Archive Page 4 of 31
The Xbox 360 is a pretty neato games machine. Hovever, lately I’ve discovered that it simply excels as a media center. Why? It plays MPEG-4 videos of course! It required a minor software update which was straightforward once I got Xbox Live up and running. It plays videos from a burnt CD or DVD which is handy, but the real treat is its ability to play videos on mass storage devices connected via the USB port. Brilliant! It also connects to a Windows PC which is nice but a feature I’ll probably never use as my MPEG-4 stuff is on USB HDD or DVD. I have to hand it to Microsoft though, they’ve nailed it here. The Xbox 360 has already replaced my Macbook Pro as the primary device for watching MPEG-4. The icing on the cake is my Logitech Harmony 525 universal remote, whose software simply downloaded all the codes for the Xbox 360! Truly awesome.
I read an article in The Age about employees committing suicide then their family saying GPS trackers in work vehicles were a contributing factor.
Employers are fitting out their fleets of company cars with invasive GPS tracking systems despite claims the technology unnecessarily invades staff privacy and contributed to the suicide of a Telstra linesman last year.
What the?
I know there are companies putting trackers in their fleet vehicles. Some even do it without telling their employees, and that I have a problem with. But when the employees know a tracker is there, what’s the problem?
Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. I have been wanting trackers in our work cars for ages. For one, it would mean an end to filling out that stupid log book. And to people forgetting to fill it out, and filling it out incorrectly, etc. And secondly, I know there are people that do abuse the resource, and this would put a stop to that.
The fuss seems to be about invasion of privacy and lack of employer’s trust for employees. But there need to be allowances for this resource to be used with flexibility. How flexible is the employer willing to be with their vehicles, and how they allow their employees to use them? The problems arise when you get draconian employers using minute details in the data in unfair ways.
An employer that respected their employees would develop some simple software to examine the data collected and find obvious patterns of abuse, then take appropriate action against the abusers. They would also clearly state their policies on vehicle use, and any thresholds that would constitute abuse. These policies would be developed in consultation with employee representatives, aiming towards a fair balance between flexibility and efficient use of company resources. For example, employees could be allowed to stop and pick up milk on the way home, etc.
Our company’s policy states that stops of less than 30 minutes during a journey do not need to be recorded in the log book. So an employer’s policies would need to reflect those they had before trackers were introduced. When employers learn to respect their employees and reflect this in their policies, devices like GPS trackers would not cause as much upset and may even be welcomed.
Update 16/8: Added quote from article.
When I got my power bill this time last year I was alarmed at the power usage during winter. I was using my split system to heat the house during waking hours. But used a small electric heater on thermostat during the nights to take the chill off the air. Such heaters are far from efficient which I have proven as my power saving experiment has come to fruition.
This winter I threw out all my portable electric heaters and used only my split system for heating. Maximum 21 degrees. Mostly it was on 18-20. At nights I left it on with low fan speed and temp set on 16 or 17. I also fitted anti-draught rollers to my two outside doors and installed foam seals around their edges. I should also mention that I took advantage of the Murray Energy scheme which includes free replacement of all globes with compact fluoros. I’m sure the globes would have helped to reduce power consumption, but they were by no means the major contributor.
These changes reduced my energy usage by 619 kWh for the May-August cycle, compared with last year. This equates to a saving of just over $100 for a quarter, which is quite significant.
The graphs don’t lie (pulled straight from the Country Energy website). Compare the three August readings. The first one was before my split system went in and I was using the house’s ancient electric heater. The last two reflect the results of my experiment.
I was truly relieved to see this graph, as using the split system at night was a bit of a gamble. But it has paid off, literally.
While we’re on the topic, I measured the temperature of my hot water out of the tap at 70 degrees C a few weeks ago. What’s yours? Leave it in the comments.
Since we are only a few days away from the anniversary the Summer Heights High premiere, and because I can just feel that you’ve been getting Mr. G withdrawl (pun intended), here’s a nice reminder of why we love Chris Lilly.
I should state at this point that Jonah is actually my favourite character, but I heard this song recently and it had me stifling first the cheesy grins and when that failed, stifling the giggles.
What’s that? Controversy around Chris Lilly you say? No….. it couldn’t be! (starts 30 seconds in)
And now for some more Mr. G antics.
In my opinion, one essential feature of a Bittorrent client is the ability to add multiple custom trackers to torrents. This is not only useful in getting more peers, which in most cases results in faster downloads. It also adds a level of redundancy, so should one tracker go down, the transfer keeps going.
I just noticed today that the Mac Bittorrent client Transmission now has this feature. Apparently it’s been there since v1.30 (I’m using v1.33). Tracker entry could be streamlined a bit though; at the moment, you need to add trackers one at a time. In uTorrent you can quickly paste several in one go. What would be really nice would be a global custom tracker list that was added to every torrent loaded into the program.
I bought an ex-rental copy of Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube for $10. It loads the menu but when I try to play a game I get disc read errors. Poo. A working Gamecube game for $10… I knew it sounded too good to be true. Oh poo. Well at least the guy said I could return it if it didn’t work.
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