Archive for September, 2009

B4 indoor setup

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

This is the setup I have more or less settled on while running at Caldicot recently, I’ve tried most things now and this is what I keep coming back to.

One important thing to note is that this setup uses an old-school 19×1 brushed motor. Now this is just about enough power for a 2wd car indoors – BUT these motors have a really strong drag brake which has a big effect on handling – bigger than on any 4wd car I have run.

I realised this this evening when I fitted a 12×1 V-brush motor into the car – the difference in the handling was incredible! I had to drop down a grade of spring on the front and run 50% drag brake to get the car to steer.

So, take this setup with a pinch of salt if you are not running a lot of drag brake. If you are, and your track has a lot of carpet on it, it might just work for you.

b4_caldicot_19x1_DA

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Team Associated RC10B4 | No Comments »

A brief product review… Amica AWCT 10L washing machine

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Pros…

- Seems to get the clothes clean
- Must be dirt cheap otherwise the landlord would not have bought it

Cons…

- Degree in linguistics required to fully comprehend the instruction manual
- Wide variety of programs but hard to work out exactly what each one is for
- Door lock is very flimsy and I’m surprised it seals in the water
- Water does not drain out of conditioner tray (odd design)
- Damn thing has started to flood the floor when filling! Water comes out of the soap tray. Probably the pipes into the machine are getting clogged up with old detergent (maybe also those liquitab wrappers), cold fill means that it is never cleared out. So I have tried pouring some hot water down there. Another curiosity is that the pump filter (which is easy to access, rather than hidden away) is missing on the machine, which was brand new.

Oddly enough our last machine (Ariston Washer Dryer from Currys – piece of junk – did neither at all well) also went through a phase of water coming out of the tray. Turned out that it was a wet wipe (or similar) that had got through the drum seal and blocked the pump. Had to take the cover off the machine to get it.

It’s a thrill a day in our household I can tell you!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Thoughts | No Comments »

Got hacked…

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

This is the danger of leaving your blog unattended for weeks at a time…

Suffered an attack from the “WordPress Worm” recently. After trying  a few manual repairs to the database and file system, I lost confidence and decided to reinstall the blog from scratch.

Now the downside of this is that you can only backup the .xml content of the site, not the admin settings. So my (admittedly few) tweaks are gone. And I can’t remember exactly what I had tweaked! It doesn’t help that I didn’t backup the site before re-installing it. Oops!!

So the site is now more or less a clean slate. I will try and repair the broken links and pictures as and when I can. The good news is that the site (now on version 2.8.4 rather than the hacked 2.8.1) should be secure until the next bored Russian geek tries to exploit it. :(

Posted in Computer Stuff | No Comments »