Misinformation on crowdfunding projects

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Crowdfunding is the in thing these days. Everyone is onto it, even students who are doing school projects are putting their projects onto crowdfunding sites.

But are they really the most valid sources of information? I think not. Take SPOT for example.

SPOT - the light with a sweet spot_Indiegogo_20130401-003748

From their indiegogo site, this seems like a pretty good deal, 6 AAA batteries can get you 8 hours of battery life on a 10W LED, and it’s a pretty nice looking torchlight. In fact I was almost on the verge of putting down money when I realised the numbers were off. You see, I own a few of these high powered torchlights, and I knew for a fact that they could not last anywhere near the numbers advertised here.

So I did some maths. The largest typical capacity of a AAA battery available to us normal human beings is 1200mah at 1.5V. That translates it to 1800mWh, or 1.8 watt-hour. 6 of these batteries at tip top conditions will give you 10.8 watt-hour. That light there is a 10 watt high output LED. And the sellers are telling us that that is enough to last 8 hours. I repeat again, a high output LED that consumes 10 watts per hour to operate can last 8 hours with only 10.8 watt-hour. Does anyone else see a problem with this?

Now, I’m not accusing them of being dishonest. They might just be ignorant and simply pulled a nice number from nowhere to make their product look more attractive. But misinformation by up to 8 times? I think there’s something wrong here. If they had tested it and put there that their light lasted 1 hour, I might have considered getting it. Now, I’m not even sure that they tested it. Someone really needs to regulate this industry.

Upgrading your mSATA SSD on the Thinkpad Twist

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Got a 128GB mSATA SSD for my Thinkpad, as my cache read percent was consistently under 10%. Writing this post because I could not find any documentation online about replacing your mSATA SSD online.

So, a couple of things you need to know about replacing the mSATA SSD on your Thinkpad Twist

  • The cache partition has a limit of 32GB
  • You still need to set aside space (Size of your RAM + a bit more space[I gave it an extra 256MB]) for Intel Rapid Start Technology(RST) (The thing that makes Windows start up faster and recover from hibernate faster)
  • You can use the remaining space as a SSD

Steps to replace the mSATA SSD

  1. Buy a mSATA drive of your choice. Recommended size to make full use of the cache and Intel RST: 64GB, more if you want SSD space as well. I went with the ADATA XPG SX300.
  2. Delete the expresscache software from your computer
  3. Unscrew the 2 screws at the base of the laptop that has the keyboard logo beside it.
  4. Remove the keyboard by following the guide (http://schabby.de/lenovo-thinkpad-keyboard-removal/)[Caution! Do it slowly and don't pull it out too hard]
  5. The mSATA slot is on the top left corner of the motherboard. Unscrew the screw that keeps the mSATA device down, and it will pop up.
  6. Extract the card out of the slot, and put in your new mSATA SSD into the mSATA slot.
  7. Put the hardware back together.
  8. Now the fun part. The installation of the drivers and making things work.
  9. Boot up your machine, and install expresscache available at http://download.lenovo.com/express/HT074404.html and install it. The Win7 and Win8 versions are the same. The installation will create a partition for the cache using whatever remaining space there is on the mSATA SSD up to 32GB. Reboot.
  10. To make it support Intel Rapid Start Technology, follow the guide over at http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/rapid_start_technology_user_guide_v11.pdf
  11. And there you have it, your new mSATA SSD is now operational on your computer. If there’s extra space, you can create a simple volume using the Disk Management (Windows) software. [Win-x, and select Disk Management]

How to avoid being called a computer nerd.

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I was walking around NUS School of Computing earlier, and I saw a lecturer standing in front of a class with a slide with How to avoid being called a computer nerd. as the title.

In NUS School of Computing no less.

The module in question was this “CS2101 Effective Communication for Computing Professionals”.

What’s wrong with being a computer nerd? What’s wrong with being yourself?

If this is what they are teaching the would be software engineers, and computer scientists, well, I think it’s better if people who want to do actual development, or do research in the field of computer science stop going to SoC. Because they are just going to tell you, you shouldn’t be a geek, you shouldn’t be a nerd. You should be what society wants you to be. And in the eyes of society, it’s probably to be a manager or banker.

To those who disagree with what that module teaches, there’s a whole bunch of us out there who fully believe in what we do, and are in fact proud of it.

To quote Michael Cheng, who recently wrote a post on SGE, Rise of Software Craftsmen

In recent years, there has been an emerging wave of computer programmers brewing in the periphery – a new breed of software craftsmen (and women). Increasingly, more are becoming “builders” by choice — and proud of it.

Join us, Join the community. And join us at GeekcampSG, the largest all-geek free conference happening on 7th Sept this year.