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my guitar |
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I'm
currently learning guitar. Teaching myself slowly
from a book, with considerable assistance from Orlando.
Orlando is a completely kick arse guitar player,
he just played a gig of Hendrix and Bob Marley covers.
My guitar is a semi-acoustic steel string cutaway,
finished in a beautiful red. It's the nicest guitar
I've ever played (I haven't played that many). I
got a really good deal on it at Music City (www.musiccitysydney.com.au),
and I recommend them for all your musical needs
- the staff are friendly and helpful, and the prices
are very competitive.
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my car |
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I
drive a red 2 litre N14 Pulsar. It has mag wheels
and a sports muffler. I recently installed a high
flow air filter and four new sony speakers for the
CD player. I also put in some nice clean synthetic
oil and upgraded the spark plug leads. I installed
the fog lights on the front myself, along with a
groovy switch on the dash.
For
a while I had my homemade car amplifier wired into
the CD player, powering some enourmous house speakers
stuffed in the boot. The amplifier has now taken
up residence in my bedroom, attached to my computer
and running off the mains.
The
amp is 30W RMS on 2 channels. It's powered by a
12V supply. The enourmous capacitors you can see
in the picture were obtained from the University
of Sydney physics department (thanks Chris!) and
are placed across the input power supply. They reduce
irregularity/ripple in the supply and provide a
faster response to changing amplifier power demands
than a car battery can. This means the amplifier
can bust out some louder bass with no lag as the
battery/alternator picks up the load.
The attachment on the left side of the box is a
speaker level to line level signal converter. The
attachment on the right is an extraction fan. The
grill on top covers a large ventilation hole that
sits over the amplifier's heatsinks. |
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my computer |
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This
is my aging computer. I say aging only because it's getting
a bit old in computer terms (maybe 3 years now?), it still
serves me very well and has never let me down.
It's an Athlon 1.2GHz, with 512MB of RAM, 60GB HDD, DVD,
48x12x48x CD-RW, Optical Mouse, Logitech Internet Keyboard,
Philips 17" monitor, with a Lexmark 600dpi Laser
printer.
The philips monitor may not be the largest in the world,
but it's certainly easy to look at. I've spent many long
days and nights staring at it.
I do a lot of things on my computer. Programming (Java,
C++, etc), web design (duh), game playing (warcraft 3,
monkey island, etc), among other things. I wrote my thesis
on this machine too.
In case you're wondering, although you're probably not,
my thesis was on "Fault Tolerant Replicated Enterprise
JavaBeans Using Transis". Enterprise JavaBeans are
software components used mainly in large corporate/enterprise
systems that need to be spread over multiple machines.
Transis is a process group messaging system designed to
allow the reliable and efficient dispatch of messages
over a network to multiple recipients. |
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photography |
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Before
I got my digital camera I used to snap away endlessly
with the Pentax in the picture. It's a Program A. I chose
it mainly because it looks very cool (stylish black),
has aperture preview, can operate in a number of modes
(manual, full automatic, etc), and came with a spiffy
macro lens (I got it 2nd hand).
Lately I've been cutting back on the cost of processing
by making use of the Casio Exilim I bought myself
for christmas. The Exilim is the worlds smallest
digital camera with LCD. It fits neatly in your
pocket and is practically credit card size. Check
it out at exilim.casio.com.
Most of the photos on this site were taken with the Exilim. |
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saying d'oh |
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the other day my sister was kind enough to point
out that I'm the only person since 1995 to still
be saying d'oh. She was also happy to suggest that
perhaps I sound like a massive dork every time I
say it. Hmm. D'oh. |
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"bad" television |
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Most
of my friends know me as a connoisseur of bad late night
television. I think most of the best shows are on late,
because the general public has shocking taste.
Some of my scorned favourites (or past favourites) are:
1. Renegade.
2. Star Trek (DS9, TNG, Voyager).
3. Babylon 5.
4. Xena Warrior Princess.
5. Stargate SG1.
6. Walker Texas Ranger.
You may have noticed the trend towards sci-fi. I like
watching sci-fi. I used to read a lot of science fiction
too. If you're looking for a good book I recommend Ender's
Game (and others in the series) by Orson Scott Card. I
read the series a few years ago now, but remember being
truly enthralled. The author received both Hugo and Nebula
awards for his work.
If you're looking for a long read, you might try the Amtrak
Wars series by Patrick Tilley (www.patrick-tilley.com).
The six books are highly addictive. |
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vegetarian lasagne |
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| Stay
tuned for a recipe and photograph of my favourite
food. |
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