hardware Be careful buying an Intel BE200 M.2 card Here’s a picture of an Intel AX210 card: And here’s a picture of an Intel BE200 card: If you’re observant, you may have noticed that the connector is slightly different. The AX210 is both A and E keyed, while the BE200
photography Jupiter and Saturn with my Canon camera I recently bought a Canon RF 800mm F11 IS STM lens for my Canon EOS R camera. While the lens is light for an 800mm lens, it’s still too large and heavy to take out and about on a whim (for me, at
Windows The bugs in File Explorer The latest version of Windows 11 includes an updated version of File Explorer, built using the Windows App SDK. Some parts of File Explorer haven’t actually changed – the main part of the UI containing the left pane and the file list is still
photography I made a website for my photos Photography is a small hobby of mine, and I used to post some of my photos on photography websites like 500px. But, apart from blurry photos, on that site you get people liking your photos just because you liked theirs, and people following you
photography A super blue moon Taking photos of the moon is always fun. Here’s one I took last night, from London: (It’s not quite up there with the one on the Wikipedia page for the moon, sadly, but where’s the fun in downloading a photo from
Windows A Win32 tree view scrolling oddity It turns out the Win32 tree view control has a novel way of selecting items. If you hold down Shift and scroll your mouse wheel up (but not down!) it will select the item underneath the pointer. This even works in the Windows 10
web The case of the misplaced GitHub username Recently, when using GitHub’s global code search, I noticed something amiss with one of the results: The file path of the result was somewhat confused. Taking the path literally, there seemed to be a directory named ‘ui_extension.cpp’, as if it were
hardware 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