Category: Personal

I’ve been using public means of transport more often in the last few weeks and months as they provide a relaxed way of getting from A to B. What is more, is that going by car is getting more and more expensive and if you’re travelling alone, you can do that for about half the price when using the train. One of the major advantages is that you are able to work on some code when carrying a laptop computer with you. However, as these laptops have limited battery capacity, it’s sometimes very helpful that at least in some waggons there are power outlets where you can plug in your computer.

As I write this entry, I’m sitting in a train named “Europäischer Computerführerschein” (german – “european computer driving licence”) and guess what – really funny – no power outlets here ;) For those of you wondering about the strange name – the major connections and trains, respectively, have all such strange names here in Austria…

Anyway, this time I was thinking of that possibility before entering the train and therefore my laptop batteries are fully charged…

(think of a two minutes break here)

Haha, it gets even funnier, I was just interrogated by a plainclothes policeman who was searching for something or someone I don’t know. He asked for identification, so I handed over my driver’s licence. He looked somehow puzzled for a few moments, then serious again as he realized that I wasn’t the terrorist he was looking for. He definitely didn’t get the point how funny it is to check a driver’s licence in a train with such a name…

A few days ago…

…I was looking outside the office window, hoping for sunshine…

In my spare time, I’ve been playing around with MythTV, a PVR project based on Linux. A very nice feature is the use of program guides which enables the user to record programs easily. Basically, there are two ways to feed MythTV with program data. First, the use of XMLTV grabbers which download data from certain websites. Second, it is possible to get program information directly via EPG from the broadcast signal.

Unfortunately, the first alternative didn’t work out very well because of some grabber errors due to changes on certain websites… so I went for the second alternative.

Using version 0.19, EPG didn’t work out of the box when using Astra satellites. After searching the web for a solution, I’ve found this here useful (in siparser.cpp):

[cpp]

//The following was found to break EIT guide for
// Kristian Kalweit
if (n.LinkageType == 4)
{
PrivateTypes.GuideOnSingleTransport = true;
PrivateTypes.GuideTransportID = n.LinkageTransportID;
}
[/cpp]

I’ve removed these lines and voilà, works like a charm ;)

MythTV also features a bunch of plugins – my favorite one is MythWeb, which allows to control MythTV via a website. Here is a screenshot of it:

Recording TV programs is now officially considered as addictive.

I missed it. This is my first blue screen in Windows XP :-)

But I have two screens so I had double of the fun.

About 4 weeks ago I bought an new (used) car. After 6.500 km (or 92.500 km operational performance) the engine gave up. I won’t bore you to death with the technical details but to say the least a part broke and destroyed the cylinder. The following images should illustrate this.

First, the dismantled old engine:

The dam(n)aged cylinder and cylinder head.

Last but not least the new engine.

So I’ll get a new engine for my car for free, due to warranty :-) Feel free to ask for high resolution pictures.

Welcome to the next chapter of the cup warmer investigation. Unfortunately, this is another one which is rather sad. In the first part, I mentioned my idea to put more heat-conductive paste on the lower side of the heating plate. That’s exactly what I tried this time. I don’t want to sound like Marvin the robot from the Guide, but somehow I think the cup warmer doesn’t respect my needs. It just lets me sit here at my desk working all the time without giving me a chance to prove my cleverness by drinking hot coffee.

In fact, my experiment didn’t turn out to help in any way at all. The plate is still cold at its borders. But hmmm, someone here in the office suggested plugging the device into a standard power outlet…

Finally the audio jack was replaced with the line-in jack. The picture below shows the result. As you may notice there is only one jack left.

Btw, thanks to Mario “The master of circuits” W.

So the reassembling process could be started. I was very suprised that the whole process took only 45 minutes and that the damn thing worked afterwords. The next picture should supply evidence:

But as in every reassembling process there was one part left. A damn little screw :-)

On a journey to spain I destroyed the audio jack of my Acer notebook. Hence, I can’t plug the notebook to the sound system of my car anymore. So I decided to repair it by my self. The easiest way to do this is to replace the audio jack with the line-in jack (which I don’t need). So I had to disassemble the notebook. You can see the result of the disassembling on the first picture shown below. The second shows the destroyed audio jack. Read more about the repairing process in part II :-)

I already explained the problem with my USB cup warmer in one of my last entries, but recently I’ve made some further investigations. I completely disassembled the whole thing as you can see on these photos:

I thought the inner life of such a warmer would be more complex, but in fact it’s rather simple, as there are just two resistors mounted on a cork plate as you can see on the second photo.
The heating plate itself is mounted on top of these resistors and has some heat-conductive paste on it (see photo #3). In my opinion, the problem is that the resistors are too central and there is too little paste on the plate to transport the heat to the margins of the heating plate.

So it looks like I’m gonna drink cold coffee until I trash the warmer and buy a better one or find a self-made solution for it. Hmm, so what about greasing more paste on to the heating plate…

Oh yeah, I’m not religious or something, but Happy Easter to all of you ;)

I’m currently reading The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide by Douglas Adams and found the following fact interesting: It is mentioned that dolphins are very intelligent creatures and that they are superior to human beings. This is also mentioned in Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, which I’ve read a few weeks ago. Now to the conspiracy part of the story: Is it pure coincidence or synchronicity that you can find it in chapter 23 of the Hitchhiker’s Guide and that this chapter consists of 23 lines?