Tuesday, April 05, 2011

New painted wall with Crown or Kraft stinks

I used two different paint colors in a room. One wall green with Crown the others white with Kraft. I noticed a smell right after finishing them, but I thought it's normal and it will go away within a few days. Days passed, weeks passed and the room was still smelling like gas. Everyone entering asked about leaking, but there were no pipes nearby. Someone installing the furniture asked why the room smells like medicines.

I asked the paint shop about this, they had no idea. I was getting desperate and I started to try things to make the smell go away:

  • air purifier - no effect

  • water with sodium bicarbonate spray - the smell was going away for a few hours then it was getting back

  • cut onions - after this the smell was not so strong but still present

  • vinegar spray - it was now smelling of vinegar instead of gas, and it was not so annoying but it didn't last too much

  • candles - I read somewhere that fire neutralizes some substances causing smells, but I didn't notice improvements

  • essential oil - I think this had a very strong and positive effect, it was the last thing I tried and within days the smell was gone completely


As you can see I have tried many things and I'm not sure which of them helped, but the important thing is the walls no longer stink.

rtorrent: tracker group list is not a list

It seems like some torrents contain malformed announce-lists making clients which use libtorrent like rtorrent to reject torrent though it is downloadable.

To fix this, either upgrade libtorrent to the latest version or use a hex editor and replace "announce-list" with "xnnounce-list" in the .torrent file.

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Free Baby Whitenoise Generators


Have you recently discovered that white noise generators help your baby to sleep? This is common for many newborns, but unfortunately many websites are trying to make money by selling white noise files or generator devices.

However, you can download for free here:

http://whitenoisemp3s.com/free-white-noise
http://s3.amazonaws.com/pillowfactory/org/HairDryer.mp3
http://whitenoise247.net/default.aspx