Weeknotes 191

This week I had a brand new experience. I nearly forgot to have dinner. This has never happened in all my life.

Given that the UK government is making ludicrous demands to have access to all of Apple’s customer’s data in the whole of world, I decided to turn on Advanced Data Protection in iOS just to spite them. Fight the power!

Unfortunately, that didn’t last long as Apple have now turned off the feature for new users of it. How long I will be able to keep hold of the feature remains to be seen.

The power regulation board I thought I’d identified last week as being the cause of the final GBC refusing to start arrived in the post this week. I eagerly removed the existing broken board and started to solder the “new” one in it’s place when I noticed that one of the components on the board had a leg missing 🙀 And it also had solder on it’s pad which made it look like it should definitely be connected. I ploughed ahead anyway, because I thought it better to test it in-place first before doing anything more drastic. It worked! It turned on, and it made the famous Game Boy ding sound. I turned it off, connected the screen, and it worked again. So hopefully that will stay working. Win ✅.

The seller of the new AMOLED screen agreed that it is probably faulty. I was not looking forward to having this discussion with a seller in China fearing a difficult lost in translation situation over a protracted timescale due to time differences, but it was actually quite pleasant. After sending a photo and some videos they said they would send a replacement. Not sure when it will get here but I really hope it works 🤞

An eBay seller sent me a 5% coupon code for a job lot of Game Boys I was watching and that is all it took for me to buy them. Why have you bought move Game Boys when you haven’t fixed the current set of Game Boys Jordan? That’s a good question, and well argued, but hear me out – I am weak.

Next weekend we will be visiting the old country to visit some friends, and of course, to get my eyes tested. The prospect of several days in a Premier Inn is not filling me with joy, but it will hopefully be nice to see people.

In order to test Game Boys without having to reassemble them each time, and in lieu of a proper bench power supply, I bought some AA battery holders. They have crocodile clips attached allowing easy connection to PCB battery terminals. They were also cheap and as a result they started falling apart fairly quickly and the wires kept becoming disconnected from the main unit.

That’s ok, I fix things now! But first…I break them a bit more. During the disassembly to change the wires over I tore the pads that said wires need to connect to from the tiny PCB. A good excuse to use my new grinding pen. I ground the PCB back to expose new copper and soldered to that. I was pleased with the result and the battery holders are now back in action.

Pomera - Full-Suite Typewriter For Focused Writing

This device is giving me strong Psion vibes but with much less functionality.

If I never see the sentence “Front Door has (dis|re)connected to Wi-Fi” it will be too soon. My smart lock has served me well since it was installed a year ago, with one issue. Occasionally it loses the plot and spirals into a disconnect/reconnect meltdown which sometimes goes on for literally weeks. Then it’s fine for months.

There is no way to turn off just those notifications either, you have to turn off all the notifications which would mean not knowing when people enter the property.

I don’t know what is causing this. I suspect whatever is WiFi chip it has is just pants (a technical term). I’ve done some research and there are a few things which I can try: 1) Setting a dedicated WiFi channel instead of letting it auto-select; 2) Moving it to its own network with nothing else; and 3) Changing the WiFi channel to a less congested frequency.

All seem reasonable to try, but administering this remotely, of course, is risky. If I make a change to the network settings and it decides to not do the reconnecting part, then bad times. I plan on trying out some of these changes next week so I can be on-site next weekend if required.

“You shouldn’t have to do anything special to support 1Password on your website, as long as you develop your pages according to best practices”

Sometimes I think the job market is improving, but then I keep reading things that are very worrying. It’s true that I always feel unemployable and yet I have worked for the last 10 years, but the threat of AI and the state of the economy are not giving me good vibes.

(For the record, I don’t think AI will replace programmers, but a lot of business people do which is a problem in the shorter term).

You’ll be relieved to know that the new socks were delivered.