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FYI! Last read at 09:55 on 2025/04/26.

Burning music

I have set up my phone to, when I'm out and about, be in the music player. This allows me to jump to any track my entering a number, use the headset button to skip to the next track, and pause. The music will keep playing out of the music player, but your control options basically require you to go back into the player, so I just stay there.
When in the music player, the status screen is always displayed. No biggie, right? Well, after a few weeks of heavy use, I am starting to see the effects of monitor burn. I can faintly read "Music Player" at the top of other displays.
What's going on here? I didn't know this was an issue that affected LCD panels!?

 

Hey Mr. Prez

It is quite telling. The redneck gun-soaked states voted Republican - Texas (obviously!), Alabama, the sorts of places that would not tolerate the idea of a non-white President. Meanwhile the money and industry states (the north east, north central, Florida, and the entire West Coast) had called time on Republican mismanagement. Because of the freaky (bizarre) electoral college system, Obama actually won by a fairly small margin - 52 to 48. That's about what brought Sarko in as the leader of France (over Ségo); however the electoral college gave him a storming 349 to 161. Utterly trounced. Not quite a landslide, but a pretty clear message.
This could be taken as a criticism of the electoral college system. My American friend, Andy, did explain it, but I'm afraid I still don't see the purpose. Get everybody who wants to vote to go and vote, count up all those votes, the highest score is the winner - how hard can that be? Or shall we recall that the last guy didn't win on popular vote (and, as it happens, he didn't appear to win on the proper vote either...).
After all of those films with people such as Morgan Freeman playing the role, it is quite something to see a coloured man elected to the role of President. It is not something that is going to be easy, it was quite telling that he went and took a moment to stand alone at the front of the stage... surrounded by a bulletproof glass 'cage'. However my mother remembers some of the segregation (think of the "Driving Miss Daisy" sort of era, or the clever take on "coloureds" in "Pleasantville"), and in my brief time in over there I was apparently "bused", though I don't really remember it. Not so long ago Martin Luther King had a dream, and not so long before that many people had extremely bad dreams as they were abducted from their homes and crated over to be plantation workers and such. Prejudices are rife, "Bowling For Columbine" points this out rather starkly, however collectively the country has overcome the prejudices to elect a coloured President. We shouldn't refer to him as such, his skin colour has little bearing on his policies or his effectiveness, but I'm afraid this is going to be historic for exactly that - a country with a well-known racial problem being the first Westernised/Superpower/MajorPlayer to elect a black man as their leader. I knew the day would come, but I honestly thought it would be a while yet. I was wrong, and I'm quite pleased I was wrong!

 

Take a tablet before meals...

On a whim I got myself a graphics tablet. It is girly-purple and aimed firmly at children, however it is functional. Anybody who has ever tried to draw into a computer using a mouse, touchpad or (God help you) a trackerball (yes, guilty...) will know that it is an exercise in futility. I'm not disciplined/clever (delete as applicable) enough to draw with vector objects. And anyway, it isn't my style.
Installing the tablet was a doddle. Plug it in. XP detects it, loads drivers, off you go (and, in a far cry to the days of old, you don't even need to reboot!). The tablet area is 'mapped' to the screen. Hovering the pen over the tablet will drag the mouse pointer - bottom left is the position of the "Start" button, upper right is the close "X" on a maximised window... and touching the pen to the tablet will behave as if the mouse button has been held down. There's a two-way button on the pen (you can just see in the picture) which acts as second or third mouse button.

If I had to give downsides, I would say that it is a shame that no software is supplied. There is no CD-ROM or anything. I have used my usual graphics program (PhotoImpact5) to cobble up an example, however I don't think it is capable of registering nib 'pressure'. I guess I'll have to look around for some manga-oriented software.
Additionally, the battery inside the pen is ultra-tiny. It is, actually, an AAAA size. Yes, four A's. I'd not heard of that. I wonder if replacements will be difficult?

 

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