Being legal is frustrating

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Four years ago I bought a laptop on a student special with the local universities. Pinnacle were the local distributors and the laptop came pre-installed with Windows 7 and Office professional. Wonderful. But it didn’t come with installation DVDs. I queried this with Pinnacle and they said I should use the Lenovo software (OneKey Backup) to create a backup install which would then have everything ready to go. Fine.

A few months later I buy myself an SSD and now want to install Windows on it. Do everything necessary but the 36GB original install complains that my 120GB SSD is too small to install Windows on… So I repartition my original HDD to have an 80GB windows install. Create new backup install, and successfully install on my SSD.

Fast forward to 2016 and for several reasons I haven’t once reformatted my hard drive since original install. But now it’s time. Backup everything I need. Boot up my backup DVD and try and install onto the same SSD. It complains the drive is too small. This is the same drive I installed on four years prior. No other hardware changes have taken place. I spend the next several hours rebooting trying different types of things; use an Ubuntu live CD to format the drive and remove the extra 100MB partition that Windows makes. All efforts are unsuccessful.

I give up and decide to use a legit Windows 7 install DVD I have to just do a plain install. Alas after installation it doesn’t like my key (the one stuck under my laptop), as the DVD is for Windows Ultimate, and my licence is for Windows Premium… Windows used to have their install DVDs freely available through Digital River. But discontinued this service a few years ago. After some extended searching I get hold of an ISO that, after installing, seems legit and is happy with my key. Yay.

I spent more time trying to get an audible.com audio book playing than it took to listen to the book. I have lost every other piece of DRM-locked music I have paid for.

source: https://xkcd.com/488/

But now I don’t have Office. So I begin the same search for an install for Office. I had earlier run a program to extract the CD-Key from my installed software. Again the Digital River ISOs had been discontinued. MS does offer install files for download on their website, but you have to input a valid CD-Key, and the licence for my CD-Key apparently didn’t match any of the versions they had for download. I get hold of some ISOs through different sources, but none of them are playing ball with my CD-Key…

So what eventually happens? I break down and buy Office. Through all my searching, I kept on getting adverts for MS’s Home Use Program. Basically, if your employer has some deal with MS, you can get Office 2016 Pro for like R150. My employer had never advertised this to us (that I recall), but I typed in my work email address and the next day there was an e-mail at work stating that I am eligible. So R150 later I have Office 2016 installed. My biggest gripe (besides having to pay for something I kinda already had) is that it installs everything! Skype for business (which you can’t use a normal Skype account with), MS Access, OneNote and Publisher which I don’t use. There is no option to only install specific software. And no option afterwards to remove some of the software.

But at least I have a working computer again. And I’ve made copies of all the CDs and installs I used. Stuff knows what use the Lenovo OneKey backup DVDs are to be used for.

All of this boils down to DRM, and how difficult it makes people’s lives. Those who try to do the right thing get blocked at every corner. Whereas I could easily have downloaded a cracked copy and be done with all these hassles. Argh!

Electric/Hybrid/Self Driving vehicles

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I’ve long held an interest in the motor industry, and the recent developments in driverless cars are as exciting as they are frightening to me.

hero-01

Tesla Model S 90D

With that in mind, for the past few months I’ve been working on and off on a website dedicated to following the development of the autonomous and electric/hybrid vehicle market in South Africa. And I finally got it to a usable state.

I give you AutosAndElectric.co.za

Where you can find a list of currently available Hybrid and electric vehicles in South Africa as well as charging stations. Hopefully as time goes on space will be made for the influx of autonomous vehicles coming to our shores :)

Website needs some aesthetic work, and logo redesign, but for now I wanted to get it up.

Remington F4790 Partial disassembly

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Recently the foil on my Remington F4790 got a hole in it, it makes the foil and cutter part of the razor unusable. While I placed replacement foils on order, I figured I’d just use the trimmer, but then trimmer stopped working.

Apologies for the poor image quality, they’re screengrabs from a video.

The foil and the cutters pop straight off with a little bit of a pull. Thereafter there are two small screws at the hinge point which can be loosened.
GP012706.MP4_snapshot_00.01_[2015.10.13_19.56.49]The foil and cutter head then comes out. Take care when reassembling to align the pop-out with the slot on the head.GOPR2706.MP4_snapshot_10.54_[2015.10.13_19.59.41]

From here there are 4 screws easily accessible that can be loosened.

GOPR2706.MP4_snapshot_01.24_[2015.10.13_19.57.57]A black rubber seal is then visible, which comes off easily to reveal two white plastic mechanisms which are driven by a motor. Align the drive shaft (1) on the motor so that the point is away from the trimmer. Plastic mechanism [2] can come straight off. Plastic mechanism [3] drives the trimmer and has a shaft going down. It can now be lifted out.GP012704.MP4_snapshot_00.53_[2015.10.13_20.09.58]There’s a round rubber seal between the trimmer and the motor housing which must be removed. The trimmer must now be fully extended. With a bit of jiggling the trimmer will come out completely. There is a metal spring near the bottom which might catch, see below.GOPR2705.MP4_snapshot_08.02_[2015.10.13_20.04.40]The trimmer is unfortunately a sealed mechanism. The outer casing is two parts which look like they clipped into each other, but looks like some heat was used to ‘seal’ it. Anyway, I pried it apart, because there was nothing left to do. Not too much seemed to break.

GP012704.MP4_snapshot_04.37_[2015.10.13_20.10.55]When I opened it up it was clogged up with hair preventing it from moving. I cleared all of it up, and the cover fortunately managed to clip back together and seemed to hold.GOPR2705.MP4_snapshot_03.06_[2015.10.13_20.02.47]I don’t really know how to disassemble the razor further. There are two screws visible, but loosening them doesn’t achieve anything. Through the clear motor housing other screws can be seen connecting it to the outer case, but no way to access them.

GP012704.MP4_snapshot_00.24_[2015.10.13_20.09.25]

I think the outer case is all just clipped together, but felt nervous in forcing it apart when I still want to use the razor. If my foils don’t make it in the post, then maybe I’ll do it, but for now I can’t see any further way to take the razor apart besides forcing the outer casing apart.

Research is time consuming

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Eugh. I finished my masters last year. Kind of. I submitted, and it was accepted on condition of a few changes. It was a research and design project, concluded with a dissertation.

I like knowing things. I enjoy reading up and learning new things. I enjoy imparting this knowledge. I don’t enjoy referencing. There are a lot of tools designed to make referencing easy. I write in latex, and made use of a combination of JabRef and Mendeley to aid my referencing. And it helped.

My biggest problem is writing a couple paragraphs, going over it, realising one of my statements may need a reference, and then not finding a nice academic reference for what I wrote. I know what I wrote is correct (well think at least), but to try find a reference for what I said, is difficult. And time consuming. I’ll do searches in Mendeley for keywords, else I start poring through Google Scholar search results. And usually I’ll find something I can use. But my word is it time consuming.

IMG_0845But I guess this is what makes peer-reviewed journals (and referencing) so important. Cause it prevents someone just saying something, and ensures accountability. As much as a pain as it is.

Which I think is a bit why I enjoy writing. Non-scientific articles that is. Opinion pieces, reviews etc. I can just write whatever I want. I can make statements and am not required to reference. I can link for more info if I want, but I’m not required to.

In conclusion: blogs are great.