Aggregated Blog

This Glob aggregates all the Blogs on this site.

Other blogs not included here: State of the Evolution.

French: IT world, dev blog, off topic & blog finance.

Comparing 3 bluetooth kitchen scales

I recently compared those 3 kitchen scales from Amazon. They allow to display nutritional (macro and micro nutrients alike) info for each food you weigh.

Here's a quick summary:

RENPHO Digital Kitchen Scale (19.99 €)

Comparing 3 bluetooth kitchen scales

Pros:

  • The App is fully functional (not a given for all scales)

Cons:

  • No ON button (need to press really HARD on the scale to turn it on, not user friendly)
  • No OFF button (continues to emit bluetooth way longer than necessary)
  • App requires registering
  • App requires phone to be connected to the internet
  • Bloated and convoluted app
  • App is very slow as everything requires an internet request

NBPOWER Kitchen Scale (9.99 €)

Comparing 3 bluetooth kitchen scales

Pros:

  • Tactile ON/OFF button (press 3 seconds for off)
  • Simple and beautiful app
  • App more responsive than Renpho

Cons:

  • Impossible to register custom foods that have less than 1g of carbs per 100g (e-g: salmon) (kinda sucks if you're doing keto or or something like that)
  • App reqiqures registering
  • App requires phone to be connected to the internet

AIRMSEN Digital Kitchen Scale (19.99 €)

Comparing 3 bluetooth kitchen scales

Pros:

  • App works 100% offline, no internet connection necessary
  • App does not require registration
  • App does everything it should
  • ON/OFF switch
  • Most beautiful of the pack

Cons:

  • The buttons in the app are too small and to close to the screen corners to be easy to press.
  • User Interface could be more graphical in showing nutrients in various places

18 years of b2evolution

I first started tinkering with the original b2/cafelog software in the end of 2002, as the original author, Michel V. had stopped maintaining it.

Then, in early 2003 it became apparent that I was going to fork it and start maintaining something of my own.

Later in 2003, I registered the domain b2evolution.net. Whois will tell you Creation Date: 2003-06-12T02:50:00Z (I guess I’ve always done my best work late in the night… ;)

So, well, it’s been 18 years now

Read more »

Doulton filters with mold

I ordered a British Berkefeld water filter on Amazon.

This system uses Doulton filers.

And those filters arrived wrapped in a wet paper, inside bubble bags. Under these condition it is not unsurprising to find some mold had developed between the filters and the paper:

Doulton filters with mold
"New" filters with mold spots
Doulton filters with mold
The paper the filters were wrapped in...

I contacted the seller (named "AllSpares") and they have been totally unhelpful. "We are sorry we did not receive the photos.". I sent them twice. For all I know they are in their spam box... Of course they gave no alternative means of sending the photos, they don't answer the phone and keep telling "send the photos before we can approve a return".

So I have to post the photos on my blog so I can send them a link through Amazon?

What a lousy service :/

I'm not going to use these filters. I could clean the outside or even trust they filter the mold, but how do I know if they have mold on the inside too?

Internet like heroin

Internet like heroin
Not heroin, I know, but I really didn't want a picture of a needle here! :p

Back in April 2004, I quoted this: [original now unavailable]

"Like heroin, I don't think the internet is one of those things that you can just do casually."
-Rory Blyth

I remember I really agreed with Rory at the time.

Well... now I was about to brag about how I'm over the RSS feed addiction, how I'm over the Facebook feed addiction, how I'm over the twitter feed addiction, how I'm over the Reddit feed... yep I was about to brag... and then it dawned on me: oh how many hours per day I am stuck on YouTube.

Yep... I don't think my use of Youtube is casual any more! :/

"At least I'm learning things"... that's my excuse now... just as it was back then.

PS: I'm not talking about watching "funny videos". I'm talking about learning anything and everything from very knowledgeable people who share their craft, knowledge and wisdom in video form.

A web of broken links

A web of broken links

From time to time I do a little housekeeping on my blogs. Today I moved some old English posts from my French blog to my English blog. I'm not sure if it even matters, but it gives me some satisfaction to tidy things up. I do it as a distraction procrastination like you may browse an endless Facebook or Twitter feed...

Anyways, the reason I am writing this is because it struck me that 9 out of 10 old posts actually have broken links. Back in the days, we bloggers used to cite other bloggers on our blogs. Well... today all these citations lead to 404 pages and even non-existant domains.

All this interconnected blogosphere we collectively built for several years is now slowly degrading into a web of broken links...

Once I get past the nostalgia, I wonder though, why so many of the tech bloggers, and even the hardcore "open web" and "web standards" bloggers have dropped the ball on their blogs. I mean, I get it they don't blog any more, but why did they take them offline? The cost of keeping these old blogs alive would be practically zero...