Posted by Benjamin Close on September 21, 2011 under Country Living, Repairs | 
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This article details a method I used to fix a large hole in the crankcase of a 8hp Briggs & Stratton Vertical Engine. First a little background: When we first bought our property we quickly realised we would need either a tractor or a ride on lawn mower. Whilst I would have loved a tractor, [..more..]
Posted by Benjamin Close on August 29, 2011 under Country Living, Life | Be the First to Comment
We’re now well and truly settled into our new home, but moving into a different house – even one which isn’t newly built – can often be a little tricky. With this in mind, here are just a few top tips which can help ‘move day’ to go as smoothly as possible. If you have [..more..]
Posted by Benjamin Close on May 6, 2011 under OpenSource, Programming | Be the First to Comment
This article details a reason libdc1394_video_set_mode/libdc1394_video_set_framerate may not work. Whilst working on an application that makes use of a 1394a/firewire camera I found a strange bug/feature with libdc1394. The problem was dc1394 was being used to the mode of the camera to 800×600 resolution. However, when querying the frame size after dequeuing the frame, the [..more..]
Posted by Benjamin Close on under Programming | Read the First Comment
This article describes a possible reason glTexSubImage2D may be slow. Recently I was working on a piece of code that updated a texture with a camera frame. The application was using the fixed function (non shaders) pipeline of OpenGL. Whilst I didn’t notice it at first, I soon found that the camera image was very [..more..]
Posted by Benjamin Close on February 21, 2011 under Cooking | Be the First to Comment
A little while ago I was making a quiche and found I had no shortcrust pastry left. Rather than ducking out to the local shop and buying some I decided to make some. Searching through the recipie books I had I found a the following recipie (per Breville Inspirations book) Recipie: 180g butter chopped 2 [..more..]
Posted by Benjamin Close on January 21, 2011 under OpenSource | 8 Comments to Read
Recently a colleague of mine came to me with a problem he was having with SSL certificates and the web server Apache 2.2. Put simply Apache (httpd) would not start. It was an unusual situation as this server had been running flawlessly for almost 2 years and it was only a recent power outage that [..more..]
Posted by Benjamin Close on December 10, 2010 under Computers | 74 Comments to Read
This article details how to use a Belkin FSU409 USB to Serial Converter under Windows Vista/Windows 7 64bit
Posted by Benjamin Close on October 29, 2010 under Country Living, Repairs | 6 Comments to Read
It was the middle of winter, the nights were cold and we needed some firewood for our little combustion heater. Out I went with my 2 times hand-me-down Husqvarna 136 chainsaw to cut some wood up. After only a minute of cutting the blade began to smoke. Despite the cold I thought “That ain’t right” [..more..]
Posted by Benjamin Close on October 12, 2010 under Country Living, Disputes | 8 Comments to Read
Our experience buying and getting an Apricus LPG Boosted, evacuated tube solar hot water system installed.
