Netherlands and more

Blog about life in Holland

Fixing whining noise from a DC adapter

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I’ve stumbled upon a cute and convenient DC adapter the other day, with four USB charging ports (up to 4800 mA total), a power socket, and a tablet stand. All of that for less than € 15.

A bit later turned out there’s a pitfall, too: it produced annoying whining noise. The noise was quiet but clearly audible in silence, especially while the adapter was unloaded.

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Sound Switcher Indicator ‣ 2.0.1

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It’s been more than two years since the last release of the Sound Switcher Indicator (1.2.2). During this period I’ve been bombarded with requests to allow the indicator to switch device profiles, because most sound cards cannot be otherwise switched to their digital ports, like S/PDIF and HDMI.

So today I proudly present Sound Switcher Indicator 2.0.1, which finally supports profile switching:

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yktoo.com switched to HTTPS

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The website yktoo.com is permanently switched to using the secure HTTPS protocol (instead of the former HTTP). Your boss won’t be able to figure out what exactly you’re reading in my blog anymore.

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Russian store experiences

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I’ve recently been to Saint Petersburg, Russia, to help my parents to renovate the apartment they had moved into. Just for your information, Russians recognise Saint Petersburg as the “cultural capital of Russia” due to its rich cultural traditions, heritage and, arguably, population.

But I’d like to touch on another subject now. For the sake of the renovation I had to do a lot of shopping in a big builder’s store. Just because it was big, I preferred to ask staff for directions rather than waste my time looking for the thing I needed.

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Sun Caged Farewell Show

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I’ve finally nerved myself to tell you about a sad development for prog lovers.

I first learned about the Dutch prog band Sun Caged when I came to Holland back in 2008. Shortly after I’ve even seen them playing on Walhalla. I must say I was impressed. But three years later, in 2011, the band has released The Lotus Effect (which also happened to be their last album), I was totally blown away as this was absolutely a masterpiece of progressive metal. I can’t even explain why, but I deem this album one of the best rock works ever, and I seem to be able to listen to it endlessly.

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Packaging overdone

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I already happened to receive things packaged in an oversized box, but this one beats all imaginable records.

An online store sent me a Bosch jigsaw blade kit in this box:

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Ambient backlighting for Samsung LED TV

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Being quite happy with my 75 inch whopper Samsung UE75HU7500, the only thing I wanted to do about it was giving it ambient backlighting. When watching TV in complete darkness your eyes get quickly tired because of the stark contrast between the bright screen and its dark surroundings. Even though this device features an ambient light sensor, which is used to automatically adjust the screen brightness, the contrast is still all too harsh.

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