2015-02-20: Pepped up by Poles

Went for my lady bike ride and gym session all by myself again today.

I am so cool I don't need fancy wheels. And red is cooler anyway.

On the ride home I must have looked a bit down as a Polish fellow decided to cheer me up by doing mental stuff.

With a damn big grin

I did not join in but I was certainly cheered up.

Equipment Review: Mobile Office

This is actually working a lot better than I had any right to expect of it. I did plan it out before leaving Australia but I am impressed at how well it has worked.

Trust the Potato.

Lenovo T440p: It is corporate grade so it doesn't have retarded "let's break all security" stuff preloaded onto it. It runs 4 hyperV machines with ease, mostly these are for connecting to client sites and so have relatively low load but one has SQL Server running and another has Outlook and all my other user level stuff on it. I did lose the HDMI adapter which was stupid of me but hasn't been an issue yet as most teles have vga anyway.
VypVPN: I use giganews for my vpn requirements. This allows me to impersonate a machine in various countries so I can watch things like the Daily Show, ABC News 24 online. I have the occasional drop out but mostly it works fine. In theory I can use Hulu as well but I haven't bothered yet.
Asus RT-N12+ wireless router: I grabbed this for hotel rooms which don't have wifi. Weighs almost nothing. Have only had to use it once (Poprad) but it worked beautifully. Phones, tablets etc all connected fine and setup with the wizard worked out of the box.
2TB HDD for external backups /archive: I screwed up here by not grabbing a notebook drive. Will have to change this. Notebook drive hopefully won't need external power and will weigh less. PGP'ed up so relatively safe.
HP Mouse (and keyboard not shown): I got the x4000 wireless mouse & Elite Keyboard v2 combo which run off the single usb dongle. Mouse works on almost every surface I have used (including my desk in Aus which refused several mice). Keyboard has taken a couple of beers and being packed into a bag and thrown around. Battery life looks like about 3 months for my usage which is pretty heavy. Bit annoyed the batteries are not interchangeable.
GP701 Portable Powerbank: This thing is crazy. 10 000mAh. Takes 8 hours to charge but has held the charge for almost 2 months and has saved me from having a dead phone several times. Also charges tablets for the Candy Crush addicts amongst us.
Samsung S22D300 (Not Shown): Piece of steaming crap. Stand is non swivel. Angle of viewing is along the lines of "if you are not at the precise angle you can't see a damn thing". This makes it useless for watching movies in bed. Even on my desk I have to prop it up with a spare hard drive under the stand so I can use it.

Rating: 8/10 (I can drop a few grams with the drive and would like battery compatibility for the mouse/kb but I am quite proud of myself for a starting idea)

We had an amazing sunset tonight. The sun was a vast ball of churning molten toffee hovering over the houses.
It got me thinking. Why is the sun setting over there? I thought I was looking North out the window but the sun was setting on the right. Maybe they switch that for the Northern Hemisphere?
I had to work through from first principles to ensure that the only problem was that I am looking south when I look out the window.

Also of course the "big things on the horizon" are optical illusions and cameras are too dumb to see them

I had the same problem in Poprad when I saw 4 stars in the sky that were in a close together straight line. I couldn't remember there being a straight line of 4 stars. So then I had to work through in my little brain about whether stars move in relation to each other and so could create a 4 star line.
By the time I had worked out that they don't (much) I also remembered that constellations exist and so stars can't move (much) in relation to each other.
By that time also the 3rd light in the line had moved off as it was a plane and the other three stayed still because they are lights on a mountain road.
I might not be the brains of the operation but at least I try!

A Plea For Help: ID this lookalike

I was annoyed by this magazine for two main reasons.

1. It has a tabloid style cover but is just full of crosswords, no gossip at all. The reason it has a tabloid style headshot on the cover is because it is called "Corona" which means it should have a head on it. But they could have called it "Crosswords" and had a bored commuter on the cover which would have made more sense.

Slovakia doesn't use the Corona anymore so it has zero amusement factor of trying to pay for things with it

2. The person is faintly familiar but I cannot remember who it is. She is a Polish actor and is not the person I thought I recognised but couldn't remember. If anyone knows who I think it looks like please tell me as it is really annoying me.

Rating: 1/10 (circular logic shits me to tears)