Nick Taylors blog

Living in the US coupled with never watching ads (commercials for US readers) on TV means I’ve not seen a PG Tips advert for years. I’ve been known for taking my tea seriously, but I’ve never taken it this far. Not yet anyway, though I see eBay does have some tea-monkeys available…

So allow me to share this with you, it’s over a minute long, so go and put the kettle on before you play it!

PG Tips Advert from Nick Taylor on Vimeo.

After shelling out the dough on a new TV, it’s worth spending a little more getting it properly calibrated. On a recommendation, I made a call to Chip Moran of Maestro Home Systems (based out of Castle Rock, CO), and he came out and spent 2 or 3 hours calibrating the Sony. While he only did a couple of the inputs (the Tivo and the PS3), it made a great improvement. I’m seeing better blacks and a wider range of contrast, the colors are spot-on and viewing 1080p content is just sweet. For the geeks, the report makes an interesting read.

If you’ve got a decent display and care out accurate color and contrast, you should get this done. I have no problem recommending Chip to do the work, he did a great job and is a top bloke!

Sound & Vision magazine has a good article on the subject.

link here blah

Lowendmac list a few applications and gives advice on how to keeping your mac running super fast.

read more | digg story

I just saw this BBC News article.

No one else was hurt but police have reported the Bugatti driver for driving without due care and attention.

Driving without due care and attention! On a Surrey B road! In the rain! And in a Veyron! What was he thinking?

Makes Alex’s F430 crash look like a bent bumper in a Lada!

Yesterday we went to the Denver RV Show. We’re getting a truck soon, probably a 1 ton Dodge Ram DRW and after last years RV trip we’ve decided to get a camper. Truck Campers, also known as slide-ins, fit in the bed of a pickup. For us, it’s a ideal solution as 1) we can use the pickup sans camper, 2) we can get to more places of the beaten track and 3) we can tow one of the Land Rovers in an enclosed trailer and still be in the weight limits.

As with anything you buy, there are loads of options from loads of vendors. I like the Northern Lite campers as they have a great build quality and are made from two molded fiberglass shells. The hardware is stainless steel and the internal fittings are built and fitted properly. We also liked the pop-up type, as that lowers your profile (both head-on and sideways), which keeps the center of gravity lower and lessens the effect of the wind. That said, you do give up storage space and I’m not so sure that they’d last as well. But they are little over half the price of the “fixed” truck campers. Bigfoot seems to do a nice range too, though the ventilation doesn’t seem to be as good as the Northern Lite (we try to avoid a/c if we can).

Just like the Land Rovers, there are loads of options for modifying and accessorisng the camper. One page of ideas is here.

“Buttercup” has been unhappy lately, simply not wanting to start unless the battery charger had been connected for a while. Like most Defenders has some “auxiliary electrics” – for that read “unlabeled rats-nest of wiring”. So after a few hours of tracing cabling and testing the battery we now have 1) labeled wiring and 2) a broken battery. The battery is an 11 month-old Deka Intimidator 9A34M (PDF link) AGM battery. Now I didn’t break the battery, and the good folks at Hensley Battery in Denver quickly replaced it. There were a couple of issues with some of the permanently connected accesories, but nothing an FIA-rated kill-switch can’t solve.

I’m also using the opportunity to install two batteries. This will increase the electrical performance, including more winching power and better starting from cold. Rather than install in parallel, I’m installing a Hellroaring Technologies battery isolator/combiner. I’m installing a single BIC95300B, and you can read all about that on their webpage! I’ll get around to installing this over the next few days.

I also noticed that some of the relays were positioned badly, picking up loads of crud in the battery compartment. At least so I don’t forget, the relay used for the rear worklamp is a Hella fused 15A relay, 4RA 003 510-36 aka 87108 in the US.

So it’s that time of year again, and as the 90 is old, permanent 4WD and short wheelbase, it has to go to the DMV tech center to get tested. There are no dynamometers in Colorado short enough for the 90″ wheelbase (ok, anoraks, 92.9″). That means I get to go and have a chat with the guys at the tech center, who are all “car guys”, so that’s a lot of fun. I think it’s more of a formality than a pass/fail situation, but so far (fingers crossed), we’ve always passed…

I’ve just migrated some of my domains to Media Temple, and I forgot that my published travel plans calendar would break. As I’m using Google Apps for Your Domain quite a bit for email, I thought I’d have a go at using the Google Calendar to publish my travel plans. The problem was sync’ing both my iCal and my gCal.

Then I found Spanning Sync. It’s still in beta, and I had to reinstall it once to get it to work, but it’s working well now. I can update calendars on either my iCal on any of my Macs or edit the gCal on line and all changes are nicely sync’ed up.

He said p-ness, uh-huh, huh-huh.
Shutup Beavis!

The new TV arrived! All hail to it’s 52 inchness! 1080p rocks.
Makes you want glasses watching 480i (SDTV), ugh.

It’s a Sony KDL 52XBR3, details from Sonystyle here.

The Chameleon from Salamander Designs is a custom cablnet for AV equipment. Not only does it make the cabling easy to manage (ok, so on the right I have to install the X360 and PS3, hence the mess), it has thermistor controlled fans at the rear (very quiet), a custom mount for a Panamax surge suppressor and vents in the bottom and rear. It’s also wonderful wood with a great build quality. 52″ LCD TV arrives tomorrow!