Paul’s esoteric meanderings

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.

If you have a corporate wallpaper pushed to your desktop / laptop, chances are it’s being done with Windows Group Policy. It’s likely this is a PR rather than IT initiative, IT being there to service rather than brand the customer.

You can override this wallpaper with some local settings, although this *may* have impacts down the track where other settings are also blocked. This may or may not be a bad thing, depending on your perspective. It will definitely mean that IT won’t be happy as your PC is no longer standard and may not behave as they expect. This isn’t really a big stress, as with the advent of the Internet and web applications, no machine is the same as another anymore, despite opinions to the contrary. Your mileage may vary.

OK - it came time to rebuild the media centre.

Here are ALL the steps I went through to getting the software install right.

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)
• Cooling - Quiet Fans

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:

• So lets look at the current state of play for these things.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

When I first heard about Windows Home Server (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

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

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.

http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/SSR/Mypapers/whatknow.htm

And this is why we have to wean business off Excel.

Just like programming - it’s all mistakes mistakes mistakes.

When I upgraded to Vista, I lost the ability to run one of my favourite XP Power Toys - Image Resizer.

I like to be able to resize stuff easily and quickly for a number of uses. It’s one of the main reasons I use Live Writer for this site - it’s quick and easy to to the image management.

Luckily a free replacement with all the simple “Right Click - Resize” features turned up - VSO Image Resizer. And it’s free for personal use.

This just turned up with my rego renewal.

They are a scam, it’s so well documented I can’t even be bothered linking the hundreds of articles.

http://www.google.com/search?q=firepower+dans+data&rls=com.microsoft:*&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

Scammers, Charlatans, Scumbags, Liars, Theives, Con Artists, Rip Off Merchants, Fools and Money.

What next - Hyclone ads? I’ve got some magic fairy dust I would like to sell you…..

http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1

I have to sit through far too many piss-poor Powerpoint slide decks that just send the audience to sleep. Here are some examples of how to use Powerpoint properly.

Brilliant Video Session
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187

Great tips from a  great presenter
http://blogs.technet.com/jesper_johansson/archive/2005/08/24/Death-by-PowerPoint.aspx

Advice from a specialist
http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2005/09/whats_good_powe.html

TED Talks Al Gore- New thinking on the climate crisis (video)

I thought it was brilliant, and this inspires me to make better choices.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187

I like music in my house and have a mild audiophile fetish, not as bad as some, but enough. I wanted a nice system for the main living room that would be used for background music, the loud stuff being out on the deck, or in the home theatre room. Despite being quiet, it still had to be “nice”.

It also needed to be small an un-intrusive, and fit on some small bookshelves. This ruled out most amplifiers, as they just don’t come in small sizes.