Year: 2014

Swatch Sistem51

I just got a new “Sistem51” watch from Swatch. I got interested in this watch after reading a review of it on Hodinkee. I like the idea of a reliable, automatic, watch for a reasonable price. (The other automatic I have is my Dad’s old Rolex. And old Rolexes don’t really count as terribly reliable or reasonably priced. Though in my case, it didn’t cost me anything, and it’s been OK since having it serviced a few years back. But I digress.)

I’ve had two other Swatches, one of which I bought in the early 90s and the other in 2003 or thereabouts. Both were their cheapest plastic watches, which generally go for around $60 (or did when I last checked). I’ve replaced the watch bands on both of them multiple times, but they’ve both kept ticking since I bought them, no problem. I just threw out the older one, since the part of the watch that the band attaches to had broken in such a way that I couldn’t attach a new band. (The watch still kept perfect time.) And the newer watch is still working fine.

The Sistem51 is an interesting concept. You can read more about it at the Swatch site or the Hodinkee article, but, basically, it’s a machine-assembled, sealed, automatic watch. So, in theory, it should just keep running for quite some time without any trouble.

The strap on it is leather, but the buckle is plastic, so I have a feeling that I’ll probably need to replace that at some point. But the band itself isn’t going to snap like the plastic ones do. I plan on using this watch as my regular, day-to-day, watch. I’m hoping it will last at least five years before needing a new strap. Maybe when something does eventually go wrong with it, I’ll remember this blog post and write an update.

Windows 8 fresh install

After last week’s successful, but not terribly useful, Windows refresh, I decided to go ahead and just reformat my ThinkPad and do a fresh install. I had to step back to Windows 8, since I have no Windows 8.1 install media, and no 8.1 product key. So that’s a bit of a pain, but I can live with it.

So far, I’ve successfully installed Windows 8, then installed all pending Windows updates, and now I’m doing the 8.1 upgrade from the Windows Store. I started the whole process at around 10 am, and it’s just about 2 pm now, so it’s taken quite a while. But I did run out for a haircut during the Windows 8 install, and out for a walk while the updates were downloading/installing, so I could be further along if I’d stayed home.

Once the 8.1 upgrade is done, I’ll have a bunch of software to install. But I’ll finally have a clean laptop, free of all the Lenovo cruft that got pulled along when I first upgraded from Win 7 to 8. And free of various past Visual Studio installs and other dev tool installs that weren’t easily removed.

NYC trip today – The Met and MoMA

I took a trip into NYC today to visit the Met and MoMA. It worked out pretty well. I got to the Met right around 10am, just after they opened. It wasn’t crowded at all, so I had a nice time casually strolling around and enjoying a nice quiet Sunday visit. I went to MoMA after lunch, and spent a little time there, but not too long. It was a lot more crowded at MoMA, but still manageable. And I finally managed to visit the Monet water lily room, which I blogged about back in June. I got caught up in some Brazilian street festival while walking back to the train station, but managed to extricate myself and get to my train in one piece. So, all in all, a good Sunday in NYC.

Windows 8.1 refresh shenanigans

Yesterday, I decided I wanted to do a system refresh on my Windows 8.1 laptop. This machine is a Lenovo ThinkPad that originally shipped with Windows 7. I’ve since upgraded it to 8 and 8.1. I bought the Windows 8 upgrade online from Microsoft, so I have no install media. And of course I have no install media for 8.1. This leaves me in an awkward position, where I can’t do a normal refresh, as I have a Windows 8 product key, but no media for either 8 or 8.1. This is a pretty well-documented problem, and I think it really reflects poorly on Microsoft that they’ve done nothing to address it.

There are various (slightly Rube Goldberg style) workarounds, none of which worked out for me. The one thing that did work is the solution documented here, using the “recimg” command to create a restore image on my hard drive, which can then be used for the refresh. What that article didn’t make clear, though, is that the image you create that way has all your installed programs in it. That’s clear from this support document, but I didn’t find that one until today.

So, basically, I spent three hours creating a restore image that contained all the installed apps that I wanted to get rid of via the system refresh! Then I ran the refresh, and wound up with a Windows install that was nearly identical to the one I started with. Oh well. I guess the only way to clean things up would be to do a full format and re-install. But, again, since I have no 8.1 install media, I’m not sure I could even do that. It’s enough to drive a guy straight to Ubuntu. (Which probably works pretty well on a ThinkPad. Hmm.)

The main motivation for wanting to do the refresh was that I wanted a nice clean machine for the fall, since I will probably be taking a class via Coursera, and I wanted a good fast machine to work on. Well, I can still mess around with it some more and see what I can do with it.

Poirot

I’ve been binge-watching old episodes of Poirot (via Amazon Prime) recently. I haven’t seen the early episodes since they first aired, and I probably haven’t see all of them, since I (of course) didn’t have a DVR in those days.

The series is coming to an end now, after about 25 years. There are good write-ups on it at NPR and the NY Times. I don’t think I’ll be signing up for Acorn TV just to see the last few episodes. I’ll wait until they show up on PBS (or possibly Amazon Prime or Netflix).

WP-CLI on 1&1

After coming back from WordCamp, I mentioned that I wanted to start messing with WP-CLI. Well, today, I decided to give that a try under my 1&1 account. I first tried installing it with curl and running it, as described on the WP-CLI home page. But (to make a long story short), I had some problems getting it to work.

Then, I did some searching, and found some indication that WP-CLI might already be installed and configured on my account. So, I just typed in “wp cli info” and hey, it’s there and working. (Thanks, 1&1!) I’ve had some problems installing Jetpack updates from the WP admin page, so now I can just ssh in and type “wp plugin update jetpack”. Much smoother!

Of course, nothing’s perfect, so right now, some of the WP-CLI commands are throwing a whole bunch of warnings up on the screen, but they’re all working, so I’ll see if I can fix the warnings later.