Author: rolfje

Philips Wake-up Light HF3461/01 Manual

Posted on By rolfje 1 Comment on Philips Wake-up Light HF3461/01 Manual

For some strange reason, Philips doesn’t provide you with a manual when you buy a Wake-up light. For those of you who want to download the full manual, you can do so by browsing through the directory at:

http://www.p4c.philips.com/files/h/hf3461_01/

The filenames are a bit strange, but looking at the last three letters in the filename will generaly give you a manual containing the language you can read. (“fra” for France, “nld” for the Netherlands, etc.). The Manuals describe the models HF3451, HF3461 and HF3462.

Funny detail: After downloading the manual and opening it, it says “Read this manual carefully before using this device”.

Hardware

Macworld 2008 thin as air

Posted on By rolfje No Comments on Macworld 2008 thin as air

Hi, I’ve read the writeups on Steve’s keynote this year, and listened to some podcasts of people who were in the audience. Personally I’m a bit dissapointed by the features introduced at this Macworld. Surely it’s hard to live up to the ever rising expectations every year, but I do have some comments to make on the introduced products.

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Apple, Hardware

Irritating “Features”: Philips Matchline TV

Posted on By rolfje 2 Comments on Irritating “Features”: Philips Matchline TV

Okay, I have to get this out of my system. It is something I’ve been complaining about for months, and it is really an example of the utter dumbness of some product designers. What am I talking about? Simply turning on my TV.

I have this very nice big heavy 100Hz 4:3 Phillips Matchline TV, which I bought 8 or so years ago. For that time, it was a feature-rich TV which could store all kinds of user settings through on-screen menus, and keep them stored even when the power went out. A few weeks ago I noticed a new TV at a friends house has the same “feature” as my old Matchline. You can’t turn it on!

What happens? Monday evening, you are done watching TV and use the remote to switch it to “Stand By” mode. Before you go to bed, you walk by the TV and hit the power button to completely turn it off. Now on Tuesday, after dinner, you decide to watch TV. You walk to the TV, hit the power button, and what happens? The TV goes from “off” to “Standby”. What complete and utter IDIOT designs a TV which goes to “standby” after turning it on with the power button? It wouldn’t surprise me that a junior programmer was showing off his l33t skills by remembering the state of the TV before it was turned off.

So, after 8 years of introducing the wierdest features to TV’s, the usability labs in this world have still not found the most obvious feature to a TV: Turning it on.

Fun, Hardware

Real guitar game: Guitar Wizzard

Posted on By rolfje 1 Comment on Real guitar game: Guitar Wizzard

No, I’m not a guitar player, but I noticed this cool post on TUAW where the “Guitar Hero” game has been taken a notch up. TUAW reports that the guys at www.musicwizard.com have built “Guitar Wizzard”, a game with which you can learn to play popular songs on a real guitar. From what I can see in the video, this looks way less frustrating than doing the same excersizes over and over to learn to play the guitar.

Okay, you might not turn in to Mark Knopfler in a week, but isn’t it a much better feeling to hold a real guitar in your hand, in stead of that plasticky, toy-like mini quitar with the bright colored buttons? And the price is about right for a game including hardware aswell.

Fun, Games, Hardware

Dakar, 369 days to go…

Posted on By rolfje 2 Comments on Dakar, 369 days to go…

The organization of the Dakar rally has cancelled the rally because some idiots are planning terrorist attacks. Instead of doing a partial rally, or a couple of stages around Lissabon, the complete rally is cancelled. I really think this is unacceptable for all riders, sponsors and TV stations depending on this rally.

All the time and money people have put into making it to Dakar is wasted. Next year it will be harder to get sponsors for the rally, because the sponsors will not risk investing large amounts of money in a rally which “may or may not” start. All those private riders which loaned money from the bank will have a hard time returning next year.

Although not nearly as bad as for the competitors, this means a lousy start of 2008 for me and a lot of Dakar fans eagerly waiting the start of the rally, which was scheduled tommorow.

Racing

Dakar 2008, 4 days to go.

Posted on By rolfje 1 Comment on Dakar 2008, 4 days to go.

Only 4 days until the biggest and toughest rally in the world starts in Lisboa. After 2 weeks, on the 20th of Januari, the bikes will finish their trip in Dakar (oh yes, and there will be some cars too, and some uninteresting truckers). The number to keep an eye on (again) this year is bike 041. It’s Miriam Pol, who is planning on finishing high in the bikes classification.

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Racing

Easy Image Resizing in OSX

Posted on By rolfje 1 Comment on Easy Image Resizing in OSX

A little heads-up for Apple OSX users who have lots of images to resize. There’s a free tool available to do this at http://www.eagle-of-liberty.com/resizeemall/. It’s donationware, if you like it you can send the author money by paypal.

I’ve used it, and it works as advertised. Drag a bunch of images on the application, and batch-resize them without touching your originals. You can save the images with a postfix, and even in a different format if you like. Very easy for mailing a bunch of photo’s.

Apple, Software

Translators ruin good books.

Posted on By rolfje 3 Comments on Translators ruin good books.

On Christmas day, Santa gave me a very nice book about digital photography, by Michael Freeman. The book contains lots of interesting information and tips for the digital SLR photographer. The only problem with the book is, that the Dutch translation of it is absolutely terrible to read. The sentences do not “flow” naturaly, and almost feel as if they were litteraly translated word-by-word from the English version.

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Uncategorized

Karel de Kerstplant

Posted on By rolfje 3 Comments on Karel de Kerstplant

“Wat wil je later worden jongen?” vroeg papa plant aan kleine Kareltje.

“Een hele grote kerstboom papa” zei Kareltje.

Kareltjes vader durfde hem de harde realiteit niet te vertellen, en hielp Kareltje bij alles wat hij probeerde om in een grote, sterke kerstboom te veranderen. Kareltje probeerde met alle macht zijn blaadjes op te rollen tot naaldjes. Jaren lang bond hij zijn stengels bijelkaar in de hoop dat ze zouden samensmelten tot een dikke, stevige stam.

Jaren later is Kareltje een verbitterde kantoorplant geworden. Maar eens in het jaar, rond de kerst, haalt hij zijn lampjes tevoorschijn en droomt hij nog één keer zijn mooie droom. Dan staat hij in zijn mooiste pot, draagt hij de mooiste ballen en is hij een paar weken Karel de Kerstplant, het stralende middelpunt van de roze kamer.

Met dank aan Sidney voor de sfeerfotografie.

Fun