Ben Ryves

Screenshot of Duolingo showing someone saying 「君たちの基地は、全て私たちがいただいた。」which has been translated as "We have taken over all of your bases".

I feel the English translation they've gone for here lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

As far as I'm aware NiCD is more tolerant of overcharging than NiMH and so for "dumb" devices that just chuck a power supply across the battery terminals via a series resistor I've tended to replace with NiCD to avoid damaging the cells. Understandably harder to find these days, though...

Wondering if it's worth the hassle of keeping old (and unvisited) forums online these days. I'd been doing it for archival reasons but over the past few months the amount of bot scraping has gone through the roof and brings the DB server to its knees (my guess is training data for AI LLM)? PITA!

Indeed, the PC-1211 would simply redirect most things from the screen, whereas on the PC-1251 you have to be more explicit (PRINT v LPRINT in programs, P↔NP to automatically print calculations). As the 1251 can load 1211 programs you can add PRINT=LPRINT to programs to direct PRINT to the printer.

To Print or Not to Print, that is the question! Thank you. :)

I think I found the printer fault, though it's still a bit temperamental (e.g. refuses to enable the printer immediately after loading from tape). Once it's in the mood it will print everything now, whereas previously it was only printing the last line of whatever you sent.

Just highly annoyed as it was in excellent cosmetic condition before and this was 100% my silly fault. :(

Photo of a Sharp PC-1251 pocket computer connected to a CE-125 printer and microcassette recorder.

Talk about falling at the final hurdle, getting it all back together I put a screw in the wrong place and ended up marring the front cover (bottom right, between "Exp" and ">"). Very disappointing! :( The printer it came with seems to have given up printing, too.

Photo of three replacement LCD panels and a PC-1211 showing LCD degradation.

Photo of a Sharp PC-1251 with the replacement LCD installed. The screen of the PC-1251 reads "HOORAY, IT WORKS!"

The LCDs turned up and I've just installed one in the PC-1251 (need to polish and reinstall the bezel). The PC-1211 shows how the degradation starts, but as it's still useable and the removal process is destructive I only felt brave enough to replace the PC-1251's completely dead screen so far.

Photo of a Sharp PC-1251 LCD module in its metal frame. The entire LCD surface is black apart from a small silvery grey blob towards the very middle. These LCDs fail over time and gradually go black, starting from the outer edges.

Photo of the LCD module in a tub with some acetone. The LCD glass is glued into the metal frame, so to swap it the old LCD needs to be unstuck.

Royal Mail said they're going to deliver the LCDs this week, so I guess I should get prepared. I've already removed the LCD from my PC-1251, but need to unglue it from its frame. An acetone bath should help. The polariser is the right way around here, the LCD has failed that badly!

Happy birthday!

Photo of a tabby cat

Here's the birthday boy.

Photo of two ladies in cat minidresses singing outside.

Tonight I'm attending a cat's tenth birthday party. An ABBA tribute band are putting on a great performance in his honour. Happy birthday, Cosimo!

Stackry went very smoothly; a couple of hours after the USPS delivery notification I was sent a photo of my package and was able to enter customs info and get it forwarded. Less than a day later it's been dispatched and all for under a fiver (thanks to a $10 discount code). Now it's DHL's turn!

I feel your pain on this. I've ended up having to buy those cheap assorted bags which will get the player working, but the belts are clearly not cut very well and the inconsistent size results in audible wow and flutter. Not the end of the world for computer data, but no good for music!

The whole stack was clamped between two pieces of scrap wood and five coats of PVA bond were rubbed onto the spine. Finally, a strip of card was glued onto the spine with around 4mm overlap onto the front and back covers.

I used pdftk to reorder the PDF in blocks of four pages in order {3, 0, 1, 2} and then printed 2 pages per sheet, double sided, flip on short edge. Each sheet was then folded in half and stacked. The covers were printed separately on one piece of thin card then cut in half.

I much prefer a paper manual for reference but didn't have one for my PC-1248. Here's my first attempt at some DIY book-binding using stuff around the home, think it turned out OK and it certainly beats scrolling around the PDF!

Could it be a beat cut switch labelled for two different frequencies?

Photo of the band Guitar Wolf playing at the New Cross Inn.

I think it's fair to say Guitar Wolf have been the most fun band I've gone to see live - highly recommended if they're playing near you. So so sweaty... but all very worth it!

I enjoyed both films too, in spite of their similar premises they are executed quite differently. I saw them as part of a "movie mathematics" screening (RoboCop+The Raid=Dredd) which was great fun too. Not sure where I'd fit Assault on Precinct 13 in that equation but I got a similar vibe from that.

It has a similar premise to The Raid (Indonesian), but Dredd started production first so it's not possible for it to have been a remake. The Raid getting released first probably didn't help Dredd's chances, though! People were put off by the 3D, too, even though it worked really well in this film.

Disappointed we never got a sequel to this, Karl Urban was a great Judge Dredd and the "day in the life" format worked brilliantly so I would have loved to have seen more.

Name a film flop that you wish had done better at the box office.

#filmsky

YouTube video by tim hunkin The Secret Life of the Home

The Secret Life of the Home was one of my favourite parts of the Science Museum so it was sad to see it close last year. Here's a nice guided tour from Tim Hunkin recorded just before its closure: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqpv...

YouTube video by Mar W. The Thing (1982) - RJ Macready vs. Chess Wizard

Drinking and chess computers doesn't really mix: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv_X...

Stackry is the one I looked into last time this issue arose, but at that time the seller seemed intent to make the ordering and payment process as complicated as possible and so I never went through with it.

I'd like to order some small LCD panels from a US supplier who refuses to post to the UK. Has anyone had any good experience with cheap parcel forwarding services from the US to the UK they could recommend? As the panels are $20 each I don't really want to end up paying more than that in postage!

Photo showing an IQ-8000 electronic organiser editing a BASIC program in a small font. The BASIC program listing fills the screen (40x8 characters) instead of the usual 16x8 region.

Photo showing an IQ-8000 electronic organiser editing a BASIC program in a large font. The BASIC program listing fills the screen (30x4 characters) instead of the usual 12x4 region.

It's not entirely perfect, but I've found a way to access the whole screen on an IQ-8000 when using the 16-column-only IQ-707 BASIC card. Only requires a couple of POKEs, but figuring those out was a bit of a faff. www.benryves.com/journal/3763...

Due to be hotter tomorrow, at least where I am. :( I'm very much looking forwards to the cooler weather from Wednesday!