This week, we talk about Adam’s upcoming trip to the White House Science Fair, our own first science fair projects, and the trouble with troubleshooting connected devices in the home. (Apologies for any jackhammering noise that got through in the podcast–construction was happening next door!)
One Day Builds
Adam embarks on one of his most ambitious builds yet: fulfil…
Show And Tell
Adam recently completed a build of the royal St. Edwards cro…
Making
Viewers often ask to see Adam working in real-time, so this …
One Day Builds
Adam and Norm assemble a beautifully machined replica prop k…
One Day Builds
One of the ways Adam has been getting through lockdown has b…
Making
Adam unboxes and performs a quick test of this novel new hel…
Making
When Adam visited Weta Workshop early last year, he stopped …
One Day Builds
Adam tackles a shop shelf build that he's been putting off f…
Show And Tell
Time for a model kit build! This steampunk-inspired mechanic…
One Day Builds
Adam reveals his surprise Christmas present for his wife--a …
video coming soon!
update: and it’s up now!
With the exception of the Windows 10 upgrade debacle (which is a single package and not part of the kernel), I’m not sure it’s fair to characterize the OS’ broader error reporting as “something’s happened.” In most every other scenario Windows returns error codes just like everyone else, and in many cases includes a basic description beyond the numeric code.
I have never understood peoples reluctance to tell the user “This is what went wrong” or “This is why you cant move forward from here.” and instead opt for “random error code 2147”. I have written programs where I was told to put in error codes and don’t let the users know whats wrong. 0_o
Great show. The last bit about using a Glowforge with printer toner was fun.
Oh man, you guys hit some great topics this time.
In my former work life I was doing research, a tiny bit, with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), on securing the internet of things. At the same time I still fight with automation for my home. I think Will is spot on with the problem is figuring out what you want to do with the automation. There are some interesting projects for orchestrating the internet of things, such as NodeRed, but those are not really set up for general consumer use. Hopefully one day someone will figure it out.
Adam, for your projector setup woes, I found that the Harmony remote actually works well for our setup, mostly due to the ‘Help’ button that goes through and turns on and off things when it isn’t working right. (Although my set up is a bit ‘simple’ as we stream everything through a PS3 and I have all the audio going through a receiver, and not my sonos stuff.)
As always keep up the great work on the podcast, it is a highlight of my week 🙂
can we start a betting on how many members are now opening there old printer to open the toner?
and also, anyone know if a laser pointer on a 3D printer would work, since i don’t have a laser cutter yet.
As far as the red curb situation, I’ve seen people take those floor jacks out, lift the offending cars up, put them on jack stands and leaving them up there, as well as putting them on rollers and moving them into someone else’s areas. Probably not legal (moving a vehicle that is not yours anywhere from six to twenty feet, in many places, will get you arrested for grand theft auto), but it’s funny to watch.
One year, for science fair, I tested whether the age of mice had an effect on their ability to learn to go through a maze. Almost 15 years later I’m doing my PhD in experimental analysis of behaviour, doing basically the same thing. But with more math.
I have twice moved compact cars that blocked me from exiting a parking space by getting a handful of friends to lift the front wheels off the ground and wheel the offender around like a wheelbarrow.
One of those times, we were late for an event only to find someone had parked in our private driveway blocking our exit from the garage. We just rolled the person’s car into the middle of the street and left it there…
Hey Adam!
I can’t believe that you have sonos as your homecinema speakers?! You are kidding, right? Why dont you have some propper speakers and a sophisticated AV receiver? I alwase thought you as a movie lover guy would have some awsome home entertaining shstem.
I have a doozy of a story about parking tickets.
I live in Philly and parked in a particular spot often and was never ticketed. One week I parked my car in this spot on a Monday and left it there. There was some road work going on, so I checked it periodically to see if there was a “Temporary Police Action, No Parking” sign posted (which there wasn’t), the last time being Wednesday night.
When I returned to my car early Saturday morning there were two parking tickets on my windshield. When I looked up I found that the city had replaced the “No parking” sign with an arrow pointing to the left with a “No stopping” sign with an arrow pointing both left and right (right being in the direction of my car).
When I looked into it I found that the sign had been replaced Thursday and that I was given tickets Thursday and Friday night.
Here’s the kicker, no matter who I talked to in the city they said that it was their right to change signs as they please, that there’s no legislation regarding required notice or grace period and that my tickets were valid.
So screw Philly.
I could not agree more!
This should really be the kickoff into a new Premium Tested-Feature Cast: “F-IoT…how do I make this work anyway.”
Based on real life experiences by the Tested Team or Guests.
Not sponsored, so you don’t piss-off any paycheck signors.
Make the video cast multi medium. Include screenshots/pictures/shortclips of scripts, hardware/software solutions etc. And then attach the scripts, links or references to hardware/software solutions, to resources to the cast.
Inter-connectivity:
It’s ironic right? None of these devices can operate seamlessly. Even the devices that are designed to operate
seamlessly. I used a universal remote with
my dad at his house. Forget it! It required more button pushes that just
using multiple remotes. And every time
you change a password (which you really should do more often that most of us
do) every device has to be updated via a scroll and pick interface. I can ask it verbally “Movies about cats
that are not about pets” but I have to code in my password one letter at a
time – for every device I have because none of them can “do it all”. And not really because they can’t – but because
they won’t. My PS4 (formally our main
streaming machine)? Less functionality
than my PS3 – because they wanted it that way – not a hardware issue – it’s an
intentional move by the maker.
ok …./rant.
But really, it’s crazy.
HomeTheaterDynamics.net They will make it all work with one click.
Awesome discussion. As a college student trying to get into UX design this episode is right up my alley.
We have a forklift at work for offending cars….
I think in one of her videos, Simone says it’s Simone Yetch.
Really? With all the exaggerated Windows bashing? Great way to alienate a large portion of your listeners. Yeah, we get it. You like Apple. Guess what…a lot of people like PC, and a lot of those people are pretty smart.
the jack hammering wasnt that
For some reason I get letters from the Whitehouse. Today’s had this link to the science fair. Have fun Adam.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/science-fair?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=email589-text&utm_campaign=sciencefair
I don’t think Will was exaggeratedly bashing Windows – and Apple is notoriously worse!
Adam, etc: if resetting things is a problem, consider some kind of web-enabled powerstrip ; I have a http://www.amazon.com/IP-Power-9258T-Network-Controller/dp/B005D55HKU and a script that uses it to automatically powercycle my cablemodem if/when I lose network to the outside world.
“Have you tried turning it off and then on again?” is automatable…
re jackhammering: major construction a block away here in NYC. restarted just as you guys apologized. pretty funny.
Anyway, are Jamie and Adam involved in all is the new “mythbusters” show on scifi? I assume not based on silence here…
i was referring to your comment about windows error codes, but you keep spamming your resume like it means something.
Oh, please tell me you are going to try that experiment with the laser cutter and put it on video. Best entertainment ever.
re: using a laser cutter as a printer…
Skip the toner. Just dial down the “depth of cut” and let the laser singe the text onto the paper!
You can get model train building kits that ‘draw’ shingles on the material used for the roof!
–Paul E Musselman
To be fair to the coding staff, my recollection was that all of the needed functionality was there in XP, but MS refused to implement it. Sure, the service packs had real updates in them for some real code level problems in the NT base – but they also had a lot of configuration updates. For example XP came with a firewall IIRC – but it wasn’t enabled by default because certain folks MS thought it would confuse users. Market research suggested many users would be put off if they didn’t have easy admin access – so guess what? You probably know more about that than me.
At the time of XP I was a subadmin at a Big 12 UNI and I used to complain to no end at commport (or the later one) and Logik! would pound into my head it was a configuration problem. I hated XP, but he was right. The functionality was there, it just wasn’t turned on – and I was tied by IT to make global changes.
Good times those.
As far as errors go – MS seems better than Apple to me but you are right. They are not only cryptic, I actually had the MS tech forum staff tell me they didn’t know what a code meant at all (not documented). OTOH – at least for 8.1 Pro I have had some informative B-Screen errors that point me to a specific driver.
I try to subscribe to this…and I’m brought to a wall of text, possibly code…..