Blessed by the Potato

I swear I’ve ranted about the mad proliferation of power adaptors, power bricks, AC-DC transformers or whatever you want to call them before, but I can’t find it in my archives. My search function is not quite as helpful as I would have hoped.

Anyhow, this was a pretty good Potatomas for me, with lots of toys to haul in: a Nintendo DS, some Wii games, and a new camera to replace the one that was stolen. The camera looks pretty keen: a Canon SD850 8-megapixel unit that’s quite small and sleek. So far I only have two complaints about it. The first is that the flash is way too bright, and that it could really use a half-flash setting, or even a low, med, high flash like my old, old 3-MP camera had. The second is that it doesn’t take AA batteries, so I have to remember to charge it when going places, and also to take the proprietary charger. Likewise, the DS has its own charging dongle. My old Sony camera also had its charger, but it used rechargeable AA-batteries, so when I inevitably ran out of juice in the middle of a trip or a party, I could just run into a convenience store or bum some batteries from somewhere else and I was good to go.

My cell phone (motorola Razr V3c) has a mini-USB slot to charge, which I find quite handy. I don’t need to pack a charger, just my laptop. Of course, that stupid thing needs a specific driver for my laptop in order for it to charge properly, so it was of no help when my phone died over at a friend’s place last night, and I had no way of charging it.

Another device I have is useless for the moment as I’ve lost its charging brick, and am trying to figure out how to get another. At Wayfare’s house, her mom has a bag of power bricks and no one knows what they’re for, so they’re afraid to throw them out just yet (in a sign of inspired organisation, they’re labelled with the date they were found so that they can eventually be declared orphan bricks and thrown out/recycled).

I think about now I would kill for someone (ISO? ANSI? IEEE? The government?) to come out with a couple (even a couple dozen) standardized power brick/battery charger configurations. A few DC voltages, a few different max current/wattage ratings, a few different plug geometries, and we’d be off to the races. Sure, we might have a whole alphabet of charger types A through Z, but even narrowing it down just that much would help if it ever becomes necessary to replace one. At work we have “universal” power adapters that are giant and have selectors for 3, 6, 9, 12, or 15 V and 4 or 5 different plugs, and while we use those for a number of different pieces of lab equipment/prototypes, I don’t think there’s a single laptop that they could run. The desktop replacement ones need too much power, and the smaller Dells have a weird square 3-pronged plug.

Plus, my understanding is that there is a certain amount of inefficiency inherent to these transformer power bricks. People simply aren’t going to pay the price for a more efficient version for every device they have; in some cases, the power bricks might end up costing more than what they power! However, if there were only so many power brick types needed in a home, then a person could spring for a more efficient one, and then use it to power a couple of different devices…

For some portable devices, like my camera and DS, it does make sense that the AC-DC converter is in a separate power brick, even if the non-standard adapters drive me crazy. Other devices, such as my PS2 and computer have the power supply internal, and then have a fairly standard plug on the back. I don’t know why that’s not the case for the Wii and the TV — it’s not like they’re portable, and they don’t have batteries so they can’t be used separately from the power supply. While it would be more weight to put on my lap, I would even prefer to have the power brick internal on my laptop, since I can never travel far without it anyway (note that I don’t think this should be true of most laptops: mine is already heavy and hot enough that it’s never on my lap anyway, and the battery life is so short that I never carry it anywhere without the power brick).

We saw I Am Legend tonight, and we’re not thrilled. First Markham Place has really comfy chairs (much better than the blue chairs of the formerly Famous Players theatres, especially for short people like Wayfare), but the non-stadium seating meant it was kind of annoying when a tall guy sat in front of us. We also had a very chatty couple behind us, and the film quality was really awful: there were a half-dozen black vertical lines through the whole thing. I don’t know how the film got that scratched up, that systematically (every reel?!), but I would have left and complained if it weren’t for the fact that so much of the movie was dark, so it was harder to see that.

The movie is only very loosely based on the book. In fact, they have the same concept, and the main character has the same name, but not the same plots at all. No more battling with depression and creeping alcoholism, now Neville simply tries to hold on to his sanity as he faces being the last man on earth. No longer a hapless joe schmo victim trying to piece things together, he’s now a top-notch army scientist who knew about the virus since the beginning. And the big part of the end of the novella? Gone entirely, though oddly enough there were a number of weird touches (what we thought were elements of foreshadowing) through the movie that made us think they were following the original plot, only to see them go wildly off into a completely different direction entirely.

While the camera work got quite dizzying at points, the movie is pretty decent and worth a watch. If you’ve read the novella and were expecting to see a film adaptation of it, however, don’t bother: this is a completely different story they’re telling.

I did not set out to set out to scam Air Miles, let me tell you that up front, though that is essentially what ended up happening.

What happened was that I was looking to buy xmas presents, and not having much luck in the stores, so I turned online. I was worried that, being 11 days before the big day at the time, there wouldn’t be enough time for my items to ship. Not to fear, many sites had big banners on their front pages, “order now for shipping in time for xmas!” On Dell’s site they had a Nintendo DS game my sister wanted and I couldn’t find in stores. It was listed as “in stock” and “ships 5-7 days”. Great, I thought, even if it’s a bit longer than they estimate, it’ll still be there on time.

I went in via Airmilesshops.ca’s portal, which lets me get a whole 1 Air Mile from the purchase. I placed the order and got the confirmation email: estimated ship date: December 26th. D’oh! Well, I thought to myself, at least that’ll be close enough that I’ll still be at my parents’ house to give it to her, and I can just put a card under the tree or something. The next day another email came in: the item was out of stock and the estimated ship date was now mid-January. At that point, xmas was saved by Wayfare, who found the last copy in a Future Shop for me. I cancelled the order and slept soundly, having finished my shopping early for one of the first years ever.

I just got the email from Air Miles that my account has been credited the 1 Air Mile from that cancelled order. I successfully scammed 1 Air Mile. Of course, I didn’t set out to do that, and part of my conscience wants me to call them up and give it back. Of course, the rest of me thinks that the Air Mile, with an approximate value of 14 cents, is not worth the hassle and would end up costing them more to take back… and that I deserve it after they lied about the game’s shipping time and in-stock status.

Back at my parents’ house they have a lot more channels on cable than I get, so I’ve been watching a lot of crap. One show that I used to like was Mythbusters. It’s such a good concept, and the two main hosts are even fairly entertaining. However, the more recent episodes I’ve seen have really stunk. The three new kids are really, really super lame. Their dialogue is obviously scripted, but it’s really terribly done. It’s like they’re trying to make it sound like they’re having a normal conversation, but it’s very painfully not. A conversation may go “What are you doing, I’m completely clueless about the objects in front of you.” “I’m trying to answer this myth.” “Oh, this is one of my favourite myths, let me explain what those objects in front of you represent.”

The useless kids are also a big contributor to how vapid the show has become. I think they could condense the hour-long episode into 15-20 minutes or so. They first set up the myth, then say how they’re going to test it, then go to commercial. When they come back from commercial, they go over how they have it set up to test it, then go to Jamie & Adam and their myth being tested, then get back to the useless kids where, for the 3rd time, they describe their set up and how cool and unbelievable it is, and then they actually test it. Then after another commercial break and a cut to Jamie & Adam, the useless kids get to describe their setup yet again as they test it again with another variable.

Some of the myths and experiments are either really just dumb, or not well-controlled. For example, tonight they tested the “myth” that “tongues can stick to frozen steel poles”. Seriously? Ok, maybe they’re from California or some place that’s never seen winter, but haven’t they gotten their tongue stuck to a fudgescicle? Or called one of their friends from Canada or the northern states who did get their tongues stuck to something when they were kids?

I know they’re not scientists, but they don’t seem to have much of a concept of positive controls, either. They were testing the myth that yodeling could set off an avalanche. They “busted” it… but then couldn’t set off an avalanche with a couple of automatic rifles, either. Avalanches do happen, and rangers/mountain overseers try to set them off in controlled manners by firing off artillery shells — if they couldn’t set one off with their rifles, then it might just indicate that that particular mountain wasn’t primed for an avalanche, and not necessarily that yodeling couldn’t prompt an avalanche. (At the end of the show, one of them did say that there are documented cases of skiers setting off avalanches).

My latest car repair/upgrade was my headlights. I do a ton of night driving, often driving between London and Toronto in the middle of the night with few others on the road. Lately I’ve found though that it’s been far too easy to over-drive my headlights, and I haven’t been quite as confident driving out there on my own, at least not above 90 km/h or so. While both of my headlights were still working, I know that the passenger side one was last replaced about 4 years ago, and the driver’s side one could be original to the car for all I know (5+ years). When the passenger’s side one burned out and was replaced, it was noticeably brighter than the driver’s side one for a while, but now both have dimmed to the point where, well, they’re both dim. I know that halogen lights dim over time, and should generally be replaced before they actually burn out completely, so that’s what I did.

I chose GE Nighthawk bulbs, which (should be) are compatible with my headlights. They’re supposed to be brighter than typical car headlights, and I had read a lot more good reviews about them than some of the other options (the Sylvania Silverstars, for instance, get mixed reviews about light output, and mostly just seem to be obnoxious blue). With a $10 mail in rebate, I decided to take the plunge and get a pair this week. I was expecting an improvement, a substantial improvement (I figured generic halogens would be an improvement), but not necessarily something as bright as my parents’ HIDs.

After doing a little bit of driving, I’m not hugely impressed. They’re only a touch “whiter” than regular halogens, which I’m fine with. I was hoping for brighter, with a longer viewing distance, and while they are an improvement over the old, worn out bulbs, it’s a surprisingly marginal difference. I think the point at which I risk overdriving them is about 100-110 km/h, which is a bit of an improvement. Interestingly, the bias to the right for the illumination seems a lot more pronounced than before, so I’ll have to figure out how to check my headlight alignment (if it can be adjusted easily at all). I actually found it a little distracting, since the shoulder was lit up better than my lane was, it almost made me want to pull off towards the right.

Despite the slight improvement, I still found that whenever another car would pull up beside me, their light output would almost always put mine to shame :(