because 140 characters isn't enough

Print Rewards: Unscrupulous behaviour by Canon

Canon Europe has (or had) a printer rewards scheme called Print Rewards, where you earn points for printing and replacing ink cartridges. Those points can then be exchanged for things like photo paper. This morning I received this email from Canon: At least Canon

tech

A message from my bank

I recently tried to move money between two accounts held with the same business bank. I did everything as I usually would, using the relevant mobile banking app. But after confirming the transfer, instead of a success message, I got this: I’ve heard

hardware

The ten-month-old SSD that ate my data

I recently noticed that the audio player I use, foobar2000, was refusing to play a certain song in my media library. It complained that the file was corrupt. In fact, it wasn’t just one file – there were four files in a row that

photography

Seaford to Eastbourne: a long walk

I had some free time in mid-September, so decided to go on what seemed like the most picturesque hike that was relatively close to home. I jumped on a train to Seaford – a town in East Sussex, and the start of a clifftop walk

Windows

The (unsolved) mystery of the self-terminating applications

For several months, I’ve been troubled by an odd phenomenon when using Visual Studio. Its first occurrence was several months ago, when I was using Visual Studio to work on a foobar2000 component. I had foobar2000 running in the background, intermittently playing music

Google

The case of the self-installing Google Drive client

Yesterday morning, I was greeted by this after logging into my Windows PC: Google Drive was asking me to sign inThis was the fourth time this had happened in the last couple of months. Each time, I’d right-clicked on the Start button, gone

hardware

Official Asus XG-C100C firmware update available

I’ve had the Asus XG-C100C 10Gbps Ethernet card for a while but only really started making use of networking speeds faster than 1Gbps when I recently bought a QNAP QSW-1105-5T 2.5Gbps switch. Since then, however, I’ve been having repeated network connectivity

Windows

The mystery of the slow downloads folder

I keep my downloads folder sorted by date, with the most recent downloads first. However, recently, I had been having a problem where Windows Explorer would spend a long time loading when opening the downloads folder: A real-time video of the phenomenon When opening

tech

The freezing Dell U2020Q monitor

I recently bought a Dell u2020Q 4k monitor. However, I had a curious problem: when using my desktop PC, the monitor would occasionally lock up. The screen would turn black and the monitor would become unresponsive to anything other than the power button. Pressing

photography

A winter hike

I’d known hail to be a momentary phenomenon. This hail, however, was fierce, and didn’t seem to be in any rush to go away. It was late February and I was at the start of a hike up Loughrigg Fell in the

tech

A short time with a Pixel 4

I pre-ordered a Pixel 4 (the non-XL model), intended as an upgrade from a Pixel 2. I received it last week – and sent it back a few days later, having not got on with it. Here’s what I found. It was difficult to

Windows

The slow programs and my sound drivers

I recently noticed that some programs on my Windows PC were taking a long time to start. I knew, for example, foobar2000 should start instantly. And yet, it was frustratingly taking several seconds. I then realised that other programs were affected: Firefox and Chrome

web

The history of a website: musicmusic’s (foobar2000) stuff

musicmusic’s foobar2000 stuff first appeared in 2003, as a website to host components I had written for the foobar2000 audio player. Hosted on free web host Lycos, it’s address was members.lycos.co.uk/musicf. The site’s design was simple and

Win32

A bit of trouble with TreeView_GetItemState

Recently, I had a bit of trouble with TreeView_GetItemState [archive] and TVM_GETITEMSTATE [archive]. The TreeView_GetItemState macro is a simple convenience wrapper around the TVM_GETITEMSTATE message. Hence, they should do the same thing: retrieve certain state values for a tree-view item.

Python

__init_subclass__ – a simpler way to implement class registries in Python

I overlooked that fact that Python 3.6 added a new class method to object called __init_subclass__. Once use case where it shines is class registries. Put simply, this is keeping track (in a global or equivalent object) of the subclasses of a

Excel

A day with CSV files and Excel

I recently tried to open a CSV file in Excel and was greeted with the mysterious error, 'The file format and extension of test.csv don't match...', followed by 'Excel has detected that test.csv is a SYLK file...'

Win32

The mystery of the Windows 10 message box icons

I noticed that, in Columns UI, the Windows 10 standard error icon as displayed by MessageBox looks like this: However, the error icon in my custom dialogue box looked like a bit of a relic in comparison: I was left scratching my head. I

C++

The beauty of a fold

I previously wrote about how the following: console::formatter() << "some text" << 15 << a_variable << and so on...; was a common pattern in and when using the foobar2000 SDK, but wasn't standards-compliant C++, as it

tech

The death of my Nexus 5X and the uselessness of Argos

I bought a Nexus 5X in March last year and honestly it’s been the worst mobile phone I’ve owned. Despite having fairly good specs, it was incredibly slow in use and seemed to get slower with every major update. Anyway, I was

Windows 10

Windows 10: Locked in darkness

This one has been an ongoing problem for at least several months. I have been able to reproduce it on every Windows 10 PC I encountered, and there are references to the problem all over the internet. And yet the problem still exists on

FreeNAS

Migrating a VM from VirtualBox to iohyve/bhyve on FreeNAS 9.10

I have been running FreeNAS on an HP G7 N54L ProLiant MicroServer for a few years, including running an Ubuntu Server VM in VirtualBox running in a FreeBSD jail. However, VirtualBox support in FreeNAS had been deprecated, and as of FreeNAS 9.10.2

Windows 10

Windows 10: Useless links everywhere

I had repeatedly encountered useless links in Microsoft programs, and I knew Windows 10 was no exception to this. Here I was in the Display Colour Calibration applet, wondering what it exactly it does, when I saw a 'How do I calibrate my display?

Intel

Intel Management Engine software now includes an NDIS filter driver

I just installed the latest version of the Intel Management Engine software from my motherboard manufacturer's website (version 11.6.0.1032). During installation, I got multiple alerts from my software firewall that it was connecting to the internet, which seemed unusual. I looked

Google

The free coffee that almost slipped through my fingers

Google are currently running an Android Pay promotion in the UK for the festive season. Every time you use Android Pay this month (December 2016), you get a chance of winning a prize [archive]. The first five times, you also get a coin. And

Win32

The queue to nowhere

Recently, I received a report of a hang when using one of my foobar2000 components on Windows 10. I had a process dump file which showed the hang was not in my code: foobar2000 itself was stuck in a loop on the main thread