Josh (the blog)

I’ve delivered simple, clear and easy-to-use services for 20 years, for startups, scaleups and government. I write about the nerdy bits here.


@joahua

Battery saving exam technique

A technique for saving batteries.

Or, how exams saved batteries. Yes, that’d be it.

I just realised how long it’s been since I charged my phone. I like to think it has a decent battery life, although not as good as some, but still — it’s generally pretty good. My usual charge cycle is about 3 or 4 days, with me placing it on the charger only as it starts beeping and going into spasms saying “FEED ME!!!”. Well, not quite… you get the picture.

So when I realised that I’d last charged it on Sunday night, I was a tad suprised. The battery display meter has three segments, and it’s currently sitting on two. Phwoar. That’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — We’re on Saturday. I think I’m about to make my first week without a recharge!

As I scanned the phone, my battery meter fell to one bar… still impressive. That said, given usage patterns imposed by exams this week, perhaps I should change my phones screen display message…

My Samsung N191, displaying 1 bar of battery and the display message '100% uptime!'

Celsius 232 and 7/9ths

It’s a really good book. Short, too. I picked it up this afternoon and finished it in procrastination time and whilst on public transport, etc. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s probably because it’s usually expressed in Fahrenheit.

Making slightly more sense, now? Maybe?

I’m sure there many others have already expressed opinions on the book, and a quick search with your weapon of choice will probably yield multitudes of synposiseseseses (synopsi?), reviews and the like.

It seemed (at least to me) to be different in the whole “bleak futurist” genre in that the book ends on a positive note. Okay, I should clarify that. It seems, at least to me, to end on a positive note, in that the valued elements established in the text survive, even though a few million people die, and… yeah. That was a spoiler, by the way. Forget the previous line now. ;-)

Something was going to be announced where this paragraph is, but I’ve decided not to, because I’m not sure enough to make that worthwhile. If I were to say I’m looking for ideas for Extension 2 next year, that’d probably allow clever cookies to surmise what I would have been considering suggesting as a theme here. But I won’t. Because I’m still liable to changing my mind several times a day for about two months still ;-)

Rapidfire – Firefox’s World Domination campaign!

Okay, so that was a lie… it’s not actually called “Rapidfire”. I think that’s a cool name, though, so they should. *nods* Really!

Basically, they’ve got a huge amount of unused net transfers remaining with their webhost, and are trying to make full use of it before the end of the month. Yeah, that was a lie, too. Damn, you’re good.

The bottom line is, Firefox 1.0 PR (not the pre-PR release which Asa was shouting about on the mozilla-announce mailing list a few days back) has been released, and the world is being encouraged to clamber and grab it. So much so that I’ve heard this same thing from three independent sources as I turned on my computer this morning — hey, that’s a good thing, I suppose.

Go get it, visit Spread Firefox now!

As previously pimped on the WSG mailing list, Dale’s Blog, and Photo Matt.

Physics is funny

Oh dear. I just got a phone call from school which made me burst out laughing.

Apparently, I’m meant to be in a physics exam right about now. Teeheehee. I said, gleefully, that I had dropped physics some time ago, yet the change may not have come through yet, as this was officially listed on a Year 12 subject change form.

My plans to walk into that exam and have a lot of fun writing stupid yet entertaining things on the paper could have proceeded without difficulty! Muwahahahaha!

I love physics ;)

Public transport, public disgorgement

Apparently, one and the same. I just recieved an SMS message from Sam, who has apparently just had her handbag fall onto the floor of a train, into a puddle of someone elses vomit. Lovely.

On reflection, I realised I’ve never had an experience like this on Sydney’s public transport system. Admittedly, I probably don’t carry a

handbag enough, but that’s another story entirely. No, seriously. I don’t think I’ve ever been vomited on, or even near, on public transport. I’ve been on a bus where someone at the other end urinated in their seat, and on a few more where people have been so drunk that urinating becomes a highly probable event, but it’s never actually affected me, personally. Besides, I can count those incidents on my hands and feet. Yes, I have a normal number of fingers, and toes, just for the record. Well, most days.

So, any Sydney-dwellers, what’re your experiences with such things? Is our public transport system the grossest thing since… umm… something gross? Or isn’t it so bad, aside from a few incidents which could really happen anywhere? Tim Swavley seems to think that even a train that HAS been vomited on, but cleaned up, isn’t worth riding on, judging from his escapades of earlier this week, in which he managed a new record (was it seven trains?) for the highest number of individual trains inbound to the city. He hasn’t got a blog, so I can’t hyperlink you to the full story. Harrass him in person, though. ;-)

Of course, if you’re not from Sydney, what do you think of the public transport systems (if any) in your little corner of the earth? Are such things universally gross, or have we Sydney-siders done something to deserve this especially?