A month later, in September 2001, I had put out an ad and bought two more swivelling shelves in addition to the one I already had. But I wasn’t looking for the top shelf at the time. There was no reason as I felt I had plenty of desk real estate at the time.

Today, I feel the desk is cluttered with devices. Subwoofer, UPS, gamepad, USB hub … and I would of course like to move to a dual monitor setup eventually. The Jerker seems perfect for a dual 22 inch display setup. So I will have to do some digging around again. Someone is bound to have a Jerker that they want to get rid of. If I can’t find the shelf I might as well buy an entire desk and strip it down for parts. One caveat though is that the Jerker v2 (which I also have) is 120 cm wide (v1 is 110 cm) so unfortunately I wont be able to scavenge any v2 desks for parts. Another complication is that the shelf is practically impossible to send in the mail and that the v1 seems to exist in at least one other colour except for the birch / silver that I have.

Addendum: I just realized that there is a site dedicated to second-hand IKEA furniture (Billyandfriends). Too bad no one seems to use it. Perhaps the official second-hand IKEA site that is launching later this week will change all that. I would have really liked to have attended one of their flea markets on Saturday but I just can’t be bothered.

Also, moving this hardware would require buying a new graphic card for WS2. Buying new budget components for the WS2 on the other hand would not only be cheaper, but would also allow for buying a 785G main board with integrated graphics. No impressive graphic solution to be sure, but essentially free. Not to mention that such a setup would be A LOT more power efficient, and have higher per core clock speed, compared to my old 65nm quad core. I mean, still after several years there is absolutely no reason for the casual desktop user to go beyond two physical cores. Unless you’re gaming or encoding video or some such it’s just a waste of energy. Certainly nothing to aspire to on a budget system.

• 785G main board with integrated ATI 4200, mATX most likely.
• AMD Athlon II X2 250 (with the boxed fan for the time being).
• 2 or 4 GB DDR3. 1333 MHz or older 1066 MHz if available. Memory frequency seems to matter very little (X-bit labs) so on a budget system there is no point in going all out.
• Samsung F3 1TB. Cheap and fast.
• Possibly new PSU. I know I replaced the original PSU on WS2 because it fried. Can’t imagine the replacement was very high quality.

It’s the smartest upgrade I’ve been able to come up with thus far. WS2 also requires a new monitor, Dell 2209WA most likely, so I might replace my 19” Mitsubishi CRT with the 19” Philips CRT from that setup. For the short term that will solve the problem of my ageing monitor, and it will allow me to get first hand experience from a TFT screen in a setup without any gaming inclinations. I still don’t know if I will have to forego TFTs altogether and hold out for some future tech.

On a side note though, if you were to buy a new TFT today, the market is as difficult as it was six months ago. The 16:10 e-IPS Dell 2209WA is still the best choice. 1680 x 1050 is still the ideal resolution. Going for 1920 x 1080, especially on a 21-23 inch display (as Dell moronically did on their two replacement monitors, the U2311H and U2211H) is useless. Meanwhile, 1920 x 1200 monitors are increasingly scarce. Right now I’m a little concerned that the 2209WA will be discontinued though. I can certainly see the writing on the wall.

Generally there are two or three problems that you run into when making a fruit curd. The first being how to heat the mixture sufficiently, with as little risk as possible and the second is achieving the right consistency. The third is getting the correct flavour which is especially crucial when it comes to acidic mixtures like lemon or lime curds. I’ve found for instance that many recipes have far too much lemon juice in them. For the future I will try using half a lemon worth for a standard one egg batch. It’s better to add more zest in my opinion. Also, unless you have a good reason, don’t bother with separating the eggs and using just the yolks.

I’ve tried a number of ways of making curds and in the end I stumbled upon the microwave method. It seems infallible when used in intervals of 30 – 60 seconds. I also found this nifty video that explains the method in detail. I really can’t recommend using the "double boiler" method, i.e. steam heating a bowl, as it is SLOW and BORING. A microwave is twice as fast at least and twice as exact. I’d sooner recommend using a saucepan directly, just like the pros. It can easily fail but at least it’s fast.

That brings us to texture and consistency. Using a microwave cuts down on need to use a strainer afterwards. The eggs just don’t clot in the same unappealing way. So unless you’ve used extremely chunky zest or forgot to remove the pulp from the fruit juice you’re probably good to go. Finally, getting the right thickness is just a matter of experimentation. I’d reckon I run a normal batch of curd five or six minutes or so in the microwave (60 + 60 + 45 + … seconds). You can keep going until you’re happy but also keep in mind that the mixture will thicken somewhat as it cools. It might be a good idea to put the bowl in some cold water to speed up the process and get a better idea of the final result. If you’re not happy you SHOULD be able to start the heating cycle again.

Suggested curds: Lemon, orange, lime, raspberry, kiwi, passion fruit, pineapple, mango, blackberry … the possibilities are endless.

As for features it seems that the dev team will bring back the old "live" tracking again in the future. As well as a number of other perks like grouping tracks together and music logging. Version 3.5 of the client also includes a number of new and exotic activities to choose from. Hopefully the software will continue to be free and without nags or ads.

I just wish they hadn’t made the website using FLASH! Cpu usage is 33% on a QUAD core … effectively several times worse than playing 1080p videos on youtube. Come on people!

Edit: I took some new photos in less gloomy weather. Still through a window but at shutter speeds of 1/250 (f7.1) to 1/160 (f8) which is quite acceptable using the Sigma 150-500 OS. A larger image can be found in the Garden album.

Where would Starcraft 2 fit in all of this? Is it just semi-retarded or is it too generous a description? At any rate the game lacks any sort of strategy, not that it was present in the first game either. I don’t really remember. No real unit diversity, no base planning or layout, no proper base defence structures. Even the nice little things from the single player campaign, like resource caches, seem to be unavailable, at least in skirmish mode. Just amass the biggest heap of units, bring healers and swamp your enemy. Real sophisticated. Your base just seems like a parenthesis, kind of like in Demigod. Replay value seems real low on this one.

So, here is a first sort of final sketch of the proposed fence.

Building a virtual model, even of something as trivial as a fence, turned out to be extremely advantageous. In the end it will not only prevent a ton of wasted materials by more accurately anticipating demand, but it has also helped me to foresee about a dozen or so serious design flaws and conflicts. Enough hopefully so that the things I weren’t able to foresee can be patched up and glossed over. All in all not the simplest design, but the best I could come up with given the constraints of the walls and landscape. The basic requirements were that the fence would be double sided, have at least two different heights, leave no area exposed to wood rot and if possible extend down to cover the uglier parts of the retaining wall. The biggest hurdle remains to install and space the fence post brackets on that wall though. It’s a fair bit of concrete to drill through and because of the different levels, the posts that in turn decide the levels would have to be spot on for optimum aesthetics.

Now, all that is left is to wait for the plant clearance sale that usually happens in August or September.

Impressions of the 5230: Great value. One sixth or so of the price of an Iphone 3GS. No powerhouse or multimedia wonder though. And applications can be dodgy.

Caveats when compared to most smart phones, like its bigger brother the 5800 include the lack of WLAN, stereo speakers, front facing camera, autofocus and a decent camera. Also, Nokia should have kept the stylus from the 5800.

It should also be noted that none of Nokia’s current HVGA phones have any sort of graphics acceleration whatsoever. As is painfully evident over at GLBenchmark. The only HVGA Nokia phone that makes any sort of impression is the upcoming N8. Their older QVGA phones are obviously useless and the current HVGA phones, like the 5230, 5800, N97 and X6 can only muster about 70 frames (using only the CPU) whereas the N8 does 905 frames, iPhone 4 1016 frames and most of the new and upcoming Samsung phones manage 1400 – 1600 frames.

One other drawback of the 5230 specifically is its lacklustre home screen. So far anyway it hasn’t been given the widget enabled screen of the 5800 and N97. You can make things a little nicer by running widgetizer but in the end you’re still going to waste that big beautiful touch screen.

And on a side note, the file system is completely nonsensical. If you decide to add files manually, there is no hint as to where to place them. And all your music and videos will show up on your ring tone selection screen. Just like ring tones will show up in the native mp3 player. There are a number of workarounds, but neither is altogether successful.

On the plus side we have free turn-by-turn navigation via Ovi maps and the apparently free Nokia Mail which checks up to ten email accounts and delivers the result to your phone at regular intervals.

Custom firmwares and hacking are ever expanding fields. I quickly found that hacking the phone was all but inevitable. Signing applications yourself is just too much work. Plus, using custom firmwares enables enables a few system hacks that would otherwise be impossible as long as the OS is running. Overall the modding community is fairly active and helpful.

Applications: There are a quite a few good applications for the platform. Almost everything you need is there. For instance: Ovi maps / Google maps / Garmin (discontinued?), Foreca Weather, Truecaller, Skype, Nimbuzz, Fring, Sports Tracker / Endomondo, Opera / Skyfire, Nokia mail, Gravity, Quick Office, Adobe Reader, PowerMP3, Quickmark barcode reader etc etc. The most useful app so far has without a doubt been Sports Tracker.

Warez: Warez is quite abundant, even if a select few applications remain without a viable crack. Some are obviously hopeless since they rely on a central server. But you’d be surprised by what you can find. Most notorious sites include: OPDA, Noeman, Symbiantalk, Nokiasoftware and Dotsis.

Bypassing Ovi Store: Why waste your monthly quota if you don’t have to? There is a simple trick for downloading software directly to your PC and then use the software suite to install them. Just change your browser user agent!

PC software suite: There are actually two to choose from. The "Ovi Suite" and the "PC suite". The former is very sleek but bulky and buggy and might in time replace the latter. Both offer easy and fast backup and editing of calendar and messages.

Games: Good games are scarce and sluggish thanks to the lack of acceleration. They are also held back by the somewhat unresponsive touch screen which is otherwise quite competent. I hope you like solitaire because you’ll be playing it a lot! There are a few others like MicroPool, MicroMaze, Airport, Sky Force Reloaded, Gears etc, but overall games are a mix of sad Java games and games that don’t run or don’t run very well. I’ve probably installed a hundred games or so and removed eighty of them.

As for the future, I’ve pretty much canned the idea of getting a used 5800. I think the N8, once it sinks well below its RRP, and IF software development ramps up, could be an alternative. But Symbian has an uphill battle here, and backward compatibility is questionable. Symbian may have a big heritage of applications, however most of them are sucky old 2005 versions that especially in the case of games can’t do full screen or aren’t even touch screen enabled. Meanwhile Android is a rising star, and Samsung is encouraging Bada development, plus Microsoft is about to join the match again. Could be a hard sell for Nokia to convince developers to code for Symbian^3. On the other hand, there is said to be 300.000 QT developers that may or may not code for the platform. And Symbian sold a rather mindboggling 27 million devices in Q2 2010. So while it has a miniscule market share in the US, the rumours of its demise may be exaggerated somewhat by American snot-nosed iphone kiddies. Just think about it, Blackberry and Windows Mobile still hold considerable chunks of the market there. Have you ever heard something as ludicrous.

Obviously, if at all possible, I’d like to jump on the Android bandwagon. But it’s all a question of cost … and the state of the warez scene. Android is just now coming into full bloom so we’ll have to see where it ends up.

One of the changes in 3.0 is the custom menu. Unfortunately you have to code it into your template for this to work. Just like with widgets. Incidentally I stripped the widget snippets from all my templates and I’m starting to regret it now.