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Recently I’ve taken up maintenance on my 20 year old car. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time and have done a few small jobs over the years, but acquiring the tools to do anything larger is a bit of an investment I’ve been working up to. It’s been interesting seeing how simple some scary-sounding mechanical jobs can be and applying my knowledge of electrics and computers to vehicle systems.

Having fixed a lot of other problems that all occured around the same time I was left with a single fault code on the airbag (SRS) system which is permanently stored and unable to be reset by regular diagnostic tools. Let’s take a look at what’s involved in repairing this ourselves!

Continue reading “Clearing permanent faults on a car airbag controller”

More USB ports is always better, but have you ever tried to add more? Over the years I’ve tried several PCI Express (PCIe) addin cards designed to give your computer up to 7 additional ports but have never been able to get one working. They’ve all delivered power but won’t talk data.

Continue reading “VIA VL805 USB PCIe expansion cards stumped by AMD IOMMU”

Hey folks, I’m back to talk about an app project from my day job.

A prototype website and companion app for a rewards scheme that allowed users to get discounts when they shopped at participating retailers as well as donating a portion to a charitable organization of their choice.

My team and I built the frontend, while a sister team worked on the backend.

Continue reading “Reward program website and app”

Android app to geotag Christmas trees

The Christmas tree retail site I used to work out of offered a popular service where customers could visit earlier in the year and choose a still-growing tree in our plantations. The first year was messy with all of us struggling to find customer’s trees with crude paper forms and “best guess” locations, so I was asked to investigate using very cheap Android devices to geotag trees and ease the pain.

Continue reading “Android app to geotag Christmas trees”

Hello again! I know, this post isn’t coming that long after the previous – almost like I’m trying to blog regularly! Also – much like the previous post – this one concerns an oddity in Windows 10 that’s been annoying me, again, starting with the November update.

 

the outlook default mail account popup

Continue reading “Windows 10 and the Outlook popup of anger”

Evening all, I trust this post finds you well.

You might’ve been able to guess, or you might’ve just assumed, but yes, I am enrolled in the Windows Insider Program. It was pretty fun throughout Windows 10’s development and even after the initial release, culminating in the very recent roll out of “TH2” or “the real Windows 10”. There’ve been a few stutters along the way, odd glitches and issues, but here’s one that popped up recently and has been annoying me a little…

Continue reading “Windows 10 and the Double Arrow icon of death”

Greetings one and all, today we’ll be taking a look at another bit of concepting/messing around from the start of 2015. This time we’ve got an animation of some flying reindeer!

This follows on from the settling snowfall effect (“Mimas”) I’ve covered previously. This project was started directly after Mimas, but never reached the same level of completion. Following the years’ theme of moons of Saturn, this project was called Iapetus.

Flying reindeer animation lapetus
Continue reading “Flying reindeer animation (“Iapetus”)”

Xbox Game Collection

Xbox game collection

Because I’m a lame nerd I also made a spreadsheet of them all so I don’t buy dupes. Oh dear.

I’m thinking I need to add digital games too, since Games with Gold and numerous sales has gifted me a whole load more games in the last couple of years. Physical games have a greater charm though, I think. They take up space but I like having them, especially Xbox 360 and prior where games still had manuals (pretty enormous manuals in some cases!)

 

Any recommendations you don’t see on the list and that haven’t been given away via GwG? Let me know!

— B