Tuesday 23 February 2010

Finally found: Replacement batteries for Electrolux Trilobite ZA2

I've been using my Electrolux Trilobite ZA2 several times a week for about five years and almost forgot how to do manual vacuum cleaning.

Once it stopped working and I had to take it apart and clean the circuit board from dust. Another time I had to take apart the docking station and bypass the switch to the charging blade, but in gerneral the ZA2 has been running like a clock.

Unfortunately, the batteries in the Trilobite has now worn out. The battery only lasts for like 15 minutes now. The ZA2 used to run for about an hour I recall.

I've been searching the whole web for batteries for the Trilobite, but they've been really hard to find (the Electrolux web site sucks).

But at last, I found out how to get a battery from the manufacturer!

I'm thinking of getting a whole bunch of them and start selling them on eBay. :)

Monday 18 January 2010

Simple Pomodoro Timer

Create it yourself!

From time to time everybody has boring work that must be taken care of. I often use the pomodoro technique to stay focused and get it done, so that I can move on to the more inspiring things in life.

Sometimes though, there's no kitchen timer available. Like today.

This is how you can create the world's smallest (66 bytes) pomodoro timer in ten seconds on your PC:

  1. Open a CMD window.
  2. Type in the following:

    copy con: pomodoro.bat
    @echo off
    echo Started %TIME%
    sleep 1500
    echo Time's up!! ^G^G^G [press Ctrl-G three times here]
    ^Z [press Ctrl-Z here, then press enter]

  3. You may also need to create sleep.bat. Type in the following:

    copy con: sleep.bat
    @ping -n %1 127.0.0.1 > nul
    ^Z [press Ctrl-Z here, then press enter]
Start the timer by typing pomodoro or doubleclicking on the file's icon.