Ray!

You'd have to work out whether it's powerful enough to properly run an Android navigation program. It has a micro-SD card slot, so you certainly have enough memory for maps. The only thing you'd really have to work out is running the screen. You can get independent LCD screens that run off a USB connection, so it's quite possible to do a fair bit with such a device. Cheers Ray

I think the idea is that you can take it anywhere and effectively have your own PC wherever you go, as long as you can plug it into a screen, TV or whatever. This is one of those things where people start to create stuff that it can be used for, rather than having an end purpose outright. Cheers Ray

I'm fairly certain that Windows 8 will be backwards compatible with anything designed for at least for XP, that's one thing that has been common with Windows for so many years. Most of the time when things don't work, it's not Windows at fault, but application developers who don't update drivers etc to be compatible with the newer versions. It depends on how old your applications are as to whether updated drivers and the like will be made available. Cheers Ray

I love looking at that Inhabitat web site to see what new piece of crock their promoting. Every article seems to require the word 'sustainable', or the like, to be used wherever possible and every time they mention wood, it's nearly always prefaced with such oxymorons. What's the difference between sustainable wood and wood? There a brilliant article on some Japanese 'Chikuno' charcoal filters that use bamboo charcoal, supported on a base of 'all-natural' wood, unlike unnatural wood. What they fail to show is an alternative 'Chikuno' bamboo charcoal filter supported by (natural?) plastic. Also, the all electric automatic John Deere lawnmower is a classic, no pollution whatsoever. Err, no? Not to mention that lawn, especially in Australia, is probably the energy/resource inefficient plant that you can grow. Cheers Ray

I think that's a wood fire, no idea what the gas bottles are for. Cheers Ray

Freestanding, to replace the gas fire heater. Cheers Ray

They said that the glass is made from some special material that apparently retains heat, but everything about the house implies to me that it isn't all that heat retentive. Notice the 2000W or whatever electric heater over the door facing the balcony? Notwithstanding, doesn't it all sound so ecologically sound? Cheers Ray

We bought a Nectre FS500 and love it as well. Cheers Ray

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/06/this-eco-friendly-new-zealand-home-is-powered-entirely-by-the-sun/ First question: What is sustainably-sourced timber? Is this different from timber grown in plantations etc? Second question: Why do environmentally conscious people need to run nine laptops at the same time? Why does anyone need nine laptops in the first place? Third question: What are the two 45kg gas bottles in the background for? Fourth question: I can understand a fireplace for the mood, but why so big in an ecologically sound house? Is the timber that's burned sustainably-sourced? Fifth question: Where the hell do they sleep? Sixth question: Is this mere green delusion? Cheers Ray

Yes, all the flues are double tubes, and the part inside the roof cavity is triple tube, but what they do with wood heaters (our gas heater wasn't like this) is have a perforated outer shell (front half) so that the radiant heat in the flue is directed into the room, increasing the efficiency. That's one reason why the flue temperature drops as you measure it higher up the flue, as heat is radiated out, rather than collecting in the flue. I'm not saying that redirecting heat from a flue to rooms further removed won't work, but I'm not sure how much you will gain. I know from experience in open plan office buildings where heating/cooling systems, that were installed as per the original open plan design, failed miserably when the internals were changed to create offices, partitioned areas etc. It boils down to fluid dynamics and air flow can be incredibly complicated, even for seemingly simple situations. If you can get really good wood, like red gum which is slow burning and gives off great heat, then combustion stoves etc can work extremely well. Nowadays, to by a metre (no one seems to sell by the ton anymore) of red gum, will cost you between $160-$180. And that metre may include a lot of empty space in the tipper. Cheers Ray

You've forgotten how our two hounds react to ceiling fans. There's no ash collector on our fireplace, the designs have changed and some have ash collectors and some don't. Cheers Ray

As I pointed out, all modern wood fireplaces have the amount that you can close down the flue restricted, but that's easy to modify. The other thing that allows for a slow burn is dense wood, the stuff we get here burns very well but, unfortunately, a lot faster than the stuff available in the high country. Working bee and BBQ come summer at our place. Working bee will happen north of Licola to collect wood. As long as people burn the right stuff and not nappies and other crap, then fine in suburbia. Unfortunately, many don't and boy did we suffer at times from whatever our neighbours used to put in their fire when the wind blew our way. Cheers Ray

I just got home from a wood hunting expedition and only had to go 3km, and loaded nearly a cubic metre of dry wood in the back of the Patrol (filled the full width and depth, and more than halfway up the windows). I cut the wood to the depth of the rear so that there's less cutting in the bush and everything stacks better and is more stable, and then cut to suit when back home. There's still at least another equal load I left behind, so if the weather is kind, will go and get the rest. I'd love one of those wood fired stoves, but having lived at my uncle's for a year where that's what they used, including one massive oven that could have rivalled a commercial pizza oven, they just tend to be too much effort overall. The major thing is that you start to use too much wood to keep things going, You can't let them die down, as then it takes too long to get things fired up again. It's a lot easier and perhaps more economical to run an electric or gas oven etc, than use wood, unless you have an endless supply in your back yard. The idea of taking heat from the flue and directing it to other parts of the house is reasonable, but to do that you have to then run the fire pretty much at full bore all the time. I've been monitoring our fire now for the last few days, especially to see whether the heat generated on the back and sides is worthy of concern, because of the close proximity of the wall and furniture, but the temperature, even when the fire is set to highest isn't a problem. I have one of those IR temp gauges and when the fire is set to low, which produces a nice warmth without burning excess wood, the temp at the top of the flue, where it joins the ceiling, is only 42C (and that probably includes the heat that is collected at the ceiling). If you were to try and redirect what is on the other side of the ceiling to the far side of the house, given the colder air above the insulated ceiling, transfer losses at the heat exchanger and losses in transmission, I'm not sure you'd gain very much at the other end. What might work is trying to redirect some of the accummulated warm air on the inside of ceiling, maybe mixed in with what the heat exchanger picks up, as it has to get air from somewhere anyway, so why not start with warm air. Cheers Ray

Here's an update on the MK802: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/07/mk802-android-4-0-mini-pc-hands-on-impressions/. Cheers Ray

I run the power to my intercooler fan and thermatic switch from the blue wiper motor wire. It's an ignition on, only, power source. Connecting alternator or instrument wires to this is not a good solution, you need to find the source of the problem, else bigger issues may arise. Cheers Ray

Have you connected the relay to the blue wire? Why is the alternator connected to the wiper motor? Cheers Ray

I wish the price of a 45kg gas bottle was $90 delivered, here it's $127. The wood fire is working brilliantly, keeping the entire house at a nice temperature; a bit warmer in the lounge, but the heat is permeating nicely into the other rooms as well. Drawing the curtains makes an enormous difference to heat retention, as one would expect. The only annoying thing with today's wood heaters is that because of some EPA regulations you can't, by default, close down the flue so that at night the wood goes into a very slow burn. Kind of stupid really, when the solution to that is all too easy. I closed the flue to its lowest setting last night and the fire was completey out by the morning. Part of this was probably due to the type of wood (gum, but not red gum), but also because too much air was moving through the heater box. Remedies are required. Another thing I found out when I went looking for fireplaces is that many manufacturers are now offering cast iron plates in lieu of fire bricks, as they apparently retain heat better and thus provide better performance. I'm not sure about that, but if it turns out to be true, rather than getting those 'specially' made cast iron plates, which I didn't even ask how much they cost, I might get some proper 20mm mild steel plate, cut to size, and use that instead of the firebricks. The cast iron plates were only about a third the thickness of the firebricks, so a big lump of steel should work a lot better. Anyway, things are nice and warm, even if the chimney is smoking like a 4.2. Cheers Ray

I guess this adds to the above comments: http://www.techspot.com/news/48906-microsoft-over-600-million-windows-7-licenses-sold.html and: http://www.ubuntu.com/ Cheers Ray

Your warranty manual tells you everything that should be done at an 80,000km service. Cheers Ray

Yes, there have been many variations of Windows, but that is not fragmentation, they are simply incremental updates more to do with the user interface and underlying processes, the same applies to Apple. By Linux fragmentation, I mean that there are hundreds of different versions available, each of which works differently and has been developed by different indivuduals/groups. The only thing that is controlled with Linux is the underlying kernel, the rest is up to anyone to play with and produce what they want, with no guarantee that it will be compatible with what you want to use it for. With Windows and Apple, everything is rigorously controlled and everything is unified. After using Ubuntu for some time now, in most respects it works like Windows when it comes to updates (of which there seem to be many every week) etc, you just click the install button and sit back. Why would anyone want to use a program in this day and age that requires you to go to a text screen and input code to do updates and whatever? Ony a select few I would suspect. Cheers Ray

In our last place in Melbourne, our neigbours put in a wood fireplace, they sold the place and the new owners used to burn what must have been nappies in the fire. When the wind was in the wrong direction, the smoke and smell was abhorent. So as far as wood fires are concerned for suburbia, I'd be voting to ban them. But in the country, like where we are now, it's the cheapest option and no one burns wet, treated or otherwise, wood. Cheers Ray

With the carbon tax to stab us in the neck on 1 July, electricity and gas prices are going to cost more in a year than a night out with Craig Thompson on your credit card. So today, we finally had a wood fireplace installed to replace our gas, mock wood, fireplace. A 45kg gas bottle was lasting about a week or so, at the fire's lowest setting and run for no more than 4 hours a day, and costing us $127 a refill. We were going broke just trying to keep warm. It just makes one wonder, the more we have advanced technologically in the last 200+ years, the more we now seem to be regressing to what was the norm 200+ years ago. Cheers Ray

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't disagreeing with what you've experienced with water injection. Water injection has been used for just about ever in petrol engines, when modifications have been made to increase compression, timing etc. There is something that I studied quite a long way back about water injection in combustion processes, when I was doing engine mods, where the addition of atomised water made substantial improvements to the burn characteristics of all internal combustion engines. There's almost an encyclopedia that could cover air/fuel ratios, combustion temperatures, combustion pressures etc when it comes to playing with ICE. Cheers Ray

I've always maintained that what needs to be observed in order to keep the internals of a diesel clean and the engine running well are: buy fuel from reputable sources, especially high volume turnover sources (other than if you make your own and know what you're getting) do not do lots of short drives where the engine doesn't come up to operating temperature and unable to sustain operating temperature for a reasonable time do not drive in such a way that you rarely load up the engine and make it work do not drive in a way that you are, more often than not, in the lowest rev range, use the gears and rev the engine out and more recently, use mineral-based, two-stroke, small engine oil at a ratio of 1:200 every fill (for 3.0lt owners) Cheers Ray

Water tanks in residential areas is an interesting story. Years ago, in Victoria at least, the main water board was able to enforce a no-watertanks rule, as they said it would affect the water treatment plants by reducing flows. Then as the population increased and the infrastructure failed to keep up, the water board then complained to government that too much water flow was affecting the water treatment plants and thus water tanks became an option. Then came the green scare and water tanks have almost become mandatory, and once one installs a water tank, the councils then place a rate payment on it. There's only one person who seems to lose out on all of this. Cheers Ray