Dammit Jim!

After making the WP_MonsterID WordPress plugin to create a random monster avatar from an assortment of parts for each commenter (based on other people’s code), fruityoaty asked This looks nifty, but how many monster images are available for assigning?

I was browsing Science Daily today when I came across the headline “Rodent Sperm Work Together For Better Results”. I had thought that sperm were mindless little swimmers just looking for an egg so I had to take a look at the article (available online and free).

I was skimming Simon Willison’s blog (I know his uncle) when I came across this cool idea for automatic avatar generation. Well to tell the truth, I took one look at the title “Visual Security: 9-block IP Identification” and deleted the link from my RSS reader but the next day a link based on that idea came up for generating a unique monster avatar for each user that did catch my interest. After all if it’s got monsters, it has got to be interesting.

Laptop Repair Guy points out that Toshiba has issued a warranty extension resulting from a class action lawsuit. As far as I can tell (I’m not a lawyer so better check for yourself) I’m out of luck since I’m in Canada but definitely better to have Toshiba fix it for free than try yourself.

After I put up a post about repairing my laptop power connector, Laptop Freak left a informative comment:

As you see on the photo above, the positive connector oxidized and almost black. If you put a fresh solder on the connector like this, the power jack problem will reappear very soon. I usually remove the power jack from the system board (with iron gun and solder sucker), clean oxidized pins on the power jack and pads on the motherboard and only after that resolder the power jack.

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that he was right. The power jack started coming loose again after about a month and a half. I was in the middle of a bunch of things so I didn’t really feel like messing with it so I just opened up the computer and threw some more solder on it. When the power jack started jiggling again a few weeks later, I knew I had to do something better to fix it. So I picked up a desoldering sucker and some desoldering wick.