Hard Wired

We are beginning to get used to glorious weather with around 24° during the day and low teens overnight.  There has been plenty of sunshine too.  But that is about to end with a change of wind direction and temperatures heading to the more normal 22° or so during the day.  Still nice mind you but those extra couple of degrees make quite a difference.  Showers are predicted for overnight tonight.

The sale of the laptop off Ebay fell through.  It was later described to me as a display model and failed a final test prior to posting.  I thought I read the eBay advert closely but obviously not closely enough.

Another brew went on yesterday and a trip to the home brew shop showed people had left $150 on my tab down there for any help I had given with their Android TV devices.  It is now $100 lighter with the purchase of numerous 'mixers' and new cans of brew.  I am right for the next two or three months now.

The refurbished DLink Powerline connectors turned up and have been pressed into service.  This now gives me a 'hardwire' connection for the transference of files between my "Cloud Drive" in the 'office' and my Nvidia Shield box in the lounge room.  So in future any buffering would be caused by a poor internet link rather than a local WiFi issue.

The Powerline units themselves are a little bulky and should be plugged directly into a power point on the wall.  Being as bulky as they are, it can be difficult to plug a powerboard plug beside it.  You need one of the older style power plugs or else they don't fit.

The Powerlines use existing electrical cabling to connect devices around the home.  The model I bought has 'passthrough' which means you can still use the power point for electrical connections though I wouldn't press them into service in case it diminishes the connection.  But I guess they would be fine.

The photo above shows what I mean.

I managed to find a couple of old internet cables to use at Computer Club last weekend which really are a bit of an eyesore.  Needless to say I have two new cables coming from China and are due in a few weeks. The cables are required to complete the link between devices from the Powerline units.

We are off to Headland Golf Club for lunch today and taking Keith and his sister with us.  It should be great.  I am not sure they get out a lot as she is still recovering from fairly major surgery.

Long Bike Ride

Despite being the distance of a reasonable 17 or so kilometres, this morning's bike ride seemed substantially longer.  I was still feeling the effects of a torrid time watching footy on TV the day before and enjoying some drinks with a mate from down south.

In a previous lifetime when we lived in Melbourne, every Saturday during the footy season would see me head to our nearest AFL ground.  The ground was Waverley and I was there for the first ever game and I was there for the last ever game played there.

We were a group of great mates who went to the footy every Saturday and had laughs, drinks and even saw some great footy games as well.

As with all things, especially when we shifted interstate, we tended to drift apart, keeping up with the occasional reading of a blog or even the odd email.  So when one of those mates, Keith, said he was in town for a few weeks it was too good a chance to catch up.

As the damage on the fence below shows, we had a great time.  We watched several footy matches on TV and even saw both our teams win.  In between time we had copious amounts of my home brew, the occasional Sambucca and a few other mixers.

We barracked at the footy on the TV, chatted away reliving old times, caught up on happenings with others from the group and had a great time together.  Keith is in town for another week or two as he sits with his sister who is recuperating after a recent trip for surgery at the new Sunshine Coast hospital.

Trish mentioned to me that the Arts Centre Association was looking for a new laptop computer and could I keep my eye open for something suitable.  On the weekend eBay had a 15% off sale on.  On eBay I found a Lenovo 15" laptop with an i7 processor and 8GB of ram for $799.  With the 15% off, the price dropped to $680 delivered!  Now that is a super deal!  It should be delivered later this week.

I too was a little busy with eBay and I grabbed a couple of refurbished "Powerlinks".  Powerlinks utilize your electrical wiring around the house to transfer files from device to device.

The speed of transfer of files via wifi is limited by the slower speed of the wifi itself.  I would expect files to be moved around the house from device to device using the powerlinks at up to around 6 times faster than via wifi.  And at around half the new price of a new pair of Powerlinks, it seemed a good deal.

So a huge video file of top notch quality, with excellent audio, and stored on my Cloud Drive will soon have a wired connection to the Nvidia Shield in the lounge room ensuring perfect playback.

With the turmoil surrounding some Kodi addons due to legal action and the demise of the largest store of addons, TVAddons, there has been a bit of a backlash as developers now move the addons away from TVAddons to safer places to house their products.  This has kept me busy as well as people report to me they are beginning to experience some problems with their Android TV boxes as addons do not update with the latest links.

It is now a couple of weeks since TVAddons closed down and the dust is beginning to settle with new repositories being found by developers and put to work.  Keeping up with which addon has gone where has kept life interesting!

But it is great fun!

Rain Has Gone

We are again waking to clear blue skies with a top temp of around 23° most days after low teens overnight.  In other words, things are getting back to normal for this part of the world at this time of the year.

Last week was cool and showery, so much so I only managed one or two bike rides for the week.  But today another 17 or so K's and looking at around 100k's for this week.  It is a little blowy outside with huge surf on the coast.  The wind means 50% of the ride is hard work and 50% is straight forward.

I think the cardiac guy I see is looking to buy a new car as he referred me for an Echo Cardiogram which I had yesterday.  I am in my 70's and you would expect things to not be quite 100% which is the case.  The guy doing the Echo said as much in that there is a slight leakage in the heart valves which is almost normal for someone my age.  $220 thank you to be told there really isn't a problem.  The guy said he wouldn't even grade the leakage as "mild".

The one big benefit was where the Echo was done is just around the corner from the Headland Golf Club and sensational Chicken Parmas on the lunch menu!  Lunch was the highlight of the day.  The view from where you eat at the Golf Club is great as you can see.  That's Mooloolabah in the distance.  Those clouds you can see in the photo stay offshore through out the day leaving us with sparkling sunshine.

Temporary crowns continue to do their job OK and the front lawn was mown the other day.

Most of my time has been spent playing around with the disappearance of the major source of illegal addons from a website known as TV Addons following a threat of legal action.  The addons once installed provide links to movies and TV shows and allow them to be streamed over the internet to your TV via the internet.

I am not a big streamer of this stuff.  I find the quality varies a far bit and you never really know just how much of your monthly internet download allocation you are using.  As I have said before, a one hour TV show in good quality could vary from between 150mb to 800mb as a file size depending on the file type.

Last night we watched a two hour movie and it was 600mb in the x265 format.  To stream the same movie in the same quality could have been anything from 600mb as a x265 to 2GB (2000+mb) as an avi.  I have the time and the resources to hunt for the smaller file size and bettwr quality and get those.  There are actually some websites which now specialize in these smaller file types (x265).

The top addon for streaming stuff used to be stored on the TV Addons website and when TV Addons went, so to did this top addon.  It has just recently found a new storage spot so updates have to occur again so the addon 'home' can be updated and then the addon itself updated to everyone's device.  These updates can occur every two weeks or so.

But it's great fun!

A Dampish Week

I have managed one bike ride of around 18k's this week, such has been the weather and rain across the time.  With the daily rain there has been an accompanying strong wind.  Neither feature of the weather is conducive to bike riding I am afraid.

But I have bottled one brew and immediately put another brew on.  When the weather is a bit unpleasant it isn't too much of a chore to bottle and then get another brew on straight away.

And for a guy who has is reasonably fit I have seen the Heart Specialist, the Ear Nose and Throat Guy (ENT) and the Dentist.  It is two years since I had a bit of a scare with the old heart and shortness of breath.  This turned out not to be a heart problem but a mild case of Asthma which is now under medication.  Shortness of breath is no longer a concern!

But there is a minor problem, a problem which many specialists now consider 'normal' for a person of my age according to the Heart Doctor.  So it is off for another Echo Cardiagram next week.

The ENT guy was for my annual checkup and tidy up.  I got an excellent report from him. 
 
Currently I am nursing a tooth with a 'temporary crown' through to the next Health Cover year which begins July 1st when a permanent crown will be fitted.  However in the meantime another tooth which had an extensive filling several years ago, has not stood up to the rigors of my eating and it has collapsed as well.

It too urgently requires a crown too.  These crowns are very expensive in this part of the world and now I am up for a second one, an expense we had not counted on. One is out of this year's benefits, the other will be from the new year when it begins on July 1st thus giving us the best financial outcome possible.

TV Addons, the website which provides around 60% of the addons I suggest for people on their Android TV Boxes via Kodi, has gone to ground and removed all services.  Their website has gone and the links no longer work!  It seems they have been threatened with legal action.  As with many things, where this is a will there is a way and much of this week has been spent finding new ways!

And as with many things, TV Addons will reappear in slightly different guise in a few days time and all will be 100% again!

I pay for a service called Real Debrid.  It is relatively inexpensive and provides live full links to movies, TV Shows and other downloads across the web.  Right now the most dangerous way of getting video files is via torrents known also as person to person (P2P).  ISP providers can tell those of its customers who are using person to person to get their movie files illegally.

But with Real Debrid you just paste the torrent link into their website and they download the file for you.  This means you cannot be spotted by your ISP for participating in illegal behaviour.  Usually P2P is the slowest of all methods of downloading.  As the screenshot above shows, Real Debrid downloaded my file at over 4MB per second which is around double the internet speed I have access to!  Right now I am downloading the file from Real Debrid to my PC at around 1.7MB per second!

Hopefully the bulk of the rain has now passed and we can get back on with bike rides, walking, mowing lawns, cleaning pools etc.  Across this week we have had around 60mls of rain over 4 or 5 days.  The days have been cool but the nights warmer than usual for this time of year.

The Arts centre Fair last weekend made around $9,000+ profit and slightly pipped the previous year's effort.  Everyone is rightly proud of themselves.

The Wet Weather Has Hit

It was one of those mornings when you said that we have had some rain but it isn't raining now.  Then you step outdoors into very light drizzle.  We don't get these kind of days very often here on the Sunshine Coast.  usually when it rains it pours down cats and dogs.  Well today it is a little wet, a day too wet to ride but OK to "Bottle Wash".  So as the photo shows, the bottles have been washed and are 'drying' while the bike is parked and looking all alone.

I doubt the bottles will really dry at all today.

So after sorting the Community Association Newsletter over the earlier part of the week the rest has been a little quieter.  I did help a friend get his wireless printer setup.  What should have been easy and straight forward turned out out to be a complicated task.  The friend is beginning to have some problems with his memory so when it came to logging in to his computer he didn't know his login.  It was written on a piece of paper stuck to the monitor.  Then the login wouldn't work, and after 3 goes we had the option to create a new login.

But eventually it was all done.

Someone is suing one of the major stores of Kodi addons and they have caused it to go 'offline'.  This means you cannot install or update around 60% of all the best addons for Kodi.  Time will sort it out as addon developers find a new home in a new country for their addons.

Trish fell asleep in her chair last night around 7:30pm watching TV. As Secretary of the Arts Centre Association and in the middle of their giant Mid Year Fair, she has been very busy organizing.  Needless to say she loves it.  She was out for much of Thursday, all of Friday and Saturday as well as today Sunday.  Tomorrow will be finalizing all the unsold items. sorting the cash and tying up all those loose ends.

I still find it difficult to fully understand just how small the world has become.  A friend is currently in Bali staying not far from where we stayed.  I told him about some great Pork Belly we had.  I got an email from him yesterday asking could I remember where we had it.  Out came Google Maps, and then Street View and within 10 minutes he had the name of the restaurant and directions to it.

I then got another email a couple of hours later agreeing the Pork Belly there was very good indeed.  I remember back to our time in Malaysia in the late 70's.  My mother used to send the Monday Edition of the Herald Sun over by mail from Australia so I could get all the footy scores and the footy news.  It would arrive around Thursday and then it was passed on to others hungry for news.  Nowadays if overseas you can watch a game 'live' on your tablet or PC.

So that is about the latest of our news.  Kate, Arj and family are spending the 'long weekend' in Alice Springs and around Ayres Rock.  Again we get updates hourly via Facebook!  Thanks Arj for the photo I have 'borrowed' from Facebook!.

Times have sure changed!

Getting Back To Normal

The cars are all running OK, a couple of items I bought online have arrived, I have done my bike ride, but most importantly, Trish is back at home safe and sound and straight into her involvement with the Arts Centre Association.

Last night was the Community Association Public Meeting night which I chaired with the local Police, reps from Crime Stoppers and the local Federal Parliament member.  So after collecting Trish from Brisbane earlier in the afternoon it was back home to sort out things ready for the meeting.  Being mid year, those committee members with caravans are all further north enjoying sunshine leaving only a couple of us to put up chairs, erect tables and get things ready for the meeting. Photo above.

This morning a summary of last night's public meeting has to go onto the website to keep people up to date.  On top of this we have a Newsletter (which I put together) which has to be sorted by Friday ready for printing next week.  It is actually easier to put the Newsletter together with last night's meeting report and then put the same text and photos online on the Community Association website.

So all that is now done and dusted and at last I can sit quietly and surf the internet.

And I squeezed a 15 kilometre bike ride in this morning as well!

When you buy an Android TV Box from overseas quite often it comes with a US power plug and a very basic remote control.  People need to have an adapter so the overseas plug can be connected to an Aussie power point!  Sometimes when setting android TV boxes up for other people I wish I had power plug adapters and mini keyboards ready for them as well.

Usually you buy this stuff online and wait a few weeks for delivery.  They don't mind paying me whatever it costs to have what they want there and ready to go.  Via a website I keep an eye on called OzBargain, every now and again I find gadgets I reckon may be handy.  The Xiaomi Power Strip above and the Mini Keyboard below were both 'specials' I found and bought.

They both arrived yesterday.  I had almost forgotten about them.  Both are good quality items but sold for lower prices as they were both "Special Promotions".  The power strip is from China but has very good safety specifications.  As you can see it accepts various international power plugs.  The mini keyboard is backlit and also has a built in battery charged by USB.  For these sorts of features you would expect to pay well over $20 each where as both were around $15 or $16 delivered.

And I now have a spare power strip and a basic (but working fine) mini keyboard for people who may want them to work with their newly acquired android TV box.  So to cut a long story short, I will get my money back no problems.

It was particularly blowy on the bike ride this morning with the southerly keeping things cool.  We have around 23° today as our top and low teens as an overnight low.  There is hardly a cloud in the sky and it is delightful ....... out of the wind!

Easier With It!

I managed 15.5k's on the bike this morning (Thursday).  Trish is saying it is cold down in Melbourne.  That same cold is available up here as well but mainly due to the windchill factor.  My Samsung tablet said this morning "Is 12.5° but feels like 6.5°".  With that in mind I delayed setting off for the bike ride till well after 9 am and managed 15.5k's all up.  I reckon around 5 or 6 of those K's were into the wind today and it is blowing quite steadily!  So it is much easier with the wind than riding against it!

Yesterday was 'repair day'.  The car is dropping some oil so it went in to be checked over today (Thursday) and any repairs are to be carried out.  I had been without the whipper snipper for about 5 weeks owing to fuel line leakages and them stuffing up the repair.  Then I had to wait yet another week or so before it was all done.  As a show of good faith they cleaned it up and did some free minor maintenance.

The fuel lines are good now but the thing leaks fuel from where they did the free minor maintenance.  So back it went yesterday.

So yesterday (Weds) I was about to back out of the garage and head to the mower repair shop to drop off the whipper snipper and then I was going to take the car around to leave it there and have the oil leak sorted today.  I jumped in the car, turned the key .... and nothing!  Our Auto Service up here was advertising a new 'Service Call' app for your phone.  It got a work out yesterday!

After the car was started, I took the whipper snipper to be dropped off and then around to the service centre I drove.  They were going to drop me back at home to save me carting the push bike over and riding back from the service centre.  We jumped in the car, turned the key .... and nothing!  So it looks like $160 for a new battery before they even begin to look for any oil leak.

Trish seems pretty busy down in Melbourne catching up with people all over.  She is able to get access to one of the cars down there when she needs it which is a great help.  She caught up with Kim yesterday and they had a great time.

I continue to learn more and more about Kodi.  I have updated myself on 'smart playlists' and set them up on my system.  So what I had previously has now become even better.  Today while watching a YouTube idea I picked up another great idea which will be fantastic for setting up anyone's new box in the future.

At home here I have hard drives for backing up my files everywhere.  The major drive is a 4TB Seagate desktop drive which is really the 'master' drive.  I had inadvertently left it on over night recently despite turning the PC totally off.

You would expect that when the PC was started for the next day and with the 4TB drive still powered up that, the computer would just see it was there and mount it.  But that isn't what happened.  Numerous turning on and off of the drive did not work, powering the PC off and then restarting didn't work so it looked like I had possibly blown the USB3 connection on the PC or that the drive was dead!  I plugged it into a different USB3 point, powered it up and "Bingo", the PC saw it was there and mounted it.

So it was still able to be used but now has to be properly dismounted after use and not left powered on!

Yep you guessed it, I left it turned on overnight again last night and this morning another usb3 connection failed to load the 4TB drive.

But I can now report that ALL of my USB3 ports are working again (most likely as the result of powering off and leaving everything to reset).  The 4TB drive has now been moved into the 'open' on my table so I can easily see if the blue 'Power On' light has been left on.  It will be a matter of watch and see.

One of the stores here (JB HiFi) has an online price of around $190 for a replacement 4TB drive.  Amazon in the US will deliver the same model to my home for around $135.

Footy on TV tonight and then more each night into and across the weekend.  Trish flies home on Monday around lunchtime so Sunday will be a washing day for me!

Hopefully the wind will ease, the windchill factor will decrease and it will become a little more comfortable outside for upcoming bike rides.