Conor’s Little Dangly Bits

You be the judge.

My Sky+ Remote:

The new Bugatti Veyron SS from Top Gear:

We've had a big-assed 50L Brabantia bin for the past 6 years or so. In their wisdom, Brabantia realise that the crappy catches they put on their bins break regularly and not only provide a spare but make it very easy to order another:

Unfortunately, what they didn't suss was basic mechanical engineering and the fracture mechanics of 5 children whacking the bin-lid hard every time they opened and closed it. So in no time at all the bit which held the catch broke.

Solution 1: Superglue. Rubbish. Lasted precisely one whack from a 4year old.

Solution 2: Epoxy Resin. Used this multiple times over several years. Worked reasonably well. But a pain in the ass to apply since it oozes in everywhere and actually seized up one of the catches. Also goes brittle eventually and breaks away.

Solution 3: Double-sided mounting tape. Tried this recently with surprisingly good results. As it is flexible, it can handle the whackage. Lasted about 2 months until the oozage of the sticky bits made it fall off.

Solution 4: Sugru. I think it may be the perfect solution. Sticky but not oozy to apply. Hard but flexible to handle impact. Has bulk so the load can be spread across a wider area. Two days in and all is well. I'll report back if it ever breaks.

UPDATE 1: Title changed from "Bloody Brabantia Bin" to "Lovely Brabantia Bin" because they reached out to me on Twitter and pointed out that I could get an entire replacement lid for free on their web-site under the 10 year guarantee. Fantastic customer service. But a bit of Googling reveals the problem above is rampant which surely must be costing them a fortune? I hereby offer my Sugru "distributed load" design to Brabantia's engineers for free :-)

This is CyanogenMod 6.0RC2. Working brilliantly on old hardware. 

One of my 5 darling children (identity unknown) decided to peel off a strip of the rubber backing on the Sky+ remote. This bugged me every time I held it. So I decided to have some fun with a Sugru repair. 

Before:

I had a vision in my head for what I wanted to do. Unfortunately I have zero artistic ability. 

The plan was something like a Spiderman web but this is what I gouged out:

I love it and admire my handiwork (crude tho it is) every time I hold it. The kids are less impressed. Oisín aged 8 said "Dad, the last thing that looks like is Spiderman".

Hack number 3 (ultra simple) to follow.

I have never used Digg much. It's perfect for when I have spare time and I want to bounce around different stories. The problem is that first bit, spare time. So like most people, I just used it to pimp the shit out of my own shit. But even that gets boring after a while.

You buy this:

But to use it, it has to look like this:

No more HTC Sense bling. Dunno if I'll miss it or not.

So somehow I have bought a 3-month Annual Subscription? Are they kidding? 

I'd be less pissed off if I could actually get the thing to do a backup but it just gives "Network Errror" over and over, despite every other app on the phone having no problem with the network.

And $19 for three months of phone backup is just silly money.

Andddddd, you can't even buy the bloody thing on your phone, you have to do it on a PC.

Avoid.