Monday 18 September 2006

Chariots of Fire

Myself, James & George's Dad ran the Sydney marathon on Sunday.  Despite a blisteringly hot Saturday the heat wasn't as bad as expected and we all got around okay.  A big shout out to George's dad though...  it was his 173rd marathon..  respect!

Finishing time was 4hrs 26 mins something.  Thanks to everyone for their support along the way and at the finish.. hopefully we've inspired a few of you to try the marathon yourself!

 

Chariots of Fire

Myself, James & George's Dad ran the Sydney marathon on Sunday.  Despite a blisteringly hot Saturday the heat wasn't as bad as expected and we all got around okay.  A big shout out to George's dad though...  it was his 173rd marathon..  respect!

Finishing time was 4hrs 26 mins something.  Thanks to everyone for their support along the way and at the finish.. hopefully we've inspired a few of you to try the marathon yourself!

 

Tuesday 12 September 2006

Vista-bility

I've been thinking about getting a new pc for along time now, the trouble is the one i've got despite being ~3 years old works just fine.  The current configuration i have is :

CPU:                Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
Memory:           1GB
Hard Disk Drives:  30 GB
Graphics Card    Rubbish.Realtek AC'97 Audio


To get Vista's full array of graphical geegaws, you need a Premium Ready PC that has to have a 1GHz 32- or 64-bit processor, 1GB of memory, 40GB of hard drive capacity with at 15GB free space, a DVD-ROM drive and internet access, Microsoft said.   So i'm pretty much there, but i just ran this Vista Upgrade Advisor Tool and it told me i'd be okay to install the new operating system but half the new features will be missing.  Hmmm.  The new features being the "Windows Aero user experience", and everything would run pretty slow.    What to do.

Talking of slow pc's - PCSpy have an article on what programs slow down an operating system the most. 


The author installed several popular applications into a Windows virtual machine in order to determine the slowdown each app added to the system. Each new application was installed on a totally fresh machine, and the tests were repeated 3 times each. The results?

It came as no surprise that antivirus software (in this case, Norton) created the biggest system drag. Beyond that, lots of installed system fonts was the second biggest slowdown, followed by Yahoo's and AOL's chat programs. Obviously you shouldn't get rid of any old program just because it is on this list, but if you want to speed up your PC and you see an application or two you could do without, it never hurts to spring clean abit.

 




Vista-bility

I've been thinking about getting a new pc for along time now, the trouble is the one i've got despite being ~3 years old works just fine.  The current configuration i have is :

CPU:                Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
Memory:           1GB
Hard Disk Drives:  30 GB
Graphics Card    Rubbish.Realtek AC'97 Audio


To get Vista's full array of graphical geegaws, you need a Premium Ready PC that has to have a 1GHz 32- or 64-bit processor, 1GB of memory, 40GB of hard drive capacity with at 15GB free space, a DVD-ROM drive and internet access, Microsoft said.   So i'm pretty much there, but i just ran this Vista Upgrade Advisor Tool and it told me i'd be okay to install the new operating system but half the new features will be missing.  Hmmm.  The new features being the "Windows Aero user experience", and everything would run pretty slow.    What to do.

Talking of slow pc's - PCSpy have an article on what programs slow down an operating system the most. 


The author installed several popular applications into a Windows virtual machine in order to determine the slowdown each app added to the system. Each new application was installed on a totally fresh machine, and the tests were repeated 3 times each. The results?

It came as no surprise that antivirus software (in this case, Norton) created the biggest system drag. Beyond that, lots of installed system fonts was the second biggest slowdown, followed by Yahoo's and AOL's chat programs. Obviously you shouldn't get rid of any old program just because it is on this list, but if you want to speed up your PC and you see an application or two you could do without, it never hurts to spring clean abit.

 




Thursday 7 September 2006

Bloke takes picture of himself everyday for 6 years

wow -  have a look at this video clip.. what dedication that would take. I think he looked his healthiest around the middle of the video. He appeared childish in the beginning and looked tired and overworked towards the end.

Music is a great touch in this video, anyidea what the song is??

Ahh - just found the music "Carly Comando - Untitled"

Only place I could find it was her MySpace, but it's available for free download there: http://www.myspace.com/carlycomando




 

Bloke takes picture of himself everyday for 6 years

wow -  have a look at this video clip.. what dedication that would take. I think he looked his healthiest around the middle of the video. He appeared childish in the beginning and looked tired and overworked towards the end.

Music is a great touch in this video, anyidea what the song is??

Ahh - just found the music "Carly Comando - Untitled"

Only place I could find it was her MySpace, but it's available for free download there: http://www.myspace.com/carlycomando




 

Tuesday 5 September 2006

Why oh why

do i have Google ads for Bible ringtones??  Who would want one on their phone anyway??

Strangely enough, as I had just finished reading this article by Richard Dawkins, "God is a Delusion and Religion is a Virus" when i noticed them.  The article is spot on; it stands for the rational mind and the world would be a much better place if more people thought like him. Ho-hum.

 

Why oh why

do i have Google ads for Bible ringtones??  Who would want one on their phone anyway??

Strangely enough, as I had just finished reading this article by Richard Dawkins, "God is a Delusion and Religion is a Virus" when i noticed them.  The article is spot on; it stands for the rational mind and the world would be a much better place if more people thought like him. Ho-hum.

 

Saturday 2 September 2006

Balcony Panography

Voila,  my first attempt at a panograph.  It is the view from our balcony, what do you think?  It involved taking dozens of photos from the same point, then reassembling them in Photoshop as a patchwork of images that more accurately represents what your eyes see when you're not looking through a viewfinder:





With the camera I manually set the white balance, focus, f-stop, and shutter speed (this ensures that it doesn't light meter every shot and the photos aren't all differently exposed).  Might try zooming in abit next time, so the panography will consist of many individual photos.

Thanks to Ingunn for the Photoshop wizardry :-)

Balcony Panography

Voila,  my first attempt at a panograph.  It is the view from our balcony, what do you think?  It involved taking dozens of photos from the same point, then reassembling them in Photoshop as a patchwork of images that more accurately represents what your eyes see when you're not looking through a viewfinder:





With the camera I manually set the white balance, focus, f-stop, and shutter speed (this ensures that it doesn't light meter every shot and the photos aren't all differently exposed).  Might try zooming in abit next time, so the panography will consist of many individual photos.

Thanks to Ingunn for the Photoshop wizardry :-)