101 Amazing Earth Facts

We live on a sphere of extremes and oddities. In fact it's not really a sphere, but it is a wild planet, mottled with deadly volcanoes, rattled by killer earthquakes, drenched in disastrous deluges. But do you know which were the worst?



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How to Live 25 Hours a Day: 61 Time-saving Tips

The average person spends less than 7 hours of their day productively. The remaining time is typically wasted, leaving you overwhelmed and stressed. Here is a comprehensive list of tips and tricks to help you manage your time more effectively.



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Photo Illusions Pics

Kind of like "I'll crush your head" - 'cept better.



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PICTURES: Construction of the World's Highest Bridge

The Millau bridge over the River Tarn in the Massif Central mountains is more than 300m (984ft) high - taller even than the Eiffel Tower. With its concrete and steel pillars soaring high above the morning fog in the Tarn Valley, the construction makes a spectacular sight.



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Anti-Virus, Malware and Hijack Information

What to use ? Up to you, but there is lots of information out there as well as loads of free tools and online scanners. Read on...

Start with the Anti-Virus Software Review and then check out AV Comparatives for independent comparatives of Anti-Virus software. CyberNet also has an interesting list of comparisons and ratings.

Super Antispyware has a free version as has Active Virus Shield. Spybot Search and Destroy is another freebie (or donation-ware, anyway).

Need help with malware removal ? Try Geeks To Go or Wilders Security for lots of good information.

Of course some products posing as Anti-spyware are rogues - check the Spyware Warrior for more information on these.

Looking for an online scanner ? Try...
1. Panda ActiveScan
2. Kapersky Online Scanner
3. Trojan Scan
4. Virus Total
5. Jotti's Malware Scan

Going heavier into HijackThis ? Help is at hand at HijackThis Quick Start
and Bleeping Computer also have a guide and tutorial on using HijackThis to remove Browser Hijackers & Spyware.

And just to conclude with, here's a neat little security baseline overview from Windows Secrets.

Be careful out there!

APOLLO ON STEROIDS: Behind the Scenes with NASA's New Moon Ship

With the iconic Space Shuttle nearing retirement, the pressure is on NASA to design a new manned vehicle — one that will deliver us safely to the lunar surface by 2020 before building a lasting lunar base. From ensuring safe launch to getting the vehicle back on the ground, here's a look at the toughest challenges facing the spacecraft's engineers



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The Most Annoying Things About Windows Vista

There's lots to like in the newest version of Windows. Vista's look is stunning, the OS should be more secure, and finding things is often easier. But Windows wouldn't be Windows without those aspects, big and small, that just drive you nuts with frustration. Here's our list of Vista features that just make us wonder, "What were they thinking?"



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PICTURE incredible satellite image of Mt. Etna vocanic eruption plume.

You can see how the plume traveled accross the atmosphere.



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PICTURES: Pictures of the World's Weirdest Accidents!

Here are various pictures, from various car accidents, that are just plain weird cool none the less.



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George Orwell: 12 Writing Tips

George expressed a strong dislike of totalitarian governments in his work, but he was also passionate defender of good writing. Thus, you may want to hear some of George’s writing tips.



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HOWTO drop an egg four stories without breaking

A video showing how to safely drop an egg from 4 stories or more without breaking.

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Paraglider sucked up to 30,000 feet - and survives!

A German paraglider survived lightning, melon-sized hail, minus 50-degree temperatures and oxygen deprivation after a storm system sucked her to an altitude higher than Mount Everest.

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If You're Alive in 20 years, you may be able to Live Forever

Human Immortality: A Scientific Reality? From the moment of birth, we begin the battle against death -- against the inevitable. Statistics say that a newborn child can expect to live an average of 76 years. But averages may not be what they use to be

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D-Weather Australian Weather Monitoring

D-Weather is your personal Australian weather monitoring utility for weather conditions in Australia ! It automatically retrieves the current conditions, daily outlook, detailed forecast, international forecast, and weather warnings for Australia. D-Weather also provides you with access to rain radars, satellite images and MSL Charts. Also included is support for SAPI (Microsoft Speech Engine), which will allow D-Weather to read the weather to you!

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Also...Black Stump Weather

How to Ace Your Job Interview: 88 Surefire Tips and Tricks

Job interviews can be highly awkward, stressful, and subjective. Here is a comprehensive resource to ensure you impress the interviewer (and avoid all the common pitfalls). Looking for work? You and thousands of others. What can you offer that they can't? Well, hopefully you know that or will learn as you search. Your job search is a project in itself, with various stages. Here are some tips to get you to your goal of a great first job.

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AMAZING What the hell happened photos

Collection of WTF photos -- busses, planes and trains in strange configurations.

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Daylight Savings

I love Daylight Savings- wish we could just move all the clocks forward (at least) an hour permanently. I hate mornings, so I couldn't care less if it was dark until 9am.

Seems to me like it's getting way too complex though trying to align all the times everywhere. Historically only parts of Australia have observed DST at various times but is it what the people want? Western Australia made a snap decision this October to implement DST in early December (thanks for the computer chaos!!) after not participating previously - they even have their own Political Party.

Now I hear that the USA is moving DST forward this year by three weeks - more chaos! Microsoft have dedicated an extensive resource to the topic as well - all I can see is headaches and abuse from customers whose appointments are an hour out of whack. Israel have an even more complex problem as it is tied to moving religious festivals.

For more info on DST look on Time and Date - the Black Stump Time page also has more references.

Just turn 'em forward an hour everywhere at the same time and leave 'em, I say! Who cares about the curtains fading in Queensland....

Enjoy the Sunshine!

Google Reader

For my RSS feeds I used Bloglines for quite a while but I switched over to Google Reader some time back now. I still like Bloglines neatness and compactness but I like the integration of Google Reader with other Google things I use. It also has some pretty good features in it's own right too, of course.

One particularly neat feature (for someone like me who runs a directory web-site featuring new sites regularly) is a really easy way to highlight more sites of interest than I would normally have time to do. Using Google Reader it's just plain simple to tag and share an item of note - I've integrated this into the Black Stump What's New page - you'll see it positioned just below this weeks new sites. Click on the Read More link for another page with (not surprisingly) more information about each post. You can go directly to each post also if you wish.

I hope this is of value to you - I know I'm a bit of a Google tragic (although I still use Yahoo Mail in preference to Google Mail for general use) - I just think they're pretty damn good at most of what they do!

Happy Surfing!

(note I've also put the link to the Google Reader sites in the side bar of this blog so you don't have to go via The Black Stump site if you don't want to - it's just there on the right)

...and, uh, oh yeah, there's an RSS feed available too....here

Get Smart

Managed to get hold of the DVD Set of the entire series of Get Smart. I loved this show when I watched it in the sixties and seventies but it's been a while. This series was really big in Australia and most kids my school knew most of the dialog. (after all, the episodes got repeated to death in afternoon TV slot but got butchered to death). I'm really looking to forward to watching them in sequence and in entirety!

What puzzles me (would you believe it?) is they have only been released via the Time Life website and they'll only ship to USA addresses. What the....!! Lucky I have some friends in the good old USofA to send it down under! But, don't despair fellow Aussies - it appears that it will be available in Australia in February via Time Life Australia - pricing and box configuration unknown but supposedly the same content as released in the US.

This set is superb. Yeah, talk about the corny (but o-so-funny) dialog and the often repeated (but highly anticipated) lines and jokes. Don Adams and Barbara Feldon are even better than I remembered. And let's not forget The Chief. The DVD set has been re-mastered and looks sensational on wide screen TV. Sadly, Don Adams passed away in 2005, but "#99" lives on and gives a lot of the intro commentaries to the episodes on the DVD set.

Brilliant. Yup, I've concluded this is my favourite TV show of all time. I'm up to Episode 20 already, I have 118 to go...would you believe it ?

...and Loving it! (sorry about that, Chief!)

VHS to DVD

Summer holidays are here, time to clean up the house and get rid of all the accumulated rubbish one (or, more precisely, one's family) collects over a year or two. Rummaging through lots of old home Videos (that's not the rubbish, by the way, to me anyway) I decided it was time to save all this stuff on new media before the VHS tapes disintegrate.

Surprisingly easy these days and, happily to report, all my VHS tapes going back to 1987 were still OK - I'm sure they left a bit of dust and residue behind but it all looked Ok when played back on DVD. The end result is a new library of home DVDs (and a backup copy) and the original VHS tapes which I've now packed away with the Master DVDs and stored in a constant temperature environment.

What did I need to do the job ? Not a computer, that's for sure! I experimented in the past with Video Capture boards and Studio software but it takes waaaay too long to render bulk amounts of tapes. At the start of this exercise I briefly flirted again with this stuff but still, no thanks.

Moved on to a combo VHS/DVD recorder - a Panasonic ES35V to be precise - as the name suggests it has both functions in the same box - incredibly, this machine could not do the job for me. I say incredibly because I'm thinking its probably one of main reasons anyone would buy this type of machine - but you can't edit the tapes as you copy them! What a load of hooey. Now, I'm not suggesting anything wrong with Panasonic here, folks. I've been using Panasonic VCRs from when they first came out (was it in 1979?) and they've always worked extremely reliably - anyway, the lack of the edit feature was a major downer but probably "mea culpa" for not researching this up front - don't assume...

Bit the bullet and bought a dedicated DVD recorder - this time a Panasonic DMR-EH55 attached to an existing SJ400 Panasonic VCR - could have used the ES35V but my wife already stole that for her use elsewhere in the house. The EH55 has 160GB which is ample storage space (bit more than 640K anyway).

After cabling machines together (easy) play video in VCR, hit record on DVD and edit away. I finished up loading all the tapes on the DVD recorder (they're all still on it), carved them up a bit further and hi-speed copied them onto 8x or 16x DVDs. You just need to get everything in the sequence you want and copy as close to (but under) 2 hours worth of viewing. 2 hours is the limit if you want roughly the same quality on a standard (non Dual layer) DVD.

Quality is good and because of the hi-speed transfer I was able to make a backup copy very quickly as well.

Just do it before it's too late. The Black Stump Guides page has few more good sites for tips on Digital editing. See also the DVD section.

Happy copying!