Other What currently makes your life awesome?

Looking mighty fine there Gunny, a job to be proud of!

 

Just reserved a flat to buy! Its been a busy week and a half! Had to go for shared ownership as I'm buying on my own, but the place looks lovely and is in a really good location for me. Its all been so fast that my LISA bonus for it only cleared yesterday! £6k saved in 2 months!

 

Somehow it looks clinically clean ... even with the drink on the sofa console. I suggest to keep it looking like that, you never, ever, let somebody else enter it.

 

Awesome mate.

I could probably get this by my OH but she'd leave plates, cups, bras and random schizzle all over it which would do my head.

Next house, hopefully not too far off, perhaps I could do a scaled down version in a manchild room.

 

Headphones and an iPad?

 

How dare you!

An iPad indeed. Wash your mouth out.

 

Brought this back to life yesterday, although I did have to pay for some commercial software in order to bypass the account lockout.



Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 (SM-T830).

Found during my mother’s house move last week. For many years it had laid idle, stuffed in a darkened recess of her utility room, in a carrier bag containing a number of other tablets & kindles. Everything else was either dead or worthless, but this one immediately stood out. No idea who it had belonged to; at first I thought it belonged to my late father, but this model was released in late 2018 and he died in early 2017.

Looks like it was a pretty decently kitted-out machine for its time. The 10.5” screen is pretty damn nice, it’s 2560*1600 Super AMOLED and at full whack is bright enough to sear your retinas. Battery seems OK so far too. Charged to full about 9pm last night, ran multiple OS updates on battery, and it’s still at 68%. Shame there’s no official version of Android beyond 10, because that’s out of support now. Will have to investigate custom ROMs or alternative OS’s for it.

 

Nexushub

 

Some more of the almost antique tech that was dug out during my mother’s house move.

Orange SPV “smart phone”, aka HTC “Canary”.



This beastie ran Windows Mobile and it was a total pain to use without a touchscreen. Really cool for the time though. Also dead as a dodo - needs a proprietary power cable and that’s long gone.

The T-Mobile MDA Vario III “smart phone”, aka HTC TyTN II, aka HTC “Kaiser”.



This also ran Windows Mobile - at least to start with - but this one has a resistive touchscreen (complete with mini-stylus docked in the rear) and a slide-out keyboard. I absolutely loved this phone at the time. Within a couple of years there were versions of Android available for this, both Android “Cupcake” and Android “Donut”; yes, for those playing along at home, that’s Android versions 1.5 and 1.6! I’ve used the very oldest and the very newest versions of Android, and I still prefer iOS .

This is also, sadly, dead as a dodo. It’s MiniUSB so I have plenty of cables, but it won’t power up with battery connected or disconnected. I’m reluctant to leave such an old li-ion battery on charge for any length of time; it’s not obviously gone spicy, but it’s not worth the risk of inducing spiciness for the sake of nostalgia.

Finally, and the one I have the most fondness for, my Sony MZ-N710 NetMD MiniDisc recorder… <3



I did buy one of these a few years back, but that one was knackered and didn’t record properly; this one, however, was mine. I bought this about 20 years ago when I got a “proper” job after having failed university. It stayed with me for a good few years before I finally moved away from discs. I’ve raved about how good MiniDisc was off and on over the last 10 years or so, and I still stand by that - as a portable disc-based media format, it’s absolutely brilliant.

Pleasingly, it appears that this still works. The replacement “gumstick” batteries I bought seem to be utter garbage though; they were both charged fully overnight on a “proper” NiMH charger, but one died as soon as I tried to transfer music, and the other couldn’t survive transferring a full album. But I was able to transfer at least some music, and it seemed to record and playback just fine. I’m going to get another replacement from a brand I’ve seen recommended by fellow MiniDisc weirdos
“aficionados” and see if it’s any better. It could also just be that recording/USB transfer is highly taxing for the gumstick batteries; back when I used this regularly I had the screw-on AA adapter and a mains adapter, so I honestly can’t remember how much of a battery hit the USB transfer causes.

Speaking of which… I am so glad that I no longer have to use that utter garbage SonicStage application any more. There’s now a web-based UI for NetMD units that can handle both conversion to ATRAC and copying data over USB. (Context for those not aware: NetMD was Sony’s attempt at bridging the gap between “solid state” digital music players and their MiniDisc hardware. Previously you had to record to MiniDisc using an analogue or S/PDIF TOSLINK source, but NetMD units could have songs transferred over USB.)

 

Funnily enough I came across my minidisc the other day, part of an extra job bonus way back in the day. Can't remember the model of the top of my head.

Thought it was a great bit of kit. Not sure where the battery's gone so I'll have to find a replacement. I still have the adapter pack that came with it though that takes a bunch of AA batteries iirc.

Will have to boot it back up sometime. Sometime. Lol.

 

If you’ve got an adapter for AA batteries that’s going to be the easiest thing to test with.

A lot of Sony units used these “gumstick” batteries - the original Sony model number is NH-14WM.



You can get modern replacements - “Vapex” seems to be the brand that a lot of people recommend - but charging them is awkward.

It’s not usually recommended to charge them in the device, because the devices weren’t always designed for NiMH - they often used NiCD. They’re very similar, but it seems - and I haven’t researched this in any great depth - that the charging profile is slightly different, and charging a NiMH in a device only designed to charge NiCD can affect longevity and charge levels. The dreaded “memory effect” is still a very real thing for these battery chemistries…

I do have a dedicated NiMH charger, but it’s a little awkward to get the cells in - they have to be at the right position to make contact.

 

FAFO, goddess of Karma, has proven she exists!

https://x.com/TomLatchem/status/1818387851903746176

 

FAFO, indeed.


Arseholes using the deaths of three young girls to justify acting like tw@ts. I hope that last shot removed him from the gene pool.

 

At the very least, he's getting the third degree from his wife about where the bag of frozen peas she knows was in the freezer has disappeared to.

 

More debt paid off.



feelsgoodman.jpg

My name is already free of debt, the remaining ones are in my OH’s name. But they’re our debt, we’re both liable for it, so as far as I’m concerned it’s not a done deal until they’re paid.

Still: only two more to go.

Unfortunately we will technically still have “credit”, because if you pay for stuff like insurance monthly instead of annually then it’s still classed as “credit”. But by the time we’re done we could, if we choose, switch to paying everything annually - including council tax.

 

Huh, thanks for that, appreciate it Byron.

I'll have to check one day post move. Interesting about charging in the unit as I also have the original charging plug too.

Yup another thing on my tinker list.

 

Not won a single penny on those, my worst investment ever.

 

My Gran bought me a £100 Premium Bond about 20 years ago, it won nothing for about the first 18, then £25 and a year or so later another £25, at which point it had beaten inflation. It's just sat there being useless I suppose, I should cash it out.

 

Put some savings in there when interest rates were low and got back £100 which made it a better return but reinvested when rates when up as was getting nothing, they seem like a good idea but don't know anyone who has a good payout except my old boss who has high five figures in them