Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!
It doesn’t have to be me making the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!
Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.
So how’s it going?
Got my hair did, smell like salon potions.
Today I’m processing UAV data of slips from up North. It’s going to be fun!!!
Wow, that does sound fun! So many questions! Do you fly the UAV or does someone else do that? Is it more like a drone or like a light aircraft? What does processing the data involve?
I don’t fly them my colleagues do as they have their part 2 training. I process the data into ortho imagery, mesh, and point clouds and combine with LiDAR data and survey topographical data picked up at the same time as the flights.
This sounds amazing! What kind of tooling do you use to achieve this, and what is the output format? Who consumes this information once it has been refined?
UAVs and modern computers really do enable some incredible things.
yeah it’s pretty cool. We provide a few different deliverables. Mesh usually in a format the client likes e.g. .obj but our preference is Context Capture .3sm / .3sx files they just work nicely for a mesh. We also provide orthorectified/georeferenced imagery (.tif, .jp2, .ecw) and point clouds from the UAV flight. To check the accuracy of the UAV we post process the GPS data against Base station and Survey control we establish on site as well as using LINZ CORRS stations. It’s usually District Councils and Internal Engineers who use the data to design fixes for the road (Slips we do are usually on road corridors) so it’s not that glamourous haha. Recently we’ve also been doing Bridges and Road corridors to digistise into CAD from the UAV data and then design cycleways which is much more fullfilling.
Kiaora whanau!
Looks like we may be out of the bad weather!
It’s been so endlessly rainy that I’ve been thinking about buying a laundry dryer… Hard to justify a >$1000 purchase for something we’d not really use outside of the depths of winter though. It seems hard to find good info on specific models, anyone got a condenser/ heat pump dryer they’d recommend?
I just use the laundromat when I need to dry clothes. If you can, I recommend that. A home dryer can only dry one load of washing at a time. I can get 3 or 4 loads dried at the laundromat in the same or less time for like $6.
We’ve got an Electrolux one, have had it for over a year now and had 0 issues with it. They take a lot longer than a hot air dryer, but sip power in comparison. Our model uses a hose rather than a tray for the extracted water and it handles all sorts of loads fine. Only the 2 of us, so the time to dry isn’t a big factor as we’re not doing a whole families worth of washing over & over.
Four keys on my laptop have decided to just stop working (G, H, single quote and up arrow). Internet searches show others with the same problem, even the same keys, but no solution.
Tried cleaning individual keys, rebooting multiple times, even a different OS as a live CD. Even a bios test has them failing. External keyboard works fully, but lugging one of those around defeats the purpose of having a laptop at all.
Warranty expired too. Considering buying a replacement, aftermarket, keyboard as I can’t afford to buy a new laptop and the rest of it appears to be working fine.
A frustrating problem.
What kind of laptop and how old is it?
The warranty has virtuality no impact on whether you can get it repaired for free. We have the Consumer Guarantees Act which far surpasses most warranties.
Thinkpad, just under 3 years old. The keyboard replacement is around $50 from Amazon.
I think this one is going to depend on your circumstances. Most likely you could argue enough to get it fixed, they will probably send it away and you’ll be without a laptop for a couple or three weeks. If you paid $500 for it then you might struggle to get them to do it. If it was a $3000 model then I’d say you have a very good argument for getting it covered under the CGA, but it will depend on the store. There’s also the risk they will claim you dropped it and not cover it.
But normally for me the conversation goes “I bought this from you a couple of years back, now it’s not working”. They say “Sorry it’s out of warranty”, I say “you’re still required to fix it under the Consumer Guarantees Act”. Then they get a manager and you repeat the conversation. They will normally agree at this point. If they say they can’t do it without a receipt, tell them they have the record because the IRD requires them to keep the records for 7 years, and the GST Act requires they provide a copy receipt within 28 days of someone requesting it so please can I have a copy of my receipt?
Now, depending on how much $50 is worth to you and how much you like arguing with staff, it might just be easier to do it yourself.
Personally I have got a refund on a 2.5 year old laptop that died and a 2 year old phone that died, but I know some places are better about it than others.
You a fan of Louis Rossman too?
To be honest I’d never heard of him, but checking his Wikipedia page I think I would have been a fan if I had heard of him.
I have done the odd laptop repair but these days I have a Framework laptop. Super easy to fix or upgrade, just difficult to get to NZ because they don’t ship here yet.
Framework laptop
Modular laptop… 🤤 🤤
Dam I want to get one of those!
I’ve had it for a while now, definitely has some quirks but I really like it. I love that you can hot swap your ports. Need an HDMI port? Slide one in. Display port? Remove the HDMI and slide in and Display port. Need 4 USB-A ports? You got it!
There are only 4 port slots but you can just swap in what you need.
It charges with USB-C, and you can move the ports, so you can put the power cord on the left or the right depending on what you need.
I had it shipped through Youshop, was not cheap but it probably wasn’t that different from buying that level of laptop in NZ.
They have announced a 15 inch one now. It looks really cool, maybe you’ll find a 13 inch Framework on trademe later this year 😆
you’re not tempted to take the old mobo and chuck it in a 3d printed case for a thin desktop / lab PC?
I am very tempted, probably to use as a server to replace my Raspberry Pi, but then what do I do with the rest of it? No one wants to buy a laptop with no guts.
