Monthly Archives: December 2012

Tech Flashback: AMR, CNR cards

Posted on December 31, 2012 by lui_gough

In the Pentium 3 era, some bright mind came up with the idea that they could make a special slot which could provide network/modem capabilities more cheaply by providing the ability to interface with the onboard components directly rather than … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: PCI Graphics Cards

Posted on December 31, 2012 by lui_gough

Here’s another tech flashback (and about time too!). The first graphics cards I knew of were in the ISA 8-bit and 16-bit form factor, then came VLB – the last hurrah for ISA. Then the higher-bandwidth PCI, boasting 32-bits. This … Continue reading →

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LCD Monitor Service/Factory Menus

Posted on December 31, 2012 by lui_gough

I’m not sure many people know, but the chips inside LCD monitors are actually fairly smart. For one thing, they generate the on-screen overlay displays which you set your settings with, and they do scaling of different resolutions to your … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Electronics | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

NDB Band Spectrogram

Posted on December 30, 2012 by lui_gough

Following on my earlier post about LF, MW and AM radio – here’s a picture of what the NDB band (200-520khz) looks like at night (click for full image – super compressed JPG – 2Mb 13107 x 1013px!): Look at … Continue reading →

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VLF, LF and MW Radio – NDB Hunting, ATIS, DGPS and Broadcast

Posted on December 29, 2012 by lui_gough

[Very short videos this time … no lectures!] Low Frequency (LF for short) is the band (30khz-300khz) that sits below HF. This band is also somewhat special, and I enjoy monitoring for stations here as well. Its propagation characteristics vary … Continue reading →

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Site Update: Unscheduled Downtime

Posted on December 29, 2012 by lui_gough

Apologies for the unannounced downtime earlier today. As the traffic to this blog has increased (along with web-spider activity from Google, Bing and Yandex), the Raspberry Pi (and my ADSL2+ connection) is starting to see difficulties in keeping up with … Continue reading →

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About HF Radio and the Sydney to Hobart Skeds

Posted on December 28, 2012 by lui_gough

[Note: This is a video-heavy post – it’s probably most interesting to watch the Sounds of HF video and parts of the actual sked (last video). The other videos are included just in case somebody wants to watch them …] … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Radio | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Pixel Pitch Visual Comparison

Posted on December 27, 2012 by lui_gough

Most of the photos on this website have been shot using my Canon SX110IS point and shoot camera out of convenience. One good thing about this camera is a very good macro ability “right out of the box”. As part … Continue reading →

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Counterfeit Nikon Battery Charger – Part 2

Posted on December 27, 2012 by lui_gough

[For those who have not read the first part, here it is.] Thanks to a few words and pictures, and a reasonable seller, the issue of the counterfeit charger in terms of faulty goods and financial compensation was sorted. Thank … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Photography | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Counterfeit Nikon Battery Charger – Part 1

Posted on December 27, 2012 by lui_gough

In the world of eBay, you really do have to be careful. I try my best, but when shopping on price – often you will snag a counterfeit here and there. This morning, I was delivered a counterfiet Nikon MH-24 … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Photography | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Tripview Bus Time Offset Visualization

Posted on December 20, 2012 by lui_gough

So after the discoveries made in earlier posts, I decided to make a bit of an investigation into the data itself. I chose M50, towards UNSW as the candidate route for investigation. So I scripted wget for a 30-second poll … Continue reading →

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Update on Tripview Live Bus Data

Posted on December 19, 2012 by lui_gough

[Continuing on from my last post about Tripview bus data] So I woke up this morning and what did I find? Something had changed. Requesting data at URL’s encoded with http://realtime.grofsoft.com/tripview/delays?routes=SB_???_u always returned no tuples, even for a known active … Continue reading →

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Youtube Rewind 2012 Australia – Easter Eggs!

Posted on December 19, 2012 by lui_gough

A friend of mine referred me to this video last night: While watching it, on the last frame, I noticed this icon in the top right corner … … it’s an Easter Egg! Buried in the video above, there are … Continue reading →

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Tripview and Sydney Buses Realtime Data

Posted on December 18, 2012 by lui_gough

Once I saw that Tripview had Sydney Buses real-time data – I thought this would be fun to play with! One of my friends, Nonie, was quite interested in how the data was disseminated and collected, and I thought it … Continue reading →

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Setting off a Flashgun with an Arduino

Posted on December 18, 2012 by lui_gough

So it might not be obvious why one might want to do such a thing – but it could come in useful. I have a Yongnuo YN560 “manual” flash (no TTL metering, so one had to set the flash power … Continue reading →

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Point and Shoot Photosite Areas

Posted on December 18, 2012 by lui_gough

Since my last post about DSLR photosite areas – I wondered just how it would compare if we threw point-and-shoots into the mix, and say cameraphones. Using the same methodology, I catalogued Canon’s Point-and-Shoot range. I didn’t bother with Nikon … Continue reading →

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Digital Photo Frames – why they never really took off …

Posted on December 16, 2012 by lui_gough

About five years back, digital photo frames were new on the market and there was much hope that it would be a decent way to show off one’s photo collection. Sadly, they haven’t taken off as predicted, and I would … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Obituary, Photography | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Photosite sizes on DSLR Sensors

Posted on December 16, 2012 by lui_gough

So, as people who have been reading my Facebook posts would know – I recently became a Nikon convert – with a D3200 providing lots of megapixels for cheap. Of course, some of that is marketing gimmick, but when you … Continue reading →

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No computer case? No worries!

Posted on December 16, 2012 by lui_gough

A couple of times, I have had old computer parts turn up at my house, and nothing to build it in. Sure, you can leave it lying over a bench (and I’ve done that countless times), but when bench space … Continue reading →

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Refurbishing unwanted laptops

Posted on December 12, 2012 by lui_gough

Well, just today, a good friend of mine gave me an “unwanted” laptop that had served its time. In fact, it was this one – a Dell Inspiron 640m, based on the initial Centrino Duo platform (Intel T2300E 1.66Ghz dual … Continue reading →

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Special Event: 12/12/12 12:12:12pm

Posted on December 12, 2012 by lui_gough

Well, I guess the internet is blowing up with 12/12/12 12:12:12pm stories. Here’s mine – I was at home, preparing to go to uni – putting on my shoes. Around that time, my mySQL server on my RPi crashed, my … Continue reading →

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Addendum: LG GGW-H20L DL Performance Oddity

Posted on December 5, 2012 by lui_gough

It looks like my scans of the MEI disc using the LG may have incorrectly shown a repeatable error when the disc itself is NOT defective. When I looked at the result, I scratched my head and decided to throw … Continue reading →

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Adonit Jot Mini

Posted on December 5, 2012 by lui_gough

Well, one of my good friends (Irfan) showed me this in person, and I just had to have it. So I dutifully went over to The Stylus Company and bought myself one. What is it you ask? Well, it’s a … Continue reading →

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Recordable Blu-Ray Disc Longevity – Periodic Survey

Posted on December 5, 2012 by lui_gough

A while back, I posted a thread on CDFreaks (now known as myCE) about my Ritek BD-R’s which had completely lost data. That thread received in excess of 20,000 views and drew along a few skeptics – those who had … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Tech Flashback: Citizen 3.5″ Floppy Drive

Posted on December 4, 2012 by lui_gough

I just managed to find an old Citizen drive that’s a bit borderline, and a head-clean didn’t help, so I thought I’d throw it out – but before I do that, I’ll open its guts for all to see. This … Continue reading →

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Nexus 7 Browser Comparison and Overclocking

Posted on December 4, 2012 by lui_gough

This one is more like two short articles in one – first I look at the Sunspider benchmark performance (v0.9.1) of several popular browsers under Android 4.1.2, and then I go into overclocking of the Nexus 7. Browser Comparison Popular … Continue reading →

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Running Ubuntu on the Nexus 7

Posted on December 4, 2012 by lui_gough

Just the other day, I bought a second Asus Nexus 7 tablet because I was interested in trying out Ubuntu Linux on it. With the instructions given by Ubuntu themselves, you can install Linux on your tablet, thus turning it … Continue reading →

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RS Components – they just can’t get it right!

Posted on December 3, 2012 by lui_gough

Okay, so when I started this blog, I was pretty irate at RS. They took forever with the Pi, and when it came, it was dead and needed to be baked. While that has improved things, I’m not yet convinced … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: Kaypro Keyboard – It’s still alive!

Posted on December 3, 2012 by lui_gough

After writing my last post about my efforts to bring the Kaypro (donated to me) back to life – one thing still nagged me. Why was the keyboard dead? Was it really dead? It didn’t look dead … Seeing that … Continue reading →

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Milleniata M-Disc on non M-Disc burners?

Posted on December 2, 2012 by lui_gough

A little while back, I wrote this post about the M-Disc – a curious innovation that claims to be the new standard for permanent digital archival. In that post, physical disc quality and burn quality using an LG M-Disc ready … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | Tagged , , , , | 14 Comments