Weak water fountains

One of the things that drives me crazy is how un-ergonomic water fountains are. I'm a tall guy so I have to bend way down to get to it, and often the stream is set so weakly that it only comes up an inch or two above the fountain. I am not really interested in kissing the fountain so often I just pass on getting a drink.

Somebody ought to invent a water fountain that auto adjusts to water pressure and puts out a consistent stream.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/14/history-of-water-fountains_n_6357064.html

https://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/everything-you-already-know-about-water-fountains

Insignia Flex 10.1 tablet

I was perusing Best Buy's ad this week and they had an insignia flex 10.1 android tablet on sale for $100. I couldn't resist trying it and it's pretty good. So far, I've had no problems.

The display is 1280x800 which is fine for me.

The camera(s) on the tablet aren't the greatest but they produce passable pictures.

Pretty amazing what you can get for $100 these days.


Months ago I bought a chromecast and never installed it. I thought it'd be worth a try and it works very well to "cast" video to it. I even installed a chromecast extension in my Chromium browser on ubuntu and it works very well to "cast" a webpage to it, but your computer needs to be on to keep the connection.

Dual systems and dual monitors with dual inputs

Most monitors have dual inputs, and most older ones have VGA and DVI. What's useful is to have a KVM on your primary monitor and use the secondary monitor's own switching ability to act as a video switch between systems.

It helps to have a video card with dual outputs on each system, and most cards (especially older ones) have VGA and DVI.

Oh, the duality!

What would actually be cool is if you could switch a monitor with DDC/CI.

Getting my sound back by closing tab, undo close tab

I keep losing my sound under Ubuntu 14.04 and firefox trying to play youtube with an Optiplex 760.

For some reason I hear no sound at all, but what seems to work is to close the youtube tab, then right click on the tabs area and click on "Undo close tab". Most of the time the sound will magically start working.

Reloading the page doesn't seem to work, I have to fully close the tab.

It'd be nice if I could do that as a single menu item, "Close tab and reopen", or have the most recently closed tabs listed on the new tab page. I was going up to the menus and choosing History/Recently closed tabs until I found the right click menu item "Undo close tab".

Zaggkeys flex stand keeps collapsing

So I got a zaggkeys flex wireless bluetooth keyboard and stand. But the stand keeps collapsing on me under the weight of my tablet.

My solution: get some strong clips and attach to the underside of the stand to keep it held together.

All the clips have to do is to keep the folding part from coming unfolded. No more collapsing!

Secret Menus

I thought these secret menus were kind of amusing. Psst! Hey, wanna try a secret menu?

The leprechaun milkshake? Expect a visit from the MIB after ordering...

http://secretmenus.com/

http://hackthemenu.com/mcdonalds/secret-menu/


http://www.rsvlts.com/2015/07/20/mcdonalds-secret-menu/

and don't forget to ask for access to the secret VIP lounge.

The Art of Swiping without Swiping

I thought this was pretty cool: a credit card magstripe "emulator" that can simulate a credit card swipe.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/25/kamkar_credit_card/

http://samy.pl/magspoof/

I was most interested in how he visually shows the magnetic stripe on the card with little iron oxide particles.


It was interesting that he was using a "coin" card in his video.

https://onlycoin.com/