Single Blade Shaving Part 3

I've been single blade shaving for about six weeks now.

I've tried all sorts of things, and I've discovered that:

• I can't shave against the grain, no matter what I do
• Feather razor blades are much, much better than anything else
• The Merkur HD is a good razor, but can't shave under the nose
• The Feather "Popular" is a bad razor
• The Weishi is OK if you want to do lots of passes
• Shaving across the grain works well with a DE
• I'm unlikely to ever get a "baby bottom smooth" shave

I'm still experimenting, including with some other brands of razor blades, and going back to my cartridge razors for a comparison.

Nokia E71 Update

I've had the Nokia E71 for a couple of weeks now.

Most of the points I raised turned out to be no big deal.

The static noise in the headphones has gone away since using the clip to clip it to my jacket, YouTube has its own mobile phone player that works much better than the built-in one, and Nokia appear to be making a better program for copying music to your phone.

The main problem I had was with my Bluetooth headset, which worked some times, but others not.

It also had a tendency to stay locked on 2G if the 3G signal became poor, even after I moved to a new area where there was good 3G coverage (fixed by manually selecting the network).

The camera was adequate, but no replacement for a real one.

Outside on an overcast day

Close-up of the post box

A few minutes later, facing the other direction

Outside on a sunny Winter's day

Inside without flash (incandescent room light)

Inside with flash

At night (with night mode)

There's lots of other little niggles, but none of them are fatal.

• Have to manually tell it which connection to use if WLAN is unavailable
• Can't have a dd mmm yyyy date format (e.g. 2 Sep 2008)
• PiZero's themes have white text on a white background in obscure places
• There's no way to disable the startup sound or the camera sound
• Can't easily select multiple text messages
• There is no way to insert smileys :-(

Better GNOME Terminal Copy and Paste

In most programs these days, you press Ctrl+C to copy to the clipboard.

In GNOME Terminal on Linux it's Ctrl+Shift+C and in PuTTY on Windows it happens as soon as you select some text.

This was confusing me until I found a great feature of GNOME Terminal:

1. Click on the Edit menu, then on Keyboard Shortcuts...
2. Click on Copy, then type Ctrl+C

Now Ctrl+C will act as copy if some text is selected, but it still acts as the interrupt key to stop a program if there's nothing selected.

The GNOME Edit Keyboard Shortcuts menu

Ctrl+C with something highlighted

Ctrl+C with nothing highlighted

Nokia E71 Review

My mobile phone contract was nearly over, so I called 3 to ask about my options, thinking I'd try to get a Nokia 6220 classic.

The salesman suggested the Nokia E71 was better and was available free on a $49 cap, so I got it instead.

The Nokia E71 (white)

It supports wireless LANs, VoIP, and has a longer battery life, but the camera isn't as good as the 6220's. It also does all the other usual stuff, including web, music, calendar, and games.

After using it for a day, I'm pleasantly surprised.

The keyboard layout is a bit different, being a full QWERTY keyboard. It's fine to use, but the right Navi key no longer works as backspace: instead it cancels the current operation - not a good thing if you're writing a long message. Still, you quickly get used to it.

It's smaller than it looks. It's very thin, and it's just narrow enough to hold it with one large hand.

Nokia E71 in my hand

It had a setup wizard that asked me if I wanted to copy all my contacts, appointments, and notes from my old phone over Bluetooth. Apart from the backspace key not working when entering a name for my new phone, it seems to have worked well.

The default 3 theme is fine but not particularly good looking and the Nokia ones are worse. Downloading some of PiZero's free themes makes it look and feel much nicer.

3 default theme

Nokia's icons

PiZero's icons

The screen is good. I can see more than I used to on my 6280, but obviously it's not as big as the iPhone's. Very clear, tho, and good fonts. Quite OK for browsing.

The built in browser isn't bad, but Opera Mini works a little better. The phone also supports Flash applications such as YouTube, but the sound was too choppy to be worthwhile.

Browsing The Age web site with Opera Mini

Google Maps uses the phone's builtin GPS receiver to show the current location on the map. It works OK, and looks really cool, but sometimes it takes over a minute to lock in.

Google Maps with GPS

The clock is really neat. When the phone is locked, you can hold the middle button down to see a full screen clock. I reduced the screensaver timeout to 10 seconds to make this work more to my liking.

Big clock

I've tried taking some photos, and the results are acceptable. As with all digital cameras I've tried, photos in poor light look quite grainy, but photos in good light look OK. I'll have to get some photos printed before I can really say how good the camera is.

On the home screen, there is an application shortcut list and a list of upcoming appointments, but it works a bit differently from my old Nokia 6280. Now, the so-called "active standby screen" means I can't press up, down, left, or right to launch an application. Instead, there are dedicated contacts, calendar, and messages keys, and you're better off using the application shortcut bar for everything else. I put the music player, Opera Mini, Gmail, the camera, and the clock there.

At first I was disappointed that there was no dedicated camera button, but the combination of the shortcut bar and the middle button to take the picture seem to work fine.

You can also rearrange most menus. This is pretty much necessary, since the default menus are cluttered. Thankfully the shortcut bar and shortcut keys should mean you don't have to even go into the menu very often.

I tried making a call last night with the supplied headphones, and you could easily hear noise. I think this was caused by the microphone brushing on my jacket. I'll try clipping it to my top next time. (Now I understand why my old headphones had an annoying neck loop.)

The ringtones sound really nice in a quiet environment or with the headphones, but the only one suitable for loud environments is the "Nostalgia" old style telephone. Still, one's better than none.

The power socket is the 2mm Nokia connector, so I can use all my old Nokia chargers. It also includes a USB to microUSB cable. It's only capable of USB 1.1, meaning the transfers will be slow but not painful at around one megabyte per second, for example it would take roughly one minute to copy an album of MP3s.

The Wi-Fi has been good for browsing the web and testing out the assisted GPS, but the killer application should be using it as a VoIP handset. Eventually I found a guide on Whirlpool that gave me the information I needed to set it up.

Making an internet phone call

The only other note I have to make is it's been pretty stable. It crashes reliably if you try to download a .sis theme file that it doesn't understand (presumably due to the wrong MIME type being sent by the server), but other than that I haven't noticed any problems, even while multi-tasking.

I'll try to post some photos I took with it tomorrow.

GNOME Without Borders

I run a lot of terminal sessions on my computer desktop so I can connect to some remote servers.

In GNOME, the terminal always starts out small, and then I have to click on the icon in the top right corner of the window to maximize it.

It also displays the title once in the title bar, and a second time in the tab title, which used up some of the screen unnecessarily.

No more!

The best solution I've found uses Openbox.

I installed it using Yum, then ran it once from the command line with the --replace option. After that, GNOME remembered to start it up instead of its default window manager, Metacity.

Then I created ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml with the following applications section:

<applications>
    <application class="Firefox*">
      <maximized>true</maximized>
      <decor>no</decor>
    </application>
    <application class="Gnome-terminal">
      <maximized>true</maximized>
      <decor>no</decor>
    </application>
    <application class="Terminal">
      <maximized>true</maximized>
      <decor>no</decor>
    </application>
</applications>

Now Firefox and my terminals start up maximized and without a title.

My GNOME desktop without window borders

On the rare occasion I need to turn borders back on, I can press Alt+Space then click on Decorate from the menu.

Single Blade Shaving Part 2

My new shaving gear

Back to Part 1

For my first single blade shave, I started out very carefully. I didn't get a very good lather. I shaved my face twice going downwards, applying the soap lather before each pass. It wasn't a close shave, but there were no cuts or irritation afterwards, so it was an OK start.

I went and bought a $5 porcelain bowl from a homewares store and used it to make the lather for my second shave. It was much better. I did it by starting before my shower, filling the bowl with hot water, putting the brush in the bowl, and putting a tiny bit of hot water on top of the soap. When I got out of the shower, I emptied the bowl into the sink (with the plug in), tipped the soapy water into the bowl, squeezed the brush dry, pushed it firmly into the soap and did a few circles, then started whisking it with the soapy water in the bowl. Got a really good result in about a minute.

The shave itself was good. I did three downward passes. Probably as close as an average cartridge razor, but not especially close. Still, I had no irritation and I was presentable.

Third shave was quite good. A little better than the second. This time I focussed more on the angle. I tried about 30 degrees for the first pass and about 40 degrees for the second pass. Inspite of most of the tutorials saying 30 degrees is the correct angle, I found that with my razor, something closer to 40 was the best. It gave the closest shave. You could also hear it was cutting more hair, as the razor makes a subtle rumbling sound as you shave.

Me after my third shave

My fourth shave wasn't so good. I had to do four passes to get the same effect and it left my face stinging slightly. I think it was because the blade was getting blunt, so I changed it.

My fifth shave was as good as the third.

And today, I had my best shave yet. I did three downward passes, keeping the angle at about 40 degrees. It produced no irritation, and a nice smooth face, but only in the downward direction. If I put my hand against my face and run it upward, I can feel some stubble.

Tomorrow I'm going to be brave and gently try an upward (against the grain) third pass. This is what mantic's original videos recommended (see my original post), but I was too scared to try it because it always gave me ingrown hairs when using a cartridge razor.

Wish me luck!

(Also, thanks to all the guys who gave me good advice on the Badger and Blade forums.)

Disabling Ugly Fedora 9 Wallpaper

I installed Fedora 9 preview back in April.

This is what greets you when it's finished booting:



I think it's the ugliest login screen wallpaper I've ever seen, and the Fedora team don't give you any way to change it.

I tried deleting the package, but it kept coming back when I applied the latest updates.

Adding exclude=desktop-backgrounds* to /etc/yum.conf and running sudo rpm -e --nodeps desktop-backgrounds-basic seems to have done the trick.

Single Blade Shaving

I've never enjoyed shaving. I've tried various cartridge razors (Gillette Sensor, Mach 3, Fusion, Shick FX, Protector, Quattro, etc.), but I always either end up with a shave that doesn't get close (if I go with the grain) or a shave that irritates my skin and leaves me with ingrown hairs (if I go against the grain). Electric shavers were even worse.

When I was using a razor blade to remove my car registration sticker, it made me wonder why we can get razor blades in supermarkets, yet I'd never seen a proper single blade razor!

I found some interesting videos on YouTube discussing traditional wet shaving and single blade shaving and decided to give it a try.

My first order of shaving gear from the Shaver Shop arrived today. I got a Baden P Morris Safety Razor Set, which is really the Weishi Shaver with some Dorco Platinum ST-300 blades, some Omega shaving soap, and an Omega shaving brush.

I'm looking forward to giving it a shot!

Climate Change Segment on Sunday

Channel 9 had a segment about climate change on the Sunday show.

It featured Tim Flannery, author of "The Weather Makers", William Kininmonth, author of "Climate Change: A Natural Hazard", and Jennifer Marohasy from the Institute of Public Affairs.

I actually read "The Weather Makers" about two years ago on recommendation from an environmentally-inclined friend. As I didn't have a good grounding in the science, I was quite disappointed that it glossed over the theories and facts. Instead, it gave some examples of species going extinct, hypothesizing that it was caused by climate change. (Omitting any proof that such change was caused by humans.)

In this show, he stays true to form, and relies on a "consensus", rather than using any facts.

He says that his predictions are like predicting whether January is likely to be warmer than June. This is clearly absurd, as long-term temperature records show that earth's temperature has been rising and falling (e.g. ice ages, rising and falling sea levels), while we know that summer is predictably warmer than winter due to the earth's tilt exposing the respective hemispheres to the sun. He's predicting that January in ten years (or even fifty years) will be so many degrees hotter than this January, which is quite a different thing.

He also makes a ridiculous analogy about seeing a doctor who says he's 99% certain you have terminal cancer. The most well known advocate of man-made climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their latest report says there is a 9 out of 10 certainty that humans are at least partly responsible for global warming. So it's really more like a doctor telling you there's a 90% chance you'll get cancer if you eat meat, without telling you what your chances are of getting cancer if you stop eating meat. And 90% isn't 99%. That's a blatant exaggeration.

Maybe there's some proof out there, but the fact that Tim Flannery gets so much promotion suggests there's some definite bias in the media, and that a little more debate could be a good thing.

Better Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

I've been using AutoHotkey for a while now. It's made my computer much easier to use.

You can use it to do several things, including:

• Starting common programs without the mouse
• Controlling your music and video programs
• Making Mac shortcuts like Ctrl+Q work everywhere
• Customizing application keyboard shortcuts

Installation

1. Download and install AutoHotkey
2. Create an empty file called shortcuts.ahk
3. Create a shortcut to that file and put it in the Startup folder

You can then edit the script by right clicking on the green H icon in the corner of the screen and selecting Edit This Script, saving the file, then clicking Reload This Script.

Starting common programs

The Windows key is used for only a few things on a normal computer, such as Win+L to lock the screen. It's easy to add shortcuts for all your favorite programs, for example Win+F for Firefox, Win+I for iTunes, Win+N for Notepad, and so on.

Do this by adding a line like this

#i::Run C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes

to your shortcuts.ahk file.

The # means the Windows key (labeled with either a Windows symbol or the word Start), i means the I key, and C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes is the command to run when Windows and i are pressed together.

Another trick is to start a program in a maximized window, e.g.

#p::
Run C:\Program Files\PuTTY\PuTTY servername
WinWait, PuTTY
WinMaximize
return

Controlling your music and video programs

I use AutoHotkey to simulate the media buttons that some newer keyboards have, such as back, forward, pause, mute, and so on. I could buy a media keyboard, but I prefer a smaller keyboard that doesn't take up all my desk space.

You can either set it up to control the program in the foreground using something like:

#Left::Send {Media_Prev}
#Right::Send {Media_Next}

or tell it to control iTunes (even if the current window is Windows Media Player) using something like:

#Left::SendMessage, 0x319, 0, 0xC0000, , iTunes
#Right::SendMessage, 0x319, 0, 0xB0000, , iTunes

I also use these to control the volume everywhere:

#Up::Send {Volume_Up}
#Down::Send {Volume_Down}
#NumpadDot::Send {Volume_Mute}
#NumpadDel::Send {Volume_Mute}

Making Mac shortcuts like Ctrl+Q work everywhere

Since using Macs and Linux systems for a while, I find Ctrl+Q a more convenient shortcut to close the current program. A few Windows programs support this, but most of them use Alt+F4.

Adding this rule makes Ctrl+Q equivalent to Alt+F4.

^q::Send !{F4}

Customizing application keyboard shortcuts

I was trying out the Safari web browser, and it wasn't too bad, but the keyboard shortcut to change tabs is Ctrl+Shift+[. Firefox uses Ctrl+PageUp, which is more familiar and easier to press. Unfortunately, Safari doesn't let me change its keyboard shortcuts.

These rules check if the program is Safari then translate Ctrl+PageUp to Ctrl+Shift+[ and similarly for Ctrl+PageDown.

#ifWinActive ahk_class {1C03B488-D53B-4a81-97F8-754559640193}
^PgUp::Send ^+[
#ifWinActive ahk_class {1C03B488-D53B-4a81-97F8-754559640193}
^PgDn::Send ^+]

To find out the class id numbers, right click on the H icon, click on Spy, then click on the window you want to control.

Bold Shell Command like the Rails Books

I've recently been reading some books about Ruby on Rails.

One little thing that I thought was cool was the example commands:

dave> cd work
work> rails demo
create
create  app/controllers
create  app/helpers
create  app/models
  :      :      :

I decided to try to make my shell look the same.

Putting the directory name in the prompt is easy. That can be achieved by setting PS1='$(basename "$PWD")> '

(if you use zsh, you may need to run setopt promptsubst first)

Making everything you type after the prompt bold is the tricky bit. You have to enable bold mode at the end of the prompt, but disable it as soon as the user has pressed Enter, so the command's output isn't bold too.

This can be achieved in zsh by adding %{$(tput bold)%} to the end of your PS1 line, e.g.

PS1='$(basename "$PWD")> %{$(tput bold)%}'

and adding a function called preexec that resets the font to normal.

preexec()
{
    tput rmso
}

And to finish up, I like to handle things properly if tput and basename aren't available, so I test if tput is present using command -V tput and use POSIX-style ${parameter##word} to delete everything except the last part of the path.

So the stuff you need to add to ~/.zshrc now looks like this

setopt promptsubst

init_terminal()
{
        if command -V tput >/dev/null 2>&1; then
                bold="$(tput bold)"
                underline="$(tput smul)"
                normal="$(tput sgr0)"
        fi
}

last_part_of_path()
{
        local full_path="$1"
        local last_part="${full_path##*/}"

        if test -n "$last_part"; then
                echo "$last_part"
        else
                echo "/"
        fi
}

preexec()
{
    print -n "$normal"
}

init_terminal

PS1='$(last_part_of_path "$PWD")> %{$bold%}'

And the end result looks like this



Unfortunately, you can't do this in bash because it doesn't have an equivalent to the preexec function, so everything including the command's output will be bold. (There is a patch to add something similar, but it causes bash to crash in some situations, so I think it's safer not to use it.)

Australian Soccer World Cup Stadiums

Australia's bid for the FIFA World Cup 2018 has been in the news today.

In particular, The Age has an article, Australia's World Cup bid to soccer it to 'em, where they touch on the stadiums we have.

It mentions only six, which isn't very flattering.

We've actually got at least ten, and we could have fourteen by then.

Sydney has the ANZ Stadium (83,500), the Sydney Cricket Ground (50,000), and the Sydney Football Stadium (45,000).

ANZ Stadium (Alexormes)

Brisbane has Suncorp Stadium (52,500), the Queensland Sport and Athletic Centre (48,400), and the Gabba (42,000).

Suncorp Stadium (Inecita)

Melbourne has the MCG (100,000), Telstra Dome (56,300), with Princes Park (35,000) and the new Rectangular Stadium (31,500) just under the mark.

Melbourne Cricket Ground (NicnBill)

Adelaide has AAMI Stadium (51,500), there is discussion of a new 45,000 capacity soccer ground at Bonython Park, and Adelaide Oval (33,500) could probably be upgraded.

AAMI Stadium (Nemrac2)

Perth has Subiaco (43,000) and this week the WA Premier announced a new 70,000 seat stadium at Kitchener Park.

Kitchener Park (thewest.com.au)

So we have ten stadiums over 40,000 already built, an eleventh in Perth already committed to, a twelfth in Adelaide likely, and another two or three that could easily be upgraded.

Germany had twelve stadiums for the last world cup, with most around 40,000 to 50,000, and none as big as the MCG or ANZ Stadium.

With a modest amount of investment, proper ground preparation, and good scheduling, Australia could easily host the world cup.

Australian Open

I went to the Australian Open this week with Katie.

We had the night free and I'd never been to the tennis so it seemed like a good idea!

There were a few big name players, but tickets to their matches were already sold out, so we just got a $20 after-work ground pass ticket, which lets you go to any match on the outside courts.

Most matches were starting a bit later, so we went to get some food and a beer, and have a walk around. The food was nothing special, but the atmosphere was great. It felt a lot like the world cup in Germany, and the weather was nice and hot (over 30 degrees).

We saw a really bad match on a side court for about ten minutes, then went off to see Economidis versus Gonzalez at Margaret Court Arena, which sounded like the best event on the ground courts.

It sure was!



For the first few sets, it was a really close game, with some good rallies, some good skills, but also far too many unforced errors. Still, it was really good to watch.

There were a huge group of Chilean supporters there to support Gonzalez thruout the whole stadium, and a section of Greek supporters in one corner loudly singing and supporting Economidis.

Towards the middle of the game, the umpire started asking the Greek fans to be quiet. It wasn't obvious why, since the Chileans were just as vocal.

Eventually the police were called in. From the other end of the stadium, it looked like they tried to remove one of the Greek supporters, but he resisted. A short time later, the police used capsicum spray. They used a lot of spray, and it got on lots of people nearby.

It became quite an incident, with it being reported in news outlets in several countries.

Without knowing the details, I thought the Greek section were just providing a great atmosphere and having some fun, so it's disappointing that it came to this. Still, physically resisting police officers isn't a very smart idea.

That aside, Gonzalez ended up winning the match.

I'll definitely try to get tickets next year!