07 Sep 2004
As I will be travelling to Spain on holiday in the very near future, I have been getting my camera and accessories ready. Unfortunately, my Archos AV340 has broken(ish) and I am left without the ability to backup the images from my 1GB Compact flash card. This would limit me to about 400 pictures. Sounds like a lot but that is only 40 pictures per day. Again, sounds like a lot but my Canon EOS 10D could eat through those in about 12 seconds worth of continuous shooting (4 lots of 9 shots at 3 seconds each set). Now I am not saying I am a true Japanese tourist but when I go on holiday I try my best to take a lot of pictures. Remember that every picture taken is a memory that will be used for years to help me remember the holiday. And since I am shooting on digital, I can delete anything that is rubbish so why not go Jap for 10 days??
To get to my solution, I have ordered a 1GB Lexar 80X Professional CompactFlash card. These cards have a 12MB/s Minimum Sustained Write Speed which will help my camera take pictures more quickly, I am sure this feature will be very useful at the rodeo!! Another benefit of these cards comes by way of the included application, Image Rescue 2.0. This is Lexar software that can recover seemingly “lost” or deleted images from memory cards. I will be testing out the speed claims as soon as it arrives and I will post back to tell you about my findings!
You may notice that the title says upgrades implying plural… that would be correct. I have also acquired 512MB DDR ram to upgrade my PC at last. It has been sitting with 512MB RAM for an eternity waiting for the memory. After losing so many UT2004 matches last weekend at a LAN party, I felt I had better get myself back in the game!!! To summarise the issue, I was waiting twice as long as everyone else for the levels to load and by the time I entered the game, they were all kitted with flak canons and rocket launchers!!!
07 Sep 2004
For doing Math calculations, what is the most powerful bit of kit in your PC? … Whats that you say?… Your 64Bit 3GHz AMD Athlon 64! Nope.. try your graphics card. On average today, a PC’s main processor is capable of 5 or so gigaflops, the same as the Cray 3 Supercomputer in 1989. A cutting edge graphics card is generally capable of about 40 gigaflops or more. The innovative company, BionicFX, noticed this and has created the world’s first commercial application to process non-graphic data on your GPU. The new application relies on Audio Video EXchange (AVEX), a technology which transforms real-time audio into video and performs effect processing on your NVIDIA GPU. It will be interesting to see what the next stage of this revolution will be! Good work guys!!
01 Sep 2004
Gringod has linked to a very cool currency converter at Oanda. It allows you to select numbers in your browser, click a link and it will quickly process the conversion. I have set up two buttons.. a ($ -> £) and a ($euro; -> £). I think these will be very useful!! Go to the site above to set up your own buttons for quick currency conversions.
01 Sep 2004
I have a few GMail invites if any of you would like one. GMail is Google’s new email service that offers 1GB of webspace and new ways to organise your messages. It is a very good service and completely free so let me know if you are interested!!
31 Aug 2004
“I decided on and bought a Linksys wireless adsl gateway. It was installed easily and everything worked perfectly first time. I hope that it really is a ‘fit & forget’ item like the Vigor unit I used to have.
Linksys is now owned by Cisco Systems, Inc. and as such, brandishes the name all over the hardware which I like the look of!! The kit also came with a PCMCIA card to make use of the 802.11g technology. The 54Mbps transmission is noticably quicker than my existing 802.11b (11Mbps). All good so far!!
I had read a couple of bad reviews about features not working or no wireless connectivity when it has been installed. I think issues like this can really come down to knowing about the technologies. I have set up wireless systems, routers and firewalls before and I breezed through this system. Everything worked perfectly, first time! Now I just need a laptop with 802.11g built in as standard… dont Apple make one of those??
31 Aug 2004
I had a very traumatic experience over the week-end. On Sunday morning my ADSL modems lights went off never to illuminate again. This has happened a couple of times recently but the rhythm of percussive maintenance usually brought it back to life… not this time unfortunately. This problem is a good example that all clouds have a silver lining as I will be purchasing a new ADSL modem/router/firewall today with support for 802.11g wireless… if you are going to take the wires away… you might as well do it quickly!! Thus, after the death of a loved piece of hardware… the network will evolve into something greater!!
31 Aug 2004
31 Aug 2004
To compensate for my lack of internet access yesterday, I thought I would head to the boat with Dave and Leigh to perform some long overdue maintenance tasks. We sorted some of the main problems out but then came unstuck when we went to B&Q to get a plastic crate and a socket set. We left with Drills, telephones, screwdrivers, storage boxes, light bulbs and 2 large disposable bbq’s!! Its a good job they didn’t sell bonsai trees or I would have bought one of those aswell!!
Last night we had a BBQ at Port Soif. It was blowing a F7 off the sea but we were sheltered in a hole! We managed to lose a tennis ball playing a hybrid rounders/softball/cricket game in very low light conditions. Dave did a comedy act after letting go of a dogs lead, he proceeded to chase it down and at one point, was also running on all 4’s to try and catch the lead!! It was a good night.
29 Aug 2004
27 Aug 2004
Last night we completed the final race in the summer series. Mystere came 1st making a total of 3 consecutive wins. Our toughest competition have missed 2 races so victory is not as sweet as it could have been… it is sweet though! Our prize for winning last night was a beer and our prize for winning the series was a Fat Face jumper and a shield. We also received a polo shirt as our prize for coming 3rd in championship week.
The sail was very good and we seem to be going quicker in places that we didn’t think we could. I am sure a lot of the benefit is down to the extra ballast of a new pseudo-crewmember. Sorry Brooks… thats a compliment though!! Now to decide if we want to go to France. Thge decision must be made by lunchtime today!