Friday, April 17, 2015

Cheap battery used in newer Insignia HD radio

The NS-HD01A is the last Insignia HD radio I bought and it is the first that can no longer hold a charge. I opened the case, this is what I see compared to HD01 (left):


As you can see, the new battery (blue) has less capacity, 750mAh vs. 840mAh, and it is made in China instead of Korea. No wonder, this battery died so quickly after only a year while my older HD01 is still working fine. The dead battery is blown, like many such China made ones I've seen:


As you know, I have two early models of HD01 that crash too often to be usable, so I moved one battery from them into this new HD01A and now it is working fine.

What a crappy company Insignia is!

Monday, April 13, 2015

Jackie Chan's reading glasses

I was reading some news and noticed one common thing among Jackie Chan, Michelle Yeoh and Madonna: they wear large glasses. Based on their age (61, 53 and 56) and the large size of the glasses, these must be reading glasses and must be progressive (these super stars won't wear bifocal to show their age).





So, where they got these glasses? If you've read my this article, you know nowhere to buy progressive reading glasses and even bifocal ones are difficult to find in stores.

If you, or your parents, are such old, you should get these glasses - very convenient and comfortable. There is no reason to wear ordinary reading glasses. See my this article for more details.


Abstract in Chinese


你们有没有注意到成龙戴的大眼镜?才注意到杨紫琼和麦当娜也都是戴的这样的眼镜。他们都是到了戴老花镜的年纪了(好快呀!)。这些眼镜为什么都那么大个?肯定是逐渐过度的平镜(上面部分)加老花(下面部分),等于是两幅眼睛做在了一起,所以很大。

这种眼睛的英文名是progressive reading glasses。好处是:
  • 别人不知道你戴的是老花镜,能隐瞒你的年纪。
  • 不需要老是摘下来,一直戴着就是了 - 看人用上面的平镜,看手机用下面的老花镜。
  • 看人和远处不需要把头低下来然后从边框的上面去看。
可惜这种progressive眼睛买不到,比较容易买到的是叫做bifocal的,下面的老花部分是能看出来的,不是渐渐过度到平镜的。跟progressive相比,bifocal的缺点是显而易见的: 不利于掩盖佩戴者的年纪、跳跃式的从老花到平镜的转换让人不一定能适应。不过还是比普通的老花镜好多了。我个人现在用的一幅是很浅的茶色的bifoccal,还兼做太阳镜了,一镜走天下!

更多的详情可查阅我的另一篇博文