TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

In all the segments of TV and radio, containing Tony Abbott, he doesn’t seem very confident. What have the Liberal party hoped to achieve by having Tony Abbott as their ‘leader’ ? He lacks the confidence in his answers to simple questions, and as is typical, dodges many of them. Julia on the other hand [...]

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Even if the dumb fools are wrong, for a business to survive, grow and demonstrate a customer commitment, they have to hold even the most difficult of customers highly. The customers, ultimately pay the bills. One thing I learnt many years ago, is just how strong word of mouth can be. The influence of viral [...]

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And I’ve got no idea who is worthy of my ‘valuable’ vote. Personally, I’d make voting a lot of user participation. Then, it’ll become a mess for the politicians to try and convince people that: A) They are worthy of voting for. B) That they are also worthy of enrolling / committing to vote for. [...]

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… so the ancient Charles Babbage once authored. Data Validation is a very, very, very important aspect of any user facing application, be it a website, be it a program, be it a simple calculator. The data must be validated to ensure it conforms to the expected input, prior to being used for logic processes [...]

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Yesterday, I noted the solar system was producing around 1000W maximum, today was different. The clouds were out in full force today, as the drips show, and the peaks were not ~1000W, but rather, 1500 then 500, as the clouds blocked and unblocked the sunlight. Hot Water on the other hand is largely not impacted [...]

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Today was the best day I’ve seen for our solar system in a while, it’s cloud free, the temperature is moderate – not excessive. We broke 5kWH instead of the more desired, 6 – 7 I anticipated based on the design of the system and the figures we were provided. We’ve had pretty much cloudy [...]

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I had an issue recently where I wanted some data to get to all machines, all at the same time. The data would not be requested – I needed the data as it came in – from my CurrentCost meter – for purposes of testing around the house on the laptop. The solution was to [...]

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I last wrote about the front yard’s large wet hole, I’ve since proceeded further with that, and now we have the treated pine posts in. 4 posts, standing upright in concrete that set pretty quickly. I did that about two weeks ago. Last weekend I got very little done, that’s because I spent some time [...]

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There are many various languages about, and which one to use for a particular purpose is a decision in itself. I’ve got many choices when it comes to putting something together for a particular purpose, for example, recently, I’ve been using bash to handle simple tasks. PHP was my previous language of choice for anything, [...]

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The besser block steps were never going to work out, so I want to start doing something that will work – the besser blocks reassigned to the kids for planter boxes. I’ve been playing with some different methods of putting the steps in, but am ensuring they comply with the BCA, which sets standards for [...]

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I had spent the last week in Sydney for work. The best part of it is what can actually get progressed by simply being there, with the appropriate suppliers.. The worst part – CityRail’s time table is poor, it takes around 1 hour, 45 minutes to get there, and that means waking up early, and [...]

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I’ve always thought that anyone who claims something is possible is simply wrong. I’ve seen the same thought used as a quote later on, by someone else: “Anyone who claims something is impossible is too lazy to find a way”. I think that summarises the thought clearly, and I get reminded of it each time [...]

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I took the time this weekend to start fixing the front steps, with very little planning to work with, I decided I’d at the very least get the continue the path to the house, so that at least there is something there to support the previous besser block attempt. The problems with the besser block [...]

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Babies, and babies and more babies. I’m actually referring to Linux and my continual abuse of root for tasks that don’t belong to root. Recently, at work I’ve been working on a few minor tasks, however, because the system is locked down, I’ve ran into issues – for example, recently, I hit an issue with [...]

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The painter spent the last few days finishing off painting the house. He did a great job on it, and even went further than he had to / quoted. For testing colours, I figured, I would paint the front of the back fibro shed, which can be seen from the street (which meant our testing [...]

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I spent much of yesterday afternoon and night trying to locate a RS232 or RS485 to bluetooth circuit that needed to be, cheaper than $50 (the cost of running the cable myself), could be powered by a 9V battery or a combination of AA batteries, and the result at the other end had to be [...]

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I decided to use some of today to resolve an issue with MySQL Slave setup, where statements fail for various reasons. I could ignore the statements that fail – but that could be potentially dangerous – leaving with no slave backup at all. The next best option to ensure the database is up to date [...]

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I use “Twinkle” on my Ubuntu PC, for receiving and making VoIP calls. After testing Linphone, Wengo, and several others, Twinkle seemed to be the one which seemed to be pretty robust. I like to have music going when I’m not on the phone, but that proves to be quiet the distraction during a voice [...]

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When we installed our solar hot water power, we replaced the leaky, useless electric hot water system on the granny flat with a pipe from the house to the granny flat. We dug the trench and paid the plumber $550 to run the pipe – a bit of a premium perhaps, but if you look [...]

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A second post, I figure I might as well update on the “House” ideas. Sitting in bed one night this week, I was thinking about how else we could make our desired house plan, but a bit more functional. I’m no plan of having the loungeroom near the kitchen with all it’s associated noises, steam, [...]

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A boo-boo! (See the end, I found a solution). I was testing an upgrade for MySQL, from 5.0 to 5.1, to gain Row Based Replication instead of Statement based replication (as statements are a cause of SBR breaking, and it doesn’t proceed til I tell it to). So, in my usual lazy, just do it, [...]

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I managed to get the shed door painted last weekend, to match our scheme for our house. Then it rained all week, starting Monday. The steps I took to do it were largely based off having a look around at what others have done to do it. Admittedly, a powder coating finish would be far [...]

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As if to tease me, we had a fairly sunny day yesterday. If it weren’t for work, I might have been able to coat the front door, and even get a second coat on. Today, we have more rain, and the forecast for tomorrow? Rain. Another weekend wasted. I suppose for some people the rain [...]

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There are only good two aspects to the last week of rain, the first is builders generate a lot of wood chips – rain washes them away onto the grass. The second is we don’t have our gross meter installed, so we aren’t losing any generation at the moment (the last step, now that the [...]

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Our builders have finished with the cladding, and the changes are very noticeable. Some of the existing bits and peices just look out of place, for example, the drive way gate is a rotted brown painted timber fence, collapsing under it’s own weight (the building inspection recommended it’s immediate repair last year). It looks out [...]

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.. but getting it to drink, is definitely the most difficult thing. And I use that same logic in my thinking about another situation. There are only so many times you can go over the basics, and train someone, something, they should already know. Basic customer service is one thing, troubleshooting and resolving issues is [...]

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In just one day, massive amounts of progress occurred. We had the demolition people out to remove all the fibro and eaves, they took a good 5 hours. They did a good job of it, there remains some flakes and the like around the grass – unavoidable with fragile sheeting. The insulation was put in, [...]

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We are currently waiting on the builder to commence work – he seems to be delayed by a week so far, but we are hopeful of contact in the coming days to finalise some insulation paperwork, and then hopefully in the days following, we’ll see some movement. I’m annoyed at Nu Energy at the moment. [...]

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I have a lot of ideas I want to proceed with, but when it comes time to approach them, there’s some sort of bottleneck in the way of them. It’s usually not money that is the bottleneck, but time. Take for example, I wanted to make my combination, GPS, Internet Browsing, Gaming, Media playing, 15″ [...]

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Isn’t that where you go to work, do the same thing, day in, day out – and finish the day achieving absolutely nothing? (or the nearest equivalent). That’s the realisation for me, where I am at now, is too boring. Each day, it’s generally the same story, someone did something, or didn’t do something, and [...]

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