Glort

Well you know what they say, It comes from the top down. Given whom the others are / were at the top at other at other places, the scenario seems to hold true.

Friend and I were just chatting last night about what good job it was the greenwashed made everyone fell bad unless they went to the expense of installing a rain water tank to save the precious water. I mean who the Fk came up with that stupidity " Save water". For what? A rainy Day??? So the gubbermint can send a million litres a day or what ever it is down the drain because there is too much and the desal plant operators are on a gauranteed minimum buy whether we need it and when we definately don't! The way the green brains carry on, they would have you believe that turning on the tap to get a drink is a terrible waste of water and you should feel Guilty about it. As for the notinon of washing your car, Blasphemy! Watering the garden... hey, we want the place green but not too green allright! If you have to water the garden or have a drink, jump in your Priarse with the batterys toxic enough to wipe out all the water supply if someone threw one in and go and buy Bottled water in the nice plastic containers. I never get the mentality with saving water as if it's like oil, use it once and it's gone forever and one day the world will run out. If there is not enough water, it simply means the gubbermints are failing to take historical weather patterns and the growing damands of increasing population into account. I use water for whatever I want but I don't waste it. The green heads can't seem to work out the difference that using water and wasting it are 2 different things. I'll also never try to cut back on water useage. I pay a freaking lot of money every quarter just to have the water connected. The water I USE is a fraction of that over all bill. If I used NO water I'd still get a substantial bill that would be little different to the one I get now. The best value for me is use all the water I want. The bit that gets me is in surburbia it is illeagal NOT to be connected to the water / sewrage. In fact until recently, they could still charge you for it if it ran past your property but you were independent or had no dwelling on the land. Not surprisingly the water board in their infinite greed threw a hissy fit when that ruling came in. Save water? Save me the Bullchit!

That is the attitude as I had said many times. There was only one correct opinion or approved attitude to take. If you fail to conform, the sheeple mentality lynch mob will be after you!!

Would the HE not connect to the heater Lines? If there is anything about T'ing the lines, make sure the shower HE is plumbed up so all the heater circuit coolant has to run through it. If you T beforehand, a lot of the coolant will bypass the HE and you may not get the water as hot as you want. Just as an alternative, The Veg guy use Flat Plate Heat exchangers ( FPHE) for warming up veg oil in much the same way this shower has a HE for warming the bathing water. Given the FPHE's can be had for around $100 and a suitable pump off flea babe for the same or less, A DIY kit could save those on a budget some cash. A guy I know has the inlet and outlet on snap connectors sitting under his bull bar. he just puts on the pickup and line with the showerhead and he's ready to go. How long a shower can you get out of these? I know an engine block is a couple of hundred KG but the cooling effect of flowing water is significant. I made a HE a while back as a coil of copper in a 20L tin of water with a 30Kw Burner under it. I could cool the 20L of water in the bucket with the Burner going full tilt instantly and drop it 30o in no time. Like I said there is a lot more thermal mass in an engine block but still seems you'd drop temp pretty quick as you'd only have 40-50o reserve. How long do people with these things get out of them?

If you ask me Quality is better than Qty. I think the quality here is great. It seems nice and harmonious and respectful and absent of egotrippers saying crap for the sake of it. That has to be a formula for a place to grow. But..... why won't spell check work on here??

It's a nice old box. Made when there was a pride in products and quality was a a concern as well as a selling point. I don't have any suggestions what to do with it only to suggest whatever it is, make ure it will stand the test of time and not be something that you modify the box for then in 5 years it's obsolete. Something like this deserves to be round a lot longer.

I went to a phone shop the other day with my son to have his repaired. I couldn't believe how tacky and over the top some of the cases were not that people would actually buy them. Talk about cheap and crappy! The one above.... Awesome! That would stick it up a few of bling Brigade. Imagine going to a phone shop with the steampunk one. They would go nuts for that !!!

I started with funerals as a kid. Been a pretty frequent participant since. It's OK with the oldies generally. They have had their lives and it's the way of life if you like. It's the ones that go well before their time that are the real traumatic ones. That said, my mates mother is 86. Never haing lost her " Italian-ness" event though coming here as a young girl, I have always called her Mum ma and she has long refered to me as her 2nd son. She deserves a lof fking better at her age than to end her days with the the pain sufferening and indignity of Dying with cancer. Then again, so does every other person in the world ( bar one I knew) whom it takes. My uncle is one of the very few I have know to go " Properly" if you like. At a ripe old age and with no pain and suffering. The other was my grandmother who was my life and probaly saved my life. She was 82 and had her minor-Medium age related ilnesses for years. In the end she went with no pain or suffering again not expectedly , in her sleep. About the only person close to me I have lost that I could be at peace with loosing. By the time I get to 70, There will be no one left for me to attend their funeral. My wife and kids have been commanded to to go before me so have my close friends. I figure I'm due for some peace then.

I have knowingly done some very dangerous and stupid things in my time and always come through without a scratch. The things that have hurt me are the ones I never saw any risk in like with this poor guy. I guess he got out of the accident very well connsidering how badly injured he was. Amazing how suddenly your life can change or end due to the most innocent of activities. The lesson is those snatch straps are a LOT more dangerous than they look and people percive. They therefore need to become known to one and all that they are to be used for one thing only and used by the book.

I hope you found a new campspot less detrimental to the population of your family!

Just got word my Uncle Died in his sleep so I'll he heading to Funeral No. 3 for the year/ 6 months this week. A close mates mother wasn't expected to survive last weekend due to cancer so Number 4 is a matter of when not if. I have been to a LOT of funerals before but this year seems to be setting some sort of new record. Maybe it's Karma for me being so damn happy at the first one I had to knock back whooping for joy. That was a one off and wont ever happen again.

If that's your "Camper", I'd love to see your house! That thing is huge! How much you rent the rooms out a night for? I like the modest Stainless fronted fridge. Did you limit yourself to just a 135L hot water system and make do with a split system aircon instead of the full ducted setup as well?

Item Location: Byron Bay. At least you know what he has been smokin! Probably what he's been taking the truck into the bush to harvest as well!

I have 7d's, a 600 40, 30, and some 20s lying around somewhere. The 7's are great, was going to buy another but I think I'll wait for the 8 or I might get myself a 1DX just as a play toy and so I can play the penis compensation game so many other shooters place such importance on. Camera that expensive would be too good to flog out with work related stuff though. Thats what Disposeable toy camera's like 600's come into their own for. I looked at the 600 flash on Tuesday when I was in town and wasn't real impressed. Also not inclined to get something that has the same flaws as the 580 especialy for the price. Like you say, you can buy 4 yongnuos for the price of a canon 600. No brainer to me and even if you do have to buy twice, at that price so what? Youd still have the ability to do a lot more wth 4 units than you can with one and lets face it, half the features or more on the 600 are designed to work with other overpriced 600's and are useless on their own. I bought an entire 4 head 300W studio monoblock setup for $500 last year ( maybe I should do a review on that too?) and with an inverter and a car battery, I have a setup that no speedlight could match the output on or the ability to use the range of modifers. To do that sort of thing with the 600 speedlights, you'd be closer to $3K than 2 by the time you bought stands, softboxes and all the other stuff that came in the $500 kit. Crazy! The cheapie studio kit was for doing outside work to savemy elinchroms getting knocked about and it's been great. good light quality output, came with every thing you could need and so far the only failure is a lightstand I trod on and made the pressed in spogot fall out on. cut 2 inches off the top of the stand, beltedthe spigot back in and drilled a hole to pin the spigot to the stand tube. It will never come out again. The idea of buying 4 of the 600 canon flashes to do onsite strobist work to me is bloody poor business management. That said, with the yongnuos, it's a hell of a lot more feasable. For me the Yongnuos may allow me to light up the indoor pools I do the underwater work in. I could easy mount them on a wall or off a window etc for overall or background lighting and to allow faster recycle times for high frame rate work. The pool management and OH&S people would chit a kidney if I even asked about putting mains powered units in there or running leads. Then again, might be bloody good sport to see their reactions if I did ask though!

Metro Interface?? Why the hell are they so hell bent on turning the world into faggots? I'm pretty happy with the " Hetro" Interface i'm using now. I have a really bright although completely out there idea..... How about making the program so YOU can choose how you like it to look/ work? Ya know, for people over the age of 15 that want their computer to look like a computer you could choose the " Traditional" interface. For kids who can't process any thing that dosen't look like a phone or they can't operate with their 2 thumbs, They can choose Metro AKA Faggot mode. Now how is that for radical, out of the box thinking eh? Oh, it seems like that had that now they are taking it out so you are forced to be annoyed with the way they demand you have to use the thing. Can't have been nearly as awsome idea as I thought then! Bet they will have the facility to make the appearance any one of 400 different colour schemes which no one ever uses and incorporate a bunch of meaningless visual tweaking ability but the oprion to make the thing look and work like what your used to, sorry ol chap, can't have that now can we? You have to waste your time coming to grips with this new metro faggot way of doing things. 7 annoys me enough that's why I run server 2008 wherever I can. Looks like I'll be like others and running the unfashionable "Hetro" software for a bit yet.

I heard terrible Rumours he'd been killed. It's just not fair to get peoples hopes up like that only to so bitterly dissapoint them when they find out the story isn't true!

I got the email alert this morning from Aldi and thought of you straight away Ray. I was going to ask what you thought of the things and about it's worth for a mapping machine. I looked up the other site for the specs and saw it had no GPS but remembered your other thread where you said they were available as plugins. As I understand these things, they are an entertainment- internet computer for the most part. I take it that I can't plug in a keyboard and do anything in word or use them to plug my printer in and run off some photos? They look like thay could have potential for my business, I'm just trying to figure out what they are capeable of and therefore what I could do with the things that would be of benifit.

I bought mine at Hypop They are available at plenty of places though they seem to be selling like hotcakes. No surprises why that is! I agree with you on the price of the canon units. The thing is the Metz speedlights are about the same price but they are worth it to me where the canons are not. I must have used 6-7 different canon 580s given that they have all been borrowed and I wouldn't pay what I did for the yongnuo for one. I remember ringing the guy I borrowed the first one I used from and asking him about the settings as I couldn't figure out where I was going wrong. After he confirmed I had set it right ( which was intutive) I described the poor quality image too him and he said that's what they always look. Other units have been the same and required manual tweaking to get them to something acceptable for me. I was looking at a 54 metz and would have probably bought one of those if the 565 didn't turn out to be any chop. Even though I'm a terrible cheap tightarse, it's not the price of the canons that gets me, it's the fact the things are pieces of crap as far as I'm concerned. Like I said. if the yongnuo performed like the canon, Id say well you get what you pay for and there you go. The fact that the cheap knockoff Chits all over the original they ask 3 times more for is what gets me.

I needed to buy an on camera flash for some work I am doing. I really don't like these on camera things even though they are all the rage now with people that think manually setting an apeture and shutter speed value on their camera and flash is too difficult. My 25+ y/o Metz hammer heads do me just fine but unfortunately, are too big for the underwater bags I'm using. I couldn't bring myself to paying $600 for the genuine canon units having used them before and being particularly unimpressed with them. I heard about these Chinese Things and read some good Reviews. The place I have bought some other cheap studio lighting gear from Which has all been excellent) had a special on them so I picked one up for $160 to give it a go. The brand Is Yongnuo and the flash is their top of the line, Blow your nose, wipe your backside, E-TTL yada yada ripoff of canons original. The Yongnuo is YN565EX Which is compatible with the Canon 580EX and the Nikoff SB900. I have only played around the house with the 565 over the last few days but to say I am impressed with the thing is a huge understatement. The light quality that comes out of this thing is the best I have ever seen on a portable unit and that includes the Uber exy and somewhat rare Quantum Q series units. While a lot of on camera flashes produce harsh edged shadows and have a very rapid light fall off, these things Illuminate beautifuly. The foreground subject is perfectly lit ( much better than any canon unit I have used by a country mile!) and the backgrounds stay detailed for meters behind as well. This is in stark contrast to the canon units which are harsh and have terrible fall off. The colour balance of the 565 is also the best I have ever seen. It's dead neutral. All the canon units I have used have been blue as hell and take a custom white balance in the camera to make them look something like they should. I also find with every canon unit I have used the actual exposure the things put out needs to have compensation dialed in to get the images right. The Yonguno is spot on exposure and colour balance wise straght out of the box. They of course have the normal swivel and bounce and the built in flip down wide angle diffuser and white bounce card but even straight out of the head, the quality of the output is fantastic! They are very much like the Canon/ Nikoff units in look, layout and features. They even have the wireless remote/ auto feature that allows TTL sync with other units. I think the wireless is the same as the canon system and only an infra red setup that isn't worth a pinch in daylight but I guess that's why they make Pocket Wizzards. The battery life is quoted as low as 100 flashes which would of course be full dumps but it does have the external battery terminal that allows you to run from 12 batteries instead of 4. The battery life is quoted as Alakalines so if using Nickel metals you should do a bit better. Recycle time for a flat dump is 3 seconds which the unit seems to do easily even with NiMh cells with quite a few frames on them already. The Flash is also compatible with a Quantum turbo battery which would have full recylce coming in at 1 sec or less. Pretty much the 565's do everything the OEM units do but at a fraction of the price. I don't know how well these things will last but the canon units certainly aren't without their reliability issues amoung others. If the quality of the compents on the 565 is as good as the quality of the light output, these things will become redundant long before they wear out. Chinese stuff always has a stigma to it but I have to say I'm fast getting over that thanks to products like this. The parameter I always used to put on cheaper alternatives is dividing the price of the original by the knockoffs and then asking if X units will last as long as the one original. At the price these things go for, they are a bargain for sure and I get the feeling are probably just as good quality wise. Performance wise, they are a light that would justify a $600 price tag as far as I'm concerned and the canons would be more accurately price pointed at 160 bux. It should also be remembered that the Canon units have been far from trouble free. There have been a lot of problems with these things over time and I seem to remember at least one recall/ free repair being issued on them. I suspect if they had the Yongnu name on them they would be labeled as crap but because they are canon and are associated with a quality brand and the marketing influence behind it, the flaws get over looked or passed off as unusual. From what I know and have experienced, issues with the Canons are not that unusual at all. I have tried the thing on my good camera's as well as the toy ones and it works perfectly on both and is fully compatible. You can ajust the custom functions of the flash through the camera which I find easier than trying to work out the symbols on the flash LCD. Along with the flash I also got a cheap little softbox/ diffuser that goes over the head and is secured with a bit of elastic strap and velcro. I have borrowed one from a mate and was highly impressed with it on the canon 580 which personally I would never pay $600 for. It improved the light output on the canon dramatically and softens an already great illumination on the Yongnuo. Indoors, the output is almost shadowless. The ONLY complaint I have about these units is the name. Trying to pronounce it is the only thing I don't like about them. For anyone that wants an on camera flash for general ( or Pro) use, I'd highly reccomend the Yongnuo 565. You can bolt the things on and they are ready to go or you can get up to your eyeballs in the custom functions, wireless TTL setups and more. The price is unbeatable, The quality of the light out put probably is as well and certainly the best I have seen from an on camera light and it has every feature you could want including full compatability with the canon units.

Well I had a good score on ebay today. A circulation pump I bought for the veg oil heater I built for the house arrived. The listing pic was crap, the description sparse and I saw it with just a few minutes to go. I put $5 on it and won it only bid for .99 cents. Postage was $13 but only cost the guy $8.76. Good luck to him. It lobbed up this morning, brand spanking new and with a heap of brass fittings and connectors and even flow meter/regulator. That won't be any good for the heater but perfect for controlling the fuel supply on the veg burner I have built for heating the pool. Lowest setting is exactly where I want it at 500Ml min. I haven't looked it up but I'm betting that's worth a hundred or more on it's own. From the crappy pic I didn't see any of the fittings nor were they mentioned and the listing says the pump it's used. Everything is obviously brand new. Also said the brand was unknown so it took it to be a cheap chinese one when it fact it is a well known top of the line unit. I really got lucky with this one and it certainly made my day. Unrelated but to make things even better, I went to see my computer bloke about a couple of laptops, monitors and another server. He gave me a couple of really nice Dell 19" Monitors that I want for doing onsite jobs! The screens go up and down on the stand and rotate portrait to landscape, have a built in USB ports, speakers and are sharp as a tack. Said he'll have the other stuff ready for me in a couple of weeks and then asked If could help him out with a favour and shoot some new promo material for him in a couple of months. I really don't see a problem with that!!

I used to sell cars and everything they say about car salesmen is true. They are the way they are because the customers make them that way. I could sell snow to eskimos but being in new rather than used cars, I was on training wheels compared to a lot of the stunts the used car guys pulled. There are some real crunts out there in new and used. If you know the game, playing with the real tossers can be good sport. The more dodgy they are, the easier they are to set up and then pull the rug from under them. I have amazed several friends with how much I have got off the price of cars for them. No real trick when the things are priced to kill in the first place and you can see they have been sitting there 2.5 months already. You can always get them back to trade price and on the odd occasion, a bit under if they are really having a bad month and the wood ducks have been thin on the ground. My old man is a dealer of sorts, owns a wrecking yard and always has some cars to sell. I have had a lot of disagreements with him over the years and basicaly disowned him for a long time but I have always said I'd buy a car off him without looking at it. I know he has stressed about cars he has sold that have turned out to have something wrong with them that he didn't know about and gone out of his way to fix them. The one thing I will always remember him saying as long as I live is " You couldn't sell a car to someone if you knew there was something wrong with it." Utterly ironic in his game but it is his genune belief in his business and akin to his moral values in life. The thing he gets every single week is people wanting to sell him a car and after he has given them a price for it, they bring it back with all the extra's taken off or half the panels or interiour missing and then get pissy when he refuses to pay them the price he quoted for what it was when they brought it to him originally. The other month he had a Kid bring back an all wheel drive car he had put a replacement gear box in shortly before. The kid for some reason put different size wheels on the thing front and back and couldn't understand why the old man wouldn't give him warranty on the now blown Box. Previously the same kid had bought 2 engines off him. The first one was when he turned the boost and fuel up on the original engine as far as it would go and dropped the clutch at redline. That dropped the guts of the engine and the gear box right on the road. The 2nd one was when the kid changed the oil on the replacement engine and didn't tighten up the sump plug. The old story of just trying to drive it home to see what the funny noises were and why that red light was on...... Not hard to spend $10K on a car worth half of that when it's owned by an Idiot.

Never seen anyone else use a gazebo before. I have a 6x3M and it's bloody great. The original walls were useless so I got some good HD tarps which do a side and and end each and I fold in to create a floor. The roof has never leaked despite the fact I always fold the thing up with it on which you aren't supposed to do. It does move around a bit in the wind but I have added extra tie down points which help it stay firm. Mine is only a cheap chinese ebay thing I really just bought to see how practical they would be as I didn't want to buy a good one to find out it wasn't suitable for what I wanted. I bought the one I have in 2008 and I must have used it 30 times by now and even had it up in the yard for a month and it's still good as new. For the $200 odd I paid as against about $1500+ for the good ones, I'll just buy a new roof when the old one starts to leak and a whole new setup when the frame goes.

I used to be critical of people that built near the bush and had it growing to their back door but then my ignorance became enlightened. I saw this at a place in surburbia that had a river and so called " national park" behind it which was more like a strip of bush on land that would not be suitable to build on. I found out that the residents every year had a working bee to clear the growth away from their back fences about 10M and do a bit of burning off into the bush beyond that as well. The local fire brigade even came along to assist and make sure nothing got out of hand. This had been going on for over 20 years. Of course once all the green crap came along some do gooder councilor who moved into the greater area head about this and threw a hissy fit. The upshot was the local council ( who used to come along and take away what the neighbours cleaned up) go involved and sent out letters outlining fines and penalities for destroying national park, cutting trees without permits etc. In the years before, they had basically endorsed and commended the neighbours for their work in looking after themselves and there had never been a problem with what they did. The upshot now is after about 8 years the bush is now literally at these peoples back fences and growing thick and strong. If a fire ever dose come along which is really a matter of when not if, These homes are farked. Before, the people had the good sense to recognise they did live in a high risk area and did something about it on their own initiative, now they live in fear if knowing when a fire does happen, they are stuffed. If you ask me, the green washed idiots that stop them clearing the scrub ought to be nailed tot he back fence Jesus style when a fire does come along and see what their opinion is on clearing a fire break if the world is unfortunate enough for them to survive. A close mate in another area is in exactly the same boat. He lives on top of a long high ridge that backs onto a strip of national park with the army firing range going for miles behind that. The bush fire mob and the local fireys have told him due to wind direction, the way the ridge faces, the slope, type of trees and everything else, the place ticks all the right boxes for a holocaust. He has had to go through all sorts of trouble to remove trees from his OWN property that pose a risk as certified by the local bush fire brigade and the local fire station commander not to mention getting neighbours to lop their trees which hang over his house on one side. It was in fact only through being friends with the local fire commander ( another veg oil nut) that he was able to get the trees that posed a threat to his house taken down. He still wants to push the break between the house and the trees back a bit but the main dangers are now gone. He has worked hard to clean all the crap off his own land so it's more like a grassed area with trees than the thick bush it was. He's also taken a lot of trouble and expense to protect himself. He has put sprinklers on his roof and under his eaves and we set up an electric pump on a big UPS I got hold of with 4x N200 batteries. The pump draws from a 6000L tank beside the metal shed the pump and batteries are in that has it's own sprinklers aimed at the shed to keep it cool as lossible in the event of a fire. He also has a petrol and a diesel fire fighting pump. The petrol is on a trailer with an IBC and 2 36M hoses on reels another mate got for us from a building that was being upgraded. The Diesel pump sits beside the pool with more hoses capeable of reaching any part of the house and beyond. It's quite impressive what these pumps can do and good fun to play with them as well. I also have a diesel transfer and a diesel Fire fighter Pump which I always take to his place and leave them there for the summer along with a couple more hoses. It all sounds a bit overkill and when everything is running and manned with the help of my mates sons, The amount of water you can put around is pretty impressive and inspires some confidence in the ability to deal with a fire. The thing is if you ever see a bush fire up close and in real life, you realise that you can only increase the odds of saving your house, gauranteeing it is something else all together. While my mate has done as much as he practically can to avoid getting burnt out and is still improving it, It's ironic to see the neighbours either side with much newer and more expensive homes are too lazy to even cut their yards back with a whipper snipper to offset their risk. Insurance is a great thing but it can't replace everything nor can it minimise the danger to your family.

I have been watching a heap of camera gear on Fleabay over the last week or so and never cease to be amazed at what people pay for 2nd hand stuff. This morning I saw a lens go for $8 less than I saw it in to retail shops in the city for. The place I normally buy from which is an online with a shopfront in north Sydney had the same lens about $40 cheaper brand new with warranty. I have seen numerous exampls of this over the last week with a camera bodt and a lens going for more than you can buy them for at a load of places. This is all off the shelf stuff as well, not something hard to get like a $12K lens that no one keeps in stock. I have a list of the stuff want sitting besides the computer with the new prices. I can't understand why other people don't seem to pay the same due dilligence. Buying used stuff that is no longer made and paying too much is one thing, paying more used for something you can go to the shop and get or have delivered to your door brand new is something else. I have got some great bargains off Fleabay. The car I bought a few months back was underpriced at least 4 K which is pretty good on a car only worth $5500! Owner listed a bunch of problems which were going to be time consuming but not expensive to rectify. Turned out they were not what I thought ( or the poor buggers mechanic had told him) and I fixed each problem in minutes and for under $10. The sunroof was more like 10 Cents needing a single rivet to hold a guide that had come loose and another 10 C electrical termnal to fix the now Ice cold aircon. Biggest expense and not a small pain was replacing a rear wheel Cylinder and brake shoes which required a new brake line being made as well. Still, for $150 all up and a bit of running round, not the wost outcome. I'm clearing the place out getting ready to move so I just hope that some of these people with too much cash and too little research skills start bidding on whatever I try to flog off.

Who are the hardest working farmers? Who freaking cares? They all work their arses off and have constant mental stress worrying about a Myriad of things. The little I know about it from my cousin, these days it's more high tech than a lot of city jobs. I think they should be better supported. If something is grown in this country and there can be adequate supply, then the same product should not be allowed to be imported from OS, especially on a price basis. If the local farming were better supported, then prices would go down by economies of scale anyway. Seems ludicrous to me to allow the importation of something we can produce ourselves and then bitch about trading debts and Overseas spending etc.