask myself, "can I think of anyone who's a more suitable target for this product" to realize that I really had to get it. It's certainly not for fast touch typing, but programming on a Speccy was more ...

(Originally posted on Google+, Sep 30 2015.) Wow, someone put up a video of running my old Speccy emulator on an Amiga. :-)

(Originally posted on Google+, Jun 22 2015.) Bricckkkkssss!