Bucketwheel excavator

Maarten Hofman: Latest LEGO creation: a bucket wheel excavator given to me for my birthday, now complete.  View photo You received this mail because Maarten Hofman shared these photos with you. If you no longer wish to receive email notifications of shared photos, unsubscribe here. Get the Google Photos app Google LLC 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy Mountain View, CA 94043 USA

Hong Kong layover

It sometimes happens that you have a layover in Hong Kong that lasts more than a few hours. In this case you may want to do something outside the airport. Here is an example itinerary that packs a lot of excitement in a short time.

• Use the ATM at the airport to get some HK$.
• Optionally: store luggage at the facility on Level 3 of Terminal 2 (HK$12/hour)
• Take bus E23, E41 or S56 to Fu Tung Shopping Centre
• Optionally: have breakfast or lunch at the Federal Palace
• Take the Ngong Ping cable car to the monastery
• Visit the monastery. Access to the big Buddha also gives you a vegetarian meal ticket
• If this is all the time you have, return to the airport
• Take bus 21 or 23 to the Mui Wo pier (90 minute trip)
• Take the ferry to Hong Kong (90 minute trip)
• Optionally: take the tram up to Victoria Peak, and back down
• Take the Star Ferry to Kowloon
• Walk the avenue of the stars
• Optionally (if you are here at tea time): have tea at the Peninsula hotel
• Optionally: have a meal at the Serenade restaurant, overlooking the harbour
• Take the airport MTR back to the airport from Kowloon station (you can check in for your flight at this station too) (30 minutes)

Mosha down for the Holidays

Mosha is no longer running on a VPS system, and I won't be able to monitor it as closely during the Holidays because of visitors. I therefore decided to shut the server down. I'll bring it back up in the New Year, probably after January 5th. Apologies for the inconvenience, and Happy Holidays!

Alternatives to Desigual

My sister loves the products of Desigual, and I agree that they have beautiful items. However, after my recent experience it is clear I shouldn't buy anything from them anymore. I was therefore wondering if anyone might know of an alternate store that I can use that has similar products.

For those curious about what happened: the item arrived damaged. Instead of focusing on getting a replacement item to my sister instead they decided to explain all the limitations that existed surrounding returning the item to get my money back.

Messages from the Red Cross

Two years ago one of my co-workers pointed out the joy of donating money, after which I investigated my options. I was already donating to an Alzheimer group in the Netherlands, and also like PACE Universal, as they are doing projects in India (and in Kolkata, even). He pointed out that the Red Cross is quite good in finding worthy humanitarian causes, and has very low overhead. He also told me I should use a proxy for my donations, to avoid getting overwhelmed by spam. I listened to most of what he said, but unfortunately not the last part.

 It's not that the American Red Cross sends that many messages. In fact, after I set my settings correctly, they never contacted me for anything else than a donation receipt. It is that they share your address with their local chapter, which then proceeds to send letters and Emails, sometimes twice a day. Contacting them about it only leads to the address you used to contact them being used for additional communications.

I therefore decided to go to the Red Cross website, to see if there is a way to prevent this. After considerable navigation I figured out their phone number might be the only way to prevent this. I called the number and navigated their phone tree, which in the end put me (wrongly) in a meeting with several executives discussing trivialities, which made me wonder how they keep such a low overhead. They ignored what I said, and I found no other way yet. My last resort is the message on twitter, that I just sent out.

Acer Iconia W3 tablet improvement suggestions for Microsoft

A month ago I bought an Acer Iconia W3 tablet, because it had a number of features that made it interesting.

• It was only $250.
• It ran Windows 8.1 (which I wanted to know more about).
• It came with a license for Microsoft Office.
• I wanted to see how it would handle my old windows software.

The tablet itself is quite nice. It has a good size (8"), weight, and I like the white color as well. It integrates well with Hotmail, which is strange, because I hardly ever use it, but not problematic. I was able to link it with Flickr and install Chrome, although Chrome doesn't have a good touch interface. During this initial configuration I ran into the first and biggest problem: the virtual keyboard.

First improvement suggestion. Since Windows 8.1 really is two user interfaces on top of each other, there are also two virtual keyboards. There is one window shaped virtual keyboard, which opens by itself and can be minimized. I still don't know how to get it back when you close it. Then there is the "Metro" virtual keyboard, which is much bigger and works with some input fields, but not all. The keyboards don't know when you want to enter text, and appear and disappear at unwelcome times. Fortunately you can always use the START button to go to the underlying Windows 8.1, and unminimize the other keyboard, which will always be on top. You will need to make sure that you focus on the text field you want to enter before typing in it, though, which is tricky. The keyboard is also rather small, and doesn't scale well when you increase its window's size. You can work around all of these problems with any hardware bluetooth keyboard: the integration with these is excellent (much better than the Nexus 7). But if I wanted a hardware keyboard, I wouldn't have bought a tablet.

After fiddling with the keyboard I downloaded Steam, so I could access my games, and from there I installed Railroad Tycoon 2. It installed well, and ran well, although here you run into the issue of screen resolutions. The tablet has a fixed resolution of 1200x768, and any other resolution just creates a small square, with the rest of the screen black. If there are compatibility issues, this sometimes expands to a bad shape, but this can be prevented using the usual Windows tricks of managing compatibility (which, in my opinion, is one of the strengths of Windows, not a weakness). I was surprised that Railroad Tycoon 2, despite being an old game, accepted my touch commands well, and handled rotate and drawing of railroads, and generally seemed playable. However, when leaving the game, I ran into the next problem.

Second improvement suggestion. There really should be an easy way to reset the screen resolution to default. Normally you'd expect right click on the desktop to give you access to this, but the tablet sometimes claims that the new resolution is really the only resolution it knows. Access to the original control panel is hidden somewhere deep into the bowels of the software, and even in the control panel it is hard to figure out how to get your resolution back. I know how these things work, and it took me over 15 minutes to reset. I feel that another user might just have to live with a tiny square. Of course, the keyboard issue appears here as well. Ideally the keyboard would be outside of this tiny square, and not take up valuable space inside it.

After Railroad Tycoon 2 I wanted to see other games, and since the collector's edition of StarCraft 2 included StarCraft 1, I decided to install that. It was here that I ran into the third problem.

Third improvement suggestion. The tablet is sold with 32 GB of space. Unfortunately, when it arrives, there is less than 10 GB of space left to install software on. For some reason, the installation of Windows 8.1 takes up over half of the size of the solid state disk. Compare this with my 6 GB Nexus 7, which had 5 GB left after Android 4.1 was installed. Since Windows software is generally bloated as well, 10 GB is not enough to install anything. Uninstalling Internet Explorer helped a little bit (it gives you over 2 GB back) but I think Microsoft should really look into parts of Windows that can be removed in order to make the installation smaller.

More suggestions will follow.

Mosha under maintenance

Mosha is being moved to its new server. This means that currently a lot of the essential software isn't running, including the gateway. Please be patient, and use the form on the right until it is fixed.

Mosha down, alternate connection form here

Because I'm a little bit more busy during Thanksgiving, Mosha will be shut down. The form on the right will connect you through the European server, which should still work.

What if you don't want to divide?

Divide by:	Multiply by:
1	100
2	50
3	33
4	25
5	20
6	17
7	14
8	13
9	11
10	10

For numbers greater than 10, reverse the columns and take the closest number (so to divide by 15, multiply by 7). After your multiplication you just leave out the last two digits (for more accuracy, add 1 if this number is greater than 49), and you should be relatively close (probably off by 1, or 2).

Added form

Added the Mosha HTTP2telnet connect form to the right. It's pointing to the functional European server, and should have most of the entries that the old Mosha had. If any are missing, please let me know, and I'll add them.

Mosha down

At the moment Mosha is down again. It should return April 2nd, but I will attempt to get something working before that time. If you still have the form somewhere, you can point it to europe.mosha.net, as that should still work.

Hotels in Hong Kong - Peninsula

The Peninsula in Hong Kong attracts me most because it features in James Bond. I explained last time why I found the Intercontinental - Grand Stanford a better place to stay at, but I still wanted to visit the Peninsula, and the ideal moment for that was for afternoon tea. According to at least two sources it is the best place to have afternoon tea in Hong Kong, so I was very disappointed when I failed to get there in time the day we had to leave Hong Kong. Obviously afternoon tea is at 16:00, but the book I had stated they would serve until 19:00. They don't. In fact, if you arrive after 17:00 you'll be out of luck, as there is a queue that takes at least an hour. I discovered that the next time I was in Hong Kong.

Because one of the things you can do in the Peninsula is watch other people, the wait in the queue is reasonably enjoyable. You can prepare yourself for the event by watching the people that are drinking tea, and there is a chamber orchestra playing from the balcony. The songs are rather popular (Vivaldi, Queen) and not every note is clean, but this, together with free Internet, makes for a quick hour. Once seated I discovered the tea isn't actually that expensive (obviously it is expensive for tea, but there are places in London where you'd pay more for less) and comprehensive. You can just order the afternoon tea (I'm not sure why they even bother with a menu) which consists of your choice of tea (or coffee) and a three course set of finger foods.

The initial tea is served to perfection. They steep it just for the right amount of time, and their tea leaves have a magnificent quality (certainly better than what Lupicia, Teavana or Twinings offer). Later cups are, of course, slightly more bitter, but still very tasty. The first course are the scones, with cream and strawberry jam. This is the only place where strawberries taste good, and I enjoyed them. The second course are a variation of sandwiches (cucumber, mushrooms, cheese quiche) which were tasty enough. Finally there were the deserts, which included cheese cake, chocolate and various other tasty bites.

The experience was worth the hour long wait, and the two visits. The atmosphere is good, the food is great and the tea is excellent. It might all feel overly English, but I loved it.

Hotels in Hong Kong - Intercontinental Grand Stanford

For our trip to Hong Kong we had only limited time. We would be there two nights, and would arrive in the evening, so I wanted to make sure a good hotel was booked in advance. As a James Bond fan, I thought the Peninsula hotel would be the best, but after consulting Frommer's Hong Kong guide and looking at prices online I decided that the Intercontinental Grand Stanford was a better option, because it had a much better harbour view, was slightly farther away from the centre (allowing more steps on the beautiful Tsim Sha Tsui promenade), and promised to be luxurious.

Travel to the hotel was fast and simple, using the airport express and the K3 shuttle. Welcome was great, bags were handled properly and (free) bottles of water were waiting in the room. The bed was great, the view was even better than on the pictures (sleeping with the curtains eased the jetlag considerably) and the bathroom was grand. The bathtub was not ideal, but very few bathtubs are (I'm picky when it comes to tubs). I know some people might object to the fact that you have to pay for the Internet, but when you have only a few days in Hong Kong being on the Internet is not of prime importance, especially when the front desk staff of the hotel is so helpful (providing maps of the city and the subway).

Normally I avoid restaurants that are inside the hotel that I stay at, but ate at the Cafe on M three times. The staff there was very helpful (although eager to get you to fill out the survey). The buffet was especially delicious, with so many options that you certainly find more than enough to enjoy, but the menu items are also tasty.

I've not tried any of the other hotels, but this one was so good that I would probably stay there the next time as well. In fact, the whole Hong Kong experience was such that I'd gladly come back. There is a YMCA in a great location too, but I've never really been keen on Youth Hostels. For me the $260/night for the harbour view room was very good value for money.

Telnet gateway form

For those that still wish to use the telnet gateway, I made a form that links to the VPS in Europe. Hopefully it works for you, however, that server might go down without notice.

Mosha down for the holidays

Because I'll be rather busy for the holidays I'm not able to properly manage the Mosha server, it will therefore be down until the 8th of January. My apologies for the inconvenience. If you're using cliser, you might be able to still connect using the europe.mosha.net server running at ports 8080 and 8000, but I'm still setting that server up and it is quite unstable. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Daemon of Cormagan blog

I started another blog related to my novel. Together with my blog on my electronics project, this will mean this blog will become even more starved for content, but at least things are now properly separated.

Mosha down

As I wrote on the Facebook newsfeed, Mosha is currently down, as it can't be turned on in its current location. I can move the server, but for that I would need a wireless AP with ethernet connection (as there is no ethernet port in the new location) and the amount I received in donations is less than half. The old location will be available again on the 5th of May, so at that time Mosha will be turned back on.

Talker

In my novel, which I hope to publish this year, I have the concept of a talker. My illustrator asked me what such a device looks like, and I decided to try to make a raytrace of one, which you should be able to see. A talker is basically a steampunk version of a cellphone. It doesn't use electricity, instead it uses a combination of air pressure (stored in a tank, and increased using a manual pump, similar to that of a blood pressure meter) and phosphorus, which is charged in sunlight. The description in my technology document is as follows:

Transmitting: The talker has a light source (portable ones use a phosphor compound, which charges as long as it is exposed to light, wall mounted talkers usually use a friction light). When in use, the vibrations of the speaker cause a small mirror to vibrate, causing the light to change in amplitude. The crystal shape changes this light into a beam, which can be sent over a distance.

Receiving: When a beam hits a crystal anywhere, it is captured, and using the structure of the crystal aimed at a tiny metal valve that expands and contracts based on the amount of light (when there is no light, the valve is closed). The valve allows air to flow from a pressure chamber (manually inflated using a small pump in portable talkers, using a continuous pump for wall mounted versions) into a hose that ends in an ear piece, which allows the receiving party to hear the voice.

Signalling: Certain wavelengths will not be aimed at the valve by the crystal, but instead will cause the crystal to glow in a particular color, indicating in incoming call, or show other important information.

Switching: The large crystals mounted on top of mountains are connected to glass pipes, linking to exchanges, where operators receive the calls and redirect them to other talkers or to other exchanges using glass rods.

In the device on the picture you can see the green crystal (with the light green light of the phosphorus behind it), the mirror, the rubber ball used to pressurize the copper tank, the valve under the lens under the crystal, the blackish rubber tube leading to the ear piece, which can be attached to the side of the tank when carried. There is also a hook that allows you to hang the talker from your belt. The most important component of the talker is the crystal, which has four tasks.

1. It needs to convert incoming light into heat, using a lens that is attached below the crystal. The heat operates a miniature valve that responds rapidly to these heat changes, and allows minute amounts of air to escape from the reservoir depending on the amount of heat (or light). Diffuse is filtered by the crystal, and never reaches the valve.

2. It receives light from the phosphorus via a mirror. The mirror is mounted on top of the reservoir, aimed at the phosphorus and the crystal. Two springs hold the mirror at an angle at which it is at the verge of sending light to the crystal. When the mirror vibrates, the mirror will reflect the phosphorus on the crystal, which will turn it into a parallel beam emitted in a specific direction.

3. When parallel light of a certain wavelength is received, the crystal will light up. This allows the user to ensure correct alignment (the crystal is able to correct for certain variations, but aiming is important). For stationary talkers this ability is used to alert a user that there is an incoming call.

4. Diffuse light is gathered and aimed at the phosphorus, allowing it to charge when not in use.

Early steps with Starcraft 2

This weekend I completed the campaign of Starcraft 2. I played it mostly on casual, except those scenarios that I failed to complete on casual, which I replayed at a harder level. I was a bit disappointed in the length of the campaign: for some reason I had expected... More. It's the same reason why I stopped playing World of Warcraft: I like the parts that are hardest to create: story lines. I don't really care doing things a second time at a harder level if they continue to look the same (in Ulduar things looked surprisingly different on hard modes, which made them something I wanted to do).

However, I don't think people play Starcraft 2 for the story. In fact, I only played the campaign so that it would be marked as complete on my profile: I was already heavily involved in playing with other players. I use "with" deliberately here: my first games were with a friend of mine against the computer. Unfortunately the AI is easily tricked by a cloud of mutalisks, which you can build before their first wave hits. By carefully attacking their base right at the moment they arrive at yours, you can force their army to return to their base, leaving you more time to build more units... So fighting against the computer became slightly less interesting.

This is where we decided to form a group and fight in a dedicated 2v2 league, for which we developed and tried out a number of strategies, some of which I will describe in later blog posts. For some reason, playing those 2v2 games reduced the number of practice games I had available as well, and after doing some practice games too, I decided to qualify for 4v4. 4v4 had one problem, though: despite being fast, my MSI GX630 is not fast enough for that mode. 3v3 works fine, but in 4v4 the battle is over before I can do anything. So I decided to quality for 3v3 next.

I'm avoiding 1v1 because I'm playing more to cooperate with other people rather than fight against people. Of course, most people seem to think of this differently, and there were even cases where my partners started to fight each other over resources, rather than focus on the common enemy. But this is part of the fun. I'm still in the copper league at all levels, which means I'm in the bottom 40%. But that's ok, I'm only just beginning to grasp how everything fits together, and there might be many things that I'm still missing.

My "new" keyboard

My old keyboard, a 1984 Tulip, sadly died. The CTRL key had already broken off once, but I had managed to glue it back on. This time the damage was too much, though, and I had to get rid of it. Fortunately I had another keyboard, the Northgate Omnikey Ultra, in storage. This is a slightly more modern keyboard, from 1989, and is actually a step up from the Tulip. Some of the keyboard layout is a bit odd (I fixed most of it by reassigning scan codes, but there are still a few areas that I need to get used to) but the typing is amazing. I had used it before at work in Rochester, but there the people complained about the noise (it is loud) so I stopped using it. A keyboard like this makes you want to type. I looked on the Internet, and generally people seem to agree (Wikipedia calls it "the best in the industry". Other websites talk about "a legend in the computer industry", "personal favorite", "best keyboard", and the leader of PC World's column "the 30 products and services we miss most").

And PC World is right. The Tulip keyboard, the Northgate, and the IBM Model M keyboards are no longer available. The only way you can buy them is used, and given their lifespan of about 30 years, they will eventually only be seen in musea. Creative Vision Technology tried to make a keyboard like them in 2006, but it seems those aren't sold anymore either. What these keyboards have in common is that they use Alps Slider Switches, rather than a membrane. This means that they are more susceptible to liquids (if the liquid gets into the switch, your keyboard is basically dead) but also that anyone typing on them will notice that they are better. They aren't necessarily ergonomic (they can still cause carpal tunnel syndrome) but they just feel extremely good. And, just faster than sound flights, they are no longer commercially available.

The disappearance of these magnificent keyboards is most likely caused by the mouse. Because the mouse became more important in the interaction with the computer, the keyboard became less important, and people were no longer willing to spend $190 on a good keyboard. Instead, they bought a $5 keyboard and a slightly more expensive mouse. Which is fine for people that never used the old keyboards. But I will miss them. Let's hope my Northgate will last a long time, still.