Blogs
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
Videos
Good Reading
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas
Tools
iPhone App – http://itunes.com/apps/skepticalscience
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Man Made Climate Change Resources
March 2nd, 2010How much longer can your corporate network compete?
February 17th, 2010Like most people I have been watching the “Cloud Services” develop and participated in some of the discussions surround the space. These are a collection of the best articles I have found that have shaped my thinking heavily.
Tearing down the walls that limit business
A series of articles on designing Open Networks – Jericho Forum
http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-04/bh-us-04-simmonds.pdf
http://www.opengroup.org/jericho/
TechEd Australia ‘08 Locknote
This is the future of IT over the next 10 years as predicted by Microsoft’s chief navel gazer. I gotta say, I think he’s right.
Physics and a great laptop cooler
November 18th, 2009I recently bought a fanless laptop mat for use with my Dell e4300. When sitting in the lounge with the laptop on my lap it gets a bit warmish for my comfort. The fact that my clothes block it’s cooling vents certainly doesn’t help.
These new thingies work on a very cool principal of thermodynamics. Normally when you pump heat into a material it’s temperature increases. If however that material is at a point where it’s phase changes (solid – liquid or liquid – gas), then until the phase change is complete, all the energy you put in will not increase the temperature of the material. This is known as the “Enthalpy of Fusion” and the “Enthalpy of Vaporization”.
Greenpower – what exactly am I paying for?
July 21st, 2009It may appear obvious what you receive for your Greenpower dollar, but I quickly found it wasn’t. I buy Greenpower and recommend it, but I now have a much better understanding of what I am getting for my money.
I buy my Greenpower from Origin Energy as 100% Wind in Queensland Australia. I do this so that the electricity I use comes from a renewable carbon neutral source. The thought that occurs to me is to ask where this “green” power is sourced from and how that relates to the photovoltaic (PV) panels on my roof.
Toyota Landcruiser 100 Series ‘98-‘04 Temp Gauge Mod
April 5th, 2009
It’s fairly common knowledge that the OEM Toyota temperature gauge has a large “dead spot” in the centre of it’s range. This spot is deliberately engineered to reduce the apparent fluctuations and make the car appear to run at a constant temperature unless there is a significant problem. This works fine for most, but those of us that like to know what’s going on sooner rather than later, demand a little more detail. Many people fit an aftermarket gauge somewhere in the car, I figure, if the factory gauge is already there and can be made accurate, use it.
Tuning and Understanding your Toyota Viscous Fan Clutch
March 31st, 2009Landcruiser or Hilux overheating? Your factory fan clutch is probably under-filled and incorrectly set from factory. Fix this first and you may save a lot of time chasing issues.
The stock Toyota cooling system can sometimes be somewhat marginal. The suspicion for this falls on every component and modification in the system.
- Radiator (Size / Efficiency)
- Thermostat (Brand / Effectiveness)
- Water Pump (Flow, Cavitation)
- Radiator Cap (Quality, Pressure, Leaks, Recovery)
- Coolant (Freezing / Boiling points, Specific heat, Anti-corrosion)
- Hoses (Restriction)
Study on why ABS is good on a Motorcycle
February 4th, 2009The link is below.
http://www.msf-usa.org/imsc/proceedings/a-Green-ComparisonofStoppingDistance.pdf
Most interesting. My next bike will have ABS methinks. I have no delusions about how good my riding is. If I can concentrate 5% more on traffic cause I don’t have to worry about braking, that’s a good thing.
Rethink your Lid
January 21st, 2009Buying motorcycle helmets used to be easy. Plastic was crap, Fibreglass was good, Kevlar / Carbon was best. If it was a Shoei, Arai or Bell it was good, everything else was only OK.
BUT – interestingly enough, every single helmet you could buy had passed the crash test standard, so the better / worse was opinion, nothing more. In Australia this is an Australian Standard (similar to the US DOT standard, and many others). Really, it’s a “minimum”, everything on the market is better than the standard, it’s just a question of how much.
Inergen is interesting
January 19th, 2009I noticed something very strange with a new fire suppression system. There were no valve controls on the system, of the four bottles, only one was controlled. I had to look further into this.
One of the sites I work on had installed an Intergen Fire Suppression system. The basic idea is that in the event of a fire, enough oxygen is displaced from the room, that a fire cannot be sustained, but humans will remain conscious.
Combining Vista Media Centre & a Virtual Windows Home Server
December 4th, 2008The time came to decommission the Home Server once I realised how much power it was pulling. My power meter debacle had concealed the 24/7 150w consumption, chewing into my solar feed in tariff at 44c in the daytime and my green power rate at 21c at night. This was costing me about $400/yr in power bills – it had to go.
I have toyed with various options, but the most obvious was using the other machine that was on 24/7 – the Vista Media Centre.
ANZ Tells me "Pay $0.00 – Or Else"
November 13th, 2008I received a letter from ANZ a few weeks ago
"Please make immediate payment of $0.00"
Ahh yeah – great effort with the computers there guys….
Maximising your Credit Card Interest Free period for Dummies
October 13th, 2008
Here I am, 31 years old, and I only just got around to really understanding the optimum way to manage my credit card. (At least I hope I understand it now).
Now for those of you that don’t like reading, I’ll give you the short version. Very simply – you MUST pay off the “Closing Balance” as close to, but before the “Due Date” ON THAT STATEMENT – and you pay no interest. Make no other payments. Do NOT pay the “Outstanding Balance”. That’s it, nothing else you need to know. Do that religiously, and you can’t do any better.
WD External USB HDD’s do Spin Down
October 8th, 2008
I’ve been trying to reduce the power of my Home Server and Media Centre. Since my Power Meter debacle, I am now re-testing all the equipment and getting some rude shocks.
One of the positives out of this is that my 1TB Western Digital My Book Essential and 300GB Western Digital My Passport Essential both spin down and save power. On USB, this is a nice feature, as many of the generic external cages don’t spin the drive down.
The WD’s spin down on XP, Vista and Windows Home Server which is based on Server 2003. The timeout appears to be independent of the OS settings.
Lies, Damn Lies and Cheap Power Meters
October 6th, 2008
I have had and used an Electus power meter for about 12mths since they became available in Australia. I figured it was just like the American Kill-a-watt. Diligently collecting and comparing devices to see what they used and how much I was wasting with standby power. Dan did an early review on DansData.
ATA reported some accuracy concerns early on, and stopped selling them. The indication was this was only minor, and at low power settings.
I recently purchased the newer Solarinverters (SI) replacement from ATA and found some VERY large discrepancies between what I had seen before. Unsure as to which one to trust, I fired up the clamp meter to validate the results. The results shocked me.
The hurdles of setting up Vista Media Centre
September 18th, 2008OK – it came time to rebuild the media centre.
Here are ALL the steps I went through to getting the software install right. A Vista Media Center Build Document.
The changing of hardware, testing codecs, utilites, guides and apps had led to some long running config and stability issues that I couldn’t resolve. Application errors, crashes, codecs, screen sizes, resolutions and audio were all problematic.
After round one a while ago, I had managed to stabilise and expand the system somewhat. The stable hardware config now is
- Case – Zalman HD160 Case (IR, Display & Card Reader disabled)
My digital home just isn’t quite there yet
August 26th, 2008I’ve been trying to have the whole digital home experience for a while now. I’ve reviewed Vista Media Centre, Home Server, Wireless N before, the experiences there are documented.
The impossible dream I am thinking of consists of seamless integration between:
- So lets look at the current state of play for these things.
Live (Passport) is Not Live – it’s down (again)
August 12th, 2008C’mon guys – no logins for Technet subscriptions – if you can’t keep your directory up maybe you should consider OpenID.
Jesper had a similar problem last week.
Here’s a AD DNS Screwup I have seen firsthand
August 11th, 2008This is why I learnt a long time ago – if you have an AD problem – it’s probably DNS.
Creating an empty DNS zone with the same name as your internal zone can lead too all sorts of frustration – especially with the multiple locations in AD that it can end up in. You’ll find yourself knee-deep in ADSI Edit faster than you would ever want to be.
I love DNS, but it’s gotta be right, and it’s easy to get wrong.
Brisbane Translink Go Card Charges in Pounds Sterling
August 8th, 2008Sheesh – at the exchange rate – no wonder public transport is expensive! Pounds Sterling – what next – Euro’s?
This is of course on top of what would have to the slowest proximity readers on the planet, displays that are impossible to read, an arcane array of “beep” codes, and an “Auto Top Up” function – that doesn’t.
Great system guys, matches your train network perfectly.
Winch Mount Testing and Breaking Rope
August 6th, 2008I decided that my home made winch mount 
needed to be tested so I could trust it somewhat. I see from some of the conversations I am not the only one with doubts. The mount performed perfectly, although he synthetic winch rope broke.
The tests were all done on the first layer of the drum to give maximum tension. This also places additional load on the mount due to the increased height adding leverage.
Test 1 – Drag Car on Dirt (Wheels Locked)- Passed
Test 2 – Drag Car on Dirt Up Hill (Wheels Locked) – Passed
