After reading and seeing all the hype by Mr King 'The King Of Shaves', I bought in to the idea that there is a cheaper, better alternative to the big two names in shaving. How wrong was I?

It appears I was very, very wrong.

The Azor (from now on I'll drop the uppercase 'A' due to my disappointment) is the razor developed by The king Of Shaves dubbed as 'The Future Of Shaving'.

After purchasing an azor at the weekend and using it once I have the following to say.

My initial view on the design of the azor is that it looks quite nice and that the twin arm cradle that holds the blade unit looks quite good. However I feel that there are problems with the design. The two main faults I have found with the design are:

1. The self/easy cleaning blades don't work
2. The head of the razor is fixed and does not move, adjust or swivel.

If you read through the propaganda from the King of Shaves you will be be sold the idea that the reason why making the azor took five years to develop and market was down to, on some parts, to patents belonging to Gillette and Wilkinson Sword. One such patent is with regards to the self cleaning blades which has now expired, paving the way for the azor. Well, the patent may be expired, but the technology to make the blades clean easily was obviously not used correctly as I experienced this morning with the blades all bunged up after about two seconds of use. My initial thought as the razor glided across my face was 'mmm qute smooth' followed by the disappointment of trying to clean the blades. No amount of tapping cleared the debris effectively. This is not a problem that I can remember coming across in the past.

Next, onto the fixed head of the azor. I'm straining my brain trying to think back to the last time I used a razor in which the head was entirely fixed. Maybe the last time I used a Bic disposable razor, the ones that cost less than a pound for ten. I can remember the Gillette Sensor, the two blade razor from the 1990's had a head that moved. (From a quick look on Wikipedia, it was back in 1977 that the first razor with a pivot point was introduced) Onto other problems.

The shaving experience was so bad that I ended up with three cuts and a shaving rash. Even my badger brush and sandlewood shaving cream could not fix the poor performance of this razor.

The cost of the azor is only slightly cheaper that the competitors brands. It comes with no stand/tray.

I am loosing my will to type and will end with a straight forward conclusion.

Do not even think about trying the azor. Stick to the razor you have and ignore all this hype. I guess I now understand why there are only two big players in the razor market. Research and development is important. Copying does not guarantee success (just remember trying to use a cheap ink jet cartridge).

Yes, this is the worst razor, in my opinion since the 1970s.

Another one of those “why is this thing not working in Debian!” problem.

The answer is:

apt-get install ant-optional

Why or why is ant not fully installed with the ant package?

Urgh!

This is a brief post on how to get Perl's DBD::mysql working with MAMP 1.7 on Mac OS X Leopard. The instructions for now, are quite concise.

I have found that using CPAN does not seem to work to install DBD::mysql when you only have MAMP installed. The CPAN commands:

perl -MCPAN -eshell
install DBD::mysql

This I think is due to MAMP not having the correct MySQL files or libraries installed. Below are the steps required to get DBD::mysql working.

Note: You will probably need XCode tools installed to be able to compile the MySQL libraries.

1. Install the header files

Download the full MAMP packages.

The file that you need is called something like MAMP_1.7_intel_full.dmg.

This image contains the required files. Copy:

cp -r /Volumes/MAMP/MAMP/Library/include /Applications/MAMP/Library

2. Install the MySQL client libraries

1. Download the MAMP sources. MAMP_1.7_src.tar.gz
2. Untar
3. Untar the mysql archive file
4. Change directory to the mysql directory
5. Configure and build mysql

   ./configure --with-unix-socket-path=/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock \
       --without-server \
       --prefix=/Applications/MAMP/Library
   make -j2
   

6. Copy libraries

   cp libmysql/.libs/*.dylib /Applications/MAMP/Library/lib/mysql
   

3. Build and install DBD::mysql

1. Download DBD-mysql-4.006.tar.gz or similar from CPAN. (Or use the one in ~/.cpan/build/DBD-mysql-4.006)
2. Build

   perl Makefile.PL --CFLAGS="-I/Applications/MAMP/Library/include/mysql -Os -arch i386 -fno-common" \
       --libs="-L/Applications/MAMP/Library/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient -lz -lm" \
       --mysql_config="/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql_config"
   make
   make test
   sudo make install
   

Make test may throws errors about connecting to the database server but should not throw an errors about using shared libraries or missing symbols.

A few months have passed since the passing of old John Young and not much has changed.

Young's is now brewed by Wells in Bedford.

No longer in Wandsworth. No longer local. No longer drunk by me.

Well, well, Wells.

John Young, the oldest and longest-serving chairman in the brewing industry, died on Sunday night aged 85, after a long battle against cancer. He had headed the family's brewery in Wandsworth, southwest London, for 44 years.

Mr Young was the great-great-grandson of Charles Allen Young, one of two businessmen who took over the 16th-century Ram Brewery in 1831 and founded Young & Co. John Young's death came in the week that Young's beers are being brewed in Wandsworth for the last time. In May, the company said the Ram Brewery was to be sold for redevelopment, with production transferred to Bedford in a deal with the Bedford brewer, Charles Wells.

Mr Young, who was known as Mr John at the brewery, joined the family business in 1954 after serving as a fighter pilot with the Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War and after a spell in merchant shipping. He became chairman and chief executive of the brewery in 1962 when his father, William Allen Young, retired and reverted to executive chairman in 1999.

John Young was well-known for his support of regional brewing and real ale. In the 1960s he promoted draught beer rather than keg beers favoured by other brewers.

I found this on /.

• APL ~= Car built out of Legos. Fully operational. No one knows how it works. Or why.
• ASM ~= Suzuki Hayabusa: Ready, aim, goodbye
• C ~= Ferrari – drive it wrong and you'll be wrapped round a tree before you know it
• C++ ~= Pickup truck w/extended cab, dually axles, 4wd
• COBOL ~= Loaner. No one would buy one, after all
• Fortran ~= 1980's generic sedan. Speedo only goes to 80. But it has a lot of controls and gauges
• Haskell ~= Kit car. Not assembled. No directions. Not street legal.
• Java ~= VW bug complete w/flower stickers, rabid activists, and parking permit for trendy coffee shop
• Lisp ~= Mexican hopping car – scares the hell out of anyone who encounters it
• Pascal ~= Delorean DMC-12. Beautifully conceived; decently built; underpowered.
• Perl ~= Heavily modified Sachsenring Trabant P50 w/snow tires and chains. Only the owner can drive it, but it'll go anywhere. And then break down. Only the owner can fix it. But he can fix anything that happens.
• Python ~= Corvette w/luxury options, hatch full of cool accessories.
• Rexx ~= Modular 4-cylinder engine; plugs into anything. Every time you do, though, you need a new manual
• Ruby ~= Camaro – trying like hell to be a Corvette, still not stable or fast enough
• SQL ~= Coke truck – it'll carry anything, as long as it fits in a coke sized slot
• VB ~= Poorly designed bicycle with two flat tires and no pump.
• VHDL ~= Huge box of legos. Only you can make it run. But you can make anything.

Help my V3i is going flat and I'm at a friends house who have a PC and a mini-usb cable. Where do I get the V3i drivers from for Windows XP?

Now that's a question I found myself asking a few weeks ago. The usual search on google provided no useful results.

Motorola's USB Drivers or try Alternate V3i Driver for Windows XP

*updated links 10 April 1007*

Having problems compiling the vmmon kernel module on Debian 4.0 (Etch) using the 2.6.18-3 kernel?

Getting an error like:

The directory of kernel headers (version @@VMWARE@@ UTS_RELEASE) does not match your running kernel (version 2.6.18-3-amd64).  Even if the module were to compile successfully, it would not load into the running kernel. 

To fix this you need to copy the UTS_RELEASE information into the version.h file.

Copy the line (or similar):

#define UTS_RELEASE "2.6.18-3-amd64"

from /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.18-3-amd64/include/linux/utsrelease.h /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.18-3-amd64/include/linux/version.h 

The vmmon module will then compile successfully.