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 better, do that.
This is a preview of
Toyota Landcruiser 100 Series ‘98-‘04 Temp Gauge Mod
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Posted in 4WD | 1 Comment »
March 31st, 2009
Landcruiser 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)
This is a preview of
Tuning and Understanding your Toyota Viscous Fan Clutch
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February 4th, 2009
The 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.
My last significant off happened emergency braking into an intersection. As I braked and turned, the front wheel crossed the usual oily patch where cars drop oil on the centre of the wheel track. Presto – down she went, and I know how to cadence brake. I’m not good enough however to brake 100%, unlock for 0.5m and get fully back on again when trying 100% to avoid a car. ABS would have been fast enough. It wouldn’t have avoided the situation, but it may have been enough to keep the bike upright.
Permanent link to this post (138 words, 1 image, estimated 33 secs reading time)
Posted in Bikes | No Comments »
January 21st, 2009
Buying 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.
Posted in Product Reviews, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
January 19th, 2009
I 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.
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December 4th, 2008
The 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.
This is a preview of
Combining Vista Media Centre & a Virtual Windows Home Server
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Posted in IT, Tree Hugging | 7 Comments »
November 13th, 2008
I 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….
Permanent link to this post (28 words, 1 image, estimated 7 secs reading time)
Posted in Humour | No Comments »
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.
This is a preview of
Maximising your Credit Card Interest Free period for Dummies
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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.
Posted in IT, Product Reviews, Tree Hugging | No Comments »
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.
Posted in Tree Hugging | 6 Comments »
September 18th, 2008
OK - 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
This is a preview of
The hurdles of setting up Vista Media Centre
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Posted in IT | 3 Comments »
August 26th, 2008
I’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:
Home Server
Media Centre
Extenders
Game Consoles
Digital Picture Frames
Media Players
Wireless
Broadband
VOIP vs VOIP vs VOIP
Desktop PC’s
Cloud Services
- So lets look at the current state of play for these things.
This is a preview of
My digital home just isn’t quite there yet
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Posted in IT, Tree Hugging | 3 Comments »
August 12th, 2008
C’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.
Permanent link to this post (29 words, 1 image, estimated 7 secs reading time)
Posted in IT | No Comments »
August 11th, 2008
This 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.
Permanent link to this post (84 words, estimated 20 secs reading time)
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August 8th, 2008
Sheesh - 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.
Permanent link to this post (68 words, 2 images, estimated 16 secs reading time)
Posted in Humour, Tree Hugging, Uncategorized | No Comments »
August 6th, 2008
I 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
Posted in 4WD | 1 Comment »
August 5th, 2008
I wanted to fit a winch 
to my ‘98 HZJ105 without wearing a huge weight penalty, or spending too much money. That ruled out walking into ARB and handing over the Credit Card for a new Bullbar and Warn. It meant I had to DIY this little exercise.
I wanted to keep the weight down, so decided a 9500lb was smaller and lighter than a 12,000lb. If I needed more pulling power, I would use a pulley block.
Posted in 4WD, Product Reviews | 2 Comments »
August 3rd, 2008
When I first heard about Windows Home S
erver (WHS) - I was pretty reluctant to bother. I was happily running Server 2003 with a 1.5TB software RAID 5 array and am not a fan of NAS, so didn’t get the point.
With the release of Power Pack 1 (PP1), and support for external USB backups, I decided to take another look. I have not looked back.
OK - at it’s simplest WHS does three things
Posted in IT, Product Reviews | 2 Comments »
July 29th, 2008
Like many people concerned with water use and reducing the impact of my excessive capitalist wasteful bourgeois lifestyle I decided to put my greywater to better use. It’s easier than putting my greymatter to better use, and arguably a more valuable resource.
I had a few ideas I wanted to stick to, as well as keeping it within reason from council approval. You’ll have to read up on your own council approvals for greywater. I’m basing mine on the “I won’t tell them and they won’t care” legal principle.
The main principles I wanted were
Posted in Tree Hugging | 3 Comments »
July 23rd, 2008
The Lihir Gold Mine is a large open pit mine in the middle what remains of the one of the volcano calderas that make up Niolam (Lihir) island. Lihir is located in a highly active seismic and geothermal area. Half of the caldera is missing, disappeared into the ocean several thousand years ago, brining the seashore right up to the edge of mining operations. If you add in 4000mm of rain each year and an unstable soil you get a less than ideal situation for landslides.
This is a preview of
Diving for the Dead - Searching the Lucinda for bodies in PNG
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