Things you should never see in the kitchen at the office

Crap nobody needs number 1

This is a genuine product:

Why would you hang a skeleton? Kids these days eh? An improvement on a pad and pen? Clearly not. For sale on shamazon.com

Can you fit a laserdisc on to a VHS tape?

In response to Can you fit a DVD movie on a VHS tape?

Laserdisc, it's the future (click to enlarge)

As you can see, the laserdisc can easily cope with two films on one side, so four films in total, or conversly, you'd need four videos to copy a laserdisc (both sides). Science you can't argue with.

Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson

So it's been a while since Wes Anderson made a film and reminded us that there is beauty in the world. Below is the trailer for Moonrise Kingdom, which looks fantastic. 

And Check out the poster:

Click image to super size.

Obviously a must see film. While I'm on the subject, we're still waiting for BluRay releases of the Wes Anderson back catalogue.  

Science is fun - Own your own Portal gun

Well not really. A friend sent me an email with the subject line "Want" and a link to this:



Sarcastic comments from GLaDOS not included

For 100 of your UK pounds you could own a replica Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. A dream come true for some Portal fans. For some reason I'm reminded of the Christmas my brother got a Spiderman costume, and was upset because it didn't give him super powers.

Another Nvidia 8800GT dies?

I just got back from a friends, computer problems. Looks as though their graphics card has failed. This is the 2nd Nvidia based 8800GT, from around about the same purchase date, which I've investigated in the last three weeks. Could we be on the brink of another capacitor plague? I'll investigate shortly.

stretta - tour 252 case

Decent speakers or headphones required.

The amazing Matthew Davidson, no DAW involved:

Art Attack

While talking a well deserved lunch time walk after finding some rather annoying mistakes people had made at work, I saw a nice example of street art, albeit unfinished. Note the artist at work, partially obscured by the traffic lights.


Click for larger image.

Somewhat reminiscent of what I've seen a great deal of in Berlin, people working on old derelict buildings, enhancing the environment, if even for a short while.
Neil Buchannan would surely be proud.

Edward Art supply hands.

Vince Clarke / Martin Gore - VCMG - Spock

Human jukebox Mr. Vince Clarke (formerly of the wee Depeche Mode) and Mr. Martin Gore (still of the wee Depeche Mode) have recorded an album together, their first collaboration since 1981!

It's Vince Clarke captain, but not as we know it.

As a fan of their collective output I was keen to hear this new stuff. The mute youtube channel has a couple of releases, I'm excited to hear the work as a whole once it's released. Spock followed by Blip.

Headphones or good speakers recommended.

Mari0 - Super Mario Bros vs Portal mashup (Linux, Mac, Windows)

Over at Stabyourself.net you'll be able to download Mari0, a ground up recreation of the Nintendo classic Super Mario Brothers mixed with valve's modern classic Portal. Check out the action in the trailer:

Their blerb:

A complete from scratch recreation of Super Mario Bros. with a focus on perfectly imitating the feel the 1985 classic gave us. Then give Mario a portal gun, add puzzle game mechanics from Portal and there you go. And if that wasn't crazy enough, play 4-player coop, with everyone having their own Portal gun!

Features

• Complete recreation of SMB
• Elements from Portal
• Portal gun that shoots portals
• 4-player simultaneaous coop
• Level Editor that was used to create the levels in the game
• 33 different hats
• Downloadable Mappacks
• Game modifiers for extra fun

So head over to Stabyourself.net for the download of the game for Linux, Mac and Windows. Source code available.

PS3 - YLOD - Repair - The reflow

In order to reflow a yellow light of death Playstation 3 you're going to need a heat gun capable of 350 oC. I'd been looking at the Einhell BT-HA 2000, A 2000 Watt heat gun, with two modes mode one at temperature 350 oC, mode two is 550oC. Also included is various attachments, a paint stripping tool and a carry case.

I managed to pick this one up from a home bargains shop close by for £14.99, which is half the price the same model is on Amazon.co.uk.

Einhell BT-HA 2000 heat gun

The areas you need to reflow are marked in the red circles

PS3 GPU and CPU top

PS3 CPU and GPU bottom

Clean the thermal compound off the CPU and GPU. I've read that you want to heat these areas with a circular motion for between 15-30 seconds. Once you've done one side do not move the board for 15 minutes. After this time flip it over and reflow the areas on the other side.

So did it work? Well I can't find my thermal compound to re apply to the GPU and CPU before reassembly. I think I may have left it at my folks when fixing a Samsung netbook. Stay tuned for results at a later date.

PS3 yellow light of death - Fixable?

I was gifted (cheers Rachael!) a PS3 which has failed with the dreaded yellow light of death. The cause of the problem is usually due to overheating damaging solder points on the CPU/GPU. Switching in the PS3 results in a weird traffic light scenario, the LED starts off as green, then yellow and finally flashing red.

The problem can be resolved by a technique called reflow soldering. So off I trot to purchase a heat gun.

The galactic inquisitor - "Ignore me!" - KQ2A7ND23Q4C

KQ2A7ND23Q4C

KQ2A7ND23Q4C

Fail and Fail Often

Over the course of the last couple of weeks a lot of my time at work has been taken up with dealing with some problems our clients keep running into. There have been structural changes within their organisation, as a result their safe working practices seem to have been deteriorating for some time now.

Essentially, they're not learning from their mistakes, they're not listening to the advice they ask for. Making mistakes is an important part of the learning process, if you learn from your mistakes, make notes if required, and move on.

The current situation with out client sees none of this happening. It can be quite annoying when such problems get classed as 'high priority' (in this case, help with someone else's problems in addition to our own work load) and good advice, investigation/working practices suggested get ignored.

There may be a light at the end of the tunnel, with many failures they should have caught making their way into the production systems the problems have been escalated with the client, and a more senior (objective and level headed) manager assigned to the task. Perhaps he'll whip their team back into shape.

Signing off with 'Fail and fail often' by Jeri Ellsworth. Fantastic advice, applicable to more than electronics.

Open the pod bay doors HAL. Nasa loses International space station control codes

Yeah! Title. So Nasa lost (source) 5408 Laptops betwen 2010/2011 (they're not behind the couch, or on eBay, one of which contained the algorithms used to control the ISS, that's the International Space Station. How long before HAL refuses to open the pod bay doors and Sir Roger Moore is forced to blast off in a discontued space shuttle to defeat Sir (but not really) Hugo Drax? Wait, I'm confusing films again.

Sir Roger Moore, aged 52. Let's see if you look this good after so many years preparing quiche!

In reference to Stanley Kubrick's wee film 2001 I leave you with an IBM computer from 1961 singing "Daisy Bell" by Harry Dacre. It may sound synthetic but nowhere near as forced/false as Coldplay:

CyanogenMod - I miss you.

I've had my Samsung Galaxy S2 for a month now, it replaced my beloved HTC Magic as my daily phone. I am suffering buyers remorse.

When I first saw the HTC Magic available in the UK I decided it was the android device I had to have, I told my dad about the phone and Android, he managed to get one before I did. When I took deliver of mine, three of my friends were so impressed the ordered the exact same device. All well and good. Then came CyanogenMod, a replacement Android build which can be flashed (installed) to many devices (current devices list).

Cyanogen kicked my phone up a notch, it was faster than the Android build Vodafone (boo!) had installed, it didn't have any bundled apps which couldn't be removed (spunkware), I could tweak more settings, use features which the Vodafone build would never support (USB tethering, apps2sd etc).

Over the years the device naturally started to show it's age. My friends who had also bought an HTC Magic moved on to other devices (mostly the Galaxy S2). In November 2011 I was close to buying a replacement, Cyanogen had stopped supporting the old war horse, then I found Ginger Yoshi 1.5. Installing this gave my HTC Magic another, albeit not as hard, kick of life.  At this point my friends fancy Galaxy S2s were rocking Android 2.3.3, my trusty HTC Magic was running 2.3.5. 

Ginger Yoshi 1.5 - Squeezing as much into the HTC Magic as possible

For a while I struggled on, last month I took delivery of my Samsung Galaxy S2. As a long time user of 'after market' firmwares I'm less than impressed with the software. The hardware is great, don't get me wrong, O2 (my provider) have installed a lot of spunkware, ditto Samsung.

I'm currently holding off resolving the software stupidity until CyanogenMod 9 is released. I urge you to investigate CyanogenMod as an alternative to the Android build (and software) supplied by your vendor. It's cost free, though donations do go to a fund the ongoing development.

I still use the HTC Magic occasionally when the Samsung UI pissed me off.

I leave you with "The telephone call" From Electric Cafe by Kraftwerk

Pwnie Express - penetration testing pogo plug

So I just found out about the PwnPlug line of products. I remember reading about a couple of guys doing something like this (link) at Defcon ten years ago using a Sega Dreamcast, but this solution is more powerful, has more features and would look fairly innocuous plugged in to a socket in most offices.

Bringing a new meaning to the term 'Plug and play'

The main features listed on the site:

• Maintains a covert, encrypted, firewall-busting backdoor into your target network [Details]
• Includes "Plug UI" for simple web-based setup
• Tunnels through application-aware firewalls & IPS
• Sends an SMS message when SSH tunnel is activated
• Preloaded with Ubuntu, Metasploit, SET, Fasttrack, SSLstrip, nmap, dsniff, netcat, nikto, nbtscan, scapy, ettercap, JTR, medusa, & more!
• Unpingable and no listening ports in stealth mode
• Includes stealthy decal stickers

That's quite the payload, delivered in something compact and stealthy. 

Half-Life 3?

On the way to work I noticed a suspicious van, and a shady figure lurking in the forground.

Click for larger image

Is the figure encircled Dr Gordon Freeman? Is the Orange box getting an update? Are Valve about to release Half-Life 3?

No, of course not, but they had better get a move on.