Category Archives: Opinion

Logitech K750 – Solar Keyboard

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For the past few years, ever since I got a laptop, I’ve used a laptop stand with a built in keyboard, and although a bit limiting as far as manoeuvrability is concerned, it’s worked quite nicely. It allows my screen to be lifted up, and puts it a bit further away from me, while also giving me a full size keyboard to work on.

It’s not an amazing keyboard but it’s done me quite well, until earlier this year when I upended a cup of coffee onto it. To it’s credit, after I stripped it, drained it, and cleaned off as much of the sticky stuff as I could, it continued to work. But the stickiness is still there, impeding my typing. And so I was looking around for keyboards, but couldn’t find one I liked.

logitech

I knew which keyboard I wanted, it was this one (Logitech K750). The solar powered one :) but it was R1,000. And I wasn’t going to pay that much for a keyboard. Ideally I was looking for a wireless ‘island’ key layout, much like my laptop’s keyboard. But I couldn’t find one in I wanted to buy..

And so I resigned myself to sticking to my sticky keyboard. Until Takealot had a daily deal and I picked the same keyboard up for halfprice, much to my delight. In typical Takealot fashion, they completely over-packed the box, but the keyboard itself comes in a slim box, with only the essentials. The keyboard itself is very thin, but with a surprising weight to it. It has some flex to it, and two spindly legs to raise it, but it all seems sturdy enough.

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The keyboard has a nice gloss finish (it even comes with a cloth), with the two ‘large’ solar panels taking up space along the top of the keyboard. The keyboard makes use of Logitech’s unifying remote, and even comes with a small extension for plugging in the back of a desktop PC.

The letters on the keys are in the middle or slightly below the centre of the button, which makes it look odd, but obviously has minimal impact. One thing I am missing straight off the bat, is the lack of wrist rest. My laptop obviously has one, and my laptop stand also had a rather sizeable one. But I’m sure the lack of this will be forgotten in time.

A keyboard, below a keyboard, below a keyboard

A keyboard, below a keyboard, below a keyboard

The keyboard has an on/off switch, assumedly to spare a bit of battery and a ‘light testing’ button, which when pressed illuminates a green or red LED depending on how much light the panels are receiving at the time. The keyboard is also designed to never have its battery replaced. Only time will tell, but that’s obviously why we have the solar panels.

Overall a very nice keyboard that I’m happy with. The layout is ever so slightly larger than my old keyboard, so my fingers feel slightly stretched, but I don’t know if that’s actually true or if it’s just the lack of wrist rest that makes me think that. Now I just need to build a new laptop stand for myself.

Hypothetical what?

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I like writing; it’s one of the main reasons I keep this blog going. And I’ve thought I’d like to write a book. But a book about what? I think it’d be amazing to put together a fictional book. But I struggle with this. To me it seems like one big hypothetical situation. And I don’t do well with hypothetical situations.

I’m currently taking German lessons, and often I find it frustrating, because I can make myself understood fairly well in English and Afrikaans, but when I get to German I run out of words quite quickly. That being said, when I talk with my teacher about what I’ve been doing, I can get through the conversations. But often to encourage dialogue she’ll ask me something like: “Imagine you’re wanting to sign up for a gym, what kind of questions would you ask?”. This is difficult for me, not because it’s German, but because I’ve never thought about this situation previously, now all of a sudden my mind is throwing 90% of its focus into trying to think about what’s important when joining a gym, (facilities, costs, opening hours, were the conclusions I came to), and only another 10% in actually trying to speak German.

This makes it sound like I have no imagination or creativity though. Which isn’t necessarily true. I just output these in different ways. But I’m on the verge of convincing myself that I wouldn’t be able write a fiction book. Which to me is a bit sad, because I grew up on a lot of fiction. I read a ton when I was young, during primary and high school. Dropping the ball a bit during varsity but picking it up again more recently. And fiction is awesome. It’s never ending; except for me in that I need someone else to make it up first.

The alternative, non-fiction, isn’t necessarily bad, but then I still have to figure out a topic. Most of what I write here is short stories about small events in my life, and I don’t quite see me getting to the point any time soon where I have an experience, or string of experiences worthy of a book. My girlfriend’s gran recently published an autobiography (From Kitchen to Cockpit by Yvonne van den Dool), a series of stories from her time as a female pilot during South Africa’s relatively conservative 1950s. I’d love to write an autobiography, but I don’t want to wait 50 years to have content to write one.

Then there are non-fiction books covering a specialist topic, but ignoring my masters, I’ve always considered myself much more of a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ type of person. I like knowing lots of little bits of information. Maybe I can figure out something from that. Hmmm…

So again I’m met with what I assume is most author’s perpetual problem, what should I write about?

xkcd: The Sake of Argument

I love discussing things, having disagreement for the sake of the conversation. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily making things up, but it’s interpreting situations and facts in a way that is most favourable for you, thus the above cartoon from xkcd . Maybe I can write one long argument.

2014 Mercedes-Benz A200 (W176)

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So after saying goodbye to my C350 earlier this year after a short three months, I switched back to my Audi, but last month got my hands on a new A200. Which I’ll most likely be driving for the next year. And it’s nice.

The model I have is pretty much stock. It’s got the 7 Speed dual clutch auto (7G-DCT) (although I would have preferred a manual), and cruise-control, but otherwise as stock as it gets. It does not have a spare tyre, not even a space-saver. Which isn’t great for our roads, but I’m hoping to not have to test out the run-flats in any case. They didn’t have stock of tow-bars when I ordered it, but a Westfalia fold-away-able ball was installed shortly thereafter.

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The car goes well. Front-wheel drive, with a 1.6 litre turbo-charged engine producing somewhere around 115kw. A good 20 more than my Audi, although it does weigh an extra 200kg, putting it at close to 1.5tons. It still manages a 0-100 speed of 8.6s though and has plenty of umph for overtaking.

The car itself is comfortable. At 6’2″ I fit in quite nicely, with enough space for an equally sized person to sit behind me (although preferably only two people in the back). Manual seat adjustments are adequate along with the steering adjustment, pretty standard on current day cars. I’ll be doing a 1,000km trip at the end of the year so I’ll see what it’s like for extended periods then, up till now I’ve done a 200km trip without hassle.

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Fuel economy is not as good as I expected. Obviously how you drive does affect this. The car only has a 50l tank, which is a bit frustrating for me coming from the 65l in my Audi. Around town I’m usually only getting around 10l/100km, maybe slightly less. If I put some effort into it I can bring that down to 9. This is not necessarily only my driving style, but the type of driving I have to do.

On the open road I managed 7.9l/100km, but I’m quite sure I can improve on that, and will be testing it out again this coming weekend (EDIT: Got it down to 6.8l/100km). This is better than what my Audi got :)

A200 Instrument Panel

In typical Mercedes style, the ride itself is comfortable and rattles and wind-noise are minimal. At highway cruising speeds you don’t notice anything and the car feels like it can handle much higher speeds with ease. With a top speed of 220km/h, it’d be nice to get the car on a track some time.

The steering wheel, radio and much of the controls are straight out of the previous C-Class (204). So I felt right at home. Centre console and armrest are slightly different, with the gear lever now located off the steering column on the right, following the latest Merc trend. This gives a bit extra space for compartments. There are also small compartments in front of each of the front seats, as well as a nice sunglasses pocket by the review mirror which my sunglasses don’t fit in.

keylights

A moderate boot can be expanded immensely by the 60-40 split rear seats, large enough for a MTB bike without its wheels, or large TV. Ski’s may still provide a challenge, alas not one I will face. Climate control is a R7 500 extra, something I didn’t think I’d miss until I started driving this car. It handles well enough, sticks nicely in the corners, although body roll is noticeable at speed. It has a sensor for if it thinks you are driving too close behind someone. A red light comes on on the dash. And it beeps at you if it thinks you are going to crash into them. It has beeped at me many times, not always because of my ‘bad’ driving style at the time.

It’s a nice car. I’m really enjoying it. Visibility isn’t great, but I suspect the car will handle a roll quite well with the massive C pillars. Fuel consumption isn’t as good as I was expecting. I would have to spend more time in the Audi and BMW competitors before I could make a decision, But the ‘new’ A-class is definitely a hit and well up to standard.

Videographing

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I really enjoy Youtube, the never ending selection of interesting and entertaining videos is great. Of particular interest to me are the likes of CGPGrey, VSauce and Veritasium, with explanatory videos on a wide variety of topics. It’s always been something at the back of my mind to try out. But not being the world’s greatest producer, I’ve never given it a try.

Last week (I wrote this several weeks ago) Veritasium released a video showing 5 peculiar traits of nature, with the promise of explaining them in upcoming weeks, as well as the challenge to try figure them out for oneself and to post this online. The first subject was something I’d seen demonstrated in a previous episode of QI, and figured this was my chance to test out my viedographing (my dictionary doesn’t like that word and instead suggests rephotographing as the nearest real word) skills.

I believed I had the basic understanding of the concept at hand, got my GoPro, Cellphone and webcam setup to get some footage. Prepared some lighting and a pen and paper and figured the principle is fairly straightforward, and I’d be able to explain it in 5 minutes flat, one single shoot. Oh boy…

About three minutes in to my production I started to realise my failings. No script to work to meant I kept on having to think of what came next, and the examples I wanted to use took time to prepare as I tried to remember some of the basics of 2nd year Strength of Materials. I somehow developed a sore throat in that short space of time, and silences not interrupted by my throat-clearing were interspersed with long thinking “Umm”s.

I stopped recording after three short minutes, not even halfway through my expected explanation. Cutting my losses and reviewing the horror of my creation. Ignoring the terrible quality of the resulting video, the experience gave me a very good understanding of why I hadn’t tried this before, and an even greater appreciation for those who do this successfully. But it is definitely something I want to try again, maybe with a bit more preparation.