because 140 characters isn't enough

A new PC build

I had been using an Intel Core i7-8700K since October 2017, patiently waiting for a good opportunity to upgrade. Fed up of waiting, I ordered some new parts: The exact parts (along with the prices I paid, inclusive of 20% UK VAT) are: * Intel

Google

The 404 errors in the Google Pixel Discover feed

My Google Pixel 5 Android phone has a feature called a ‘Discover’ feed, which I often look at. The feed contains articles that Google thinks I’d be interested in (based on things like my search history). I ignore and scroll past many of

Windows

The pervasiveness of caret browsing in Windows 10

When I’m using Visual Studio, I often press the F7 key to start a build. But, a few days ago, I accidentally tried to do that when a taskbar item context menu was focused. What happened was this: ‘That doesn’t look like

Ubuntu

Week bits: A turbulent day with Ubuntu

I’m trying something different for this post – it's spoken (a short podcast, if you like). Week bits 19/02/2023: A turbulent day with Ubuntu0:00/5:031× Transcript This is my first ‘week bits’, where I talk about something (hopefully interesting) that

privacy

‘Your business contact information is processed by Lusha Systems Inc.’

A few days ago, I received this text message: The sender was simply a mysterious ‘Privacy’. Was this a genuine notification about some company having my data, was it plain spam, or was it even phishing? The URL in the text redirects to https:

software

An unexpected DPI-scaling failure

Recently, I printed this colour chart using X-Rite’s i1Profiler calibration software: I was creating some calibrated ICC profiles for my printer for the first time using an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer. But something looked odd with the chart: the text was overlapping things

web

The oddness of the BBC Weather scroll bar

I often would find myself confused by the scroll bar underneath the days in the forecast on the BBC Weather website. Sometimes it would look like the days were scrolled all the way to the right, when in fact they were scrolled all the

canon

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 phenomenonWhen opening the

tech

The freezing Dell U2720Q monitor

I recently bought a Dell u2720Q 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 [https://en.

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 [https://web.archive.org/web/20031222203115/http://members.lycos.co.uk/musicf/], as a website to host components I had written for the foobar2000 audio player [https://foobar2000.org]. Hosted on free web host Lycos, it’

Win32

A bit of trouble with TreeView_GetItemState

Recently, I had a bit of trouble with TreeView_GetItemState [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/desktop/api/Commctrl/nf-commctrl-treeview_getitemstate] [archive [http://archive.is/xGy7o]] and TVM_GETITEMSTATE [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/desktop/Controls/tvm-getitemstate] [archive [http://archive.is/uyz5j]]. The

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__ [https://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#object.__init_subclass__]. Once use case where it shines is class registries. Put simply, this is keeping track

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 [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/windows/desktop/ms645505(v=vs.85).aspx] looks like this: However, the error icon in my custom dialogue box looked like a

C++

The beauty of a fold

I previously wrote [https://blog.yuo.be/2016/05/11/columns-ui-can-now-be-compiled-using-clang/] 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 made use