More Wanchai Ferry

Part 2 of my Wanchai Ferry General Mills brand experience. The other promotional coupon went on Bo Luo Pork. This was a much more satisfactory meal. The marinade was nice, the pineapple chunks went well with the vegetables. The tomato sauce thickened everything up nicely. It had a nice aroma, it looked good and it was a really nice combination. However, I did not trust the miserable noodles that were packaged with the last offering that I tried. So I replaced that with a similar amount of Sharwoods Medium Egg Noodles.
I might even try it again.

Ancestry.com and Cap Gun Dad

The internet blog is the ideal platform for petty rants. With that in mind first we have Ancestry.com. They are now spamming their newsletter. If you click on unsubscribe it pretends to have worked but a few days later you get another newsletter. I thought that Ancestry.com actually had a good reputation but now I recommend adding it to your direct-to-trash filter list.

Then today I had a car pass me and a loud pop goes off in my ear. What the heck was that? The blue RAV4 that just passed me had an open passenger window. OK, it must be a cap gun. But then it turns into a no through road. Right, I'll survey the road and find who did it.

Little kid with his scooter and the "smoking gun" evidence on the garden wall. Yes, it was a little strip of caps.

I did try to explain that it was rude and a cowardly lack of respect to aim drive-by bangs at strangers. Dad should have then apologised and that would be the end of the matter. But instead I was told "didn't I have better things to do with my time" and that I should "get a life". Clearly I do not have better things to do so I took a picture of his car, a blue RAV4.

[UPDATE] I did put my version of the events to the police and they agreed to have a word with the person. The dad was at work but the wife did give her sincere apologies and ensured me that there was no malice involved. Now why couldn't dad have done that yesterday? Strangely enough the dad claimed responsibility for the "accidental" firing of the gun that he apparently didn't know was loaded. How he managed to fire at precisely the moment the car passed and through an open window is another mystery. I am sure that this is the end of the matter.

Articlesbase joins my ban list

Articlesbase has many articles submitted by people. There are probably many useful and genuine articles. However the site is infested with fake PC advice such as this page http://www.articlesbase.com/data-recovery-articles/avgcsrvx-exe-has-encountered-a-problem-and-needs-to-close-clean-it-now--1088464.html which is just a way of selling useless software to the unwary. In fact any common problem seems to be spammed with links to buy a registry cleaner. Somehow Google ranks these results high. This site is going onto my blocked list because every time I do a search I get useless results from articlesbase.

Wanchai Ferry

What does Wanchai Ferry remind you of? A short, cheap and very scenic view of Hong Kong day or night. Or something hot, windy and smells of diesel? Which brings me to the new range of Chinese food kits from General Mills. I wouldn't normally buy that sort of stuff but I had a couple of promotional coupons so I thought I'd give it a go. Wanchai Ferry Xiang Gu Chicken looked good on the box. The packaging is great, the website is interesting. It all went well until it came time to add the black bean sauce. I don't know what they did to it but the whiff of vinegar and something unpleasant ruined the recipe. Then the noodles were inferior quality just to make it worse.

If you try this kit then sniff the contents of the packet before you pour it on your food. You may prefer to pour it in the bin. Have a bottle of Sharwood's Black Bean sauce on hand to use instead. And a pack of their medium egg noodles too!

The World's Newest Teletext Inserter

Here is VBIT up and running being controlled by a Justin Mattair AVR XMEGA.

From blogpics

And here is a picture of some dodgy looking VBI, line 12 to be precise. Mostly this is the fault of the low bandwidth scope but I might try some more decoupling.

From blogpics

This 13.5kg boatanchor scope, namely a Telequipment D755 is really difficult to use. It was last calibrated in 1987. It doesn't lock on TV signals, in fact it doesn't lock on anything for the first hour, no exaggeration. Probably some caps need replacing. But then it does manage to lock onto the field flag when it warms up. The A/B dual sweep is a wonderful thing coupled with a precision multi-turn delay wheel. I think it is a 10MHz scope but the poor thing doesn't have any contrast for fast signals so 4MHz is about the real practical limit unless you work with the lights off.
[UPDATE] The wobbly vbi was caused by not having the video output terminated. With 75 ohms attached it was clear enough to read the MRAG straight off the vbi.

VBIT - USB Teletext inserter

From blogpics

VBIT, as the pocket inserter is now called is up and running as far as the hardware is concerned. A few fixes to the power and pullups and a signal line that had to be added and it is now producing vbi. What sort of vbi I have no idea as my ex-military scope doesn't do TV signals. But it means that the video path and the FIFO are all operating. Now I only have two things left to do.

1) Fit it into a case
2) Write the software.

This week I'm going to try generating packet 8/30/1 and maybe some Softel optouts as those are simple single packets. But the full text service could take a few months to implement assuming that the processor can work fast enough. And when summer comes I won't want to spend all the evening picking through code.