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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Wednesday 18 April 2001 (Day View) – Ordered IBM 40 GB HDD

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18.04.2001 – Wednesday 18 April – Ordered 40 GB IBM HDD

• Sarah and I went to town with Mandi and Jade. I took the DVD back to the video shop. Sarah stayed in town, and I went back out to Home Rule. I went and checked Bob’s governor, which seems to be in perfect working order, despite Elsie telling him “lots of smoke came out”? Harold is drawing about 32 Amps at around 220 volts, 46/7 Hz. It must be right on the regulator’s limit. It clamps the voltage back drastically when the speed drops to prevent stalling, probably what keeps it regulated. I walked back here, meeting Mum at Jacks’ old driveway, where she had just given him the drill that Bob had fixed ($35 for trigger and $10 labour).
  I then went on the Internet and downloaded Creative’s SoftDVD player (Based on their Playcenter version 145 and InterVideo’s WinDVD). It seems to work well (although I still cannot work out how to change the screen view from anything other than widescreen 16:9) and also seems to support 4-speaker output, although I cannot notice any amazing surround affects; but it definitely sounds better than the standard TV. An added bonus was that it fixed my faulty Mp3 playback problem that I had with all my Creative products. I also checked the www.blankcd.com.au site and they have 40 Gb hard drives for $329, which I think was about what the 45 Gb drive cost before. I probably should order one straight away before they become unavailable again. I downloaded as many DivX things that I could find. From what I can work out it is a compression format that either allows the conversion of DVD to MPEG-4 and WMA, or something like that. I went back on the Internet (after being disconnected) fairly late. I ordered the IBM 40 GB hard drive from www.blankcd.com.au and also 10 Verbatim 80 minute blank CD’s and an audio cable for the CR-ROM. I transferred the money and forwarded the receipt. I wrecked PowerDVD by using DVD Genie to null the region code.