“They Live”, but WeLend

  • August 22, 2018
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Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter
A Hong Kong company is running a an ad campaign in which a loan is anthropomorphized as a cute woman in shiny knee-high boots and a really short cheerleader skirt, who hugs borrowers. The fact that an advertisement like this passes raises no eyebrows in Hong Kong tells you quite a bit, and none of […]

Note that the spikes point outwards and downwards

  • August 21, 2018
Categories
Spitting Images
At the very least, the spikes ought to be sandblasted and repainted periodically. And stainless steel barbed wire exists. The orientation of the spikes (I was waiting outside the gate when I snapped this photo) suggests that they’re intended to prevent unauthorized ingress rather than escape. If I really put my mind to it, I’m […]

That Beckett quote is defeatist.

  • August 16, 2018
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Mucking About With Things Sassafras! Horsefeathers! Fiddlesticks! The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Yes, it pleases me to believe that these four 2N3638A transistors are NOS. This evening’s tinkering session is going to involve yours truly double-checking a breadboarded circuit I assembled last week, to assure myself that it correctly replicates a circuit included in a datasheet for an EOLed Hall effect sensor and then, if no boneheaded […]

But imagine it actually worked — wouldn’t that be swell?

  • August 14, 2018
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HerpDerp Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Racked up along a checkout line at a Hong Kong CitySuper with all of the other impulse-buy junk: “Keep Memory Gum”: a Japanese chewing gum (from Lotte, a Korean company) that claims to somehow boost one’s memory. A geek.com article about this gum describes it as minty and says that it contains ginkgo biloba. An […]

OK, WD-40 probably isn’t the best spray paint remover. But it works in a pinch!

  • July 27, 2018
Categories
HerpDerp Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter
M12 screw-on foot pads for pegboard/storage wall units that I’m adding to my workshop I would’ve left the the durned things silverish—if they’d shown any inclination to stop shedding paint. The inside of the box in which the M12-bolt “shelf feet” had been shipped to me was speckled with the stuff and it rubbed off […]

Bedhead systems

  • June 1, 2018
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HerpDerp Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter
From left: call button receptacle, call button plugged in (button itself dangling) with red reset button overhead, and a red triangular emergency-pull knob with its own reset button above it. I’ve spent a couple of days in and out of Hong Kong’s Prince of Wales Hospital, not ill myself, but advocating for and looking after […]

When Goop goes bad

  • May 11, 2018
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HerpDerp Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter
It had been a year or more since I’d needed the cleaning power of Goop, but need it I recently did, so I dug out my mostly-full 14-ounce container of orange-scented Goop-with-pumice. To my surprise, I found that the lid had cracked and its top had separated from its rim. Of course, it would’ve been […]

You Need Cry, Dear

  • April 27, 2018
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HerpDerp Spitting Images The Diary of Lupin Pooter
You Need Cry, Dear sort of, very loosely, sounds like the characters printed in Chinese beneath the nonsensical English. The Chinese translates to something close to “Have your express delivery.” Once you start down this path, making the mascot a bowtie-sporting cartoon deer is the obvious next step.

Back in the cut: WEAR HELMET

  • March 30, 2018
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter We'll go much more a roving
It was a public holiday and so we spent the afternoon back in the cut, crawling through promising-looking industrial buildings in a corner of the New Territories. As connoisseurs of light-industrial decay, we savored the innumerable signs of shoddy construction enhanced by decades of deferred or improperly executed maintenance and the exquisite stratigraphic layering of […]

Best fuel I know!

  • March 29, 2018
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter We'll go much more a roving
Rad sign, eh? Workspace Search 2018 seemed to be inching towards a satisfactory dénouement, but it was just one of those pesky false endings. The adventure continues. “It’s freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?” “Indignation,” said Michelangelo. “Best fuel I know. Never burns out.” Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy […]

Notice: Please beware of the undulating pavement

  • March 22, 2018
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HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter We'll go much more a roving
Why go to all of the fuss of repairing “undulating” pavement if you can simply tape up warning notices about the issue and call it a day? In one industrial neighborhood we visited today, identical copies of the helpful sign shown above were taped to the I-beams sunken into the cement ridges bifurcating the sidewalk.

Looks like a worthwhile use of GPUs to me!

  • March 21, 2018
Categories
HerpDerp Personal Firsts The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Count the ZOTAC GPU boxes. Don’t forget to smile and wave at the surveillance camera pointed at the open door. It and the street-facing windows are open to facilitate a cross-breeze for free, or at least cheap, cooling. I’m looking for workshop space. It’s Hong Kong and we’re dealing with Hong Kong real estate agents […]