Linux Developers & Printing...

 Just one more thing that 'Grinds My Gears'.  I'm still using Mint 17.3 as my main OS, because for the most part, it works.  I've found through experience, when crucial stuff stops working in Linux, it's invariably down to Linux Developers and their piss-poor/non-existent Beta-testing of new kernel releases.  And when they break shit, it more often than not stays broken!  The two examples near & dear to my heart are 1) the kernel 'regression' that caused my Transcend SSD to no longer be detected, and 2) the one that rendered my Canon scanner useless.  One moment everything works fine, update kernel, and stuff gets broken for good.

I'm sure I've mentioned it already, but their way around introduced-bugs like these is simply to 'wait them out'.  They acknowledge they exist, sure, but if there's not enough of a public outcry, they're just ignored until enough time has elapsed, that the bug-reports can be quietly marked as 'Closed'.

 And I get it, tracking down each & every little bug would be an impossible task.  But that doesn't change the fact that the older your computer & peripherals, the greater the chance that each & every kernel upgrade can potentially 'brick' your system.  This was certainly the case with my Transcend SSD - every kernel that succeeded 3.0.19-32 could no longer detect & boot from the SSD.  But what happens when it's not a hardware-driver issue, but an entire subset of the computer experience that's being neglected - in this case, Printers & printing.

Network-printing worked fine for me on Mint 17.3 for years.  Unfortunately, since the 17.3 repositories are now offline, I can no longer add new network printers to my laptop, as part of the setup procedure includes downloading the appropriate printer-driver from the net.  On discovering this yesterday, I decided to boot up my Mint 19.1 installation, which doesn't go EOL till 2023.

But what used to be a 2 minute job with 17.3, I spent more than an hour trying to do - or, 'fix' rather. Printing on Mint 19.1 seems a complete shambles.  Nothing seems to work properly.  When I try adding a new network-printer by doing a search for it, nothing is found, using either the network-printer or the Samba-printer options.  With the network-printer option, the network computer hosting the printer 'pings' fine, yet I'm told that there's no computer detected.  The Samba-printer option's search is equally clueless.  Including the entire SMB path to the printer will detect it instantly however.  The next hurdle you encounter involves permissions.  Once the network printer is detected, you are prompted for your username & password, which it accepts, no problem.  However in order to proceed, I need to 'Set authentication details now', using the exact same username & password that I've just entered - not a problem in itself - what is a problem is that the same bloody username/password combo is now not accepted!

Nevertheless, it will allow you to proceed, though you are then prompted for a username/password every time you want to print a document.  What's irritating as hell about this is, when the username/password prompt box appears, it includes a tick-box to remember these login details - but it doesn't work either.

Although I think what annoys me the most about all of this is the 'New Printer' dialog itself (see pic).  Notice the way the 'Password' field is placed above the 'Username' field!  Show me an OS, a Linux distro or even a web-page that requires the user to login, that puts the password before the username!!!  They don't exist, or at least I've never come across one.  But the lazy shit that coded this thought it perfectly fine.  This is a perfect example of someone who DOESN'T  use Linux as their main OS.  Or use printers for that matter.  Printers are still an integral part of computer systems yet this shoddy, slap-shod, buggy implementation is deemed acceptable?!?!?!?

It just makes me sad.

Unscrupulous Car Dealers...

 Another moan, but mercifully, I'll make this one short.

 As alluded to a post or two ago, I was recently coerced by circumstance into buying another car.  My purchase-window was narrow as I was 'on the clock', having rented a car from Hertz expressly for this purpose.  Given the time available, I opted for getting something from a dealer, as opposed to delving into the murky depths of the private-seller's market

 The saying about, "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is", I now see in a different light.  I decided on a dealer based on price.  I had also decided on a price, at least one I would not go above, but circumstance (always a bitch!) & exorbitant car-insurance quotes made it clear that I'd either have to fork out more on insurance or buy a newer used car.  No mention of 'quality' here, all insurance companies are interested in is a car's year of manufacture & engine size.

 I went intending to buy a 2011 Ford Focus 1.6L from the dealer (aka, villain) in question, but after some horrifying insurance quotes, ended up buying a gutless 2014 Skoda Fabia 1.2L, for about 50% more than I had planned spending.  And not just any Fabia, this as it turns out, is one of the lowest-spec Fabia that Skoda manufacture - not sure of the model-name, but this one has no glove-box door, just a hole in the dash & no mirror(s) in the sun-visors - two things I had never seen in any car, let alone one that I owned.

 But this I was assured was in perfect condition, had been serviced, and was being supplied with a new NCT - so the 'luxuries' just mentioned, I reckoned I could live with(out).  In truth, it looked respectable, and given my urgent need for a car, I signed on the proverbial dotted line.  Not before taking it for a test-drive of course.  I specifically requested that I do this solo, something the dealer didn't have a problem with - whether this was down to COVID19 or the percentage of gray hairs I sport, I know not!  It drove ok, and nothing stood out as being a deal-breaker.  One thing I noticed was that the fan-blower only worked at level 4, the highest setting - an easy fix, or so I figured.  The dealer even agreed to deliver the car, free of charge, which was cool.  But things were about to heat up.

 On dropping the car off at my house, the dealer was gone in the blink of an eye.  I had resolved to get a receipt of payment from him, the transaction for which I had done online by way of a money-transfer, the same day I'd given him a €100 deposit - but totally forgot!  I was more interested in checking out my new toy!

 That interest turned to annoyance not long after.  Almost immediately, I discovered that the passenger & driver's electric windows would not open.  I quickly contacted him, and made known my findings.  He 'played dumb' but told me that if I dropped it back to him, he'd check it out and provide me with a replacement car while it was being repaired.  Guessing that the problem was down to water damage to the door-switches concerned, I instead decided to investigate the matter myself.  Turned out I was correct, and on both doors.  The drivers side was particularly bad (see pics) but with some isopropyl alcohol, I soon had them working again, temporarily at least.  After a quick trawl through Ebay, I had replacements ordered, costing a little over €10 - I could live with that. The Blower-fan problem turned out to be a slightly more expensive fix - €14 including P&P for the resistor module that had blown - but it was here that problems started to be compounded!

 Seeing as I didn't want to wait months for fan-blower parts from China, I ordered the resistor-module from the UK instead.  But in order to be certain that I was ordering the right part, it was first necessary to extract it - this meant removing the passenger airbag in order to get at it.  The big mistake I made was, after ascertaining the correct part to order,  I did not reconnect the airbag - instead, I drove around for a week with it disconnected.  After replacing the fan-blower part, on starting the car , I was greeted with an airbag-error icon on the dash!  I had figured on computer code-errors being generated, but hey! I had an EBD2 dongle - I'd just clear them!  Or not, as it turned out.  An Internet search revealed that my EBD2 dongle has only access to engine error-codes.  When I run a scan, I am informed that all is well, there are no errors detected.  After more searching the net, I soon discovered the problem - and problems usually cost money to rectify.

 Due to the ever-increasing number of 'features' found in cars today, manufacturers have long deemed it necessary to assign different categories to each.  Airbag faults for example don't fall into the engine-category.  And the more categories that an EBD2 dongle can access, the more expensive the item - naturally, I had bought the cheapest dongle available, capable of scanning only engine faults.  In practice, what this meant was that I could either go to a dealer to get the airbag error-code reset, or I could try and do it myself - and I've chosen the latter option, though it might prove more expensive, at least I'll learn from the experience.  To that end, I've ordered a 'real' VCDS dongle through Aliexpress, capable of reading all VW/Skoda/Audi/Seat fault-codes, and a whole lot more!

 But I still haven't even got to the point of this post - so much for it being brief!  What prompted this little missive was of what transpired earlier today.  Recall, I was eager to procure from said Car-dealer, a receipt for the amount that I had paid for the car.  After contacting him nearly two weeks ago about it, I was informed that he was not at home, but if I would text him my address, he would post one out to me.  Well into the second week of waiting for it, I phoned him today - no answer.  While I was composing a text to him, I received a call from his number.  On answering the call, I was greeted to a full 2 minutes of 'snap-crackle-pop' - no voice, just random noises, as if crinkling paper, rapping the phone against something etc. After listening to this for as long as I could, without receiving a response, I hung up, texted him, politely inquiring as to why he still had not forwarded me the receipt of purchase as promised.  After waiting several more hours, with still no response to my text, I tried phoning him again.  This time, I received an immediate, "your call cannot be completed" message - as if my number was after being blocked!  That was all the motivation I needed - despite the late hour, I resolved to drive the 50+Km to his place of business to confront him in person.

 Arriving there, I put through another call, which was also ignored.  Turned out he wasn't at his car-lot either.  After walking around and examining a couple of dozen cars of his, I made my way to the nearest house on the off-chance that he might live there.  He didn't - but the really nice guy that did, knew who I was looking for, and more importantly, where our villain resided.  Just up the same road as it happened!  As I drove up to his house, he was collecting something from his lorry.  He seemed startled at my unexpected appearance, and none too pleased to see me.

 The first words out of his mouth were, "Well, what's wrong with it", meaning the car.  For someone selling cars with a 3-month warranty, it's not what you'd expect to hear as an opening line, or at least I didn't!  After telling him I was only there for the receipt, he perked up somewhat.  I ended up  getting the receipt but little else for my long drive.

 But I'm convinced that his reluctance to provide me with a receipt had nothing to do with the state of the car - after all, he seemed quite willing to repair the window problem and provide me with a replacement car.  It's much more likely to be down to having to declare (or not!) the car-sale to the tax-man - no receipt, no paper-trail to taxable-income.

Mobile Broadband: Device-Unlocking Issues...

 But before that, a round of applause for ME - this will be my seventh post for the year - a new record!  Maybe it's down to COVID19, or maybe I'm just more irascible than normal - which is also a hint that this is going to be a another grumbling post.

So, Broadband.  As I've mentioned in the last few posts, Three has been my ISP for 12 years, though it seems longer.  Generally, I was happy enough with the service, up until 1-2 years ago.  The modem/routers supplied by Three got faster, the monthly data-transfer cap increased dramatically (going from 25Gig to 768Gig) and all for less money, well, almost - it started out 12 years ago at €25/month, reached its zenith at €42/month, and I'm now paying €30.  Great!  What wasn't there to like?  The service provided, that's what!

On paper, I had better kit, better transfer-speeds, and a better monthly cap.  In reality, the download speeds during peak-hours was a joke, so I really couldn't avail of any of the improvements in the technology.  So as I've mentioned already, I went searching for a new ISP, and eventually settled on '48', an off-shoot of Three, using Three's network, though a separate company in its own right.  Before November 10th 2020, 48 are offering a 100gig/monthly data allowance, which includes unlimited calls & texts to all Irish mobile & landline numbers - and all for just €7.99.  For me, the unlimited calls bit was the clincher.  I currently have a pre-pay phone with O2 (which is owned by Three) that will eat through €10 of credit in no time.  Since my Huawei B525 modem has a standard telephone socket, all I needed to do was plug in a telephone - I did, and it works perfectly!

48 doesn't provide any modem/routers to its customers like Three does.  Instead, it outlines the requirements & steps required to get Three to unlock your Three phone/modem - which of course presumes that you are/were already with Three.  Interestingly, it also points out that, failing to get Three to unlock the device, there are many mobile-related business' that provide an unlocking service, but doesn't recommend any one in particular.

After ordering a 48 sim, it didn't take long to realise that it, along with every other ISP, was barred from using my Huawei B525 - 'sim-locked' in mobile parlance - so effectively useless.  In order to get the B525 unlocked, about 3 weeks ago, I opted to look for help through Three's 3Community forum.  Since this is ongoing, I won't say much about it.  Suffice it to say, my interactions with various moderators there went from the sublime to the ridiculous, with my username/profile suddenly no longer capable of posting to the forum, a situation that still has not been resolved.  I may relate the sad, sordid details in a future post.

Falling at that hurdle, I then tried to get help through Three's 'Web-chat'.  From past experience, this has become a 'last-resort' option for me when it comes to seeking answers.  These guys/gals, usually from India, will keep you on for ages, and generally achieve nothing in the end.  This time however, I got a result.  After explaining my unlock request to the rep. I was informed that he could see that an unlock request had already been put through for me, and granted!  I informed him after a thorough check, that no unlock-code had been emailed to me, and would he be so kind as to resend it.  This he did, only for us to discover as the minutes ticked away, that his email wasn't going to arrive.  After another failed attempt, he instead tried sending the unlock code as an SMS to my BB account - success, finally!!!

Naturally, I was elated, happier than a pig in shit.  A few minutes later, I had the 48 sim in the B525, a prompt for a SIMLOCK code, then finally, one unlocked device - EASY PEEZY!  Finding that the transfer-speeds with the 48 sim were identical to the Three BB sim was another plus, so there seems to be no throttling in evidence by the parent company.

But, as the saying goes, "Much wants more", so with the B525 puzzle cracked, I diverted my attention to the other Three dongles I have lying around, namely a E5573 and a E5220, both from the Huawei stable.  The E5573, being 4G-enabled, therefore the more able of the two, I chose to try getting unlocked by Three again, though this time, via their 'Web-chat' help service.  There was no virtually instant unlocking to be had second time round though.  The rep. told me that it's actually Huawei that provides the unlock-codes, Three just forwarding them the request.  I was further informed that I 'should' hear within a month if my unlock-request will be granted.  So I await with trepidation, if not much hope.

The E5220 I figured would be an easy fix as it was old and there must surely be a unlock-code 'calculator' freely available somewhere on the web.  Despite loads of links enticing the unwary to malware sites with promises of such, none was to be had, at least none that worked.  But there must be dozens of sites offering to unlock E5220's, with unlock-fees ranging from the ridiculous (€59) to the downright reasonable (€2-5), the latter's 'cheapness' making them immediately suspect.  Then I came across this site.  It is like most of the rest, promising to unlock modems, while charging rather hefty unlock fees.  But this one takes a different tack to attract customers - the E5220, being just 3G, so now regarded as 'old technology' , it unlocks for free!

Or at least that is the claim.  I submitted my IMEI/Country/ISP 10 days ago and waited anxiously for the coveted SIMLOCK code to be posted on their site.  The only red-flag that something may be amiss is that your request-information is not immediately viewable on their site. Only after the 'unlock codes' have been generated, is their a mass-posting of the requests, accompanied of course by the generated unlock-codes.  The second suspect thing I noticed was that, having just received a working unlock-code from Huawei, the generated-code doesn't look 'right' - the real unlock codes are made up of a variation of numbers & letters, the latter being both of upper & lower case characters.  The site's generated code is simply a string of 8 numbers.

Which doesn't work!  My first attempt was a copy & paste from the site, which resulted in a "invalid code" error.  So, just in case there was some 'invisible' character being included in the Copy & paste, I tried it again, typing it in this time.  Same result - that's 2 of 10 unlock tries wasted, with only 8 more attempts permissible before the E5220 gets 'bricked'.  What the site presents to the public is dozens of legitimate unlock-requests, accompanied by their non-working unlock-codes.  So basically, just more scumbags, giving people false hope. [UPDATE!!! Though I didn't mention it, after the failed attempt to unlock the E5220, I copy & pasted from the E5220's Web-browser interface, the hardware information from its 'Device Information' option, and re-posted it to the free-unlock site, in the vain hope that they might have made a mistake. As this 'extended information' contained an identical IMEI number to the first one I posted there, I didn't hold out much hope.  So imagine my surprise just a few minutes ago, when intent on closing forever, the Firefox open-tab to this site, I saw my re-posted hardware information there - along with a newly generated unlock-code!  AND THIS ONE WORKS!!!  I obviously owe the guys running this site an apology - SSSOOORRRYYYY.  Terrific!!! - two down, just the E5573 to go].

So it's looking like the B525, the best of the lot, is the only one I'll get unlocked, at least without paying for the service, be that from Three/Huawei, or one of the unlock sites available online.  Or maybe I'll see if some of the mobile-phone selling shops in my locality do unlockings cheaply.

Although I planned to ditch Three last month, I dithered, then finally decided to hang in there for another month, just in case there are more unlockings to be had from them.  If not, it's no biggie.  I have the 48 ISP waiting on the side-lines.  I've been using them for over a week and can see no difference in the level of service provided - and at less than a third of what I'm paying Three!  Sure, not an "unlimited" (aka 768Gig) data allowance, but 100Gig is more than enough for what I do.  Then there's the included unlimited calls & texts - also something I'll never use much, but again, it's nice to have!

Edit:

Dropped into my local mobile unlocking/internet cafe today to inquire about getting these unlocked.  Not a problem, according to the guy I spoke to, for about €25 a pop - actually less than I was expecting to be quoted!  Probably not worth doing the E5220 for this amount seeing as it only offers 3G speeds, but if Three/Huawei won't unlock the E5573, I'll definitely consider it. [Update: After Three Web-chat proved unhelpful, I played my last card and asked one of the 3Community moderators could she see if my request to unlock the E5573 had been submitted.  24hrs later, I had one unlocked E5573!!!  For the record, the sim-(un)lock code she provided was another 8-digit number, just like that generated by the unlock-site, so completely different to the E525's unlock code.] 

I've had the B525 and the E5573 setup & running from the same location for a while now, so that I can see how they compare, and I've gotta say that the B525 is the clear winner.  Even without the 'rabbit-ears' antennas, transfer-rates are much higher with the B525.  But the E5573 and E5220's 'super-power' is that they're battery-powered,  so are not without their uses.

 

FBD Insurance: "Insurance for Farmers, By Farmers"... - BOLLOCKS!!!

 Another rant ensues.   I gave up on the car six years ago, mainly because it was only a 10 minute cycle-ride to my workplace.  The last 'serious' cycling I had done had been in my teens, so getting 'saddle-fit' once more, proved the biggest obstacle I encountered - don't know if it's typical, but going from saddle-sore to saddle-fit took me about six-months, an experience I don't remember fondly either.  Ouch!

 Up till now, any time I needed a car, I'd just rent one from Hertz, who, though not the closest car rental company to me, have at least proven to be both cheap & reliable.  Damn, I could do a whole other 'Rant' regarding car rental outfits, given all the experience I acquired while on hols here, when I lived in the UK - but I'll suppress the urge!  Anyway, car procured, I'd do my thing, then go back to pedalling.  This was my routine, and since I like cycling and have no special affinity for cars, it worked for me - and it was much cheaper!

 Fast-forward to the present.  Events dictated that another car-purchase was essential, and in order to do so, back to Hertz I went, as it's practically impossible to car-shop without having a car!  Long story short, I ended up buying a car that would definitely not have been my first-choice under normal circumstances, but given that I had a limited time available, it will have to do for now.  But onto the meat of the post.

 Everyone in Ireland knows what a rip-off the Car-Insurance market here is.  It has in fact been proven that it's little more than a price-fixing Cartel.  So before actually buying a car, I had sought insurance quotes from multiple players here, the first of whom was FBD Insurance, mainly because I'd been insured with them continuously for 12 years, and 'claim-less' for the entire period.  Also, being of Farming-stock, I was more inclined to give my business to a company that had started out (and continue to advertise), providing "Insurance for Farmers, By Farmers".

 Therefore, I was initially disappointed to discover that FBD-online could not provide me with an insurance quote, suggesting that I should visit their office instead - which I proceeded to do on the last day of my Hertz car-rental.  This disappointment turned into bewilderment on being told by the FBD rep. I spoke to, that she could find no trace of my decade+ with them on their system, then outright anger when she said they would not even be prepared to offer me an insurance-quote.  I could accept that it was policy throughout the insurance industry to render a lapsed-driver's no-claims-bonus (someone that had been off the road for more than 2 years), null-and-void.  But for an insurance company to purge all traces of my time with them, then treat me like some 17 year-old starting out, rather than someone who has been on the road & claim-less, since 1984, just made me angry.  To top it off, a couple of days later, I received in the post a letter from FBD, explaining their refusal to insurance-quote me, though in reality, explaining nothing, which I'll include below.

  Thing is, they were the ONLY insurance company that refused to offer me a quote!  I'm not saying that ALL of the other insurance companies offer quotes, only that the half-dozen or so that I requested quotes from, did so - and they all did so online as well, which is another black-mark against FBD.  In fact, I'm now convinced that the FBD rep. I spoke to, has no more access to the FBD 'innards' than I have - all she sees on her computer screen is what I see when I apply for a FBD-quote online.  Irrespective of how they operate, they've burned their bridges with me, I'm done with those arse-holes.

 I eventually ended up getting car-insurance with Liberty Insurance, who offered me the best quote by far.  AXA Insurance's quote was close to twice that from Liberty, who then proceeded to spam my email with the same quote!  The worst quote was from XS Direct - these jokers quoted "Fully Comprehensive" for considerably more than Liberty did, but also stipulated a €3,000 excess (Liberty's is only the standard €300 excess). Good as Liberty's quote was, it was still more than 3 times as much as I was paying 6 years ago - so, I miss my no-claims-bonus, Sob.

 But, the thing is, they all at least offered me a car-insurance quote, which is more than can be said for FBD, The Farmer's Friend Fiend.  SCUM-BAGS.

 The only thing worse than Car-Insurance companies, are Car-Insurance Brokers.  I came so close to falling into the Brokers net.  This in fact was at the behest of the FBD rep. I visited as well!  A real pretty lady too, which given the nature of the business, is probably a pre-requisite to getting the job.  It turned out that the quotes I received from her, for Liberty car-insurance, were almost TWICE what I ended up paying Liberty by going direct.  I know Brokers have got to eat too but for fcuks sake, there's price gouging, then there's financial-rape - how can these pricks legally get away with this?  I tried two other online-brokers, but only one of them offered a direct online quote, which was €600 less than the one I visited in person - so, not so desperate to screw you over!  Most broker's sites give you the impression that they will give you a direct quote, only for you to discover, once you've fed them all of your contact details, that you must then phone them to proceed.  These guys are vermin, that are being freely allowed to prey on the unwary.

Aliexpress: Fast Becoming a Joke (*RANT*)...

 A couple of earlier posts here reveal my past dealings with Aliexpress and the slightly tempestuous relationship that developed as a result.  Summarising, while Ebay and Amazon have basically 'got it covered' with regards to about 90% of the stuff that I order online, there's always that other 10% that must be catered for by someone else - enter Aliexpress.  While that might suggest that Aliexpress (and its parent-company, Alibaba) are marginal players in the online shopping arena, the truth is probably the opposite - generally they have for sale, everything the other two offer, only MORE - there is a reason that China has become the economic powerhouse that it is!

So occasionally, when the need arises, I place an order or two with Aliexpress.  Whereas, I've never been screwed financially by Amazon or Ebay, the same cannot be said for Aliexpress.  In the past, I've had an Aliexpress Seller renege on an order I'd placed with them.  Another, refused to cancel an order that had been in limbo for almost 2 weeks, instead putting the order through immediately after I had issued a Cancellation Request - the 'Request' is capitalised for a reason, you cannot cancel an order that has been placed on Aliexpress, like you can with Amazon, you may only meekly 'request' the Seller to cancel & refund your money.  What experience has shown is that many Aliexpress Sellers lack the 'professionalism' seen on both Ebay and Amazon.  This is more down to their fear of repercussions, or lack thereof, from the platforms on which they operate.  Putting it bluntly, Ebay puts the fear of God into Sellers and will suspend their accounts once they fall below a certain 'Customer Satisfaction' level, whereas Aliexpress doesn't appear to give a shit about how its Sellers treat their customers.  Sure, Aliexpress pays lip-service to stuff like 90-day money back guarantees, but this for the most part is Public Relations stuff - I once had an undelivered order that had been placed 5 months before, and had ZERO ways of contacting Aliexpress to get a refund - the opportunity only came when, after God knows how long, they finally put their Customer Forum  back on-line.  So, notions like "the Customer is always right" would be a source of amusement, not contemplation, to Aliexpress management.

Segway-ing to a point, what has me venting of late is the state of the Aliexpress platform itself.  Frankly, it's becoming unusable.  First off, there's the 'semi-insistence' that you must login to your Aliexpress account, even when just doing a search.  I've tried various workarounds to avoid this, including deleting all Aliexpress cookies, to no avail.  Add to this, for whatever reason, Aliexpress has found it necessary to lace its platform with 'anti-bot' verification measures, where before proceeding with even a search, it is often necessary for prospective customers to 'swipe' a bar from left-to-right.  This would be bearable if the bloody thing worked - half the time, this is what I see;

This 'swipe-left' thing doesn't appear to effect the Russian Aliexpress site, which in desperation often finds me trying to negotiate the site using the Cyrillic alphabet.  Another attempted 'work-around' has included creating a dummy Aliexpress account.  This worked for searches, at least initially.  It appears that after a certain number of cookies have been created, or after a certain amount of time since their creation, the infernal 'swipe-left' thing comes back with a vengeance.  But what really grinds my gears, is when the 'swipe-left' thing works and I get a "Verified" green tick-mark, only to see the following when it tries to proceed;

Witnessing this nonsense day in, day out, had me wondering if maybe it was the Firefox browser that was somehow incompatible with the Aliexpress platform, so I decided to test the theory by installing a fresh copy of Google's Chrome on a Win7 box - just to rule out the Linux OS as well.  Result?  - same thing happens!!!  In fact, the 'experience' is even worse with Chrome - here, after every search, the user is treated to a pop-up window that must be forcibly closed in order to proceed.  This makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER!!!

Summing up, the Aliexpress platform appears to be on its way to becoming an unusable POS.  It beggars belief that something that is essentially a license to print money, has undergone such woeful development.  As a long-time Aliexpress customer, I can at least attest to the fact that yesteryear, the platform itself was on-par with Amazon and Ebay.  Today, as far as usability goes, it's a shadow of what it once was, no doubt a result of management's reluctance to employ competent web-developers.

*** WAKE UP ALIEXPRESS, YOUR SITE IS CRUMBLING BENEATH YOU ***

New Purchase: Oakcastle 8GB MP3 Player w/BT 4.0.

Ever the optimist, particularly where failure is assured, I took the plunge once again and ordered another mp3 player from Amazon - the Oakcastle 8GB mp3 player with Bluetooth 4.0.

I'm still in pursuit of the 'perfect' mp3 player with Bluetooth, namely, one that not only supports the Ogg audio format in name, but will also stream the damn thing via BT - not too much to ask I think!  But despite setting the bar this low, I find once again that my aspirations are being confounded by the same cretins behind the Ruizu mp3 player, reviewed here in another post.

In my defense, there were none of the tell-tale signs that this was the case, having read before hand that, 1) this was a relatively new model, launched in Nov/Dec 2019, and 2) that it had been designed in the UK.  There was also the English-sounding name - Oakcastle.  I was aware though that it was manufactured in China - but then, isn't most electronics nowadays!

On powering it up, it was immediately obvious that firmware-wise, this was another Ruizu in all but name, and it quickly proved that the underlying software that powers the thing is all but identical.  The same curious affliction persists, where neither Ogg or Aac will stream via BT, just the bog-standard mp3, Flac, Wav & Wma.

Anyone wondering about my insistence on Ogg BT-streaming - I use the Ogg  format with all of my (Natural Reader-made) audio-books, numbering at a rough guess, 700-800 by now.  Add to that, I have many online-radio 'stream-ripped' sessions (using 'Streamripper' naturally), whose session-lengths often exceeds 24hrs and many of these are recorded from Aac radio-streams.

But what about the mp3 player itself I hear you say.  Well, despite having a hissy-fit and vowing to return it to Amazon, after playing with it for a while, I've decided to hang onto it.  Shortcomings aside, it has definite improvements over the Ruizu.  First off, the User-interface is imo, much improved, plus the keypad entry, far more intuitive.  'Stupid' omissions like the ability to fast-forward/reverse while in BT-mode have finally been rectified.  There has also been an Ogg-specific bug-fix, where files encoded at a certain bit-rate, would lock up the Ruizu, which was gratifying to discover.  BT pairing & (re)connections seems pretty much flawless.  This drives me to distraction at times with Linux distros.  For example, with Linux Mint 17.3, still my OS of choice, BT in general works well once 'paired' to my headphones.  The problem arises when I then pair the headphones to one of my other (3) Linux boxes, then try getting a reconnection with 17.3 - suffice to say, it can be a frustrating affair!  But nowhere near as frustrating as using BT on my Raspian-powered Pi 3B or with Deepin 20.  BT on the Pi is pretty much unusable, whereas with Deepin, it's a case of continuous disconnections, so just more hassle than it's worth.  Hell, even with Win7, while BT streaming works ok, it is sometimes impossible to 'seamlessly' re-connect my headphones to it once they have been paired to another machine.  I experience none of these problems with the Oakcastle mp3 player, it reconnecting to my headphones with ease, irrespective of what machine they had previously been connected to.

The radio function, though almost universally criticised in reviews, has a Record function that produces a stereo track - or a 'fake-stereo' track rather - like the Ruizu, it produces a two-channel Wav audio track, each channel comprised of identical data, so a mono-track in practice.  Therefore no improvements on the radio-hardware side of things either, no doubt because it is almost never used.

Despite its tiny size, it is purported to provide 30hrs of listening with headphones and 9hrs with Bluetooth, though given its weight - 27g compared to the Ruizu's 40g - and the Chinese tendency to wildly inflate run-time figures, I'll take these figures under advisement.  I might even post my own battery run-times here at some stage, God willing.

 [Well, that didn't take long, Divinely Inspired, no doubt - on earphones, with a volume of 10, it ran for 29+hrs (checked at hour 29, had powered off when I checked again at hour 31).  With Bluetooth on, it ran for 8 hours, 15 minutes precisely, which surprised me.  But I wasn't happy with its battery's state of charge so did a BT re-test - 8 hours, 10 minutes! - drat, marginally less than the 1st test, though still not bad. Maybe it goes to show that not all Chinese manufacturers are the world's biggest fibbers :)].

[Some Time Later: Runtime-test 2.  I ordered a few replacement batteries from China, 6 to 9 months ago, as the original battery's run-time seemed lack-lustre.  Recent testing confirms this.  The original, fully-charged 300mAh 3.7V Li-ion battery had a measured capacity of just 180mAh (test-setup: 50mA current-draw, with a cut-off  voltage of 3.0v).  The replacement batteries had stated 350mAh capacities, though after multiple test-cycles, the average measured capacity was closer to 320mAh.  A single run-time test was done, using earphones, with a new fully-charged battery, at volume-level 10 (of 31), resulting in a run-time of a little over 18 hours.  I'm left a bit bewildered.  I cannot fathom how I got a 29 hour runtime initially, but only 18 hours now, despite using a battery of higher capacity.  Doesn't make sense, something's not right].  

Summing up, it was not what I had hoped for, but given that the Chinese company behind this player has apparently decided that, cosmetics-aside, the firmware 'as-is', is good enough for the throng of cheap mp3 players that it's cornering the mp3 market with, I guess there's not much I can do about it.  It's not awful, it has even got double the memory of the Ruizu, it's just that it could easily have been so much better.

Three.ie Broadband Woes...

 Yay, just found something else to gripe about, though unlike my usual 'glass-half-empty' summations, this one appears to have landed sunny-side-up.

I'm with Three (Broadband) coming on 12 years now.  It's been a bumpy road regarding the quality of service provided for a lot of that time.  First off, to my knowledge, Three is still the cheapest provider of Broadband in Ireland.  But click on any one of the Google-spawned links that offer to test your Internet speed, only to then funnel you to a hand-picked assortment of ISP's that actually pay their bills, and you can't help but notice that Three.ie is never even mentioned, let alone included.  Not once in the last 12 years I've been with Three have I seen a single Ireland-based ISP comparison include Three.  The reason, up until very recently anyway, was imo, that Three was by far the cheapest of the lot, so rather than try to compete on price, the other lot simply chose to ignore them, in the hope that they might simply go away.

Well they didn't, and though they are still a small player here, relative to the main Telecom services provider, Eir, who has around 70% of the broadband market, there seems to be a shift of sorts happening among ISP's here at the moment.  Personally, I'd put it down to Musk's Starlink shenanigans.

 For the first time ever it would appear that Ireland-based ISP's are viewing one another as competition and are offering much more competitive broadband packages.  Eir for instance, is now providing a free Huawei B818 modem/router with their current mobile broadband offering, while only charging €30 per month.  This €29.99 per month with a 750GB cap exactly matches what Three has been offering for almost 2 years.  Three is after countering this by cutting their price to €15 per month, though only up until the new year.  I don't know when this was first offered, but had I seen it before now, being 'out of contract', I would have jumped at it, still might.  Thing is, competition is finally having an effect on telecom services in Ireland.  I remember back in the 'noughties', Eircom still selling twin-line ISDN connections (128kb/s combined) as their answer to 'true' broadband offerings from other companies that had begun to surface.  Thing was, these cretins were not only offering something that was laughably inferior technologically, they were actually charging the suckers that fell for this, for two phone lines, not one!!!  I was living in Dublin at the time and had proper broadband from a company named UTVIP.  What has always stuck in my craw was that I still had to pay Eircom line rental, on top of the broadband charges.  But I digress, back on topic...

Three broadband reception has always been spotty where I live.  In the almost seven years that I've been here, the service had gone from being just about acceptable to downright abysmal.  For the last few months, anytime before 1-2am in the morning I would regularly have download speeds in the range of 20-50kB/s - the lower range is only 3 times the dial-up speeds I was experiencing in the 90's.  To put this further into perspective, at its worst, watching uninterrupted, Youtube videos at the lowest possible resolution (144p) was impossible.  My newfound knowledge of the ISP industry in Ireland came from research into finding a Three.ie replacement, as things had gotten that bad. Eir, the main contender, really was never an option, as their reputation among anyone even remotely interested in online privacy, is mud - check out this Wiki-article, the "Controversy" paragraphs at the bottom, in particular.

  Well, denied an honourable way of abandoning the good ship Three, I first decided to see how my immediate surroundings fared broadband-wise.  Using a tablet combined with my old battery-powered Huawei modem, I was amazed to discover that just 3km from here, I could Download at over 30Mb/s, and upload at 10-15Mb/s.  So yesterday, I spent a couple of hours seeing was their any way I could improve the broadband reception here, going so far as strapping the same battery-powered Huawei to a make-shift pole - a couple of planks nailed together -  to see if elevation was the answer.  It wasn't.  It was then I made an amazing discovery!!!

Desolate, with optimism at an all-time low, I decided I'd try a change of in-house location for my Huawei B525 modem.  Signal strength had never been an issue with it.  Worst case, I was always receiving at least 2 4G bars on it, though usually it was 3 or 4 bars.  Moving it from the window of one room at the side of the house, to one on the front, didn't improve signal-strength, there was a falling-off if anything. 

** BUT THE CHANGE IN DOWNLOAD SPEEDS WAS IMMENSE ** 

I couldn't believe it, still can't, given that there seems to be little or no difference in the signal-received strength.  the browser-based B525 diagnostics, which independently provide signal strength, is much the same as before, namely it's a 4G/4G+ signal I'm receiving.  After a day of 'playing' with various web-based Speedtests, I see speeds of between 20-60Mbps download, and once I saw it even hit 70Mbps!!!  Upload speeds are another thing entirely.  When it's operating 'correctly', there seems to be a definite speed-cap in place at around 3Mbps.  Right now though, just after 8pm (which would qualify as 'peak-period' time) my Download speed was 53Mbps and Upload speed, an underwhelming 0.67Mbps.

Nevertheless, I'm finally getting 'value for money' broadband-wise - and it only took 12 years!  Yay!

Edit:

A week or two later, there's still great speeds being had.  Generally, it's around 40-45Mbps, though occasionally it can drop down to the low teens, or jump as high as 70+Mbps.  My talk of a 3Mbps upload-cap was just more idle speculation as I've seen wildly varying figures since then, but onto the point of this edit.

I'm still mystified as to why my transfer speeds have shot up, despite the received signal strength being marginally lower.  So to that end, I've been experimenting.  I moved the B525 to another window on the same side of the house, around 10-15 metres from the first and like from the other location, practically with a clear view to the horizon.  Then using my tablet while in the same room, I speed-tested my connection from the new location.  I expected little or no difference between locations, instead the change was profound - I went from upload speeds of 40Mbps to around 1-3Mbps.  Ironically, upload speeds increased  to 4-5Mbps.  Moving the B525 back to the other room, it reverted back to the 40+Mbps download speeds again.  Intriguingly, I found that my adjusting exactly where I sat it on the window ledge - we're talking mere centimetres here - I could dramatically improve my upload-speed.  I went from the 0.5-0.7Mbps speeds noted above to a much more consistent 4-5Mbps.  I've just done a speed-test right now and it returned a Download-speed of 48.6Mbps, with Upload-speeds coming in at 4.6Mbps.  Consider again that mere weeks ago I was looking to ditch my current ISP due to not being able to stream 144p Youtube videos without them stalling repeatedly - all down to the abysmal download-speeds I was getting (<250Kbps during peak periods, or 4 times dial-up speeds!).

But I am still no nearer to understanding why such small differences in router placement makes such enormous differences in transfer speeds, particularly since there is little or no difference in the received signal strength that I'm seeing.  Had someone suggested stuff like this to me a month ago, I'd have told them that they were talking nonsense.

Remote Control Timeswitch - Additional Switch Units...

I had intended to leave this as an addendum to the original post concerning this old project, but the 'new & improved' Blogger has apparently decided that any editing of past posts will see them treated as being new, receiving the edit date, the original date being lost in the sands of time.  This is bloody stupid!!! [Edit: Ok, scratch that, it reverts to the original publish-date, not the edit-date.  So why the unnecessary alert when you republish - that's bloody stupid! :) ]

Moving on, there's not really much to add to the RTC project, information-wise.  I ordered most of the parts needed years ago.  The PCB's I produced using the excellent Proteus EDA package.  Although all of the PCB's that make up the main controller and the one switch unit, were produced the old-fashioned way, using a Ferric-chloride solution, given the ease & cheapness of ordering them from China these days, I instead opted to send some business JLCPCB's way - and an excellent job the made of them too, highly recommended!

I've moaned on enough about the BC108 transistors I sourced for these in another post, but I cannot resist a gripe about another component problem encountered while putting these together.  I had ordered a few hundred i.c's from the 74LS logic family, between 20-30 varieties, so had plenty of the dirt-common 74LS74 dual D-type flip-flops at hand.  What I discovered was that only one 'family' of the 74LS74's I had received would work reliably - for example, any of the chips that began with 'SN' would either not work at all or unreliably at best.  All of the ones that work perfectly have identical numbers, which begs the question, are the others just faulty crap that's being sold cheap?  If so, of the 12+ 74LS74's I have, only about 4 of them are to spec.  Not a happy thought.

Like I've mentioned before, filtering/line-noise seriously limit their reliability.  Since these units are merely receivers, there is no way for the main controller to verify that a switch has been toggled On or Off.  With 3 switches to play with for the first time, I was quickly introduced to a couple of new firmware bugs.  I would bet good money that Mr Browne, the project's creator, developed the s/w with just a single switch at hand.  But they're fairly inconsequential with 'normal' use as there is a much higher probability of having missed switching due to filtering/line-noise than to it being down to firmware bugs.

The electronics side of the construction was fairly straightforward.  The only complication that arose involved the tuneable miniature mains 'Toko' transformer.  Since (unsurprisingly) these are no longer available, I was forced to 'roll my own', which (surprisingly) proved easier than I had expected - finding this spec sheet online helped matters considerably.

While the hardware side of the builds, though 'fiddly', was with care, doable, finding suitable male-plug parts proved a frustrating affair.  In order to safely secure them to their enclosure boxes, their 13amp fuses had to be contained wholly within the plastic shell-half of the 'prong-side' - otherwise, I would have been forced to cut a hole in the box for the fuse to stick inside.  Situated under the PCB as they are, and with just millimetres between PCB and the live-mains prong, safety would have been compromised and I'd probably be creating a fire hazard to boot!  Thing is, mains plugs of the required construction are incredibly difficult to find nowadays.  All modern plugs have the fuse extending right into the top half of the plug body.  I was actually considering 3D-printing plug parts, the design of which (given my rotten Fusion360 skills) would have taken me ages.  Thankfully, I finally managed to locate two - one from an old Atari ST monitor, the other (scruffy-looking) one came from an old clothes iron.

Note that neither of the plugs used have the plastic 'safety sleeve' on the live & neutral prongs, a good indication of how old they are.  Ironically, the plug I used on the first switch unit, built in the early 90's, has!!!

Anyway, the deed is done, one less thing to do before I croak, so worth the effort.

Linux Mint - The Struggle Continues...

I thought I'd attempt to get at least one new blog entry penned for 2020, even though given the farcical 'lock-down' we've been subjected to over the last few months, and the long stretches of idleness concerned, this ought to have been one of my most productive blogging periods.  Evidently not!  About the only thing of note that I seem to have achieved during lock-down, was the completion of the 2 RTC units that I'd been promising myself for decades that I'd build.  But I'll leave that as an addendum for the blog entry in question.  Besides that, I've seemed to mostly spend my time watching movies or sitcoms, to the point where I'm now sick & tired of television.  Anyway, forgive my little preamble, on to the topic for consideration.

I'm still using Linux Mint 17.3 as my main OS, despite the fact that it has been EOL'ed for at least a year now.  I gave Mint 19.1 a go about a year ago and was initially enthusiastic.  This proved to be short-lived however when I realised that compared to 17.3, it was a bit of a piggy as far as memory was concerned.  As my main computer is still my old Dell laptop - and shall remain so until either it or I depart this realm - I am somewhat constrained by the fact that although the machine has two 2gig SODIMMs fitted, the stupid hardware is limited to using only 2.5gig of this.  I was so peeved when I discovered this (about a decade ago, when I upgraded its memory!) and never would have bought the laptop had I been aware of the fact at the time.

Anyway, as a result, I decided instead to hold off until the next Mint release.  This I only got round to trying a week or two ago - or would have, had it even been available!  You see, the Mint Developers have thought it prudent to drop 32-bit support from Mint 20 onwards, at least with its Ubuntu-based releases.  Instead, what they have added is 32/64-bit versions that are Debian-based, named LMDE 4, in case, and I quote, "Ubuntu were ever to disappear" - which sounds a bit ominous for Ubuntu's future prospects...

So one download of LMDE later, I was happy to discover that it installed & ran without issue.  Initially anyway.  What was soon apparent was that the Nouveau graphics drivers didn't work properly, often only scrolling part of the screen when browsing with Firefox.  It also transpired that the 'Driver Manager' app was no longer available, robbing me of the standard means of installing native Nvidia drivers!  This was unacceptable.  I then proceeded to waste days trying to install manually, driver versions downloaded from Nvidia's site, all to no avail - LMDE seems an impenetrable maze to Nvidia's old installers.

And there it lay, until I decided a day or so ago to give Mint 19.1 another go, more as a last resort than anything else.  On the plus-side, after playing with it for a few days now, Nouveau seems to work well, no glitches so far at any rate.  What had me cursing and swearing yet again at the Mint Developers was the realisation that once more, those idiots had not bothered to fix the audio-preview in the Caja file manager.  What they had done, yet again, was to disable audio-previews by default, in the hope that most users wouldn't notice the bug!  This kind of laziness is maddening to me.  A previous post here will recall the fact that this bug has been an unwanted addition of Mint-Mate releases at least as far back as version 17.1.

Given the amount of time & energy I had spent re-building the various buggy packages from Mate's source-code, I was more than reluctant at the idea of a repeat performance, but persevere I did.  And it proved surprisingly easy this time around!  One huge plus I noticed regarded the compiler.  Prior to this, issuing a './configure' would find the script stopping at each & every dependency issue that it encountered.  This resulted in my having, after resolving the highlighted dependency issue, to re-issue another './configure' - and again & again & again, often dozens of times, until all the dependencies had been resolved - which was soul-destroying.  Now what happens, after the first './configure', ALL missing dependencies, not just the first one encountered, are listed as packages "not found", which allows you to resolve all of the dependency issues in one go.

I was also delighted to find that after building the needed packages (caja-common & caja-extensions) and removing the 'broken' caja-common (which automatically removes Caja, as well as other packages that would conflict with the new build's installation), the new packages installed & worked without a hitch!  All that's needed is to add a Home Folder icon to the Panel to allow a one-click opening of Caja - just drag & drop the Home Folder onto the desktop to there, or navigate to Caja via Menu->System Tools, right-click on Caja and select 'Add to panel'.  Once old Caja has been uninstalled and its executable 'killed' using System Monitor, all that's left is to re-install 'mate-control-center' and fire up 'new Caja' via its panel icon.  In short, it works, no more Caja locking up during audio previews.  I'll include the built packages below, more for my own future use than anything else.

caja-common

caja-extensions

Right now I'm writing this on Mint 19.1, listening to some background music and everything seems to be running fine.  The memory problem hasn't gone away by any means - presently, with just Firefox and Streamripstar running, 2.3gig of my 2.5gig of memory is being used, with swap also starting to be impinged upon. 

Will this prove usable, or will I end up back with Mint 17.3? - only time will tell. 

Edit:

After posting above about the memory limitation of my old Dell XPSM1210 laptop, it got me thinking.  On the one hand, I was 99% certain of my facts - that the laptop had a limitation on the maximum amount of memory that the hardware could work with, 2.5Gig, which was well below the the 4gig limit imposed by 32-bit hardware.  On the other hand, this 2.5gig seemed an almost arbitrarily chosen number, which didn't make sense, so I went looking for confirmation of my long-held belief - and couldn't find any!  But I was certain that I had bought two 2gig SODIMMs when I did the memory upgrade, but was disgusted to discover that only 2.5gig was available to the user when it was installed.  I therefore removed one, replacing it with a 512Meg SODIMM instead.  This is my recollection of events anyway - I can't actually find the second SODIMM that I thought I'd bought!  That was more than 10 years ago. [Did a little checking, (re)discovered that Amazon keeps a long purchase history and that I bought just ONE 2Gig SODIMM, and it was 8.5 years ago, not 10+ - so wrong on both counts!].

 

Well, I was gifted an old HP laptop, minus PSU or working battery pack, about 4 years ago, and which I think I've already commented on in another post.  Long story short, after letting it gather dust for 6-9 months, I finally got a cheap Chinese PSU, powered it up and left it on a soak-test for 24 hours - which promptly killed it, or at least the Nvidia graphics part of it.  What it does have though is 4gig of SODIMM memory, that is Dell-compatible, and which for the first time, I've tried with it.

 

And yes, I was flabbergasted to discover on booting the Dell that I now have gone from having just 2.5gig, to having over 3.2gig of memory available to the user!!!  How could it have taken 10 years for the penny to drop!  Though I should be elated (and am a bit), what's bugging me now is the almost 800meg of memory that's 'unavailable' with 4gig installed, whereas with 2.5gig installed, all of that is available to the user.   The BIOS informs me that this 800meg has been allocated to the system, but nothing is allocated when 2.5gig is installed - so no doubt it's just using the top end of the address-space to map hardware to, with the 800meg left blowing in the wind.  Yep, always moaning, my glass is always half-empty.

Edit2:

Haha, seems I'm on a roll of sorts today.  The HP laptop that donated its memory to the Dell seems to have got a reprieve of sorts.  The graphics problems with these HP laptops is well known.  Despite the exorbitant prices HP charges, they are responsible for some really shoddy designs when it comes to cooling.  This problem effects multiple laptop's of theirs from what I've read,  so it's not a case of my being gifted a dud.  Anyway, what happens is, since the ineffectual cooling employed is incapable of cooling the GPU chip while under load, it literally cooks itself to death, with the soldered BGA contacts melting, and going open-circuit.  What the user ends up with at startup is, a blank screen accompanied by an  annoying Beeping.  Despite multiple past attempts at reflowing the Nvidia chip in question, it always reverted back to the beeping/blank screen.  Until tonight!  It's been running for a couple of hours, right now, playing a movie full-screen, without a bother so far!  This is only the second time I've witnessed it behaving 'normally', the first time obviously having been when I first powered it up.

Wow, all for naught, this thing really knows how to toy with me - after a few hours running perfectly, with the GPU sitting at around 60DegC the whole time, (normal for badly-designed laptops - my 14 year-old Dell, running 24/7 from new, never goes below 50DegC, often well exceeding 60DegC under load), the screen just goes blank.  Pulling the plug and powering it back up, it now exhibits a new behaviour - gone is the infernal beeping, the screen is just remaining blank, but with back light illumination.  I tried it again this morning and it powered up normally, but only remaining so for a few minutes before the screen went black again.

Well, I'm done with it, that thing goes into the bin next week, before garbage day.  I've sweated bullets for that piece of HP crap.  It could only have been worse had I spent money on it, never mind having bought it new.  Anyone considering buying 'prestige' brands such as HP should really do a little research into the quality/reliability of the junk that these clowns produce.  Add to that, this POS company uses 'white-lists' to decide what user hardware upgrades are allowable - anything not on the list is instantly black-listed.  Since HP can't foretell the future, the user is forever prevented from adding 'current-hardware' add-ons.  I discovered this when I tried upgrading the pissy 54Mb/s wireless card that came with this laptop, to something more current - all were black-listed, cited as not having been approved by HP.  Well, Good Riddance to HP.

At least I'm left with 4gig of ram and a usable 100gig hard-drive for my pains.