Category Archives: Broken tech

Firefox negative space

Why Firefox is awesome: ability to generate negative space.

Shrink Vista partition is pulling teeth

Confining oneself to a certain way often resulted in narrowing of view points. Whenever I supported an interested Windows refugee running into the Ubuntu camp, I easily gave the instruction that the user should de-fragment and then shrink the Windows partition. This will free up space in the harddisk for new partitions, in which Ubuntu [...]

Get rid of OpenOffice Calc Delete Contents dialogbox

I have been using OpenOffice Calc a lot and one annoyance I faced is the “Delete Contents” dialogbox. In the beginning, I tolerated this quirk of the program, but after more than a year of clicking “Delete all” checkbox followed by “OK” button, I have had enough. Setting aside the question why this idiotic feature [...]

Pony Express faster than broadband

Last Thursday, a news story appeared on BBC titled SA pigeon “faster than broadband”. When I first read it, I thought it’s an interesting story, and oddly funny. Then, I went “meh”, so what? The pigeon has the unfair advantage in the form of (relatively) high tech 4GB memory stick. Instead, if the pigeon had [...]

Repairing broken watch strap

The strap of my old $10 watch broke. I could spend another $10 to get a new cheap watch, but I figured I should save that for my next two meals. Instead, I took out $1 for a tube of superglue, rolled up my sleeves and start tinkering.

USB hub off the side of my desk

For a while now, one of my PC has been throw fits at the most irritating moments. It started mildly a few months ago. Randomly about once every few days, the PC would locked up hard. Only a full main power recycle would revive it. I put off trying to fix the problem for a [...]

Sleeping with the enemy

It has been a couple of weeks since I jumped back into Windows, and suffered the much maligned Vista. I guess it’s time to list down what I like and dislike about Windows Vista. Before I begin, I should mention I was a Windows user from way back. The first computer I owned (but not [...]

Stop Javascript limited pop-up window in Firefox

Once in a while, I still encountered websites which wanted to control my browser window. These retarded web developers seemed to think they should not only control how their websites look, but also how my browser window should appear.

Another gremlin visited

It was Sunday evening, I was about to sit down for some entertainment. I have my Ubuntu PC connected to the large screen TV as a second display, and the sound piped through the optical SPDIF output to a 5.1 channel sound system. I turned on the TV and sound system. And I fired up [...]

The week when a gremlin visited

Last week, a nasty gremlin stopped by and created havoc in my electronic charged life. It started when my PS/2 keyboard broke. Now, if you are geeky enough to notice the particular phrase, “PS/2 keyboard”, rather than “keyboard” or “USB keyboard”, I should tell you now there is a good reason for this special mention. [...]