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As my bluetooth headset seems to be a dead loss, I thought I'd take it apart to see how it was made. I did a lot of searching and I don't think anyone has done this yet - I certainly couldn't find any photos.

In reference to this post at Daring Fireball - I have always reasoned that the cursor is placed at the top of the new message when you hit reply precisely because you will need to start at the top with a salutation, then work your way down through the message adding your interjections after relevant paragraphs and deleting anything which you don't need to quote.

The problem is that these days nobody bothers with that, they assume the cursor is at the top because that's where their reply is supposed to go.

The worst example is when you get sent an email with something like "What do you think we should do?" at the top, and you scroll down to realise that you've been sent a massive dollop of email correspondence going back three weeks, which you're going to have to read from bottom to top before you can reply.

Well the inevitable has eventually happened, my Apple Bluetooth Headset has been put through a full 40°C cycle in the washing machine. Not only that, my iPhone stereo headset was in the other pocket.

The headset microphone seemed to be broken so I tried to pry it open to dry it out. I just managed to break the clips. After warming it up on my external USB drive all day it has dried out to the point where it might be working OK again, so I'm going to try a bit of superglue to fix the cover back on. In the meantime here is a photo.

My bluetooth headset is still in a bad way. It sort of charges up, but the indicator flashes orange. If you hold the button to turn it on, it does the usual four rising tones but it is very scratchy and crackly. It's also pretty beat up, as it came out of the pocket and rattled round the washing machine drum.

Here's some pictures.

There are many web pages making grand claims for the number of problems which can supposedly be solved by using vinegar. One that I've read quite often is that you can prevent your car windows from icing up. For example, here's a quote from "Chef Noah":

Prevent ice from forming on a car windshield overnight.
Coat the window with a solution of three parts white or vinegar to one part water.

I decided to try it last night. I mixed white vinegar and water in the designated proportions, put it in a misting bottle, and sprayed it all over my windscreen and rear screen. Then I went to bed safe in the knowledge that I'd be leaping happily into my car in the morning and driving off while all my neighbours stared enviously at my frost-free car.

Well, I'm not very happy to report that this morning there was absolutely no change in the amount of ice on my screen. Furthermore, I don't even think it was a particularly cold night last night - it was only about -1°C when I went out to the car in the morning. Don't these sites test their tips before posting them? So I got cold hands as usual. Bah.

I’m going to document this because it took me ages to work out, but in the end it turned out to be quite easy.

In Rails there is a useful thing called ‘flash’. Flash is a component which is automatically available in every view. Controller classes can insert a message into the flash object, and when it renders the view it can display the message. The great thing is that by default the message exists in the flash for two requests. This is so that the current request can be terminated with a browser redirect, and when the browser follows the redirect the flash message will be there waiting for it.

Read on for more details.