Super High Frame Rate Video From A Las Vegas Hotel Room

19 February 2011Hardware, VideosAlistair Lattimore

Tom Guilmette was in Las Vegas for work & had access to a Phantom Flex, which is a super high frame rate video camera.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, it’s the same sort of technology that provides the super slow motion footage of a tennis player striking a ball from the Australian Open tennis championship or similar.

However, the Phantom Flex isn’t just any run of the mill high frame rate camera, with enough light it can shoot at over 2,500 frames per second in 1080p! If you can ‘tolerate’ a less than full high definition picture – you can capture a speeding bullet at 10,000 frames per second – wow.

That sort of video camera isn’t the sort of thing that videographers ‘just have access to’ like a normal high megapixel digital camera. So while Tom had access to the beast, he thought he should make the most of it and shot a whole raft of cool footage from within his hotel room in Las Vegas Nevada.

Suncorp Bank Anti-Fraud Department Saved Me $686.73

16 February 2011Internet, LifeAlistair Lattimore

For the first time in ten years, I’ve been a victim of credit card fraud to the tune of $686.73!

I first became aware of it this morning when I received a phone call at work from Suncorp informing me that they suspected that there was fraudulent credit card transactions on my account. That was after they called home & left a message because Claire couldn’t answer the phone and then followed that up with a call to my mobile but I was driving to work. You’ve got to appreciate their persistence to call three different numbers trying to get a hold of me.

I don’t keep an eagle eye on my bank account, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed that transaction sitting on my credit card for a week or more but the Suncorp credit card protection system picked it up the day after it happened, which I think is great.

The Suncorp representative that called me at work gave me the run down on what had happened, also said they’d tried several other transactions as well but they were declined for some reason. They immediately set about cancelling my credit card and lodged a dispute about the charge for me.

Claire checked back through out past transactions to make sure nothing else was on there and it doesn’t appear as though there were. I called Suncorp back to check about what will happen next and was given case numbers for the cancellation & the transaction dispute to follow up on if required.

I’ve been really impressed with Suncorp customer service of late, like for instance sending me warning emails about large money transfers automatically. Now I’ve had them tell me about a fraudulent charge on my credit card and it’ll be resolved within the next few days and my replacement credit card will arrive mid next week.

Great to see them going out of their way to keep a customer informed about their money.

Fuel Price

12 February 2011GeneralAlistair Lattimore

I don’t understand how fuel is priced.

Last week I took a drive up to Toowoomba and before I left I grabbed some fuel on the Gold Coast at $1.42 for standard unleaded. As I drove towards Brisbane, the price remained fairly similar.

As soon as I got to the western side of the Logan Motorway, less than 100Km from the Gold Coast – the fuel price started to fluctuate by 2-3c per litre.

By the time I made my way into the Gatton area, the fuel price had dropped by a further 2-3c per litre. As I neared the bottom of the range at Toowoomba, the price continued to fall and when returning home I picked up fuel for $1.28 per litre, a whole $0.14 per litre cheaper than I paid on the Gold Coast a few hours earlier.

Now I’d assume that there is a cost to the fuel companies to distribute their fuel around the country. I also assume, though I could be completely wrong, that the fuel processing takes place in or near capital cities. As such, it would see logical to me that the price to distribute a litre of fuel to the Gold Coast would be less than trucking it approximately 200Km west to Toowoomba and climbing over 1000m mountain.

Today I got fuel at a BP service centre, one of the big ones that sits off to the side of a motorway. On a Saturday, surely one of their highest load days of the week – every tank and bowser was conveniently out of unleaded. The difference between 91RON and 95RON, a handy 14c per litre.

Just try and convince me that the oil companies aren’t gouging the Australian public for every dollar.

How To Kill Paper Wasps

24 January 2011Humour, LifeAlistair Lattimore

Over the last couple of years, I’ve had several encounters with paper wasps and had varying levels of success in attempting to kill paper wasps as well.

In the last couple of weeks, there have been four different sets of paper wasp nests forming around the house. Two of the four were in really inconvenient places, such as above the back sliding door near the laundry and in the joint of our clothes line.

On the weekend, it seems like as good a time as any to try my hand at killing the paper wasps again. Last time I attempted it, I was armed with a can of Mortein and I can assure you, when I sprayed their nests – they were very unhappy.

Wanting to see if I could one up the paper wasps this time, I was armed with a can of Baygon Surface Spray and WK-40. You’re probably wondering what WK-40 is; well it is your garden variety WD-40, the spray lubricant with a thousand uses with an awesome new label provided by Andrew for my 27th birthday. The WK-40 was the key in avoiding getting bitten this time, as with the thin nozzle connected you can spray a tight stream of WK-40 for over 2 metres – great for distancing yourself from angry as hell paper wasps!

With a can in either hand & feeling a little like Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters, I walked up as close to their nests as I dared and coated them & promptly ran away as the wasps swarmed the area looking for something to string! As it turns out, WK-40 and Baygon Surface Spray is a lethal concoction with great knockdown power.

In each of the four paper wasp nests, I came out on top without getting bitten once. I’m sure WD-40 didn’t have killing paper wasps on their list of 1000+ things that their fantastic lubricant is good for!

2010 Traffic Statistics

6 January 2011Blogging, WebsitesAlistair Lattimore

Following on from my 2009 web statistics, below is a summary of what traffic the site took in 2009.

In 2009 the site took 106,930 visitors over the entire year which resulted in 136,525 pageviews. During 2010, the site generated 97,509 visits and 132,068 pageviews. That figure is down from my two biggest years of approximately 145,000 and 135,000 during 2007 and 2008 when I was posting less frequently but the posts were of a more technical nature and also pop culture related such as Australian Idol. It’ll come as no surprise that from a traffic driving potential, a lot fewer people are interested in reading about my personal ramblings compared to technical style posts that I used to post.

During 2008 and 2009, I wrote a couple of posts each year that grabbed a moderate amount of traffic and were clear standouts with respect to the number of pageviews. During 2010, none of my posts really caught the attention of the internet; which per above can be attributed to the topics that I’m writing about.

The traffic breakdown by source shows a considerable decrease in the reliance of search engines, with their traffic percentage falling from around 85% in 2008-2009 down to only 74% in 2010. Within the search engine space, Google are completely dominating with 94% of the search engine traffic. During 2009, Yahoo! were the first non-Google search engine with about 2.5% & Microsoft Bing was the new kid on the block. Fast forward a year and the tides have turned with Bing now accounting for 2.6% and Yahoo! 2.4% of the search engine traffic.

The most popular posts for the year were nearly identical to 2009, with four of five remaining and one newcomer:

Removing those posts from the top of the list since they clearly dominate:

It is probably worth noting that nine out of ten of the highest traffic web pages on my site are not about anything to do with myself or our family but are in fact to do with helping others. This makes a lot of sense, especially when you see the meteoric traffic growth question and answer sites Stack Overflow and Quora have seen in the last two years.

That being said, still nothing from 2010 were showing up in the list. Isolating the posts written in 2010 and the landscape is vastly different:

Onward and upward for 2011!