• 0 Posts
  • 11 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
cake
Cake day: August 24th, 2024

help-circle

  • In my extended circle of acquaintences and colleagues I know around eight people with folding phones. I have seen ONE of them ever use it open - even in situations where you’d think it’d be great, like sitting at the tables in the office kitchen at lunchtime browsing, almost never used unfolded.

    It seems like it should be a great idea, but for the majority of people the majority of the time, it appears to be an otherwise normal phone that’s just twice as thick as it needed to be. One of the owners of these devices - who had it bought for them rather than choosing it themself - made that exact complaint to me, in fact.

    That said, don’t let this put you off. If it’s a thing you think you would like, the technology has definitely progressed to the point where the more glaring issues (of reliability, mostly) have been worked out. But definitely spend some time playing with one in a store before committing if you can.





  • Sadly the one harness my boy hasn’t managed (or indeed, even tried) to escape from was from Amazon.

    I’ll leave the link anyway, in the hope you can find something similar: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C93LKV5F - sadly it seems to be from one of those fly-by-night brands so I don’t really like your chances.

    You definitely want something a bit thicker / padded though, anything that’s just straight straps seems to get wiggled out of. I can see how the dog harness you’ve got (likely designed with a chihuahua in mind, where neck straps have to be avoided) is a bit too much fabric for a cat’s comfort though.

    This said, the biggest expression of displeasure I got to the harness was the cats flopping over and pretending their back legs didn’t work.

    Once outside mine seems to very much be a “sniffing the flowers” type of cat, just wanders around near the house taking in the new sights and smells, chewing on a bit of grass, etc. Being an indoor cat, even walking on grass seems to be an experience he doesn’t 100% vibe with. At least I’ve not had to retrieve him out of a tree, I guess?

    I tried carrying him 20 paces further from the house and he just made his way straight back to safety. Not with the biggest sense of urgency ever seen, but clearly headed back toward the familiar: https://imgur.com/a/PawWQLT

    Best of luck in your search.




  • Except sometimes it pays off massively.

    I had accidentally left the voice on for some reason, back when Google Maps’ navigation was fairly new here in New Zealand. Back then it wasn’t the easiest thing to turn off without pulling over and stabbing a bunch of buttons, so I left it.

    Approaching a large intersection, it seemed it was taking the words on the street signs somewhat literally, as it told me

    Signs for State Highway one-half

    Indeed, the sign did appear to read “SH1/2”.


  • They’ve missed a couple of times over the years.

    From LTO 1 to 9, the capacities (TB) were 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.5, 2.5, 6, 12, 18. LTO 6 also rather let the side down there.

    Apparently though LTO 10 is going to get things back on track? I’ve seen claims it will achieve 36TB, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

    The real problem is the environmental requirements for LTO 9 and newer have become too strict. The longevity is still (supposedly) fine, but the tapes are much more sensitive to temperature and humidity fluctuations when in use.

    Brand new tapes have to be brought into the environment where they’ll be written for 36-48 hours to acclimatise before being used, and then have a 60-90 minute “calibration” in the drive before they can be written to.

    Honestly, it could put the use of the newer types of tapes entirely out of the reach of many.