smnevans

I came home for lunch today, put my key in the lock, and it snapped off about a centimetre and a half  from the tip.

It was a shock but, with hindsight, not so surprising. It was more than ten years old and the lock is a bit dodgy. It needs a bit of jingling and jangling to get open at the best of times.

A few millimetres of the broken edge hung from the hole, not enough for my fingernails to grasp.

I managed to find an old pair of rusty tweezers at my mother-in-law’s house but although I have petite, girly hands I’m really not good with small, fiddly stuff. I thought there was a pretty good chance that I would end up pushing the broken fragment unreachably deeper into the lock. I’d end up spending several hundred dollars on a locksmith visit and more on a new lock and keys.

I have to learn to take it easy. On my first try I got a good hold on the chunk of key and it slid out easily.

The steamy summer interior of my hallway has seldom seemed so welcoming. 

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 No comments

Something that I’ve not seen mentioned accurately in any reviews is the appearance of an “Edit User Dictionary” option in the Keyboard Settings. It appears if a Japanese or Chinese – Pinyin keyboard is selected.

Many people, seeing it, have assumed that it is a way to add words to the auto-correction or spelling dictionary. It is not.

The user dictionary is designed to help people writing Japanese or Chinese. It allows users to pre-set which Chinese characters appear when they type a phonetic version of a word. It’s commonly used for names of places and people and is a standard feature of most character based input systems and, as such, is a very welcome addition to iOS.

Entering words in here will neither add them to the auto-correct dictionary, stop them from being underlined in red or enable any Text Expander like features.

Friday, June 25th, 2010 No comments

I was reading the end of Neil Gaiman’s ‘Neverwhere’ last night when I noticed a hat tip to William Gibson. As Richard Mayhew emerges from London Below he sees:

The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel.

It’s an echo of the first line of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’:

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Nice.

I’ve read that line of Gibson’s dozens of times in articles over the last twenty years. It’s a lazy quote; the first line of the first novel, and universally well regarded. But there is so much more.

I’ve recently been reading ‘Pattern Recognition’ again and have been amazed by the power and inventiveness of Gibson’s language as he introduces us to Cayce Pollard.

Damien:

Damien is a friend.
Their girl-boy Lego doesn’t click, he would say.

Jet lag:

She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

Her new black 501s

… every trademark carefully removed. Even the buttons on these have been ground flat, featureless , by a puzzled Korean locksmith, in the Village, a week ago.

That’s just in the first few pages. I last read ‘Pattern Recognition’, partly in paperback and partly as an audiobook, a few years ago during a really stressful time. I’m sure there’s a lot I missed. Looking forward to finding out what.

Both Neil Gaiman and William Gibson are active Twitter users. Gaiman as @neilhimself and Gibson as @GreatDismal. They both seem very nice and surprisingly responsive to questions and comments.

Monday, May 24th, 2010 No comments

I managed to avoid finding out anything about Season Five of Lost before it was released here in Japan. I hope I will be as lucky with Season Six. I have a feeling that, now that it has ended, people will be more likely to talk about it. I’ve already had to click away from a couple of (non-Lost related) websites that looked like they might contain spoilers.

Fingers crossed. Eyes averted.

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 No comments

Most games give you 100 points for doing X, 200 for doing Y and 400 for doing Z. Pretty soon your score creeps into the thousands or tens of thousands and becomes fairly meaningless.

The great thing about Orbital is that every point counts.

Saturday, February 20th, 2010 No comments

I’m reading in the bath. It’s steamy and the water is up to my neck. I notice that the phone is getting pretty steamed up and try to dry it off with a towel. The more I try to dry it the wetter it gets. I notice a splashing sound.

It’s full of water.

I shake the phone and water splashes about inside. I can’t get the water out though. I realise that the phone is still on and frantically try to turn it off. It won’t turn off. It sounds like I’m shaking a half full bottle of water.

Home Is where I want to be Pick me up and turn me round

Talking Heads’ This Must be the Place (my alarm ringtone) wakes me and ends the terror.

This was my second dream of iPhone destruction of the week. The other was simpler. I just knocked it to the floor and smashed the screen. Good thing I don’t believe that dreams mean anything or I’d be worried, but I don’t, so I’m not, and if you see me checking out waterproof cases in Yodobashi Camera this weekend it has nothing to do with this dream. It’s just something I’ve been meaning to look into for a while. Really.

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 No comments

Etymotics Research has some new eartips. They are called Gliders and are shaped like small mushrooms. Having read some glowing reports about their sound quality I wanted to try them out.

I couldn’t find them in any shops here in Japan so I emailed Etymotics asking if they knew of a Japanese source. Their response suprised me: they sent me a pair for free.

A week later they sent me two more pairs. A mistake perhaps but a very nice one.

They have the best sound of any of the eartips I have tried so far. Detailed, rich and warm. They fit nicely in my cavernous ears. They don’t block out quite as much noise as the flange eartips but I only notice it when I am in my school.

Friday, April 17th, 2009 No comments