Yeehaaaaa!

All Saints is back on tonight :D

Today hip hop saved a life

Okay, I lied, but I did have The Herd playing when I arrived - I was only 19(Redgum).

Coming back from the fortnightly migration to Centrelink I spied a pair of legs sticking out from the trees and a pair of yapping dogs. The dogs lived a few houses away - we have constant barking contests because the fucker's will never shut up when I pass. As I got to the legs another guy showed up with his dog and tantrums were had by all the canines trying to establish dominance.

So I take a look and it's the old fellow who owns the dogs, face down beside the bushes trying to push himself up and doing a pretty good impersonation of Stephen Hawkings after having been pushed out of his wheelchair. I started talking to him and he was grunting (which isn't suprising out here, there's a lot of people who don't really truck with much English), the other guy had let his dog go, so now all three were dancing around sniffing arses.

We try and help the old boy up and he seems cognizant but pretty weak, we try and help him - one under each shoulder - to his house two doors down and then his staggering legs totally give out and he's gone. We lay him down. I throw my phone to the other guy and tell him to call and ambulance, check the old blokes vitals and roll him onto his side - he's breathing and got a pulse but he's not there and his false teeth look to be falling out.

Ambulance on the way we wait and suddenly the whole neighborhood is surrounding us asking what's going on. After answering the same question a few times I tell the next guy that shows up it was a drive-by shooting and he's a Mafia Don. We giggle a bit and the old fellow's breathing gets a bit stronger, he opens his eyes again and people are saying soothing things about how it's going to be alright.

The ambulance gets there in okay time and people rush out their explanations of what happened, which suprises me since the two of us who were there first barely get a chance to speak, finally we manage to tell one of them what actually happened. The old bloke is on the stretcher and his dog's running wild, I grab one and the guy who bought his own dog to the party grabs the other - snappy bastard takes a bit of skin off my wrist but I've got it - we shove them through the gate and snap it closed.

People are still standing around talking as the ambulance drives away, the other guy grabs his dog and heads one way, I head the other and the crowd is still there. I pop my headphone's back in to find a Hilltop Hoods song playing and walk away.

Damn that seemed surreal - and just a little scary when he just passed out, I thought the bastard was done for. Thankfully saving lives isn't a big part of my job description so it doesn't happen too often.

Creative Streak- Level Two

So, Only a day between posting, and i've already gone and done something else.

This time, i have been trying to get my desktop to a standard at which if i have any unexpected atomicans turn up on my doorstep i can go 'YEAH I KNOW, IT TOTALLY PWNS HEY'.

I first created a little apps toolbar which has games, programs, etc.
Heres a pic of it when i started, before the toolbar.
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/1400x1050_85hz.JPG

And heres a pic of the App's toolbar down the bottom:
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/AppsToolbar.JPG

I then got into the whole google sidebar thing. God, i hate that resource whore so much now:
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/GoogleSidebar.jpg

Then came this, out of nowhere i created this Wallpaper which still ranks up high in my 'Most favourite things ever made in the whole universe ever, ever'
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/CalabresePwn2560x1600.jpg
(I have resized versions of this if you wish to use it on a different aspect ratio. Leave a comment and i will get back to you).

Then came Y'z Dock and Y'z Shadow. This is the result:
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/CalabreseNewDesktop2.jpg

Right now, my desktop is pretty much the same, except for one thing.
I was chatting to Seal today on #atomicmpc and he told me about 'Samurize'.
I decided to go download it, and within 2 hours, i had created a sidebar, completely customised and looking fan-fucking-tastic. Here it is:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/dianacalabrese/MySidebar.JPG

So there we have it, another day of shit Calabrese did.


Oh, and also. Inbetween post's, i went and bought one of those 'temporary' carports from supercheap auto.
I made a time-lapse video of us setting it up... it doesn't look very fast, but its actually running at 20x the normal rate:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/dianacalabrese/Carport_Lapse.wmv


How's that?
Let me know. I'll be hanging around for comments, so please, if you do happen to read my post's leave a comment so i know someones reading them :)
Otherwise i'm sure i'll stop posting and go back to being a bludger again.

Cheers,
Calabrese

Calabrese's Creative Streak

Long time, no posts :(
Here we go


I dropped out of school at the end of 2005.

The HSC just wasn't my thing. Instead, I went for an Electrotechnology Pre-Apprenticship test.
I got the results for it, thing is, the course starts halfway through March. So i've had alot of spare time to myself...

First thing i decided to do was some photoshopping.
I took some static shots of varius different things, change a variable, then took another photo. I then took it into photoshop and did some things.

Heres the first set of what i did, Here, here, here and here OR: (may need to copy/paste links)
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/SeeThru2.jpg
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/WalkThruCorollaSmall.jpg
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/WalkThruCorollaSmall2.jpg
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/Test2small.jpg


Once i had done those i thought to myself.. What else could i do?

I thought, what about video?
I started to record random shit, and i started with this, OR:
http://users.tpg.com.au/atoa/Heaven.wmv

Then this. OR:
http://users.tpg.com.au/atoa/Download2.wmv

I then did this and this because i wanted to OR:
http://users.tpg.com.au/atoa/Test1small.wmv
http://users.tpg.com.au/atoa/CalabreseViewSmall.wmv

Mind you, each of these videos were done in a matter of minutes. It was something that just popped into my head and i decided to do it.


After all this i decided to relax and play game. I'd heard some good reveiws about GT Legends and i decided to download the demo to try it out.
After playing it with my MOMO for about an hour or so, i thought to myself, 'this game is good, but it needs something... something my momo doesnt have'. Then it hit me, A CLUTCH!

So there i was, off to the shed with the intention of building a clutch.
I cut a peice of fibreboard, grab an old joysick, and some Cat5 and ribbon cables.
My old joystick just happened to have a throttle on the side of it, (just a slider you move up and down for flight sims) so i took that idea, and ran with it.

I extended the slider with Cat5 cabling (right amount of wires for the job) and soldered up all the joints.
Once done, i ended up with this, OR:
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/Throttle_Clutch.JPG

The problem was that the cat5 wiring is very rigid and snaps easily, so i ended up using an old IDE ribbon cable from the control, to a point where it would be better to join with the cat5 where it wouldnt be moving as much.

The next day, i started assembly. I wasnt going to do anything permanent as it was just something to do for fun, so i just grabbed an old peice of aluminium, cut it to size and bent it a little for a better feel.
I then mounted it onto the peice of wood i had cut and checked to see if it was swivelling ok.
All good so far.

Next thing was to connect the actual pedal to the slider.
I drilled a 1mm hole through the slider tab and did 2 holes of the same diameter on the pedal.
I then grabbed a peice of rigid steel wire and looped it through the hole on the pedal and slider.
Worked great.
One problem... It wont return!

Off the the peg basket i was.
Grabbed 2 pegs and pulled out the inner spring.
Drilled 4 holes next to eachother on the pedal to create a slot to accomodate the spring, and did the same on the wood at the bottom, and the same on the opposite side.

Fantastic!
Heres some pics of the clutch so far, remember that this is only a prototype, as to see if it would actually work. Here, and here. Or:
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/Prototype1.JPG
http://calabrese.sphosting.com/Prototype2.JPG

Next thing, In-Game testing and calibration.

1. GT Legends
This was fantastic, picked up the control straight away and configured itself properly
When i first played, the clutch was very high up and soft, so i just set the deadzone up a bit so it would engage quicker.
Results? All i could do was race with a big fat smile on my face! It was tops, especially in GT L where i could stall the car, and clutch start it while rolling down the hill again :P

2. Live For Speed S2
This game has to be my all time fav. Great cars, nice graphics, realistic handling and fantastic multiplayer action.
One problem with this game is that you cannot stall the car in the game. For some reason, even with the auto-clutch and all help 'off', when i stopped the car it would sit there with the clutch on.
Apart from this, the gaming exp. was great. Being able to slowly let the clutch slip and you drop down gear, or ride the clutch while accelerating up a hill was great fun.

I am actually about to rebuild the clutch tomorrow, ill start by actually attatching it to the side of my existing pedals, and probably having the clutch fulcrum 10-15 cm below the actual footrest. This way it will feel more realistic.

I also need to revise the springs. I need them to be strong and hard, even harder than the Brake on the momo pedals which can be tough to get to the floor.


And there we have it. About a weeks worth of creativity from my mind.

If theres anything you think i should do, or something that may help me out, please leave a comment so i know :)

I'll try keep posting about my progress on a few other projects i will start soon, but for the time being, Cheers.

Calabrese.

Nearly There!

17 days to go...supposedly.

Please make it come early!

Precautions for the IT serveroom

Hi All,
I know its been a long while since I posted in here, but I have been flat fucking stick with my new job and shit. Anyway, I took time out today to lecture on the importance of thinking through your battery backup systems for a server room, after an incident occured at work last night.

The power in our office neighborhood failed for some hours last night, but we have a UPS powered off another UPS, which provides ample runtime for just about everything in the server room. This is approximatley 25 - 30 machines of varying sizes, plus the secondary UPS itself. (The primary UPS is downstairs).

The UPS worked flawlessly, and kept all of the systems running for several hours before giving out. The problem was that no one was there to shut anything down gracefully and more importantly, A UPS DOES NOT RUN THE AIRCON...

When I came into the office (which is almost totally empty since everyone else has relocated), I could smell rotten eggs, which I assumed was some kind of sewerage or plumbing problem. As I got closer to the server room though, the smell got worse.
I noticed all of the backup drive lights were in a state that suggests they were not finished backup (bad sign) and the UPS was beeping with a red error light.

The situation was that the servers had continued to run for a couple of hours with no airconditioning, and the room had become so hot, the UPS inside the server room batteries had balooned out to a point where we had to pull apart the UPS chassis to remove the modules.. two of the batteries had split their casing and the smell was because of the acid... and let me tell you, it stank like crap.

The moral of the story is, make sure your bloody servers shut down when the UPS kicks in for more then a few minutes.. this could have gone a lot worse then it did.

Cheers,
Darrkon

Still Alive!

Yar yar. It's official! I have a stress, leading to anxiety, based depression *breaks out the streamers and party poppers* . Stress, my Kryptonite, had finally lowered all of my natural defences and whammo, all of the stuff that I could normally do and cope with, have become way too much.

But yeah reading what I have been posting for a while would have made that probably patently clear.

Citalopram hydrobromide.
The chemical name for citalopram hydrobromide is (±)-1-[3-(dimethyl amino)propyl]-1-(4-fluorophenyl)-1,3-dihydroisobenzofuran-5-carbonitrile hydrobromide.

C20H21FN2O,HBr
Molecular weight: 405.3
Cas No.: 59729-32-7