Hard Drives are proven performers – they’ve been around since 1956 – but they have a few limitations, mostly related to the fact that they have mechanical components:-

1. They fail – eventually, and usually catastrophically.
2. Their access speed is limited by the speed it takes the head to physically move across the platter and find the data you’re after – called ’seek time’

One approach to overcome these limitations is called ‘RAID’ – or a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (some folks argue that Inexpensive should be Independent, but I’ll beg to differ).

In this post, I’ll be investigating ways to speed up your computer - and I’ll be test driving RAID and the fastest available single drive solution (Western Digital Raptor) along the way - let’s fish out the facts from the hype.

What is RAID?

There are several flavors of RAID, but the major ones are (more…)

This first photo shows the place during the day..

Note the cool pink bouncy sitting ball above - very Googley - Jazz, my hound, loved it - happy to chase it around all day.

Alas, Jazz’s days of fun with the ball are (more…)

I notice a few of my friends turning up on my mybloglog sidebar.. so.. just a shout out to a few.. John - fantastic to see your blog getting the traffic it deserves lately for some inspired commentary on what peeves us about the inadequacies of Google Webmaster feedback. Shambhavi, I’d love to hear how you’ve settled in since your big move.. possibly you’re visiting in the vain hope that I’ve updated my blog recently - alas no, I haven’t.. UNTIL NOW…

But.. in all fairness I have been genuinely really busy. I’ve completed the long and drawn out process of moving into my new house… And, as the title of this post would suggest, I’ve actually managed to get broadband internet working here - which is very satisfying indeed.

Once I’ve converted my new place from the current maze of boxes to something a bit more worthy of a few photographs, I will do a post about it.

It’s certainly a unique place and I think some of my non-Australian readers would be fascinated - it’s definitely a very ‘Aussie’ pad - we’ve got Kookaburras, Kangaroos, Wombats.. very relaxing.. it’s such an Aussie house that the first thing I bought was a BBQ - and I haven’t cooked inside even once in the four weeks since I started moving in (Sorry folks from the US, but we’ve had absolutely brilliant weather here - warm, tropical).

I’ve been travelling alot recently, but by far the most ‘important’ thing I have been doing is consulting to a company in the North of my state - developing yield maps that help sugarcane growers improve their productivity whilst simultaneously reducing their costs - the fabled ‘win-win’ solution. It’s something very interesting, and I’d like to blog about it here.. But… I need your help.

Does anybody know of any free or open source software that allows you to record your screen in real time as a video? I basically want to do an online ‘tutorial’ about my new ‘yield mapping’ sofware - I’ll be putting it on my business site (www.jaisaben.com) of course.

Your help would be appreciated!

Oh - one additional subscript - those of you that know me well will know that there has been a stressful sidetrack regarding a new lingerie product over the last little while - I spoke about the stress of that particular venture quite briefly on the website of  a friend a couple of months back.

I’m glad to say that this is now completely over and done with. We won the case - something I’d never like to go through ever again, but it’s given me some new and interesting insights into the challenges that entrepreneurial businesses and webmasters face - and those kind of insights are priceless.

I now feel quite qualified to advise folks about the legal side of webmastering - how to be ’savvy’ about these issues and avoid destroying a great business with endless legal battles It’s an important lesson - your time should be spent building a business. Time in court is wasted time folks!

Cheers and all the best,

M

I’ve found a fantastic place about 25kms out of Brisbane, at a spot called Mount Nebo (quite near to where my parents live, actually). The rent is good, the view is FANTASTIC and it’s a rural area, so I’ll be able to get back to my roots and have a few chooks etc

One big problem - if you can believe it - here in Australia, only 25kms (more…)

Ok.. so the title of this post is senseless. I agree. I too have felt a sense of loss with the passing of Heath Ledger. I guess the nature of mass media is that we all like to see something of ourselves in those folks we adulate, and we feel let down when they pass away earlier than the natural order would usually dictate.

That said - the fact is this - anyone - absolutely anyone - passing away at such a young age is tragic. Naturally as soon as we hear the news, we empathise - it’s human nature.

But the sheer volume of information about Heath’s unfortunate passing is beginning (more…)

When we’re faced with a situation where we have a large number of xy or lat long points in arcmap (for instance, when we’ve got a lot of yield monitor data) overlaid over the top of a polygon data set (for instance, block or paddock boundary shapefiles) in arcGis, what’s the best way to select only those paddocks (polygon shapefiles) which contain logged points?

Actually, it’s not too difficult. You have to use (more…)

Firstly, the E8200 processor itself uses the same socket (775) as Intel has been using for quite some time now, but as I’ve been using AMD 64 processors up until now (socket 939), I needed to get a new motherboard as well - I chose the Gigabyte P35C-DS3R motherbard.

Meh - what the heck - if you’re going to go all out, why not (more…)

Ok - so a bit of an update - I’ve spent the last little while learning a new language (VB.NET). It’s been a nice challenge, as most of my programming to date has been non-object oriented stuff - command line interfaces or totally embedded solutions usually written in ANSI C.

I’ve been up in North Queensland helping a company up there develop yield maps for their Sugar Cane harvesters (actually, I helped design the equipment that sits on the harvesters and does the yield monitoring, as well). The process of taking the raw data off the harvesters and converting it into yield maps is a fairly long and drawn out one. Firstly you need to filter the data (something I had been doing in Excel) to remove erroneous positions and obvious outliers.

Secondly you need to convert the latitudes and longitudes from the yield (more…)

You can hear me cackling in the background a few times - having lived there in my early 20’s, I’m familiar with the particular bar they are singing about - a few lines stand out to me - “It took them more than 3 months just to realize - that the road to Surfers Paradise was bitumised” - it takes the piss and congratulates North Queenslander’s in one fell swoop… Why?

Funny because Surfer’s is the main ‘tourist attraction’ in Qld (but 1600 miles south of Cairns) - I think they’re basically saying that as far as the locals are concerned Cairns is the centre of the universe.. 

I also liked the line - ‘the ceiling fans rotate’ as the chorus - that’s so appropriate - so very North Queensland - time just drifts by, the slow, steady beat of the ceiling fan matches the rhythm of life in general up there - Cairns is not really known as a hectic place :)

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Blix Krieg is a widgetized, Google adsense and Search Engine friendly version of Sebastian Schmieg’s original Blix theme.

Unlike the original Blix Theme, BlixKrieg is fully compatible with the newest version of Wordpress. Blix Krieg can be installed as a drop in replacement for Blix if you are having problems with your Blix Based site after upgrading Wordpress.

You can download the latest version of Blix Krieg HERE, and see the latest version at work on our Blixkrieg beta test page.

Problems that I have identified and corrected (more…)