Monday, August 16, 2010

Latest Things

August has been a bit busy, so you get a dump of pictures and links…

Here’s some pics from DaVinci Days

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Max Likes Bugs

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Off to save the galaxy.

And some from the Steam Up:

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Evey year we take a pic in front of the biggest Cat.

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Kindly fireman.

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Spotted a time traveller…

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And his wife.

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Walker Bulldog.

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Yes it is.

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Neat home made rail bike/cart.

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Spud took Max and me fishing down the Long Tom.

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Small fry.

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Going back into the river.

So that’s the last month in pics, at least the high points.

Besides that I’ve been messing with computers a bit (I’ve bought a bunch at yard sales dirt cheap). So here are some computer links:

I bought this IOGear Keyboard for use in the bedroom, works well although the trackball doesn’t work well beyond about 40 degrees tilt.

How to boot from a USB or CD even if your BIOS won’t let you. Very handy, allowed me to restore a $3.00 laptop purchased at a yard sale.

CPU-Z tells you everything you need to know about a PC. Great for dealing with unknown hardware and figuring out what’s what.

Guimark is a great way of benchtesting a machine’s flash performance (I use the “Flex 3” test). Amazing the differences a little ram or CPU speed make when rendering Flash streaming video.

I installed a Netgear WG111 wireless PCI card (no Amazon link because I wouldn’t recommend it…) on one of the Barn PCs. It disabled “Fast User Switching” – AKA the normal XP login screen. Here’s an article on how to get it back. It’s 2010, Netgear, get your act together!

Online “Crap, I left my Caps Key on while typing that 10 paragraph blog comment” converter.

And some other non computer links:

Telegraph Instruments of Europe

The Making of a 15th Century Cannon

Harry Epstein Closeout Tools

Kolbasti Dancing.