Who’da thought that Laughing Boy here would be 71 now?  (About 1951, age 4)

It’s that day again, 12 February. My 71st birthday. There’s nothing to distinguish this milestone except that I’m here to write this and it’s a prime number. Primes somehow seem ugly to me: 6 is neat, curvaceous, but 7 is boring, just two strokes. Oh well.

I’m writing this at 4.30am after another fruitless attempt at sleep (why do we say fruitless? I wasn’t seeking fruit). My sleep has been very erratic recently, many nights of fairly normal sleep, such as Saturday night, but then it’s back to insomnia again. Some days I sleep to excess.

Oh, damn!! I just remembered, there was a lecture about sleep disorders on Saturday and I forgot all about it. Damn. There doesn’t seem to be any cure for insomnia anyway, just the usual strictures about “sleep hygiene”, darkening the room and so on. How come I can drop off easily during the day when the room is quite bright, but not at night when it’s dark?

Anyway, I heard recently that kiwi fruit are a good sedative food, so I’ve just had one. Not tired yet.

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I’ve been watching repeats of the US TV series on SBS, The Good Fight. It’s about a firm of lawyers in Chicago (who are almost all “people of colour”) who take up good causes, like union fights with employers. It’s good enough to watch twice, at least. I was hoping it was a second season, but no. Maybe that will come after the re-runs.

Anyway, the title’s been making me think: every series seems to play on The Good… for its title these days. As well as the above, we have The Good Doctor (on 7), The Good Wife, The Good Place, and I’m sure I saw The Good Men the other day. Not much imagination.

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I watched a BluRay movie the other night called Life. Although it’s action packed and with fantastic sets, it’s just another take on Alien: a spacecraft returns from Mars and docks with the International Space Station. It brings a sample from Mars which seems to be a life form. Of course, they rush the examinations and it turns out to be growing exponentially, enough to grab and crush the tech’s hand and get out of the containment by breaking through his glove. It escapes from the isolation lab and starts killing the astronauts. It looks like an octopus.

All kinds of mayhem occurs until there are only two people left, a man and a woman, naturally. They realise they have to stop it from reaching Earth, so the guy sacrifices himself by luring it into his escape capsule with him, which he launches on a trajectory out into deep space, while the woman re-enters Earth’s atmosphere. Or does she? The capsule splashes down in the ocean somewhere near Thailand, by the look of it, but when the fishermen start to open the capsule door, we see that it’s the guy in there (there’s been a mixup) and he’s in the grip of the evil octopus and is pleading with them not to open the hatch. In vain, because they do open it. The end.

Very good space station shots, but the story line? Rubbish. Another Alien. Pah!

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My eyes have settled down with their new lenses, but I’m afraid my distance vision is not as good as it was with glasses before my cataract operations. I can do without glasses for most things, including driving, but ironically, I can’t see all the detail that my fantastic 4K TV displays. I watch without glasses as my +2.0 reading glasses are not effective at the distance from the screen, but that distance is either too far or too close, I’m not sure. I’m sure I’m not getting the benefit of my luxurious ultra hi-definition screen, though, dammit.

I’m also noticing slight double vision. Typing this, wearing my reading glasses, I’m seeing a faint repeat of the text a millimetre above and slightly right of the main text. The surgeon said I have strong astigmatism, and suggested that needs further correction. In any case, I think I’ll have to go back to wearing bifocals full time. Not yet, I’ll give it more time, but…

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With all the talk about having strong passwords these days, I started using a new password keeping program a few months ago, Dashlane. I’ve been using a program called Portable Safe for many years and it’s good, but Dashlane got such good reviews that I thought I’d try out the free version. Its strong point is that it recognises any place where you’re required to type in your name and/or email and any other data and supplies it, and offers to insert the password as well in the required field. It works very well. But when you don’t have to remember or look up passwords, you forget them!

It’s like the evil octopus in that movie, it gets a grip on you and you realise after a while that you have to keep using it. It offers to generate passwords for you, very strong ones, and once you’ve done a few of these, it has its grip.

In fact one of its features is that it will change every password for you to a new strong one with one click. I have over 200 passwords. If I use that feature, I think I’m locked in.

It stores all your passwords encrypted in “the cloud”, which is good, so when they offered a three computer licence for about $15, I took it. I’m hooked now.

It’s pretty easy to use, and works as advertised. It does save typing, and remembers numbers and such, so I recommend it.

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I mentioned getting a new exhaust. Of course, the complete exhaust needed replacing, not just the muffler. $550! Yow! It was last replaced in January 2013 (in the midst of all my stressful moving house) and I’m pretty sure I remember it costing about $400 then, maybe $450. That’s a lot of price rise for five years. Can’t be helped.

Then I asked them to check my tyres (silly boy!). Two needed replacement, so that added to the bill – about $850 total. Urrrgh. Owning a car is expensive, but not having one is unthinkable. I might be banned from driving for medical reasons one day, so I’d better think about it.

Did you get a good view of the Triple Whammy, the Super Blood Blue Moon Eclipse? I went to what I thought would be a good viewing point, Neil Hawkins Park, overlooking Lake Joondalup. It would have been a great shot, except that I misjudged the time it would take to get there. When I arrived, the moon had already risen quite a way above the horizon. I have to confess that the shot above is a composite of two shots, a wide angle of the reflection on the lake, and a close up of the moon placed into the frame.

There’s a small wooden jetty out over the shore of the lake, and for some reason I thought I would be the only one there. Hah! The rail of the jetty was full when I arrived, but luckily a few people moved away and I was able to get a front row spot. But I was a bit late, so after a while I moved back to the shore and found a seat, where I stayed until the totality of the eclipse at 8.51pm.

Eclipse totality.   Panasonic FZ70 1200mm  ISO800  f5.6 ¼sec

Who says a Blue Moon isn’t blue?

I packed up at that time and went home. The moon was still emerging from the eclipse when I got home, as seen from my backyard. I’m glad I went, it was a good night.

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How about this? I saw one of these parked about 1km up the back streets from my place.

Lotus Evora

The one I saw was red (of course).  It’s not my style, too extreme, but someone in this area had enough cash to buy one. Unless he’d just asked for a test drive.

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I’m sitting here waiting for the window installers to come. They said they’d be here from 8am to 10am to do the job, i.e. fitting a replacement window for the one that was damaged when the cops broke into my bathroom last October, when I had the collapse. But at 9.30am they haven’t arrived, or called. Humph!

PS: they arrived at 12:00 noon. Although I deduct marks for lateness, after 1½ hours the job was finished, and it’s excellent. The finish is immaculate, except for some broken tiles on the floor where it meets the window. That will be a separate job for a tiler. (To make it easier, I’ll tell him I won’t mind if we use a different tile shade.)

So that’s nearly all done, then. I’ve got a key safe on the outside now, so they won’t have to break in again.

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I called in to the K-Mart auto repair shop the other day to see about getting a new muffler or exhaust fitted to my car. I was pleasantly surprised when the guy said I’d be better off going to Joondalup Exhausts in Joondalup (natch). He said they have a big range of hardware in stock, and K-Mart gets their parts from them anyway. And they would be cheaper. That’s a refreshing change, a bit of honesty and frankness. Much appreciated.

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My eyes have settled down and it works out that I need +2.0 diopter reading glasses for close up, and nothing for distance. It means that I have my reading glasses on a cord around my neck, and perched on the end of my nose when I need to look over them. It’s not that comfortable, but it works. Walking around the supermarket is a matter of glasses on/glasses off, I’m afraid. I’ll have to get used to it.

The alternative is paying for a new pair of glasses to wear full time, with top half clear and bottom half +2. I’m not sure yet. I’ll try the cheap, chemist specials for a while yet.

The image above is from the movie Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, which I watched on SBS a few nights ago. I’ve got it on DVD too, and I must have watched it around six times so far. It’s always enjoyable and I get new things out of it.

I picked this image because it was one of the new things I noticed this time through. It’s the sketch where the autumn leaves commit suicide by falling. But, notice the lintel over the columns on the right? See what’s chiselled into it? It’s the word CURTIN, but mirror reversed left to right –

Why CURTIN? John Curtin was the great Labor prime minister in Australia during WW2, in office 1941 – 1945. He took the office of PM so seriously and it weighed on him so heavily that he grew ill and died shortly after D-Day, the allied forces landing in France.

But why would this name show up in a Monty Python graphic? And why are the letters mirror reversed? The man who drew this is presumably the American, Terry Gilliam. I wonder if I could ask him? Watch this space.

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Insomnia is still plaguing me. Sunday and Monday nights were completely sleep free, and yesterday I couldn’t even get to sleep during the day when I tried to catch up. After breakfast this morning I was swaying with fatigue, and I’m happy to say I’ve just been able to get about three hours 10.00am to about 1.00pm. I feel much better now, but that’s only three hours sleep in 48 hours. I’ve found a newspaper ad for a company called Sleep Matters: Insomnia Solutions. Sounds hopeful, I’ll try phoning them.  (I just did. It rang for about 30 seconds, then someone picked up but hung up. Hmmm, probably taking a nap. I’ll try again later.)

Later: the lady phoned me back and was quite pleasant. It turns out that they run lectures on various sleep matters, and the next one is on Saturday 10 February in the afternoon at Hollywood Private Hospital. It’s not specifically on insomnia, but she said it will be relevant and we can ask questions. In fact the sleep doctor giving the talk will stay as long as needed to cover our questions. The lecture is free but they serve coffee, tea and bikkies for a gold coin donation. Excellent. I’ll go.

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About three months ago I bought a small digital recorder, shown above, at Target for $39. Various uses, recording dogs barking, for one. It works OK, except for terrible handling noise, and being a bit complicated to use as an mp3 player. But look at those twin stereo microphones. Wow!

Anyway, I was surprised to see it mentioned in Silicon Chip magazine’s Serviceman pages in this month’s issue. A customer of the Serviceman (a guy in Christchurch, NZ who writes the column each month) brought it in with a few problems. (One of the problems is that at $39, any servicing will cost more than buying a new one!)

So the Serviceman took it all apart and was surprised to find (a) those shiny mics are just plastic dummies – there’s only one mono microphone; (b) this lonely microphone is inside, on its side, getting its sound through small gaps in the side, not through the shiny capsules; (c) there’s no isolation of the mic from the case, hence the handling noise; (d) it bills itself as a stereo recorder, but it’s not stereo – there’s only one mic!; (e) it has a socket for an external mic, but even with a good quality stereo mic plugged in, there’s still no stereo; (f) when he plugged an external stereo line in to the mic socket, it had no stereo spread when recorded and played back; (g) even when an external mic was plugged in, the handling noise was still present on recordings.

So summing up, it’s deception all the way. It implies, even though it doesn’t explicitly say so, that it’s a stereo recorder, but it is not! It implies that it’s good for handling while recording, but it definitely is not. If you handle it, you’ll get loud bangs and scrapes.

Since this is its main function, you could say it’s not fit for purpose and return it for a refund, but it’s hardly worth the bother. I leave it untouched on my patio table to record the dog barking, so it’s a clear recording. But it’s clearly deceptive too.

You get what you pay for.

When you’re hot, you’re hot! I can fix anything. My OnePlus 3T phone died last night. Switched it off at 1030pm, put it on charge, but no charge light. Checked the cord and the charger by substitution, they were OK. Still nothing. Wouldn’t turn on either. Dead. Uh oh, warranty job? Left it on charge overnight thinking it might have been too run down. Nope, no good.

Then today I thought I’d try different button combinations. Sure enough, pressing the power button with the volume-up button brought it up in a basic text only, cold-boot mode, offering rescue options. I just selected the simplest, and away she went. Fixed. I wonder how long it will last before it happens again, though.

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Hmmm, my hopes for my eyes are not working out so well, so far. I’m finding I have slight double vision, two images slightly displaced. It’s too soon to tell, maybe my eyes just have to adjust?  Or maybe it’s these cheap reading glasses.

As well, I find these cheap reading glasses are sometimes a bit too strong and other times a bit too weak. You get what you pay for. I’ll leave it for a few weeks before I go to an optician for tests.

One thing I forgot to mention is that the intra-ocular pressure, the indicators of glaucoma, have come right down. Before the operations, my pressures were 22 and 23, borderline glaucoma and possibly needing the start of daily eye drops.

But now the readings are down to 14 and 15, quite safe. I asked the surgeon and he said the operations allow a small release of the pressure. I won’t need to worry about glaucoma for some time. That’s good news.

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Crumbs, I don’t know how people can watch Pay-TV all the time, I can’t even keep up with free to air. I bought a new TV-HD-DVD recorder before Xmas, and started filling the hard drive in other words. In only a month, I’ve accumulated around a dozen programs waiting for me to watch. For example, the ABC series, The Code. I missed it the first time around, and so I’ve got eps 1-4 stored so far, waiting for me, but will I watch it this time through? I watched the first two episodes of Mars last Saturday, three hours worth, and thought that was all there was, but no, the next two episodes were on last night from 10.50pm to 12.20am, too late for me, so they’re recorded now. There are two more episodes to come, apparently. Phew.

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Did you watch The Ghan on SBS? I watched most of the first three hour version a couple of weekends ago, and enjoyed it. Amazing – three hours, uninterrupted, no commentary, no music, just nat sound. A lot of people loved it, although a lot slated it.

But I missed the arrival in Darwin, so when they ran the 17 hour version last Sunday, I watched the last part to see it. Gee, Darwin ain’t very spectacular. There’s almost no station building, just a kilometre long low platform – not even a platform, just a bitumen track with metal steps to wheel up to the train at various points.

The station is a l-o-n-g way from the city, too, away across Fanny Bay in the distance.

I really, really hope they will do the Indian Pacific. That would be much more interesting.

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One show I have watched, with enthusiasm, is The Good Fight. It’s about a Chicago law firm, owned by coloureds, and specialising in “fighting the good fight” for the down-trodden. Fantastic! Series one ended a couple of months ago, and series two is on now.

Hah, I’ve just had a phone call from a woman saying, so I thought, “This is Orvid Sickness.” Huh? I asked her to repeat. She asked my name again. Eventually I realised this Irish accented woman was saying “Orbit Fitness”, inquiring about the treadmill I bought some time ago.

She said it’s 18 months old and the reason for the call was to try to sell me a service call for $99. Um, no thanks. I only walk on it, I don’t run, so I don’t think the wear and tear is a problem.

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That reminds me that I’m fed up with getting robo-calls, i.e. computer dialled, from a Queensland number and a NSW number. Nearly every day, usually twice a day, sometimes three times. My phone speaks the calling numbers, so I just don’t bother to pick up. I suppose if I did answer these obvious charities I could get them to stop, but I hate doing that. So I continue to be annoyed. Duh.

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OK, I had the right eye cataract done last Monday 15th, so that’s all done, unless the eyes in the back of my head need doing sometime. I don’t need glasses for distance now, and it feels very strange. But my closeup vision is hopeless and I need +2 reading glasses. The surgeon said I should get new glasses made with a weak correction part in the top half if I want it, and the +2 in the lower half, meaning I would go back to wearing them full time. I’ll give the “chemist cheapies” a good try first while I work out what to do.

The really noticeable thing is whites. So white! I had no idea my natural lenses were so yellow. Now I’m seeing true colours for the first time in many years. Blues are especially noticeable. Wonderful.

The operation was easier and even quicker than the first one. The time on the table was a bit under 15 mins. The anaesthetist wanted an ECG done at midday. That was fine. The eye op was in the afternoon this time, 2pm, and I had no nervousness, no pain. Monday was the cyclone rainy day, so it was raining heavily when I got out about 4pm and it continued. I stayed with my friends at their new retirement village apartment in Jolimont and as tired as I was, going to bed at 9.30pm, I was still awake at 1am trying to sleep, hearing the rain. It stopped about then.

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My insomnia continues, in other words. This shows the mattress makes no difference. On Tuesday night at home, unable to read in bed before lights-out due to a glasses mix-up, I turned the light off and lay down. I got to sleep reasonably quickly, so thought that might be it. But last night, following the same procedure, was another battle, reaching about 4am before I dropped off. I can use sedatives but they leave me hung over next day. Still battling on.

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My medical issues are just about finished now. Only the leukemia remains, and I am to see the haematologist again on 13 Feb, when we’ll decide whether to have the iron infusion to “wake up” my bone marrow, giving me more energy, to be hoped.

Wow, It’s been a busy year. Gastric band removal in November 2016; gall bladder removal in March ’17; eye problems from around June; bladder infection from June onwards (ignoring symptoms!); collapse at home in October; hospital with sepsis and kidney stone bypass operation; colonoscopy in October; day surgery to get kidney stone out in November; first cataract op on 22 November; second cataract op on 15 January. With haematologist visits in between. Five general anaesthetics and four local anaesthetics in this period Nov 16 to Jan 18. Thank goodness it’s all over. And a rousing thank goodness for HBF! I’m so glad I can afford private health insurance.

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Now my car has a rusted out muffler, so that’ll be about $400. On the other hand, I should be very grateful. The cataract operations have cost me nothing, the surgeon accepting the HBF payment and bulk billing me for his office consultations (mind you, they are usually no more than about 10 minutes). That’s terrific.

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I’ve signed up for Netflix pay-TV. It seems like a good deal, the first month free and $14 per month for the HD quality feed, unlimited downloads. I want it for the second and subsequent seasons of The Crown, that superb series. I can cancel the membership at any time.

Both my Panasonic HD/BluRay recorder and my LG 4K TV can take Netflix from my NBN wi-fi network, so I’m set like a jelly. I’ve downloaded a few episodes of various series so far with no problems, very fast. I’m 4K right through now, camera, desktop computer, laptop, TV recorder and TV display. As a former TV tech, I’m a quality addict. The quality is amazing, perfection. There are none of the old faults we used to see and accept in analogue days. Perfection.

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More later.

If only I could sleep like a dog.

No news is good news. I’ve been quiet but all’s well. But my sleeping is all over the place, and it seems to be getting worse. Almost every night I lie awake until 3am or 4am before getting to sleep, many times not sleeping at all. I then need to go back after breakfast, hoping the sleepiness I feel after eating will do the trick, but sometimes, like yesterday, even that doesn’t work. I lay there yesterday for two sessions of 90 mins each without success.

Yet today, after getting about 4hrs last night, I slept after breakfast from 10.30am to 1pm, and more.

I’ve followed all the tips, darkening the room, (if darkness is so important, how come I can sleep in the daytime?), turning off all electronic devices, leaving them outside the room, and so on. Probably if I ate some carb loaded food late, before bed, that would work, but that’s the way to weight gain in my experience.

Of course, if I got more exercise so that I’m physically tired, that would work, but it’s chicken and egg – I don’t exercise because I’m so tired. I can hope that the haematologist’s plan to wake my bone marrow up to produce more red blood cells in mid Feb will give me more energy. I’ll know soon.

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The title is a pun on “apps”. I never had much interest in a smart phone, but I find myself becoming more and more reliant on my phone. The latest is as a controller and viewfinder for a drone. My good friend KG bought me a ‘reasonably priced’ drone for Xmas and you have to scan a QR code in the instruction book to download the controller software. Therefore I had to install a QR code reader app before I could download the controller app. Amazing technology. The QR code was printed small and looked scrappy, but no problem, it worked.

The drone (there are two in the picture, but there’s only one in the box)

I’ve succeeded in getting the drone to fly around the room without a problem even without the controller software, but the idea is that the phone clips onto the controller and shows the output from the camera in the drone and records the video as desired. That’s next on the list after I’ve recharged the lithium-polymer battery from the drone itself by removing it, plugging to into a USB adapter and charging from the laptop.

This is amazing. I don’t know how much this thing cost, but I’m sure it was less than $100 (in searching for that image, I found it cost $69). For that, you get all the plastic parts housing the four propellors and a blaze of LEDs, a high def (720p) colour video camera, the Li-Po battery, and a wi-fi transceiver. The hand held controller has another wi-fi transceiver, two joysticks and numerous buttons and switches, and all the electronics to process all this – a computer in other words. All this for peanuts!

I forgot to mention, you also get a pair of goggles that take your phone and act as a VR viewer (the green thing, bottom left in the picture). They’re moulded plastic lenses, but they’re quite high quality. I haven’t tried that yet. Won’t be long now.

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In the past ten days or so I’ve been watching the Netflix series, The Crown. All I can say is WOW! I would give this a rating of 9.9/10. It left me panting for more. It is absolutely some of the best television I have ever seen, utterly spellbinding. It’s the story of the British monarchy from around the time Queen Elizabeth II was born, and covers the death of King George V, the succession of Edward VIII, his abdication to marry Wallis Simpson, the succession of his brother, Liz’s father, King George VI, his death and her succession to the throne in 1953.

Although Netflix is a US company, it’s a British made series of course. This is only the first series, ten one hour episodes. It leaves me panting for the next series, which was released on 8 December. Series three is being made now. Being Netflix, it only comes via Pay TV but I got mine at a friendly DVD shop in Bali, two DVDs at $1 each. My new TV is capable of networking and seeing Netflix. Will I be able to resist until I can get the Bali DVDs? I doubt it. The Pay TV feed will be in High Def as well, whereas the DVDs are fairly poor SD.

A large part of the series is devoted to current affairs of the time, with large parts devoted to Princess Margaret and her affair with Peter Townsend, and Winston Churchill, played superbly by John Lithgow. I can’t cover all the highlights here, all I can do is marvel at the editing and the resemblance of the actors to the real people, and the period cars and street scenes. It’s so true to life.

I could go on, but all I can say is I feel privileged to have seen this piece of television. This is what TV’s all about. It brings history to life. Coupled with the recent eight episode series of ‘Victoria’ on the ABC, I know far more now than I ever did about events that I’ve mostly lived through. If you get the chance, watch it.

In view of the Royal Commission’s scathing report mentioning Catholic clergy’s predations on children …

Any truth to the rumour that celibacy is to be banned completely and all priests and nuns will be required to show evidence that they are having regular sex?

And any truth to the rumour that Catholic monasteries and convents are going co-ed?

Crumbs, we always used to joke about priests and their sexual habits, but it’s been shown that our jokes were spot on. It was all true. Disgusting.

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I’ve been given the date of  my next cataract op, on my right eye: Monday 15 January. Crumbs, I didn’t know how much my sight had deteriorated until the left eye was done three weeks ago, but now I can see how dim and yellow my right eye is. I was going to leave it until it was necessary, but I can’t hack having the eyes so different. It will be good to have them equal again. I’ll be able to dispense with glasses for normal distance vision, only needing reading glasses for close-up work. This will save me a lot of money, and save HBF costs as well. Boy, paying the annual HBF fee seems a bit of a slug each year (I pay annually), but I’m getting benefits way more than I’m paying in. Private health insurance, yeah!

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In my endless quest to find a replacement car, I would be foolish to disregard an offer from a Hyundai dealer – they are selling 2016 model Hyundai Sonata sedans, that is, last year’s model, for $15,999 after allowing $3,000 for any trade in.

To me, this is a dead boring car, but I’ve never had a good look or even read any reviews. I should go and look, and ask for a test drive. Maybe I’ll be surprised. The deal includes full 5 year new car warranty, and I think capped price servicing and so on. These are worth a lot.

There’s a Skoda Superb sedan/hatchback for private sale in Carramar, and I was very tempted, but when I thought hard about it, there are too many things against it:

• it’s done 30,000km in about 16 months
• that means the tyres would be half way through their life, or more
• it’s black
• the price he’s asking is way OTT. He wants $37,500 when the new price is $40,690. The Red Book price guide says cars of this age should sell for around $29,000. It’s not selling, I wonder why.

I’m starting to notice that my exhaust on the Magna is sounding a bit “sporty”, and the ride seems much harder than I remember, as if the shockies are on the way out. It would be good to just hand it over as a trade-in. The search goes on.

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Another sleep free night last night. I’ll have to try for some now, after breakfast. I’m beginning to think I might need a sleep study, or at least a talk with the sleep doctor.

I slept pretty well last night after taking a Phenergan thickshake, but I happened to wake just before 3am for a pee. On going back to bed I turned the radio on to hear the news and the bulletin was followed by Richard Fidler’s interview program Conversations.

Who should his interviewee be this morning? Henry Marsh, the neurosurgeon I wrote about yesterday, the author of the book Do No Harm. That was good and of course I had to listen to the whole one hour interview until 4am.

It was good to put a voice to the face, since his picture was on the inside cover at the back of the book. I finished it last night. Good read. You might be interested to know that when a brain surgeon makes a mistake, accidentally cuts an artery or a nerve for example, they call it ‘wrecking’ the patient. It can mean irreversible damage leading to complete paralysis, a major stroke and a vegetative state for the rest of the patient’s life. I don’t know how the surgeon would cope with that.

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I meant to mention that I’ve fallen out of bed twice in recent weeks. In my tossing and turning, I seem to work my way too close to the edge of the bed and one final movement sends me over.

I also woke up punching the bedside cabinet again last week. Some dream, where I was fighting with someone. Yow, it hurt.

The bulging trackpad

I said the replacement battery arrived, but I couldn’t undo the screws to change it. Well, worry no more, it’s done.

I visited the new Jaycar shop at Clarkson today and we decided the bit I needed was a Torx T4. It came in a handy kit of 31 other bits, but that’s OK, $18.95 for the set. It fits perfectly, so I had the base cover off in no time.

Isn’t that a work of art? The battery is removed in this shot. It goes across the lower part with the two large rectangles. Those two narrow horizontal rectangles at the bottom are the speakers! Not bad sound either. The two curvy things across the middle linking the two fans are copper heat pipes in contact with the CPU chip under there somewhere.

I was interested to see that my hard drive is one of the new NVmE modules – I’ve marked it in the shot above, it’s the green rectangle with the white label on the middle left. That’s a 512GB solid state drive, half a terabyte! In the centre is the RAM, 16GB of it. This is one powerful machine. It’s a Core i7 with a 15″ 4K resolution touch screen. It’s as powerful as most desktop PCs.

There’s the new battery before I screwed it into place. It’s 84Wh and gives me about 4hrs run time. It all went back together perfectly and it was all done in under an hour. I’m using it now. I have to pack the old battery in the same box the new one came in for return to Dell. I was worried about the cost of posting it to Singapore, but it turns out I just phone a 1 800 number in Perth and the courier company comes out here and collects it from me. Now that’s civilised. They’ve even provided a pre-printed label for the box.

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Another sleepless night last night, the third in a row. I was recommended to try some tablets from the supermarket called Sleep. I had noticed them a couple of weeks ago but put them back on the shelf as soon as I saw the word “homeopathic” on the label. But a friend said they work for her, so I paid my $14.95 for a month’s supply.

The first two nights they have not worked at all. I thought there might have been a placebo effect at least, but nah.

I went back for a sleep after breakfast today but only got less than an hour of shallow dozing before I woke again. I felt reasonably OK then, but I’m knackered again now. I’ve had another shallow nap but still feel woozy. This is terrible. I’m effectively only getting two hours of poor quality sleep a night. I can get a full sleep by using sedatives but I find it hard to wake and get going in the morning. This is bad.

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The Jaycar visit produced a good idea today. I’ve been thinking of making a bedhead in my main bedroom. I have in mind a rectangle of nice veneered chipboard or craftwood screwed to a pair of 100x50mm battens, screwed to the wall. I want indirect lighting behind it, shining up the wall, and was thinking about using strip LED lighting, and thinking about switches and so on. Not difficult, but a bit fiddly.

In Jaycar I found that you can buy extruded aluminium channels with LED strip lights pre-installed behind a translucent plastic diffuser. They come pre-wired with switches and a 240V mains plug in lengths from 300mm to 1.5m. I’d need two of the 1.5m at $54.95 each. Easy. This is a very doable project.

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I’ve nearly finished the book Do No Harm by the UK neurosurgeon Henry Marsh. Excellent reading, a very easy style and a good balance between technical and dumbing down.

The interesting thing is how anxious and nervous he becomes when dealing with his patients and especially their relatives. He freely admits he makes mistakes in his surgery, with sometimes catastrophic consequences, leaving some patients in a vegetative state from which they will never recover. He admits it, sometimes there is a slip of the knife, severing a vein, artery or major nerve. Sometimes he has trouble summoning the courage to face the parents or spouse.

He’s very critical of the NHS in Britain, with all its cost cutting and maladministration. He rails against hospital managers (where have we heard that before?). He describes his own failings and illnesses, including a detailed description of his two detached retinas a few months apart. He admits he was able to jump the queues and get the best care because he knew the ophthalmology specialist to go to on a Sunday.

It’s a good read. I’ve knocked it off in less than a week, fast for me. He’s written another one which I’ll order soon.

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Speaking of labels, which I was earlier, reminds me of barcodes. A few weeks ago on ABC radio’s afternoon program on Thursdays with Dr Karl Kruzelnicki, he was asked how barcodes work.

Well, he gave a description that said the system was invented by a young boy in America who saw the pattern made on the sand at the beach by the sun shining through the canvas of a deck chair. He said the bars are different widths corresponding to the different numbers.

The ABC then proceeded to make a radio promo using him saying this, so it was repeated quite a few times over the following days.

BULLDUST! It’s not so. Dr Karl, you’ve got it wrong. ABC, stop using this promo! It’s wrong.

Barcodes are digital. If you look closely, you’ll see that there are only two widths of lines, and absence of lines, meaning white space. If two black lines follow each other, they merge to form a thick line.

The important points are that the code has to be readable from either direction and at any angle. The beginning and end of a sequence of lines is a code that tells the reader whether it’s a start or finish, and the lines are long so that the whole sequence can be held at any angle to the laser scanner and still get a reading. It has to be that way – just watch how fast the checkout chicks pass the supermarket items past the scanners.

As for being invented by a young boy on a beach, balderdash. Just look it up on Wikipedia. It was invented by an adult guy in the USA in 1957, and nowhere near any beach or deck chair.

I get het up about things like this because this is electronics and I don’t want it trivialised. And if Karl gets this wrong, what else does he get wrong?

Just an addition to say I don’t have to buy a new hot water system. The plumber came at 7.30am (!) on Thursday and noticed the manufacture date on the label inside the inspection cover is 2007. I’m pretty sure the house was built in 2004, so he suggested this might have been a warranty replacement.

Anyway, he diagnosed a faulty inlet valve, so replacing that and another smaller outlet valve got it going. Total cost $275. Phew!

He also showed me how to turn the gas off if I don’t need hot water, and confirmed that my dishwasher heats its own water, so doesn’t need pre-heated water. That means I can turn the gas off until April or so. Since I almost never use my gas cooktop either, it’ll be interesting to see if my gas usage drops to zero on my next bill.

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The replacement battery for my Dell laptop arrived on Thursday as well, and I prepared to dismantle the computer to replace it. Uh oh, no go.  The base cover uses tamper proof screws and I’ve got a set of special bits for this. But the heads on the Dell are tiny star shaped sockets and nothing I have is small enough. There are a dozen to get out, so I need a good tool. I’ll have to visit Jaycar, who have set up a new shop in Clarkson, very conveniently. I’ll also look on-line. I have to get it done, because Dell want the old battery returned to them within 10 days or they’ll invoice me for the cost of the battery. I have to get it out.