apeman design

Advanced Boot Options on a Toshiba Satellite

2010-01-23T11:54:00.003+13:00

I've just found out, after a few hours of messing about with a broken Vista boot, that you need to hold F8 at switch-on to get advanced boot options. That might save you some time. Now to see if any of the options actually help me out.

It looks like an automatic update has done something bad to Vista. It boots through to a black screen and a pointer, but doesn't get any further.

Cheap and cheerful 20/20 vision

2010-01-21T16:12:00.004+13:00

Well, I'm not sure about the 20/20 part, but by drilling two very small holes in a pair of sunglasses I've managed to double the range at which I can read a number plate. The main problem was aligning the holes correctly for a given distance, but as long as you get 'em pretty close you can bend the glasses around a bit to improve that. Of course, a monocular version might work as well or better.

I'd always wondered why some things came into better focus when I was looking at them just over the top of something - usually looking at a further away object e.g. desk over the top of a very close object e.g. fingers. Assumption would have to be that it's the same thing that happens in a pin-hole camera (nothing is out of focus because all the light passes through a single point) and you're restricting some of the light that would otherwise come in at the wrong angle for your eye's lens and make things blurry.

I'd also just read a NewScientist article that talked about the role of peripheral vision (and possibly lack of bright light) in helping, or not hindering myopia.

So I'm going to try wearing them for 10 minutes a day and see if my vision gets any better - it's been pretty stable for ages now and I've had -2.50 diopter contacts for about 5 years.

Forex

2009-12-29T15:09:00.001+13:00

I started playing with one of the foreign exchange / commodities trading programs the other day. I started well, then lost some cash, and now am being a bit more careful and gradually making some back. I'm using the system from www.avafx.com which seems good but I haven't compared it with anything else.

The most important lesson learned so far is that I was initially motivated by greed and fear. When you see gold shooting up, the instinctive reaction is "I want some of that!". In my experience, the greed + fear of letting an opportunity go by outweighed the fear of losing money on the trade. This is of course a fantastic way to get sucked into placing bigger and bigger bets trying to make back any losses, so watch out.

Don't believe people who tell you what to buy, or say that gold will continue it's rise forever. One of the reasons that gold went so high is that the US dollar was weak. Gold is priced at USD/ounce, so weak dollar means expensive gold. Now the dollar is firming up a bit, I wouldn't expect to see such high gold prices for a while. But then I'm not an expert.

NewScientist had a piece a while ago about monkeys who were given presents. They either got 1 coin with a 0.5 probability of getting another coin, or were given 2 coins with a .5 probability that one would be taken away. So the result is identical, statistically speaking. But the monkeys preferred the first option.

Happy Christmas

2009-12-24T11:48:00.003+13:00

Happy Christmas everyone. Just remember that it wasn't invented so rich westerners can stuff their faces, drink too much and acquire more possessions.

Nadolig Llawen i bawb!

good old Blue Screen Of Death

2009-12-22T12:34:00.002+13:00

A laptop that always boots to a BSOD. Error message as follows:

Stop c000021a {Fatal System Error} - The session manager initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000034 (0x00000000, 0x0000000) The system has been shut down.

I found an answer that fixed it on the interweb:

Dick White explains

I don't have an XP install disc any more but I do have a Windows 2000 install disc, which was happy to let me use the recovery console. Followed the instructions, rebooted and it worked! Nice one Mr. White.

Virus Cleaning

2009-12-22T12:31:00.002+13:00

Another annoying program pretending to be a virus scanner that just refuses to die. Last one was Antivirus 2009 or something, this one was called Security Tool. In the end I took the affected computer's drive out, put it in mine, cleaned it and then returned it - there may be an easier way and I'd like to know what it is.

Use Malware Bytes Anti-Malware. Spyware Doctor is good to use to check for additional problems but won't clean unless you pay them. Prevx and Spybot failed to do anything very useful.

Stagepas300 part two

2009-12-18T09:54:00.002+13:00

Well, it stood up to being used for vocals and drum machine last night, and we thought it sounded better than before. Something similar had happened to the unit while it was under warranty, we wonder if was the same component that failed.

The picture shows where the dead TOP249YN was.

Dead Yamaha Stagepas300

2009-12-17T15:55:00.002+13:00

This little PA wasn't making noise, and only seemed to power up for a few seconds. It's not really my field, but I thought I'd take a look since half of it belongs to me ... first observation is that something is rattling around inside. When I fish it out it appears to be part of a component case. Generally, this is a Bad Sign. Something has generated enough heat to blow fairly tought plastic resin apart.

I could read that it was a TOP249YN, which is a component that does some of the fancy switched-mode power supply stuff for you. I found a component with the missing front.

I snipped all but one of the legs off and heated the last leg while I pulled with a pair of long-nosed pliers. Then removed each stump in the same way. Then inserted the replacement component (bought from Farnell, so probably way too expensive for what it is - total $30NZD including postage?) making sure to apply heat-transfer compound and reattach to the heatsink. Soldered it up, and it worked. I'll let you know if it explodes again.

Basically we haven't had many problems with the unit over the past three years. It doesn't seem to plug into a PC for recording so well, get some funny artefacts in the recording.

But generally, a good unit and hope it keeps going for a few more years now.

Windows Updates Won't Install

2009-12-15T19:02:00.003+13:00

I've had that before on one of my computers, but fortunately it died before I had to resolve the issue. This time, I had a nice customer who needed help so I put a bit more effort in.

The usual suggestions didn't work. If the problem has occurred after XP repair then Microsoft suggest doing this:

net stop wuauserv
regsvr32 wupi2.dll
net start wuauserv

and someone else suggested (with good reports of success) that you regsvr32 anything that begins with wu and ends in dll in your system32 directory. The assumption being that Windows has forgotten where it put the Windows Update dlls and that reminding it will sort everything out.

I tried these, and I tried working out why the error logs said I didn't have something I'd never heard of installed, but in the end what seemed to fix it was the uninstallation of XP service pack 3, followed by reinstallation.

My symptoms seemed to be a little more severe than most, in that barely anything would install properly, giving the useful error message that basically says "install no work".

I also salute Microsoft for the .NET Framework 3.5 Setup download progress bar - it not only went up but down, which I didn't think would be easy to do.

Now it's happily installing the last 35 security updates it missed.

Computer Fix the fifth

2009-12-11T23:41:00.002+13:00

This one was interesting. We have a pretty solidly built desktop that has just failed to switch on one day. There was a light on the front panel and one on the motherboard, but no fans going. So, we suspect motherboard or power supply. Either way, we take it home for further examination.

Swapping the power supply helped, in that we could get the fans to spin for maybe a second. This is an improvement, but still not very useful to the customer. So. We go to unplugging all the extraneous stuff (discs, cards, etc.).

I unplugged the graphics card and the computer booted. Sweet.

As the motherboard had onboard graphics anyway, and the PC is getting on in years, we decided to use that. There were some odd uncalled-for reboots after that but I put it down to not having the latest drivers on (Intel website is very annoying - how many clicks to download my drivers?).

So reconnected all the other stuff, left the modem out because who uses dial-up these days? and returned to the customer.

Computer Fix the fourth

2009-12-11T23:27:00.002+13:00

Running XP with 512 meg of memory will get you so far, but it's probably worth spending 30 bucks on some new memory. The interesting part was that the laptop didn't seem to be happy with the old 512 meg and a new 1 gig module, so ended up fitting two 1 gig sticks. That was an Acer 3660. It did say that matched pairs were a Good Idea, but I didn't realize that meant it might not work with unmatched pairs.

Computer Fix the third

2009-12-11T23:23:00.003+13:00

Now this was interesting. We had a slow Vista laptop (512 meg of memory? yeah, that'd be why). So we added a gig to that, much better.

Also a Compaq Presario desktop (yes, why not use the same name for laptops and desktop? That definitely won't confuse people) that wouldn't boot. Dead. So, this is my preferred order to check things:

1) unplug everything, see if you get to the Power On Self Test 2) reseat the RAM (this has never helped in my experience, but we try it anyway) 3) no? ok, so as we've only got a power supply and a motherboard in this equation, we swap a new power supply in 4) still not working? well it's probably the motherboard. The patronizing man in the computer shop didn't think I'd done my PD (Problem Determination) properly but a new motherboard fixed it.

So there you go.

Computer Fix the second

2009-12-11T23:16:00.002+13:00

Not too much new and exciting from this one. Something like Norton was already installed, so I did an additional scan with Spybot, added some memory (you'd really be wanting at least a gig to do anything these days) and helped upgrade an iPhone.

Guess what? We updated the iPhone firmware and then it went into the emergency only mode (you can call 999/911/111 but nothing else). Then we called the support line. Their first suggestion was to do a hard reset which would have the added advantage that would wipe all the info off the phone. I expressed the opinion that this was a shit solution. The second suggestion was to start iTunes and make sure the phone was happy - the phone connected through iTunes and decided that everything was ok after all. Problem solved. Thankyou Apple Singapore, but maybe you should save the last resort solution until it's needed.

Computer Fix the first

2009-12-11T23:06:00.003+13:00

Well, since I've been doing this I though it might be useful to explain what happened, why, and how I fixed it. The first one might be disappointing ...

First customer was a nice lady with a laptop that would only boot sometimes. The rest of the time it would just sit there with a black screen of death. The obvious thing to try was to switch on boot logging (run msconfig, tick "boot logging"). Unfortunately this didn't show anything useful, except that windoze wasn't booting at all (i.e. no log entries).

So, cue a lot of messing about with the new lovely Vista boot settings. I still don't know what fixed it, but I suspect that Vista had got it's knickers in a twist about something in the boot loader,
or the files. So I tried ticking and unticking various boxes, broke it worse, and then fixed it.

I also fixed the CD drive by pushing it firmly back into it's socket.

That was a Compaq laptop of some kind.

Wind Speed and Direction

2009-10-31T20:16:00.002+13:00

Well, after seeing this - http://nslu2windsensor.sfe.se/ - I decided to get myself an old mouse or two and try to build something similar. The mice cost $3 from Supershed, and I've got one serial and one PS2 interface. I'm going to try the serial mouse to start with because it seems easier, and hopefully I'll be able to get the signal down a good length of wire. The RS232 spec. is nice and simple: http://www.mousetrak.com/rs232mousespec.htm

Google Earth plugin

2009-05-16T09:09:00.001+12:00

this is quite exciting - embed into your web pages (example :
http://www.wildwychwood.co.nz/ge3d.html)

Cider Press

2009-04-26T16:11:00.003+12:00

Trying to get the cider press finished before the apples go rotten ... still need a plate for the top to push on - thick piece of hardwood? I dunno... ply might be better for strength.

does this look real to you?

2009-04-26T15:57:00.002+12:00

seriously, how do you obtain all the parts to make a solar power system from your local hardware store for less than $125? I checked, my local hardware store doesn't carry the right kind of silicon.

are they going with 12V, 24V or inverting up to mains voltage? What are they using to regulate the lead-acid charging?

why doesn't the giant solar cell have a shadow or blow over and kill the stupid man?

I'm just interested.

Stupid Advert

2009-04-11T12:34:00.001+12:00

I advise you to be wary of adverts for making your own energy (usually for <$100). For example
http://makinghomeenergy.com/ - appears to be stupid, waste of time etc. whereas
http://www.thekevdog.com/projects/wind_generator/ - appear to be useful, contain information, etc.

Everyone seems to be using DC motors though, which I find a bit disappointing... it does make life easier though.

Painting Rack

2009-04-11T12:15:00.004+12:00

Here's one of last year's projects. Useful if you need to move lots of paintings around. Strong dowel frame (leftover curtain poles, leftover square-section bits) with nylon fishing line internal supports. Outside is thin MDF.

I now have a company

2009-04-07T11:23:00.001+12:00

I have completed stage one:
1) start company
2) ?
3) $$$
Now to sort out stage 2 ...

Personalized Plates

2009-04-05T11:00:00.001+12:00

If you can't afford a personalized number plate or can't find the one you're after, why not just write something stupid on your car with a marker?

Sigh

2009-01-01T17:41:00.004+13:00

Washing machine motor still not producing sensible voltage. I will use the alternator instead. Need a car battery, or several.

Ah I see now...

2008-12-14T18:20:00.000+13:00

This is a useful looking paper. I'll try the series and parallel capacitors and see if that helps.

2008-11-17T23:22:00.001+13:00

I also got time to try my polystyrene cutter. 20 cm of 13.77Ohm/meter nichrome wire will cut polystyrene slowly with 3V across it. So that's about 1A, so heating is 3W. If you compare that to a low powered soldering iron of 10 or 15W I suppose it sounds about right, but I might try different voltages and see if I can get a faster cut.