It was rather nice at West Beach last night 🙂

[pe2-image src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-DCORAAqMSsA/UudZJFXO8oI/AAAAAAAAci8/cCBFjpGbogg/s144-c-o/West%252520Beach%25252027-Jan-2014.jpg" href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116730948297768793432/Blog#5973841443323572866" caption="West Beach 27-Jan-2014.jpg" type="image" alt="West Beach 27-Jan-2014.jpg" ]

How this for nuts?

Nautilus Drive, West Beach...

[pe2-image src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-Brz-sj1Tn38/Uqlykid6bEI/AAAAAAAAcNg/oOwZiQlfjfI/s144-c-o/twinkle.jpg" href="https://picasaweb.google.com/116730948297768793432/Blog#5956417954227317826" caption="" type="image" alt="twinkle.jpg" ]

How To Make A Paper Airplane Fly Forever..

Brilliant video of the making of Sydney Harbour Bridge!

The narration on this one was done by the cleaner on his tea break!

I've been working on a bit of a project the last few weeks.

The gadget below caught my eye, and (ever thinking of future requirements) I grabbed one 🙂

Behold, a Norco 4224 SAN Chassis!

I filled it with a simple Asrock Motherboard, a G41C

I Used an Intel Quad-Core Extreme CPU that I had lying around, added 8GB of DDR3 (after some experimenting and eventually finding out that the particular CPU I used was a bit fussy about memory) and a 120GB Verbatim SSD for the OS.

A HighPoint 2760A 24-port Raid Controller and half a dozen Mini-Sata Cables rounded the system out nicely, ready for some Hard Drives!

I started out with 6 shiny new Seagate 4TB's.

After experimenting with various Operating Systems, I decided to used Linux Mint 15, and the excellent Linux Raid software in RAID5 configuration rather than the on-board HighPoint Raid software, which offloads most of the work to the motherboard CPU anyway.

I have tried everything I could think of to break it - pulling Drives out, powering off (even in the middle of rebuilds), added and removed Drives with nary a care - and it works!

I'm currently copying my media library to the box while it grows the Raid Array with the final Drive, and I've installed SickBeard, Sabnzbd, Utorrent and all the usual tools.

Fun, Fun, Fun!

We Spent the Weekend at Black Point, on the Yorke Peninsula, with Leng and Chris, and Jess and Jake!

The Beach Shack we rented was passable, although nothing to write home about, but the dogs had an absolute BLAST!

They never stopped from the moment we got there, and played in the water, sand and seaweed non-stop.

We had to take them to the doggy-wash on the way home, of course, and they are totally shattered 🙂

It was a really nice weekend!

Click Here for more pictures

Where has Britain's Funny gone?

After years of non-stop hilarious hits like Fawlty Towers, Yes Minister, Mr. Bean, The Vicar of Dibley, Ab-Fab, Men Behaving Badly ... is British comedy dead?

How long is it since we've seen anything original and truly funny out of the U.K.?

Ali G and Little Britain were clever and entertaining, but certainly not to everyone's taste, and nobody seems to be bringing the goods lately.

R.I.P. British Humour!

You’ve heard of plasma TV, LCD TV, LED and even OLED TV, but now we’re throwing a new term to mix into the salad bowl: laser TV. LG has one in Australia now, and it’s freaking enormous and just as impressive.

The product’s full name is the LG Laser DLP Display. Essentially, it uses technology called ultra-short throw which grabs the image and projects it onto the screen within 55cm, rather than from a projector at the back of a room.

The image is projected through 10 spherical lenses before passing it through an aspherical concave mirror to be thrown onto the display screen itself. It’s a 100-inch full-HD 1080p image, chucked from a projector which sits at the base of the black, anti-contrast, anti-glare screen.

First of all, holy crap: it’s a giant 100-inch screen with a throw distance of 55cm. Take a second to realise how impressive that is.

Previously, if you wanted a giant projector on your giant screen, it was an effort to get the projector mounted the correct distance away from your silver screen, and then the obnoxious job of cable-concealment would begin. When you’re done it might look good, but the job of expanding your system becomes considerably more difficult when working with that particular set-up. The LG Laser Display eliminates these issues by putting the rather fetching looking projector right in front of your display while still cleverly concealing the cables and keeping them in reach if you need them.

The lamp is also considerably impressive: with other projectors, you’d need to replace it every couple of years. LG promises that the lamp in the DLP Laser Display will go for 25,000 hours. That’s five hours per day for 13 years. Not bad at all.

The screen that the projector throws the image onto is actually made from anti-glare material, which means that you won’t need to dim the lights entirely to have a high-contrast viewing experience. The screen is also black rather than silver to help dissipate light reflection when viewing. The screen also has a tiny bezel that disappears into the background when the images play.

The Laser Display is also compatible with DLNA and Intel WiDi so you can throw your content at it easily without having to fumble around.

Probably the most convincing aspect of the laser display is the price. It comes in at $8999 with free installation and a bundled twin-tuner recorder for watching and recording free-to-air programming. Compare that to the price of a larger plasma display which will run you easily over $10,000, and you’re onto something.

The LG Laser Display goes on sale from early July.

The video linked below is nostalgic, surreal, and fascinating.

The quality of such an old piece of work is simply amazing.

http://vimeo.com/7638752

Aston Martin is celebrating its centenary in world-class style with the debut today (19 May) of the exceptional CC100 Speedster Concept.

Created as a stunning celebration of the great British brand’s 100 years of sports car excellence the one-off CC100 looks both to the past and the DBR1 – Aston Martin’s greatest sporting triumph on the track – and to the future with its teasing glimpses of potential future design direction.

The 6.0-litre V12-powered concept car today makes its world debut by completing a lap of the famous Nordschleife at Germany’s ADAC Zurich 24 Hours of Nürburgring race. It is lapping the circuit together with the 1000km race-winning 1959 DBR1 with British racing legend Sir Stirling Moss at the wheel. It is the most tangible expression yet of the brand’s year-long 2013 centenary celebrations.

Viewed by tens of thousands of lucky spectators in Germany, the radical speedster is being driven today by Aston Martin CEO Dr Ulrich Bez. He said: “CC100 is the epitome of everything that is great about Aston Martin. It represents our fantastic sporting heritage, our exceptional design capability, our superb engineering know-how and, above all, our adventurous spirit!

“I have nicknamed it ‘DBR100’ because of its affinity to the great 1959 race-winning cars and, of course, our 100-year anniversary in 2013.

“But this car is more, even, than a simple ‘birthday present’ to ourselves: it shows that the soul of Aston Martin – the thing that differentiates us from all the other car makers out there – is as powerful as ever and I very much hope that everyone who catches a glimpse of it at the Nürburgring today enjoys seeing it.”

Designed and constructed in fewer than six months at Aston Martin’s global headquarters in Gaydon, working with key supplier Multimatic Inc, under the leadership of Special Projects and Motorsport Director David King, the finished look of the two-seater CC100 is the work of Design Director Marek Reichman working alongside the brand’s Chief Exterior Designer Miles Nurnberger.

Miles explained: “The brief was very simple, yet enormously testing: create something that reflects the 100 years of Aston Martin heritage and signals the future of the brand.

“The idea of an iconic speedster concept that nods to the Le Mans − and Nürburgring – winning cars of 1959 soon came, and we have had complete freedom to shape this car.”

Marek Reichman said: “I’m extremely proud of the entire team at Gaydon for creating this remarkable sports car concept in such a short time.

“The need to create a truly fitting tribute to 100 years of the Aston Martin brand has brought out the creativity and talent that makes Aston Martin such an exceptional luxury sports car maker.”

Measuring almost four and a half metres nose to tail, and more than two metres wide (including mirrors) the Speedster Concept body is a classic example of the almost infinitely flexible nature of Aston Martin’s trademark Vertical Horizontal engineering philosophy.

With a body and interior crafted from carbon fibre, tooled and provided by low volume specialists Multimatic, the CC100 utilises the latest generation AM11 naturally aspirated V12 gasoline engine mated to a six-speed hydraulically actuated automated sequential manual transmission. Controlled via steering column-mounted paddle shifts the lightweight ‘box delivers truly sporting changes perfectly suited to the Speedster’s track-focused nature.

The drivetrain will power the CC100 from rest to 62 mph in a little over four seconds, while the top speed is limited to 180 mph.

Dr Bez added: “The future of Aston Martin is, very clearly, more exciting now than perhaps at any time in its history and I’m looking forward to seeing the excitement and anticipation that CC100 creates among Aston Martin owners and enthusiasts worldwide.”