Amazon feedback

I don’t usually send feedback but I stumbled upon an email in my inbox asking for feedback on this purchase so I figured I would tell them what happened.

John's feedback to Amazon for USB cable

lol. And then it turned out they only wanted a review of the product, and not a review of my customer experience. I am now reminded or why I don’t usually send feedback.

Advice that my review was not accepted

Mail Call #9: Tools and Equipment from Jaycar, Amazon, and AliExpress | In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video over here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

In this video I go through what arrived in the mail recently.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Yum Cha Multifunction Hook ToolsThis is an image of the product.

Let’s go shopping!

Protoboard

I have been on the lookout for some good protoboard for a while now, and today I found this: ElectroCookie Solderable Breadboard PCB Board for Electronics Projects Compatible for DIY Arduino Soldering Projects, Gold-Plated (9 Pack + 3 Mini, Multicolor Pack).

It is cheap and well laid out, which is a combination of properties I have had some trouble finding. For instance if you search for ‘protoboard’ over on AliExpress you don’t get any good results.

Anyway. I got myself two twelve packs. Average cost of AU$2.25 per board.

p.s. I went back and got these as well:

This ElectroCookie stuff is good value!

Early Content #11: Demo of the ALKOY Capacitor Discharge Pen | In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

In this video I demo my new ALKOY Capacitor Discharge Pen.

The bench multimeter I use in this video is my OWON XDM1041 and the bench power supply is my RIDEN RD6006.

The demo circuit used a 1KΩ 1/4W resistor, a 25V 330μF electrolytic capacitor, and an 18V supply.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe!


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Yum Cha Heat Shrink Wire ConnectorsThis is an image of the product.

Let’s go shopping!

FILCO Majestouch 2SS Edition Keyboards

I ordered two new keyboards this morning. I got a 104-key one and an 87-key one. The gory details are documented on the keyboard page on my wiki.

Usually I like to buy V3 keyboards from WASD Keyboards in America. But the price for the two keyboards delivered would have been AU$841, which was just a bit too expensive for me.

So I had a bit of a hunt around and I found these Japanese FILCO Majestouch 2SS Edition keyboards on Amazon:

They both come with MX Speed Silver switches which are the ones I like.

While I was researching I found the following content mill articles which I enjoyed reading to learn more about mechanical keyboards:

Homework

This is a part of the homework feature of my blog, which is an ongoing conversation with my mate S.F.

I said I found a microscope cheaper on AliExpress than on Amazon, but actually I was wrong about that. In fact I found it cheaper on eBay ($333.29) than Amazon ($733.42). Nevertheless, my point stands. It pays to shop around!

I mentioned my video jj5 feels hardcore!. Let me know if that doesn’t play for you, I think I have the original kicking around somewhere… If this video doesn’t make you happy, nothing will… :)

You told me about Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends.

The I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-satire lawyer/jailer thing I mentioned is documented here: Um, America?

The academic accident I referred to was in The Hardware Lottery by Sara Hooker published in August 2020. In the essay the author says “risk adverse”. Of course the idiomatic expression she is aiming at is “risk averse” and she just got it horribly wrong. Not once, but twice. As I said, for a professional academic ignorance at this scale is… unbecoming.

My comment about academic whinging was: “There’s nothing more sleep inducing than a pompous academic having a whinge.” (If I could refer you to section three of the policy document, subsection five, article three A, there is a discrepancy regarding some thing I do not give a shit about…)

I mentioned How It Works (girls suck at math!)

The full quote is: “‘Why?’ is a stupid boring question to which all honest answers are a deception of the mind.” — John Elliot V

I mentioned Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. I will bring you your copy next time I see you. :) In the mean time you might enjoy: Rick Rubin: Legendary Music Producer | Lex Fridman Podcast #275.

Don’t forget to send me the name of the Sony headphones you recommend.

The LCD Soundsystem you mentioned was You Wanted A Hit. Classic.

Let’s not forget: It doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

Also, let’s not forget: everything you do is indelibly wrought in space and time. (No pressure.)

Also: hope is not a strategy. (Although some do not agree)

What is the difference between hope and faith?

Hope:

  • To wish for a particular event that one considers possible.
  • To have confidence; trust.
  • To desire and consider possible: synonym: expect.

Faith:

  • The assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition or statement for which there is not complete evidence; belief in general.
  • Specifically Firm belief based upon confidence in the authority and veracity of another, rather than upon one’s own knowledge, reason, or judgment; earnest and trustful confidence: as, to have faith in the testimony of a witness; to have faith in a friend.
  • In a more restricted sense: In theology, spiritual perception of the invisible objects of religious veneration; a belief founded on such spiritual perception.

Serendipity and The Three Princes of Serendip.

I have a note about “deesterous”, but I have no idea what that means. What were we talking about? I think I wrote it down phonentically, but the search engine is telling me “dexterous”, but that is not it.

Also we were talking about “flapping around in affluence”. What was that all about? Lost to time?

We discussed the Spectacle. More reading may be required, particularly of Jean Baudrillard.

The string theory guy is Michio Kaku. I’m worried he might be a crank. Or maybe he is brilliant. Who could say. I watched a video of him recently: Michio Kaku | Quantum Supremacy | Talks at Google.

AI and the paperclip problem is described here. The problem is if you design an AI to make paperclips it might destroy civilization. Because, to begin with, it might sense that humans might try to turn it off, which would impede its ability to create paperclips, so it wipes out humanity and uses the atoms of our bodies to make paperclips… I mean, it is *very good* at making paperclips.

We mentioned Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. Classic. On the web here.

The Chillout Sessions began back in 2001. They don’t make ’em like they used to.

The concept of enshittification is explained by Cory Doctorow in Tiktok’s enshittification.

I mentioned about Musk feigning thought in an interview I watched recently. Check this out. He totally pretends to think deeply about the question! It’s awful to watch, like bad acting!

I mentioned the video game Descent. I remember playing it back in the nineties, it was so cool! I think there is Descent, Descent II, and Decent 3. Apparently I can get them all on Steam. Gonna try that. Want to get myself a good joystick to go with them, maybe this Logitech G 4021846 H.O.T.A.S. RGB Throttle and Stick Controller X56.

You asked what brings me joy, it is this:

Love you brother. Can’t wait to see you again soon. <3

Amazon Web Services (AWS) — Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Learning how to program the EC2 system via the PHP API. I needed to know about RunInstances and AssociateAddress.

You can send Amazon a Request to Remove Email Sending Limitations which by default limit the amount of email traffic instances can process.

Also read about Amazon EC2 Instance IP Addressing and Elastic IP Addresses (EIP).

Although I settled on using the PHP SDK I read the doco for the Java SDK EC2 client: Class AmazonEC2Client. The corresponding PHP API is here. Also How to get list of EC2 instances with Amazon PHP SDK 2 from StackOverflow was useful. All AWS SDKs are here and there are command-line tools. There is AWS SDK for PHP Documentation. This article Provision an Amazon EC2 Instance with PHP was a handy starting place. I also saw the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud API Reference. I also read AWS SDK for PHP: Run an Amazon EC2 Instance.

I started a project at ProgClub called make-love, which is my server re-instantiation script. It shows how to use the AWS PHP SDK and the r53.php code for programming AWS Route53 DNS services. Documentation on the Route53 client can be found at Ordering Disorder. More on r53.php at SourceForge. I added a new function listAllResourceRecordSets to the Route32 class and commented out some SSL validation code because validation was failing and it’s no big deal to ignore it.