Russell Coker: iRiver H320 and Liquid
Recently my iRiver [1] H320 had some milk based drink spilt on it. I’m not sure what the drink was (I discovered it when my iRiver stopped working and the drink was dry) but it smelled like coffee or hot chocolate when I washed it off (I considered tasting it but decided that knowing exactly which drink had damaged my iRiver probably wouldn’t help me fix it).
The initial problem was that no buttons other than the play button (which is also used to turn it on) worked. When I first discovered this I had no way of hitting the reset button so my iRiver played until the battery ran flat. I tried to disassemble it by removing the five tiny phillips-head screws from the sides, but that didn’t make any part of it loose. I tried using a small amount of force on the front piece of plastic and broke two of the clips that hold it in place while getting another two loose without breaking (but there were still at least four clips to go).
Then I realised that the problem was that the keys were physically sticking and that maybe if I washed the keypad out I might get it to work. So I spent some time in a cycle of dripping water into my iRiver, pressing the buttons to get some of the nasty stuff dissolved, and then using a towel to soak up some of the water with milk or whatever. After repeating this for a while the buttons all seemed to work well apart from the play button which kept registering presses when I wasn’t touching it. This meant that it always automatically turned on and then played a song in a stuttering manner as the play button is also the pause button and it paused and played as rapidly as it could.
Finally I left it in the sun to dry for a few hours, which seemed to do some good. The play button mostly works now. Also it seems quite easy to get water between the front layer of protective plastic and the layer behind (which actually houses the keypad). So I have several large drops of water spread out between the layers which move around as I squeeze it. I think that if I get that dried out before algae can grow then everything will be fine.
We watched either parts or the entire three matches yesterday. So, long
report..:-)
The day began with the most unbalanced game of this world cup, featuring New
Zealand, world's top rugby team, against Portugal, ranked 22nd. Rugby in
Portugal is played by about 4200 people only, in less than 50 clubs. All
players are amateur but one (Gon alvo Uva, playing in Montpellier, France),
being dentists, students, etc...and coming to RWC during their holidays. The
result (108-13 and 16 tries) was expected but the feeling when Portugal
scored a try was great, with the 40,000 attendees in Lyon supporting
Portugal. Personnally, I had great time chatting on IRC with Miguel
Figueiredo, one of the leaders of the portuguese l10n team in Debian, during
the match.
We watched Wales-Australia (20-32) during the evening. That game was obviously the
key match of this pool, with the winner very probably finishing 1st in the
pool. Wales playing in Millenium Stadium in Cardiff is always astonishing
and show how much the Welsh people love this sport. During 1st half,
Australia strongly dominated and logically lead 25-3 with 3 tries. Berrick
Barnes, their new fly half (Stephen Larkham injured), is a very promising
player and, imho, the match's MVP (even after being severely bashed by
Gareth Thomas on Australia's first try). After half time, the Welsh team
courageously fought and came back to 13-25, menacing Australia which was
more hesitating. Unfortunately, Australia scored a try after a big mistake
by Stephen Jones. So, even with good play by Wales and another try by the
incredible wing player Shane Williams, Australia logically won this game.
Again, a southern hemisphere team dominated a northern hemisphere one. This
is probably what will happen during this entire WC and I bet that New
Zealand, Australia and South Africa will end up in semi-finals, quite
probably along with Argentina, unless France does a miracle and ends up 1st
in their pool. I think that Australia is slightly weaker than NZ and RSA,
though. So, my current bet is NZ-RSA for the final (this can happen, given
their respective track to the final and given that they certainly will end
up first of their respective pools).
Finally, we watched the second half of Ireland-Georgia (14-10). *That* was quite a
surprise. Ireland was very close to lose this game with Georgian forwards
crushing them repeatedly at the end of the match and nearly scoring a try
that would have made them win. Everybody was waiting for Georgia to swell
after their strong 1st half (3-7) but they managed to fight until the last
second, supported by Bordeaux 40,000 attendees (minus a few thousands of
Irish supporters, of course). So, while the initial question was whether
Ireland would score a bonus point, the final question became about them to
*win* the match. This gives even more credit to Argentina's victory last
Tuesday. Full standing ovation for Georgia at the end of the match.
Today is again a busy day. I'll probably skip Fidji-Canada (which happens at
the same time than France-Namibia) but certainly won't miss Samoa-Tonga and,
of course, France-Namibia. Samoa have to win to keep their chances of
qualifying (they can beat England, really) and, well, France has of course
to win *and* score a bonus point. In this world cup where to so-called
"small" teams are not that small, everything can happen and France is
anything but safe, ehre.


There are many amazing things in Puerto Rico and one of them is the technologically (and I would add, aesthetically) stunning 
Oh my god, I'd be happy the day La Poste (french post offices) will call a kernel hacker to...
Wait for it...
Explain them what is a queue scheduler.
Given that the new house is a body of water away I decided I wanted to
draw out some floor plans that were to scale, so I could remember how
things were laid out and try to get a feel for what will fit where. I'm
sure there should be something out there which is easy to use and will
allow this, but I ended up with
Argh... I know it seems like I've given up on blogging entirely, but that's not the case. I've just been spending a lot of time working on Evan Prodromou instead of on evan.prodromou.name, which has been a whole different kind of world.
I'm mostly poking my head up to point to an article in the
I cannot build the new upstream rtorrent package (at least not as should been built) because of 

Just completed the migration of the next version of
Bah, MySQL keeps insisting on being a fun way to waste your time.
Okay, apart from finishing the move from the laptop back to the Pegasos (I compiled d2x-xl yesterday, today is reserved for the more serious stuff), this evening will be dedicated to cooking and my other pet project, xcontrol.
So, it will be risotto, wireless networks and autobuilders, in no particular order.
In other news, I've been running an archive rebuild to find out which packages actually implement the build-arch and build-indep targets. Out of the first 70, I've counted 11. Since so many packages would be affected, a mass filing of wishlist bugs is probably not the way to go, so I guess I'll set up a web page with the results (after making my autobuilder more robust; it still gets too easily confused) and try to shame people into updating their packages.