Tag Archives: number crunching

Project: Examining Capacity of Recharged Alkaline AA Batteries

Posted on August 5, 2018 by lui_gough

As a young kid, my parents had told me about how great NiCad rechargeable batteries are for reducing waste and saving money. While we did have some alkaline cells around, we used rechargeable batteries whenever possible. Because these were quite … Continue reading →

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Moments to Disaster: Hard Drive Failure & SMART Data

Posted on November 20, 2017 by lui_gough

While I was away on holiday, blissfully enjoying my time outdoors, I wasn’t aware that a disaster was brewing at home. I got a message from my brother that his machine had started making a clicking noise, and it was … Continue reading →

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

USB Connector Resistance: Another reason for slow phone/tablet charging

Posted on November 20, 2017 by lui_gough

It was back in 2014 when I first published about USB cable resistance as one reason why your phone or tablet might be charging slowly. At the time, quality cables with good gauge wires were hard to find, and many … Continue reading →

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Tested: “Compatible” Nikon EN-EL14 Batteries vs Genuine

Posted on June 24, 2017 by lui_gough

Amongst the published articles on the site, it seems there is a fair amount of interest in the ones dealing with “compatible” and “fake” camera accessories, specifically Nikon EN-EL14 and EN-EL14a batteries. Having just recently returned from my first extended … Continue reading →

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Analysis: Freeview Sydney (18 April 2017) after SBS moves to HD MPEG-4

Posted on June 4, 2017 by lui_gough

While I was on holidays, the DVB-T digital TV stations at home were undergoing the last of a series of long-anticipated changes. On 8th April 2017, SBS followed the lead of the other broadcasters and finally converted over to MPEG-4 … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Radio, Telecommunications | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Opinion: The “Running Man” Saga & Viewer Ratings

Posted on May 30, 2017 by lui_gough

This was a post I had meant to write before I left for my holidays, but never got around to it. Avid watchers of Korean TV would know that SBS’ Running Man show was embroiled in a saga where the … Continue reading →

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Great AA Alkaline Battery Test – Addendum: 25mA Constant Current Tests

Posted on January 31, 2017 by lui_gough

For those following along, they’d probably realize by now that I have left the country and are officially on holiday in the slightly-warmer-than-average-for-this-time-of-year Hong Kong. I had originally planned to make this post before I left home, but things got … Continue reading →

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Great AA Alkaline Battery Test – Pt 4: Cell Physical Characteristics

Posted on December 19, 2016 by lui_gough

After the rather interesting results in the previous section, I was curious as to who actually manufactured the cells for the lesser known brands, and whether that could be determined just by examining the physical characteristics of the cells. Given … Continue reading →

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Great AA Alkaline Battery Test – Pt 3: The Results

Posted on December 19, 2016 by lui_gough

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations, you’ve earned the right to read the results! If not, you could be doing yourself a big disservice and not understanding the true intricacies that underlie the subject of battery testing and the … Continue reading →

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Great AA Alkaline Battery Test – Pt 2: The Contenders

Posted on December 19, 2016 by lui_gough

Welcome to the second installment in the Great AA Alkaline Battery Test series, where the contenders for testing are presented. This post is one of the most image heavy posts I have ever delivered, so apologies if my webserver falls … Continue reading →

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Great AA Alkaline Battery Test – Pt 1: Battery Testing Fundamentals

Posted on December 19, 2016 by lui_gough

Regular readers would probably know that I have a love of batteries, and their associated test equipment. Maybe it was the fact that they were expensive, but pervasive, and my enjoyment as a child relied quite heavily on batteries to … Continue reading →

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Canb2016: Special 1 – LS-120 & Zip250 Drives, LS-240 Disk & Benchmarks

Posted on December 11, 2016 by lui_gough

In the last post, I alluded to some special postings related to my Canberra trip. Aside from the conference and roaming around, I was contacted by a reader who wished to offer me a few items as they thought I … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Tech Flashback, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Canb2016: Part 6 – DAB+, DVB-T, FM Broadcast & Other Radio Scanning

Posted on December 10, 2016 by lui_gough

It’s been a busy day of analysis to bring this part of my Canberra trip to a posting, but I suppose, it’s probably good that I’ve done the analysis before the data got too stale. In this post, I will … Continue reading →

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Analysis: Freeview Sydney Post-Launch of ABC HD (6-7th Dec 2016)

Posted on December 7, 2016 by lui_gough

Yesterday marked the launch of ABC HD, which finally means that Sydney Freeview gets each broadcasters’ main stations in high definition at long last. (EDIT: Actually, not quite true, as 7HD Sydney is still a simulcast of 7mate.) According to … Continue reading →

Posted in Telecommunications | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Video Compression: x264 CRF Generational Loss Testing

Posted on November 22, 2016 by lui_gough

Having been involved in some way with video capture and editing from the late 90’s onwards, something we have always been taught is to avoid lossy formats for capture and editing due to the problem of generational loss. Put simply, … Continue reading →

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Experiment: WD Green Data Recovery – Recovered Data vs Time?

Posted on October 27, 2016 by lui_gough

Two weeks ago, a “friend” of mine turned up with an external hard drive which was declared dead and wanted to see what could be done about recovering the data from it. Naturally, as no novice when it comes to … Continue reading →

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Video Codec Tests: x264 CRF vs enc_qsv CQ vs x265 CRF in Handbrake 0.10.5

Posted on October 3, 2016 by lui_gough

After my earlier attempt to do some codec comparisons, I realized that something went grossly wrong with the “difficult case” clip. Specifically, it was an interlaced video clip which I wanted to use, and I naturally assumed that interlaced encoding … Continue reading →

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Video Compression Testing: x264 vs x265 CRF in Handbrake 0.10.5

Posted on August 27, 2016 by lui_gough

Having played around with video since I had a few multimedia CD-ROMs and a BT878-based TV tuner card, video compression is one area that has amazed me. I watched as early “simple” compression efforts such as Cinepak and Indeo bought … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing | Tagged , , , , , , | 28 Comments

Opinion: Can You Beat Usain Bolt? Not So Fast!

Posted on August 22, 2016 by lui_gough

The Rio 2016 Olympics will be a memorable event for a number of reasons, but as it draws to an end tonight (Sydney time), I thought it would probably be nice to have one Olympic-themed post. In an era of … Continue reading →

Posted in Opinion | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Freeview Update: Channel 7’s Multiplex after the launch of 7flix

Posted on February 28, 2016 by lui_gough

Today marks the official launch of 7flix, Channel 7’s new movie-oriented channel. Since the channel is now running actual content, the configuration of the encoders should have reached their “production ready” state, so lets see where the chips have landed. … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Telecommunications | Tagged , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Telstra’s “We’re sorry” day Experiment: 4G LTE Speed vs Time of Day

Posted on February 20, 2016 by lui_gough

Rather embarrassingly, on February 9th, Telstra suffered a significant mobile outage across the country owing to human error in handling a hardware failure in a set of redundant mobile nodes, resulting in the shut down of too many nodes and … Continue reading →

Posted in Telecommunications | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Examined: Li-Ion/Li-Poly-based Power Bank Charge Current Profiles

Posted on January 9, 2016 by lui_gough

It’s been a long time since I posted anything about power banks. Believe me, I would have liked to bring you some more reviews, or updates on cycle life testing, but due to my PhD commandeering my dual-measure multimeter I … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Power Bank | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Analysis: Freeview Sydney – Launch of 9Life, DSM-CC, etc.

Posted on November 26, 2015 by lui_gough

As per the announcements, at 6am on 26th November 2015, the 9Life channel was officially launched and the Channel 9 Freeview offerings have undergone a reshuffle as a result. Anticipating this move for a week now, I had my trained … Continue reading →

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

Analysis: Sydney Freeview Services (Nov 2015) & Melbourne Cup

Posted on November 21, 2015 by lui_gough

Being the busy person that I am, I don’t usually have much time to watch TV, not that there’s much to watch on Freeview most days. Despite that, I caught wind that Channel 9 will launch a new lifestyle channel … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Opinion, Telecommunications | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

FB Friends: Thanks for Participating in the Birthday Experiment!

Posted on April 20, 2014 by lui_gough

Yesterday, I officially turned 25. Another complete year older – complete with the feeling of being mellow, feeling somewhat helpless and going about my day as usual. I woke up at 7am in the morning to build a veroboard interface … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Opinion | Tagged , , | 3 Comments