Ugh, they’ll tell you.

So I was going through this used book store, Volume One Books, and they have an interesting selection of the older ‘golden age of scifi’ pulp novels.  I found this great old Clarke:

Cool, right?  Sure it’s the 70’s reprint, but I figured it’d be cheaper than the 1963 reprint, right?  Well sure, but then I saw this on the inside:

And someone had to deface the book to prove to the world that it had passed through the hands of a narcissist.

It’s embarrassing to even think I’d want to read the same thing that had been touched by some vapid twonk.

Sigh.

So I went ahead and got the much older version, that was free of such insane defacement.

So here I am, flying at 27,000 feet over Japan on the way to the United States of America for work, and I log on to the Panasonic in flight WiFi and thought I could charge my phone and catch up on emails.

Buy guess what? The most popular single oem charger sold in 220v regions doesn’t fit the power socket. Sigh. This is the kind of crap why I have to travel with a bag of cables, adapters and batteries.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing to be able to do this kind of crap on a plane, but.. damn as always it’s the last mile where tech always falls down.
Just like RIM couldn’t grasp that the biggest market for phones with keyboards was teenage girls, you need to test your damn stuff on popular uses, edge cases are just that.

I’m sure this will end well…

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’) WHERE option_name = ‘home’ OR option_name = ‘siteurl’;
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’) WHERE option_name = ‘home’ OR option_name = ‘siteurl’;
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’, ‘https://virtuallyfun.com/’);
UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’,’https://virtuallyfun.com/’);

Since I had purchased virtuallyfun.com quite a while ago, and I had planned on doing this years ago, for some reason today felt like a good day.  I have had mappings in Apache to catch & rename links from a while back, but in reverse.  I have no plans on dumping superglobalmegacorp.com, but you have to admit it is quite long to type in, and the ‘non standard’ name for the blog no doubt wasn’t helping things.  I guess that makes 2017 the year of conformity.

As always, if you can read this, then it’s working.  Old links will continue to function so really nothing going on, same site, same crap, just flipped the aliases.

And then there is the horrible training videos.  Yuck.

I think it’s valid for just today

http://store.steampowered.com/app/38400/Fallout_A_Post_Nuclear_Role_Playing_Game/

I managed to score a TEKRAM P6B40-A4X 3 slot ISA mother-board last week, along with a CT-4500 ISA SoundBlaster AWE64 Value Edition at Capital Computer Centre, a second hand computer hardware market in Hong Kong.  I had also scored a cheap Windows 98 machine which I had hoped to use it’s case and peripherals as the basis for this ISA machine.  However that didn’t work out as the floppy drive was not only stuck in the case, but didn’t work.  And it’s CD-ROM drive didn’t work either.  I got the machine for $100 HKD so I really couldn’t complain too much, the memory, disk and P4 board were fine.  So I had to look for a case that had not only external 5 1/4″ bay, which isn’t too hard today, but it’s getting harder and harder as many systems don’t have any optical drives.  The hardest part was finding a case that had an expose 3 1/2″ bay.  After a lot of searching there was only ONE I could find, the DEEPCOOL DUKASE V3.

It was inexpensive enough, costing around $279 HKD, and thankfully had a PC-Speaker, and a bunch of screws.  Gutting out the Windows 98 machine, tossing it’s case, and I put everything in the deep cool case.

Naturally it didn’t work the first time.  I had to download the PDF manual, and do the jumpers over again.  After powering it up, I got the long beep followed by three short beeps.  Turns out my AGP Voodoo 3 wasn’t seated properly, so I re-seat the card and I’m able to DooM from my MS-DOS rig, but now it’s in a case, and not all in the open.

The hinge is magnetic, and not too obvious at first.  But it does the job, and hides the ancient removable disks.

One thing of note, for a board this old, it required the old 40 pin IDE cables.  I found mine in a junk bin for $10 HKD each.  Not bad, but I literally only saw two.  I had a much easier time finding a NIB PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard.

Like all terrible RGB builds, this case has a plastic window so you can gawk at the cards.  I don’t know who does this, but I guess it’s a thing.

I installed Windows 95, from floppies, and then downloaded the AWE Value drivers from vogons, and a Voodoo 3 driver from driverguide of all places… If you need it, beware of their ads that either want to install some spyware crap, or their insane games to get to the actual driver.  But I did get it to work.

The CPU is a Pentium III running at 450Mhz with 512MB of RAM.  It’s the at the edge of what Windows 95 can support without any modifications.  I may later on want a better sound card, I know I need to find the MIDI cable to hook up my Roland or Yamaha MIDI synthesizers up.  If you want to get into the retro PC thing with physical hardware (Don’t get me wrong, PCem is freaking amazing!), the longer you wait the harder it’s going to be to find things like 40 pin IDE cables.  Let alone ISA motherboards that are not hundreds of dollars.

I had originally 80 pin IDE cables out of the Windows 98 machine, however I never pulled them off to notice that the 80 pin standard are keyed.  This means that one of the pins are blocked off so you cannot put the ribbon in backwards.  This means that if I wanted to no clip pins off the motherboard, I would need to find original 40 pin IDE cables.  I got lucky again, another visit to Capital Computer Center, and I was in business.

So as part of the fun for being on the road at the moment, my “disposable” cheap laptop took a dive just after the NS32032 article.  I’m in a town that has a remarkable manufacturing base, however there is nowhere to get anything even slightly computer related.

But no problem you say, we live in the future, and the future is internet delivery.  While there is no Amazon delivery in China, I went ahead and ordered a bluetooth keyboard and mouse on TaoBao for my existing Windows 10 tablet making it into a quick desktop.  I’ve already used Microsoft ARC mice before, but the bluetooth model is great.  Snap to configure, and it’s a real pleasure to use.  The head is more pressure sensitive, like something Apple would have made, making scrolling a breeze.

But that isn’t what we are here for…

So, having to buy a keyboard sight un-seen, I knew I would have to probably go past the super cheap discount stuff that is labeled bluetooth, but probably isn’t, and look at the higher end stuff.  And that is when this thing caught my eye:

The keyboard set me back 599 RMB, which isn’t too bad, and I have to say I had high hopes for this keyboard.  Yuantong Express thought it was OK to just leave it in the building next to where I’m staying, and didn’t bother to notify me, as it should be somehow obvious.  Although they were fast to deliver, not knowing for 2 days that they had delivered kind of sucked.

Looking at the box, I couldn’t tell if it was some artistic minimalist design, or if this was aiming for something higher end.

Opening the box, and taking out the Styrofoam cover reveals the keyboard in one of those soft plastic bags with a quick start guide, and an accessories box.

tThis is the enclosed USB charging cable.  The keyboard itself boasts of a 4000 mAh battery.  I would hope it would last a long time, however I do enjoy the back-lighting so I’m sure that greatly reduces the longevity.

The keyboard itself feels really solidly constructed.  It doesn’t suffer from being made out of weak or inferior plastic.  The keys feel nice to the touch, kind of reminding me of the older Italian keyboards with their nice rounded and indented keys that fit nice on your fingertips.   The backlight makes looking at it, and looking for keys pretty easy to spot.. which brings me to the bad spot.

Being a reduced form-factor keyboard, this isn’t built as something you can just pick up and touch-type with ease.  While I do know how to touch type, the big gotchas are the right shit being incredibly small, and the number row is literally one off.  I find myself drifting to the up arrow half of the time I want to shift, and always a number off.  It can be a bit irritating, but the keyboard looks so nice it’s almost forgivable.

I would worry about shoving this thing into a bag, and traveling with it, as the keys sit high, and I’d hate to break it.

When I started to write this, I went to look it iup, and it turns out it was actually on indiegogo.com.  Interestingly enough that means I paid $90 for this keyboard, that is currently $125+shipping.  Although me being in China means I win out in shipping.

In all it’s not the worst keyboard I’ve used, and will end up taking a little getting used to.  But when compared to something like the Microsoft Surface Pro type cover, this is about a billion times better.

As a bonus they threw in a simple tablet stand.  I’d overlooked the need for one, so having it included with the keyboard was a nice bonus.

For anyone who cares, this is where I bought it.

I saw this post on hack a day, and oddly enough my old Fortran Snoopy calendar was on there.

And as  a bonus in the comments was a talk on RTTY porn.  Obviously NFSW….  But kind of interesting & funny regarding the preservation of old things.  If the thought of ascii art port from the 1960s, along with some nude pictures from the 1920’s scare you, obviously don’t click.

To me what is crazy is that I can download an entire GIF CD faster today than I could download an image back when this stuff was new and exciting.  But I did have a 2400 baud modem.