Finch Facts

Ever wanted to buy a factory?

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 | Facts | No Comments

… but don’t know where to get one? Well look no further, this is the place for you!

I was walking down a main road on the way to pick up my car from the mechanics, when I stumbled across this winner of a sign. Who’d have thought there was just a shop?

I didn’t dare go in there, as I have a habbit of impulse buying when I wander into shops. I could just see myself coming home and having to explain to the missus why we don’t have a back yard anymore.

Tags: roadside humour

Review: Toyota Starlet GT

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 | Reviews | No Comments

Purchased: 13/03/2008
Price: ~$7,000

Well I needed a new small and economical car. But my thirst for turbo power crept in and the showdown was on!

How did I compromise? Well with this gem of a Toyota Starlet, that’s how.

The little 1.3L 4 cyl is quite a responsive little engine I must say. After coming out of my 2.5L R33, I wasn’t sure if I would like the mini-car. But its peaky little engine, go-cart handing and incredible fuel consumption had me won!

Speaking of the fuel consumption, I’ve been running the numbers, and I must say they are impressive! Compared to my Skyline and even the factory numbers for eco-beasts like the Prius, it stacked up really well.

Here’s what I worked out:
Skyline: 12L/100km - easy going city driving
Skyline: 15L/100km - hard driving
Prius: 4L/100km
Starlet: 6L/100km - highway driving
Starlet: 8L/100km - city driving

Not mind blowing stats, but still pretty damn good. Costs me a whopping $46 to fill the tank, and that lasts me exactly 2 weeks. I’m happy with that.

Overall I’m on top with this car. No personal loan to repay, half the fuel costs, cheaper rego, cheaper insurance. Top car!

Tags: Reviews, Starlet GT, Toyota, turbo

Review: Asus EeePC900

Monday, August 25th, 2008 | Reviews | No Comments

Purchased: 11/06/2008
Price: $530.00

Well after scouring the online review community for these little suckers, I bit the bullet and purchased one. I’m not quite sure why, as my current Compaq laptop is doing me quite fine - 2.5 years down the track.

The baby laptop is quite a cute little package. The body feels quite solid and sturdy, however the keyboard keys seem a bit flimsy - the spacebar being the worst.

The 9″ screen is big enough to view documents and websites with ease, but again the keyboard lets it down if you really want to get meaty into word-smithing. Mind you, if you bought this thing to write an essay on, then you better start documenting your RSI compo claim. It’s pretty much a pecking machine… the type where the most you’ll ever type is “ping 192.168.1.1″ or similar.

With the 1gb of RAM you won’t find any issues running basic apps. I formatted the onboard SSD with Windows XP and have Office 2003 and firefox running quite happily.

I’ve since upgraded it to 2gb of RAM which gave it a nice kick along, but I still find the 900mhz CPU a bit of a bottleneck. It just has a small lag when you click website links, or want to do something that taxes the CPU ever so slightly. Besides that, it’s quite a zippy machine.

Asus in their infinite wisdom have released about another 3,000,000 models of EeePC, which includes the 901 (with the Atom 1.6ghz CPU and Bluetooth) about 2 weeks after I purchased this one. Thanks Asus.

Overall I’m quite happy with my little E. I still haven’t found a daily use for it, but that’s alright. It’s size and convenience will come in to its own on my numerous tech calls I’m sure.

Tags: Asus, EeePC, Reviews

Problem rooting? Try this

Sunday, August 24th, 2008 | Facts | No Comments

In a world full of nasal sprays, erection pills and aphrodisiacs galore, there is one more advertisement I found along a main road.

I love stumbling across little gems like this… I don’t know if it’s just my dirty mind, or whether the company responsible just didn’t realise the cliche? Either way it creates cheap humour for me and you. Or at least me.

Tags: roadside humour, root boost

The new world

Friday, August 22nd, 2008 | Facts | No Comments

So life goes on.

I changed servers a while ago, which resulted in the loss of the old Finch Facts blog. I did the diligent thing and did a backup, told my old host to go bye-bye… and then reinstall the blog on the new server. Easy right?

Well of course nothing in life is easy. I was running

about 10 releases behind the current one, which of course meant the whole code was different and my backup was pretty much useless (without some hacking). I’m inherantly lazy, so tweaking mySQL tables all weekend long didn’t sound like a great task.

Now this long winded post brings me to the point… NEW BLOG!!! I’ve scrapped all the old whinging about my old car and annoying women and started all over.

Enjoy

Tags: new blog