Tag Archives: hobbies - Page 10

I Guess I Won’t Bother

Posted by on January 29, 2014 No comments

One of my new fun things to do is find the source of images that are used in Facebook ads.  Copy the image URL, paste it into Google image search and see what comes up.

I had this ad:

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And I found the same picture used on Twitter, so I was like, I should let her know her Twitter profile picture is being used for a dating ad on FB.

This was the start of “her” Twitter feed:

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The same post, over and over.

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And over and over.  I gave up after I got back to posts from 2010.  I guess that face was made for spam.  Poor girl.

Watch Out.

Posted by on December 14, 2013 No comments

I mentioned in a past post that I have a small watch collection.  I say it that way because recently, I considered collecting watches.  I thought I had a fair collection – isn’t more than one a collection?  I had one valuable watch handed down from my dad, four watches all of the same make, just slight variations, then two gifted watches that I didn’t care for.  My plan was to start collecting watches I like.

A little bit of research online showed that that’s not what “watch collecting” means.  Watch collectors are, put bluntly, fucking snobs.  There seems to be only a couple of ways to garner the respect of a watch collector.  Either already have a collection of high-end timepieces, or if you  are starting out, ask for advice and say your budget is something like $5,000.  So, my “collection” of sub-$100 watches is probably an insult to their art.

I had mused on collections in a really old post and came up with the decent conclusion that a collection really only has value to the owner, not to anyone else. (like hair, I said.  Crazy.)  I thought a bit more on it and considered the absurdity of the concept of collecting. Here I am buying $70-100 watches and there’s a whole lot of people out there that couldn’t (or wouldn’t dare) buy a single watch for more than $20.  In that regard, I am very fortunate for my situation, but I certainly don’t have the audacity to look down on someone because they don’t see some perceived value in watches that I see.

And that’s kind of the point.  Why do we collect things?  The high-end watch collectors must be smitten with the amazing craftwork in a watch, and I can understand that.  The issue is that the appreciation of the complexity of the watch is not what is conveyed to a potential fellow collector.  And someone that is buying a watch for a new collection (with a budget of $5k), clearly can’t appreciate the device at the same level.

Really, after all is said and done, a watch tells time.  A $20 Casio digital quartz watch is just as accurate as a Rolex, and doesn’t come with a regular maintenance schedule.  If you’ve never known about luxury watches, yes, they do need to be serviced regularly.  Pay a lot up front and keep paying on schedule.  So, the argument “That watch will last for your lifetime,” loses its charm a little when you have to effectively pay the cost of a new watch every few years.

Given all the thinking I’ve done on this now, I am going to go ahead with my “collection”, although it’s not going to be classified as a collection.  I’m not sure what else to call it.  It’s just a set of watches that I like looking at and wearing and that have the expected purpose of telling time.  As part of their purpose, they match my wardrobe and match the activity I have planned while wearing them.  That’s a balance of practicality and fashion. 

Maybe someday, I will have the desire to own a device with an amazing internal structure and will find the cost of owning it to be worth the reward.  But that day is not today.

Un-Disposable

Posted by on October 23, 2013 No comments

Today I felt pretty good about myself.  I kept myself from spending more money.  I did this by simply repairing what I intended to replace.  This story goes back a little ways.  It’s about my watch.

I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned my watches before, but I have a small collection – a collection I recently am trying to build up a little.  I don’t really like heavy things on my wrist, so I have been attracted to Skagen watches because they are so thin.  When you get them in titanium, they’re even lighter.  As an aside, the current trend of huge watches offends me greatly.

I’ve been wearing Skagen watches for probably over 15 years.  One of the first watches I had, I loved.  Then the battery went dead.  So I filled out an RMA form and mailed the watch off to Skagen for battery replacement.  I never saw the watch again.  Worse, I never saw that model again, so I was never able to replace it.  I think I didn’t wear a watch for a period of time after that incident out of grief and protest.

Years go by and I’ve got a few more watches, a couple Skagen and a Wenger.  One day, I snag the mesh band on something and it pulls a link out, causing a sharp spur.  So I go to Skagen’s repair site and find that a replacement band is about $25.  That’s $25 on a $70 watch, quite a decent percentage of value.  So I balked at replacing the band.  Instead, I spent $100 on a new, nicer Skagen.  It made sense, and that watch has served me very well for years.

But the watch with the broken band has been sitting in my watch case ever since.  I really do like it – the lightest one I have and it has numbers on the face, instead of just ticks.  So recently, I went back to the Skagen website to order the band.  Now all of a sudden, you can’t buy replacement parts.  You have to send your watch to a service center for repair.  Yeah, I’ve been through that one before.  No thanks.  I search around online and the supply of replacement bands is very small and more expensive.  What the heck is going on?

I found my answer: Fossil bought out Skagen.  And with that purchase, they completely changed the way service is done.  I have little love for Fossil.  I owned one watch by them and it never “worked” for me, then it stopped working, literally.  So it was a huge disappointment to hear the news of the sale.

Now, I was going back and forth between buying a replacement watch ($70), or actually paying the now $30+ just for the band.  Oh, and the battery needs replaced ($12).  Then it hit me.  The Dremel!  I have tools!  I can grind this spur down, and if I fail at doing that, what have I lost?  I was prepared to chuck the watch anyway.

So, with the precision of an amateur dentist, I chose a grinding bit and went to town.  Totally anti-climatic, it took like 3 seconds and I had a flawless result.  Why I didn’t think of that earlier, I don’t know.  No, I kinda do know.  I’m a wasteful, consumerist American.  Everything is disposable. 

But, I’m  compelled to look for a deeper meaning here.  Why didn’t I just toss the watch and buy another?  After all, I did buy a replacement model and still didn’t throw it out.  Maybe I have a deeper connection with that watch than I realize.  I’ll get the battery changed this weekend, and I have a new watch in the mail, and I have a plan to buy another watch (maybe even two) on my upcoming vacation, so we’ll have to see which watch gets the most face time in the end.

Key Board

Posted by on March 14, 2013 No comments

When I’m at work, there’s some desk items that cause some distraction.  It could be the stuffed creatures on the shelf, it could be the NERF guns or the NERF Super Soaker missile (“The F Bomb”).  But for some people, the thing that catches their attention is my keyboard.  It’s a new keyboard, but it doesn’t look new.  It’s old-school.  It’s actually impossible to find a decent picture of it online.  Even the manufacturer’s website doesn’t have a flattering photo of it.  It’s a KeyTronic.  It’s been my favorite keyboard brand for at least 15 years.  It hasn’t changed its look in 15 years, nor has it changed its feeling.

Yesterday, I purchased the newest model of KeyTronic’s keyboards and this weekend, I’ll have the chance to find out if they are remaining true to their roots.  There’s a couple things I can’t live without on this keyboard.  When I say I can’t live without them, I mean, I bought one for home and one for work.  The productivity loss when I change keyboard layouts is significant.  The KeyTronic keyboard is offered with a large L Enter key instead of the straight bar Enter key.  This makes the backspace half-sized and moves the backslash key up to the top row.  The other thing I can’t live without is the tactile snap of the keys.  Less important, but noticeable, is the huge chasm of empty space between keys.  This is a very forgiving keyboard to type on.  When you type code all day and in the evenings either code some more or blog, a good keyboard is required.  Yet another design feature you don’t see everywhere is what someone called the “stadium seating” of the keys.  When the top row of keys is nearly 50% higher than the lowest row, I find my thumb resting more naturally under my fingers to hit the space bar.

I was looking online to see if there were any other KeyTronic fans.  Outside of product reviews, there’s a couple of threads on a mechanical keyboard forum praising the feel of the KeyTronic, although also admitting it is not a mechanical.  So, besides that, I didn’t find much.  And what I read sort of inspired me to type a bit and remember why I liked this keyboard so much. 

In this day where flat keyboards are the standard, and chiclet keyboards are fashionable, it seems like typing is taking a back seat, which is consistent with the slow decline towards content consumption instead of content creation.  You need a keyboard to type a URL or a status update or maybe an email (so long…); you don’t need a task-oriented keyboard.  Gamers buy keyboards made for their needs.  I would like to believe that this keyboard grew up as a product optimized for the needs of the time, which required much more typing than the current age.  But now it’s become a keyboard made for my needs – extended typing sessions.

So now I’m waiting and hoping that I will have a new keyboard that has all the same great feeling of this one but has a look of “what kind of keyboard is that?” instead of “is that even a USB keyboard?”

To Bed To Rise

Posted by on March 5, 2013 No comments

When Windows 8 came out, I had planned on making a Windows Store app that would be an alarm clock with sound soother for falling asleep.  Hardly a new idea.  In fact, I was driven more by personal need than personal gain.  I have the Dell Inspiron Duo.  The original one, with the JBL audio dock.  It’s possibly the best-designed multifunction consumer device. The custom dock triggers an app that can be used as a slideshow (like on an office or counter, replacing a digital photo frame), or as an alarm clock (best kept bedside).  The point is, when you’re not using it as a laptop or tablet, you’re using it as something else.

Well, you may know that this product got justifiably poor reviews because of its weight/battery life ratio and isn’t in production or even in warranty anymore.  Regardless, I own one and I have two docks, one at home and one at work.  One day I decided to upgrade to Windows 8 and the clock app wouldn’t launch anymore.  This was heartbreaking for me.  And until a recent explosion of programming motivation, I just used the dock as a charging station.

But tonight is the first live run of my replacement app for the Inspiron Duo “DockClock” or “DuoStage” or whatever they called it.  I’m pleased that I was able to come up with a technique for detecting when the laptop was docked as well as discovering the method for putting the screen to sleep on command.  The rest, involving background sounds, alarm timing, and background animation was easy work.

The original:

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My prototype, with corner controls displayed:

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My main regret is that I waited so long to write this app, since there’s a lot of Duo owners out there that have probably lost their capability to use the alarm clock in their docks.  But once I’ve given it sufficient personal testing, I’ll put it out there for download.

Oh, and as a passing mention, it appears I’m in my fifth year of posting on this blog.  I sure didn’t expect that.  There’s a lot of history in here, with some really low points in my life. Despite that, I’d have to say that the present is truly a high point of my life.  Will there be another five years?  Who knows?

Killing Creativity

Posted by on October 9, 2009 No comments

I am getting so old.

The pieces are finally coming together to allow me to start recording again.  Windows 7: check.  New Cubase 5: check.  Now we’re ready to configure the recording setup.

Using an Emu 0404 as input, I have two mono inputs for my use.  Outboard, I have a Mackie 1642 that will do mixing duties for traditional gear.  It has 4 mono busses, so I routed two of them to the 0404’s inputs.  That will let me selectively choose what inputs I want to record.  Aside from having a cable plugged into the wrong port in the back, it was a snap.  The physical is simple.  The virtual is a little unknown to me, which is where I felt old.

The request I wanted seemed simple: I did not want to monitor the input.  If I wanted to monitor the input, I would do it through Cubase, which would send it to the main output.  Obviously I want to monitor the main output.  Reading through documentation (ugh), I found some diagrams that seemed to explain what needed to be done.  The 0404 talks to the input and the speakers through physical connections.  Cubase talks to the 0404 (not the input and not the speakers) through virtual connections – ASIO connections.

So after a good hour of tweaking, I got the routing correct and working.  Then, just to prove to myself that I understood what was going on, I reset everything to defaults and started over.  But after resetting everything, it worked without any tweaks.  So now I don’t even know what to think.

Bottom line is, I’m not doing anything musical tonight.  No wonder those that can afford studio time just do it.