The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

ATM. A tedious tech post about SSD cards.

by 43 Comments

As I mentioned elsewhere I have a new toy. In the underside of this new toy is a compartment easily accessed by the simple act of unscrewing a small plate that covers the aforementioned compartment. Exposing this cavity one can insert an SSD card of up to 4tb capacity. I have no experience of such esoteric devices and was wondering if I need to purchase an SSD card with or without a heatsink. Fitting it will be a doddle once I scrape the cash together to purchase one however I not certain if a card with a large heatsink will fit. Would a card with a slimmer sticker type of heat dispersion suffice assuming thata heatsink type is considered desirable? I intend using this internal storage to rip some CDs to it along with digital flac files purchased from Qobuz. My thanks in advance and anticipation. You there boy! Wake up at the back! There is nothing inherently funny about the word cavity!

The Boring Thread

by 378 Comments

At work yesterday I needed to order some diodes. I should have ordered SK56CHV6G but I copied the line above in a spreadsheet and got a pack of LL4148 instead. What* am I like, eh?

This morning, gathered round the office kettle, I had a long discussion with two colleagues about the relative merits of Precision, Jazz and Musicman bass guitars.

This evening, I’m meeting our new cat-sitter.

What tedium have you been involved in recently?

(*) Dull, that’s what.

Email from my Dad

by 61 Comments

From my Aged Pa (98). Thought I’d share it with the vibrant online community that is the Afterword:

Just heard from Trumpole. He wished to know what to say to Ras Putin. I said best thing, say if he’s going to blow up the world, he’d better get on with it before the global warmth does it. Trumpole said ‘That’s bullshit Ern (he allus calls me Ern in emails when he wants privacy) it just ain’ gonna happen. All those trillion ton icebergs falling in the seas are gonna cool everything down and we’ll prolly have another Ice Age. Think of big gin and tonics.”

I am having a bit of bother with him

Crap Toys What You Had What Was Crap

by 171 Comments

Bayko, a building kit toy so irredeemably awful that even my dad didn’t join in (ie reduce me to spectator status). It was made of Bakelite – the material of the future. Sharp, brittle and annoyingly unconvincing, the tiny “brick” pattern panels slid onto bendy (and sharp) steel rods that you set into the holes in the base in a rigidly predetermined pattern. There were also exciting window features – the bay was the most glamorous – and non-opening doors. Roofs were panels to which the ground plan had to conform, and rested in place or, as was more likely, didn’t. The end result of an hour or so of frustrating labour was a static model of a despairingly grim nineteen-forties suburban home which you displayed with pride until you thought of using it for airgun practice. Unlike other construction toys, you couldn’t make anything other than the house on the box lid. You could try sticking Airfix wings on it, or wheels from write-off Dinky cars, but the thing remained what it was – a model of a house you hoped to God you’d never have to live in. The larger the Bayko kit, the more aspirational the suburban » Continue Reading.

Worst Thing I’ve Read All Month

by 31 Comments

I’ve just forced myself to finish “Still Whispering After All These Years”, Bob Harris’ autobiography, on my Kindle. My god he didn’t ‘arf go on. Before I read it, I considered him a vaguely OK bloke who’d had a surprisingly long career in radio and TV. Now having finished the book I find him a strangely dislikeable bloke. A shameless grinning git who’s made a bloody good living out of a calculated mix of sheer persistence and comforting blandness. The early chapters detailing his childhood and initial entry to “the scene” are reasonably interesting but a bit long-winded. The long-windedness continues throughout the book but it quickly becomes an extremely detailed and often repetitious catalogue of every single facet of his not-very-enthralling career and seemingly every single person he’s ever had any dealings of any kind with. I was horrified to realise, at one point, that the book had reached the mid-2000s, I was bored shitless and I was only 75% through the book. It came as a great relief to discover that most of the remainder was an over-extensive index where Mohammed Al-Fayed gets 4 mentions and Frank Zappa gets 3.

Do not buy this book.