2012-03-30

A P510 moon.

It's testing pretty well this new camera, no tripod here either.

Zoooom, Nikon P510.

Oh dear, Jimmy saw some sample pics from this camera on photographyblog.com and was overly tempted to grab one for catching things from afar.
At least it was less than a fortnight's pay and the buy me trigger may have been it being available in a colour other than black or grey (which they usually give the fancy name of silver).
This Nikon P510 is the current king of zooms with a 1000 mm (35mm equivalent) reach, it can grab things like this noisy helicopter a kilometre away, taken hand held in a hurry.

Or skippy's relaxing 250 metres away this morning before the light was brilliant, so it suffers a bit of mid-iso fuzzies, but it just keeps giving me usable results hand held at full zoom, something that couldn't be done a few years ago.

For total uselessness here is a crop of our TV screen taken at full zoom from my usual viewing perch a couple of metres away, yes right into its very pixels.

2012-03-29

Another election coming soon.

With the bloodbath of the State election over, next we have our local government one in a few weeks.
This poster popped up yesterday and curious Jimmy had to walk up the street to check it out.
Posters mean nothing to me but with so many candidates who are unknown to me I'll have to do a heap of investigating before putting in my vote.

The tree that fell down a few weeks ago still looks sad but at least a few work trucks have paid it a quick visit before leaving.

2012-03-24

A pleasant place to vote.

Well my deed is done and much to my pleasure I was the only voter there when I went.

According to the education department Bambaroo currently has six students so I suppose they're not too overcrowded, they even manage to have a student of the week award.

Long month.

I suppose it's a leap year but even then April usually has but 30 days (see the red type)
Still sounds fairly expensive to me and they appear frightened to write about how much a builder will charge to slap a house together.

QLD state election today, voting is compulsory but I'd probably do it anyway. There's an fair chance of a change of government this time.

2012-03-20

I think the emerald may be real.

Grace scored herself a fancy emerald paperweight at a good price, it wasn't sold as being a real emerald but I think it may be because usually fakes are flawless but this one has a speck inside it just like a real one would.

I think Sideshow Bob may have gotten distracted by an errant label up his jacksie, though I must add that he would never ever become a modern major general with hair like that.

Still there.

Despite very little rain today I think the water level may have risen a touch, but that can be fairly normal here with a major river carrying plenty from upstream.
What the photo can't show is how noisy the red car was, typical of many around these parts it doesn't sound like it has a muffler, but there never seems to be any pressure in these parts to quieten things.
My fault I suppose, I should really build a soundproof room in the house so we can enjoy TV and things in peace.

Oops.

After driving through water much of the way to the shop I ran through the entry into Coles a touch hot and stalled poor Artie after splashing a bit of water over the bonnet, pretty deep the gutter into their carpark, but he recovered after a little while.

Ingham seems to be closed today but it was good shopping at Coles with rather less than the usual crowd.

Success at last.

I've had dramas a plenty with the computer dropping out under stress, even recently changed to a low power A8-3870 CPU thinking the previous powerhouse was just a dog, however same problem.
Anyway the 3870 with the stock cooler runs fine but it's noisy and things run hot under stress yet doesn't bomb out, that was the go figure issue for me, a big open mouthed wonder.

I've run water cooling which kept the CPU 10 degrees cooler than stock but it crashed at 52 degrees yet the stock job kept things running at 62 degrees, much scratching of head but thought maybe there was hot pockets in the mount so I ordered a reasonable powered and priced air cooler.

I mounted the new air cooler shown here last night and had my jaw drop yet again when running cool the computer crashed under stress. Right time to thing sideways and use some logic.
The four grey square things in the lower right of the picture appear to power the CPU, and there was no air flow from the aftermarket coolers but the stock cooler spills onto them, felt them and they were hot.
Time to do a Jimmy kludge.
Cut up an empty 99c dishwashing liquid bottle (surprisingly made in Australia), shape a couple of prongs to hold it in place and fit it to direct air flow over those grey thingies.
Win.
I think I'll order some little heatsinks for them now, but Jimmy is happy to have a quiet stable computer again.

Wet season.


We had a bit of rain yesterday and overnight, still no flooding at our place but if we get any more rain.....

2012-03-16

Ring...again.

Jimmy finally got off his tail and grabbed Grace another ring (actually two of them) that looks close enough to the fancy expensive jobs people buy as wedding rings. Poor Grace lost the first one back in the long distant past, pity as it cost 10 times what one of these did.


For those interested in just how frugal (or is that just plain cheap?) Jimmy is, they came from here
http://www.focalprice.com/HP0646Y/Domed_Stainless_Steel_Ring_8_Golden.html
http://www.focalprice.com/HP0647Y/Domed_Stainless_Steel_Ring_8__Golden.html

2012-03-07

Darkness.

Our end of town lost power last night, quite surprisingly and suddenly, but a real surprise to me was work trucks shown here out after midnight apparently fixing it, I wasn't expecting that and it cheered me up.
We were in the dark for about four and a quarter hours, quite a shock when our power is usually quite reliable.

We missed out on flooding last week and I now think it'll be most unlikely till the next season, fingers crossed.

2012-03-02

A victim of wet feet.

This tree across the road didn't enjoy the bit of rain we've had lately.