The Home of Tom & Morven

I was proud to have solved this puzzle, whatever it is called! Not sure where it came from. If anyone knows what it is called please let me know.

I solved it using an analytical approach, which is why I was proud. I then dismantled it taking photos so that I could do it backwards the hard way (albeit physically easier to manipulate).

Those that know me personally know why it has been such a long time since I last posted a blog update. For others, you probably don’t even care but I’ll explain anyway. Regardless of what Stephen and Ben say about how long it’s been since I’ve last posted and how bad this makes my blog, I’m still ranked #307 in “ State of the AustralianBlogs-osphere (or the noisiest bloggers in Oz) - Spring 2006“, whatever this means!

My computer crashed, and it crashed hard! I was experiencing random data loss, so I formatted, reinstalled system, and restored all data from my backups. This is a very lengthy process to do, and takes me about a week to do this as I have many other things I’d rather be doing like mountain biking, and things I’d prefer not to be doing like going to work (not to say I don’t enjoy it, but like most people there are days I’d rather just go mountain biking). So the computer then ran fine for a few days, the blog was restored, and then I experienced even more data loss. But this time it wasn’t just my downloads directory which had crashed, it was my webserver files, documents, and even some program files. This is when I knew there was a hardware error, and so the debugging began. It was a length process of torture testing the CPU for a few days using Prime95 then doing manufacturers disk checks on the hard drives (and my gosh, the windows chkdsk utility certainly didn’t help to “preserve” data shall we say). No errors with the CPU and hard drives, so I check the RAM with memtest86 and that was fine. Then I realised that the partitions that were failing were all from hard drives connected to my RAID controller, so I am confident this is the problem. Forum searches of this problem revealed that yes it most definitely is because of my RAID controller, although there didn’t seem to be any solutions, and so I just bought a new computer. I had by this time wasted several weeks of time debugging and if I had to buy a new motherboard to fix it, then it was just time to upgrade. So now I’m sporting (and consequently this blog is running from):

• Antec P180B case
• Antec Phantom 500 power supply
• Asus P5B-E Plus motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 CPU with Scythe Ninja heatsink
• GeIL DDRII 667MHz Dual Channel 2×1GB CAS 3-4-4-8 passively cooled RAM
• Asus 7600GS 256MB GeForce PCI-E passively cooled graphics card (with plans to upgrade in a year)
• Western Digital SATAII HDD’s with 16MB cache
• Windows Vista Ultimate and hating this operating system (will explain in a future post)

I’ve been working on making the computer whisper quiet, by duct taping all of the air vents in the box which stops sound waves coming out of the back of the box, and also forces the air to go through the air filters at the front. It is silly that the box has air filters when the air isn’t forced to go through them - c’mon Antec! I have also ordered some Scythe S-Flex brand fans to replace the Antec fans so this way the motherboard will be able to control the fan speeds according to temperature. The Scythe brand fans look to be really good quality, made with fluid dynamic bearings, and soft spin-up technology. Once I get these fans installed I’ll do a big post on the result and explain fully what I’ve done.

All in all, apart from having a new fans on the way to install, and not liking Windows Vista because it won’t let me run programs like Winrar without having to type in the administrators password, and not running the background programs for my motherboard without typing the administrator password EVERY TIME I REBOOT, I’m pretty much back on track and I guess you can expect this blog to be updated slightly more regularly from now on again

Apart from all this computer saga that I’ve been experiencing, I’ve been mountain biking at Eagle Park about once a week, spending time with Morven and our friends, the odd bit of gardening, doing stuff for the IET, experimenting in the kitchen with random food recipes, burning Morvens leg on my motorbike (sorry Morv!) and seeing her go in to emergency department of hospital, watching dodgy chick flicks with her afterwards to help her feel better, and watching the latest TV series I’m totally addicted to, which is called “24“.

Selling my Zen Touch on eBay, just in case anyone wants to purchase it outside of eBay give me an oi.

My sister and I have both just ordered a couple tiny Zen Neeon’s.

This is from an email floating around at the moment between mechanical engineering friends.

Michelin have created a tyre that doesn’t use air. Click on the photos for enlargements:

From a press release on the michelin website:

MICHELIN LETS THE AIR OUT OF FUTURE TIRE INNOVATION

Michelin announces two fitments for its revolutionary non-pneumatic Tweel™

DETROIT, M.I. (January 9, 2005) – Today at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) Michelin showcased a potential future for mobility, an integrated tire and wheel combination missing one ingredient that is vital for traditional tire performance…air. The company unveiled the first real-world fitments for its revolutionary “Tweel” – which operates entirely without air. View the photo gallery.

“Major revolutions in mobility may come along only once in a hundred years,” said Terry Gettys, president of Michelin Americas Research and Development Center in Greenville, S.C. “But a new century has dawned and Tweel has proven its potential to transform mobility. Tweel enables us to reach levels of performance that quite simply aren’t possible with today’s conventional pneumatic technology.” Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Dan for this great link!
http://sunamiturbo.com/index.html

Basically, it’s a fake turbo for your car, with automatic and/or manual triggers to make the sound of what a real turbo sounds like, using a couple speakers under the bonnet.

Click to hear the turbo sound.

It costs almost more than a real one, too!! Pictures taken from the website:

No idea what this has to do with the turbo sound but they obviously think it’s important. As Dan said, the fake tits are probably to match the fake turbo sound.

The actual turbo faking device thingy itself.

The coolest number plate in the world. I want one immediately!

You use the remote control to program it, and the message scrolls across the bottom of the number plate.

Meccano World Landmark Set Special Edition I thought is pretty cool. I’d love to get a massive set of meccano just for fun.

My mate Jame just bought my second Sony G420 monitor from me, as I’m intending on going either the dual LCD setup or the Mac double LCD screen. This makes it 3 G420’s for him, and eventually he may buy my 1st one from me making it that he has an array of four of these beasts. He uses them for his graphics, such as photo editing, digital imagery, DVD productions for weddings, and so forth.

I got an email from “The Rat” today. Was very amused to see a picture of his computer after he “fixed it”. Click on image for the full size.

Thanks to Paul Philps for this link, this is awesome! The coolest robot I’ve ever seen that’s for sure.

Another cool robot video here of a Kung Fu robot.