I have some loose ends to tidy up.

The last Twitter Code Challenge was a bust. I didn’t promote it very well, and going on holiday in the middle of it didn’t help. In the end, nobody submitted anything before the deadline. I didn’t even get to write my own code for the challenge. Not that I was going to compete against myself, but I don’t like releasing a challenge without at least showing that it’s doable by myself. I had an idea about injecting a canvas element into the page and using some kind of fractal algorithm to draw a Mandelbrot set in it. So the loose end is this: There was no winner. I still have the books, but for now, the challenge is not on.

In my Highs and Lows post from the 2nd of April. I did talk to Zazz about the SSD and they pointed out that there was in fact a little asterisk next to the “16 GB SSD” which lead to an explanation that 16 was in fact an actual 8GB solid state drive, and 8GB SD card.. Wikipaedia explains SSD as “a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data.” It also implies that flash memory can be considered “solid state”. So their 8+8 could be called 16GB SSD, if you squint at it. I feel ripped off, and I firmly believe that Zazz was being deceptive in their marketing of this product, but it’s a hard case to argue, and in the end probably not worth it. Lesson learnt: read the fine print.

The Acer Aspire is still kicking, but it struggles to do anything in a timely manner. It’s such an old model that I doubt it’s still available anywhere, but just in  case anyone is thinking about buying one, I’d seriously suggest they look at other models from other manufacturers first. The kids still like it.