Andy Balaam’s Blog

So let’s quietly forget FreeGuide 0.10.8, which basically didn’t work.

I fixed the problem (which was some nasty threading thing) by making the initial “Choose Channels for XMLTV” call from the first time wizard not do the clever stuff of displaying errors to the user. Instead it dumps any errors to the console (which is an improvement over swallowing them completely as it did before), and when you run “Choose Channels for XMLTV” from the menu, or “Configure” from the Options screen, you still get the errors displayed in a nice dialog as in 0.10.8.

More excitingly, new in this release: some unit tests!

You can run them by doing this in the src directory:

java freeguide.test.slow.FreeGuideSlowTest

They test the fixes I made in 0.10.9 for XMLTV files that have certain attributes missing, and have different date formats.

The date formats were supposed to be already working, but a fix I made several years (yes, years) ago broke them. Why didn’t I catch the problem? No tests.

The second age of FreeGuide is coming. I shall call it The Time of Testing.

A few weeks ago my Nintendo Wii started not accepting any Wii disks (but was still fine for GameCube ones… interesting). It made a clicking noise for a bit and then declared “Bad Disk” or something like that.

I need my Wii. I watch all my TV through it, using recordtv. I had to get it fixed.

I looked up the official support options, and the deal in the UK is that you go to http://www.nintendoservicecentre.co.uk and they send you an envelope. You put your Wii in the envelope (postage paid) and they have a look at it. Then they give you one of two fixed prices: either £28 or £70 depending on the severity of the problem. (I guess £70 is about the cost price of a Wii?). If you agree on the price, you pay them and they send it back fixed, postage paid.

So I sent mine off, worried and entertainment-less. I heard nothing for about a week, and then it returned, fixed, with a little sticker on it saying “Repair: Wii minor, £0.00.”

Paint me satisfied.

+1 Nintendo.

Due in March. Very excited.