Originally uploaded by paulfarrow
After putting a power meter on my home entertainment system realised that my equipment was using a lot of power 350 watts at peak. So thought I would do some investigation into a recent low power mini-itx board from Zotac. I chose this one because it was dual core and it has a pci-express card on it which is good for a cable tuner I am looking at to use in it for when I am in the USA.
Ordered the board from mini-itx.com as they are the only people I could find doing this board. It came and everything looked fine except that the fan isnt fitted and there are no holes for it on the cpu heat sink. After talking with mini-itx they told me to screw it to the heatsink even though it doesnt have any predetermined holes. I also noticed that the manuals that came with it – the quick installation and the main manual werent for this board. Which was a great start.
I had already converted my old system from Vista to Windows 7. I then put the new Atom board into my case and started it up. Immediately I was getting checksum errors and just stalled. I was like oh dear must be memory related so twiddled about a bit with the memory until I found the culprit. From going from 1 board to the other, one stick of my 2Gb DDR2 had decided to die.
Not a real problem as really 2Gb of memory should be ok for what that board needs to do. So once over that everything came up fine. I use this as my media center so mainly playing music and watching tv (SD & HD blu-ray).
Initial reaction was that its great. So lets put it through its paces, watching blu-ray with fast moving action – didnt phase it at all everything was running fine at 17% cpu and wattage was about 270 watts so it was already saving me about 70 watts of power. I then decided to get it to record two tv stations and watch a recorded program at the same time.
It did this as well although cpu was about going from about 50 to 75%. And when navigating through the menu it was a bit sluggish although livable. All in all it is great because it will save me money and the Windows 7 media center is a little better than the old Vista one.
FURTHER UPDATE: having recently bought UP on blu-ray I have noticed something that is important for this board. Some of the later blu-ray’s are recorded in MPEG4 – I have tested UP and The Taking Of Pelham 123, they are both recorded in MPEG4 unlike I Am Legend which is VC1.
MPEG4 is currently running at around 47% cpu usage which is fine on its own but if (like I was at the time of trying to play UP) you are recording tv at the same time its just a bit too much for the little NVIDIA ION board which then runs at 100% and frames and audio drop on the play back of the blu-ray movie. Its a shame because its a great board and just what I want when the machine is on all the time but its a trade off between performance and cost of running the equipment.
Overall I am still impressed even though there are these obvious trade offs.
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Rick and Me At El Rickys Mexican Restaurant
Originally uploaded by paulfarrow
Yesterday I got invited around a very good friend of mines – Rick Marden. It was excellent we had fajitas and they were good. Also had to have a photo with the hat !!.
It was such a great send off for my emigration to the USA. It ended up with him giving me a bottle of Pol Roger which was Winston Churchill’s favourite champagne and a special edition scalextric mini cooper from the Italian Job. So kind, thank you.
It was just great and I will miss him and his wife Judy a lot.
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Originally uploaded by paulfarrow
First snow of the Winter hits us here in Guildford, Surrey. Its not as bad as last year but looks like a substantial amount of snow none the less.
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Buff and Cooper in front of Tower Bridge, London
Originally uploaded by paulfarrow
We decided that it was about time Buff brought her son Cooper over to England. So they came last week and we had a blast. We went to the Bluebell Railway, Birdworld, The London Eye, Hamleys Toy Shop, Winter Wonderland and generally out and about in England.
Hopefully next time Cooper ‘AND’ Olivia will come visit me.
Lets hope so.
Originally uploaded by paulfarrow
Popped out to the states last weekend for Paula and Ben Herz’s wedding and what a lovely event it was. They looked so happy. While I was out there though visited Neal’s BBQ in Thomson, Georgia. Now the reason that we took ourselves out there was because it had recently been featured on Jamies American Road Trip. It was the recent series from Jamie Oliver and he visited Neal’s on the show.
It was the best BBQ that I had ever tasted. And Olivia our little girl went straight in and started talking to a couple of guys at a table which one of them turned out to be the owner. They were so hospitable and the prices are so reasonable – all children 8 and under eat for free and the main prices are about 7 dollars per plate.
I had to try a bit of everything, so had the chicken, pork, ribs, beans, green beans, potato salad and a glass of tea. Oh and the lovely hash which was one of the things that Jamie helped make while he was there.
It was delicious and will definitely go back. Completely recommend it and think the locals love it too as it was really really busy.
Thanks guys for your hospitality it was great talking to y’all. Cant wait to come back and try your fish.
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- Refinance the balloon payment.
- Sell the car.
- Hand it back to BMW.
Didnt really want to refinance the car as there are a few things going on in my life right now which dictates that I dont want to take on any more debt.
Selling the car privately is a hassle and always will be.
So the only option was to hand it back to BMW, was going to do that when a friend of mine recommended Stoughton Car Sales in Guildford and Godalming.
Rang them and talked to a chap called Paul, he was immediately interested and in the end reached a price that was good for the both of us and did the deed.
So its finally gone and I am now car less. Its back to two wheels for me for the moment. For the details of Stoughton Car Sales (Surrey) please click the image below….
The ribs eventually arrived which took some time after ordering but hey they were busy so I allowed them this. The food was dumped and we weren’t even given cutlery or napkins to start with. After asking these were provided for, how could they forget cutlery !!!
The ribs didnt look marinaded in anything except some generic BBQ sauce which looked like it had been on for days. The ribs were tough and not really that pleasant at all. They didnt taste of the marinade that I had chosen. Was very disappointed indeed. At the end of the meal I couldnt find any wipes to clean my hands which you would expect to be available being a rib restaurant.
On getting back to England was so disappointed with the restaurant decided I was going to let the owners of the chain know of my disappointment with the Augusta branch. So fired up the Sticky Fingers website and filled in a page detailing my experience, pressed the button. Then got emails back from their site saying that it couldn’t find the host stickyfingers.com from its mail server – agghghghghgh.
This is obviously a restaurant chain in decline, wouldn’t recommend it at all. Although I guess a lot of people are happy with second rate ribs as it did have its busy periods.
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Flags a flying next to us on the beach
Originally uploaded by paulfarrow
Spent the last two weeks with Buff, the kids and her family down at Edisto Beach. Was very relaxing, Edisto beach is down on Edisto Island in South Carolina in the USA.
It is a very non commercialised beach with just one supermarket (The Piggly Wiggly) on it and a handful of gift shops, restuarants and bars.
Weather was fab the whole two weeks, top 30’s. Saw heaps of wild life, from a shark, dolphins, pelicans, dear and a raccoon.
We stayed in a beach house called “Sea Cloud” which was very nice except for annoying beeping on the oven that the owner didn’t get fixed. Even though we repeatedly told him about it.
It took us about 2.5 hours to get to Edisto from Augusta.
The kids had a blast as its the sort of beach that you can just let them do their own thing. Apart from a couple of jelly fish stings the kids had a great time. Including the big kid Farrow, it was excellent. Thanks go to the guy with the chewing tobacco who generously gave it up to rub into the places that had been stung to help the kids.
I did quite a lot of paddling in the sea, built some sandcastles with the children which was nice. It was quite windy at times which made it ideal for flying kites which we did. We had a butterfly and a spiderman kite flying during the 2 weeks away.
Buff, I and the kids did a little bit of cycling around the island and there are well designed cycle lanes so that you can cycle without being involved with the traffic. Although saying “traffic” there was none, any way.
Buff’s dad Terry had taken their golf kart down there to get around and this seemed to be the preferred way to get around Edisto Beach as there are more golf karts than regular cars driving around Edisto.
I cooked a little and the range of fresh seafood available is excellent. This helped, as I produced some excellent fish cakes (if I dont say so myself) which the kids wolfed down, even after saying “fish is gross”.
Buff and I did sneak off to a drinking hole (without the kiddos) not far from the beach house called “Whaleys”. We sampled the food their with which I had a Sarah BLT and Buff had the rock oysters, was excellent and the rather pleasant eccentric older chap behind the bar served us Mango Madras’s. We did get a little rapped by our party as they thought something had happened to us as we were gone 2.5 hours just for a trip to the Piggly Wiggly supermarket.
All in all it was an excellent holiday / vacation and there was just one major problem which was that I had to come back, to England.
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Originally uploaded by paulfarrow
Well saw that the cafe in Bramley had re-opened after the last owners had left, so thought being a lover of cafe’s I would go and try it today.
It is situated on the high street in Bramley. Initial impressions: lovely smell of hot food and it was busy. I opted for the Bramley special which was a sausage, 2 pieces of bacon, fried egg, fried slice, 2 pieces of black pudding, baked beans, hash brown, bread and butter. I also ordered a mug of hot tea and the whole lot came to £6.20.
The delivery of the food and drink was a little different to most other cafe’s I have been in around this area because the others tend to give you your drinks as you pay. Here you pay, sit down and the tea is brought out to you. I guess this approach is a little posher but personally I like to get my drink there and then as you can drink and read your paper if you have one. It took a little while for the tea to arrive but was quickly followed by my food.
Initial reaction – it looked good, food was hot and fresh.
You can always tell something about a cafe by the type of sausage they have on offer and this sausage was a very meaty one, it was delicious. Minor detail here but could have done with a bit more bread and it would have been nice if it was on a plate because there was just too much stuff for the size of the plates they were offering.
Value for money – I would say it was a little more expensive than I am used to but it was nice to go to a cafe out in the sticks. It was nice so I am happy to pay a little extra.
Would I go back – Yes I would go back, probably not as often as my favourite cafe in Leatherhead but I would go back.
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Harry after he woke up.
Originally uploaded by dandj1025
Another photo I found taken in and around Augusta – hes so cute….
