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Perth’s Huge Hail Storm – Photos and Video

What a drive home yesterday afternoon, here’s the photos and tweets I posted.

"Racing this home"

"I think the storm is winning..."

"Got home in the middle of the first wave"

"Storm won :( That's my backyard starting to flood. Storm drains got up to 3/4 full"

"Single hail stone stuck to my car roof"

" The hail has kicked up all the moss between my pavers. :)"

I was caught in a hugh storm over Perth. Drove half of the way and sailed the rest. Streets were flooded all over the place and with the lightning going crazy many intersections were without power. Arrived home safely (thanks for opening the shed!), thankfully our home was in good shape. Seeing as we pulled the power to most of the electrical equipment due to the lightning, our only source of communication was our mobile phones. Right when I was on the phone to a colleague the phone dropped out and it was a good while before I got reception again. At this point the weather was very calm outside. I thought I’d see if I could get the Perth Weather Radar up on my phone to see what the storm was doing, this is what I saw.

eep

See that lovely clear bit in the middle? That’s where I was. See that crazy coloured bit above just covering Perth CBD? That come in about 20mins later, bringing with it more of the craziest weather I have ever seen in Perth. I also around this time got a MMS from the colleauge I was talking to earlier showing all the stained glassed windows at UWA’s heritage listed Winthrop Hall smashed. :(

Winthrop Hall Photo by frenchiephish

Heading into work this morning things didn’t seem too badly affected near home. Lot’s of signs of flooding the streets and only a few tree branches down. It was slowly becoming apparent how badly hit UWA as the roads were littered with more and more debris the closer I got. Below are my photos of some of the areas around UWA.

UWA Carpark - There's a car park here somewhere...

UWA - Pathway cleared by storm water

UWA Reid Library Lawn - There's normally a pathway here...

UWA Reid Library Lawn - Thick debris covering the Reid Library lawn

UWA Reid Library Lawn - Where the debris came from, this was a very thick foliage tree yesterday

Fallen tree at the UWA Arts building

Clock tower at UWA Winthrop Hall, didn't fair well

Nor did any North facing window for that matter...

Some more coverage of the Perth Storms around the Interwebs:

• Youtube: UWA ALVA Library Flooded
• ABC: Rain, hail, lightning – pictures from Perth’s severe storm check out the lightning hitting a crane in the CBD!
• 7 News: Nightly News 23/03/2010 check out the storm front rolling in at 1:13
• perthnow: Mudslide swamps luxury apartments
• perthnow: Gallery – Chaos as Storm Hits
• perthnow: Gallery – Perth counts cost of million-dollar storm
• Flicker matt.didcoe: UWA Storm
• Flickr tanarama: UWA Engineering Carpark and UWA James Oval
• IAAML Blog: Storm in Perth Yesterday awesome photo of the storm front rolling in

I hope everyone survived this crazy storm okay.

Free Antivirus – Avast! 5

For quite some time I have been recommending avast! Antivirus to Friends, Family and Colleagues to protect their personal computers. It’s simple, covers all bases and easy to maintain but most of all it’s free!

I was glad to find out recently that they’ve just released their latest major version of their free Antivirus product version 5. They’ve made it easier to use and it looks so much better.

Changes I’m glad to see:

• Simplfied layout in program window
  The previous layout was far to confusing, I had trouble every time I launched it…
• Easy access to Boot-time Scan under ‘Scan Computer’
  My must suggested fix for viruses on a computer, as it scans your disk for viruses before Windows starts making it possible to delete them.
• Gaming mode
  Supresses notifications when a full screen application is launched
• Easy to see protection status
  Nice big letters and colour right up the top so you know everything is running and up to date

If you’re not running antivirus or your currently paying for virus protection I’d strongly recommend avast! 5. Download it here: http://www.avast.com

Movember 2009 – Mo Grown

Movember is over, was great fun and a great feeling to be an offical Mo Bro this year. A big Thank you! to those who donated, final tally was $30 raised individually and a great effort from the team at work raising $270.50.

I’m a little short of words, so I thought I’d leave it up to the photos to do the talking. Enjoy :)

Vodafone and 3/Hutchison Merger Followup

It was announced back in February of this year that Vodafone and 3 were to merge, in a hope to be more competitive in these troubled financial times. My comments on the proposal was initially bleak, but in light of some more recent news my thoughts on the proposal are coming around. The news in question is the article on Whirlpool “3 set to utilise Vodafone network”

The access to Vodafone’s 2G network is in addition to the announcement back in April that 3 will roam onto Telstra’s NextG network. ie. When your out of the 3’s CBD coverage, you’ll get the advantage of using Telstra’s wide country coverage. However should you use any data on Telstra’s network it will not be included in any caps. At present the additional usage charge is $1.60/mb, under the new Telstra NextG agreement the roaming data charge will be 50c/mb. This is still quite high, but I do like the fact that I can still get coverage in the country areas of Western Australia for Voice and SMS.

So where is the advantage of gaining access to Vodafone’s 2G (or Voice/SMS/Slow Data) network? The original Whirlpool article suggests that data usage on the Vodafone 2G network will be included in 3’s cap. However what will my phone do when it can’t find 3’s 3G network? Will it drop back to Vodafone 2G or Telstra NextG? Whirlpool Forum members are seeing the Vodafone network appear as “3″ in addition to “3 (3G)”. Perhaps the SIM will instruct the phone to choose anything with “3″ in the network name. This also bring’s 3’s coverage to a mix of their own 3G (Voice/SMS/Fast Data) in the CBDs, Telstra’s 2G/NextG and Vodafone’s 2G in the CBD / Country. I also wonder if this will have any affect on the Telstra NextG whilst roaming agreement ?

Enough of me brain dumping for the morning, time to get back to my email and coffee.

RB

Movember – Halfway There!

The three critical stages of the Mo

Stage 1 - Proof facial hair can be grown (Check!)

Stage 2 - A clean canvas (Check :()

Stage 3 - Cultivation (Check!)

Movember 2009 – Let the Growing Begin!

I’m finally using the facial hair for the power of good and growing a Movember moustache for reals this year. Unlike last year’s chopper/trucker mo that turned up after a close shave, this year I started November 1st clean shaven and registered at the Movember website.

What many people don’t appreciate is that close to 3,000 men die of prostate cancer each year in Australia and one in eight men will experience depression in their lifetime – many of whom don’t seek help.

Movember is now in its sixth year and, to date, has achieved some pretty amazing results by working alongside The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCFA) and beyondblue: the national depression initiative. Check out further details at: http://au.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs.

Mo progress will be logged (with photos!) on my Movember profile page.

To sponsor my young and impressionable Mo, you can either:

• Click this link http://au.movember.com/mospace/223349/ and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account
• Write a cheque payable to ‘Movember Foundation’, referencing my Registration Number 223349 and mailing it to: Movember Foundation, PO Box 292, Prahran, VIC, 3181
• Hunt me down and throw cash at my feet to worship the fuzz that is my Mo

Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.

Offerings of names for the new found fuzzy member of the family will also be accepted. Hope to see lots of Mobrothers and Mosisters out there on the streets of Perth!

RB

Cleanup Windows WA Daylight Savings Mess

For those of you in the East Australian states, you’ve already switched to Daylight Savings for the 08-09 Summer. We over here in the West were due to switch to Daylight Savings on the 25th of October, but as we’re all pertrified of change it was rejected in a referendum in May earlier this year.

One small problem, your Windows based computer is still set to go forward an hour on the 25th. Microsoft were so confident that WA would vote DST in they configured Windows to switch not just for the 3 year trial but for every year.

Not to worry, Microsoft have kindly put together a website to help you undo Daylight Savings for your version of Windows. Head over to the Microsoft Daylight Savings page and follow the instructions. It’s also a good idea to print out your calendars for Home or Work before the 25th, just in case they get screwed up with preprogrammed Daylight Savings changes.

It’s a Left 4 Dead Weekend on Steam

Lots of news this morning relating to one of my most recent favourite games:

First up if you haven’t had the pleasure of playing Left 4 Dead (L4D) yet, today is your lucky day! Today is “Freaky Free Friday” and for the next 24hours you can download and play L4D via Steam. I highly recommend it, lots of fun! My Steam ID is skitau, feel free add me to your Friends list so we can join up for some Zombie killing action!

Secondly if you do decide to purchase L4D or have been waiting for a sale on L4D to snap it up, your in luck! This weekend L4D is on sale at 40% the normaly price bringing it down to US$23.99, awesome!

Last but not least, once you’ve dedicated your entire weekend to zombie smashing you’ll no doubt have high numbers of kills/pounces/snags/booms against your name. Valve have also released an extended stats page for L4D so you can see the numbers in all their glory! Check out my stats page here: http://steamcommunity.com/id/skitau/stats/L4D

“Stole the set of Steak Knifes” Skit

Making a USB Key Bootable

Spent a while today working out the best procedure to create a USB Key boot DOS, without a Floppy Drive. Below are the instructions and files that worked for me, haven’t gone into to much detail, but feel free to ask any questions in the comments section below.

!!Warning!! This procedure will delete all files from the USB key, make sure you backup all data!

1. 1. Download MSDOS Boot Files and the HP Flash Tool, Extract both to your computer
2. 2. Install the HP Flash tool using defaults, then run C:\DriveKey\HPUSBFW.EXE
3. 3. Ensure you have the right USB device selected, and check ‘Create a DOS startup disk’ also putting the location of the contents of msdos.zip in the field below.
4. 4. Click Start and then your done!
   

To test, make sure your Computer supports USB booting, plug in the USB key and reboot. You should end up with a DOS prompt. Enjoy!

How to Spot an ATM Skimmer

The Consumerist have made available a great PDF from the Commonwealth Bank giving some tips on how to spot those nasty ATM skimmers. Be sure to head over and have a read, I might save you from getting caught out and having your money stolen!

The Consumerist – How To ID An ATM Skimmer