As you may know, this site is run on a shoe string and administered entirely by one person... me, the Admin. Feedback has been received along the lines of 'how come the coming events don't include xxx' (add your own event here)?

The answer is - time. I simply don't have enough of it. I need someone locally who has a bit of time on his or her hands to help with this. Honestly, adding and editing events on this site isn't rocket science and it would only take me an hour to tutor a complete beginner in the procedure.

So, what about it? If you believe the site is worth keeping current - then why not offer some help? I'd love to share the load!

Andy

I noticed that the surf club live camera has been updated recently with one that auto-pans and zooms across the whole beach. Great idea! I send the link to friends and relatives so they can see how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful spot.

Check out the links page from the menu, it's on there.

Yes, that's not a misprint. I just popped into my favourite local independent petrol station - Shoalhaven Ethanol Fuel
at 215 Kinghorne St and they have 'E85' Ethanol fuel on sale at $1.05 a litre (they also had E10 Unleaded for $1.63 which compared pretty well with Friday prices in the rest of the stations in Nowra today!). Now, E85 is 85% ethanol, 15% unleaded petrol and before you throw up your hands in horror at the thought of running your vehicle on 85% (or any mixture of ethanol) - get the real facts here.

The catch? Well you will need to get your vehicle fitted with a bi-fuel converter, which apparently will be a lot cheaper than an LPG conversion - around $400 depending on your engine. This clever device 'knows' when you are running on the higher octane E85 and adjusts the engine management system accordingly. The fantastic advantage of this is that if E85 isn't available when you fill up, no problem!

Currently E85 is not available in many towns in NSW - closest ones to us are at Albion Park and one in Nowra at the moment, but it will apparently be available nationwide soon.

As well as the substantial price advantage, the higher 105 octane means that your engine has more power and runs cooler - so what's the disadvantages? None that I can see and anything that reduces this countries dependence on offshore oil has to be a good thing.

For more info try these websites:
http://www.flexfuelkit.com.au * http://ethanolenhance.com.au/

Edit Aug'08 :
Has anybody else in the 'Heads noticed an improvement in the GSM service from Telstra? We are now able to hold a conversation if we sit in the lounge of our place without calls dropping out - amazing! I can't take any credit for this interesting development but I have heard that the NextG service power levels have been turned down a notch as it was interferring with the GSM service in some areas. Maybe the reason...

Well, my endeavours to try to get something done about our mobile phone 'service' here at the 'Heads hasn't borne any fruit. You might be interested in this reply we finally received from Telstra:

'Telstra's primary mobile technology in Shoalhaven Heads is Next G which provides good coverage in the township and surrounds. We also have GSM technology in the area but it is mainly for the Princes Highway with any coverage in Shoalhaven Heads considered fortuitous. Telstra has no plans to extend the GSM coverage footprint outside the urban centres however we are only one of several carriers who have GSM networks. These carriers may want to improve their mobile presence in the Shoalhaven Heads area.. '

So, essentially what they are saying is this - they want us all to switch to Next G and because of this, they have no interest in improving their GSM service coverage to the 'Heads. They are also saying that they never actually provided GSM coverage to Shoalhaven Heads - any coverage we got was just 'spillover' from the Princes Highway cell towers. Ok - if that is so, then why does their coverage map for GSM state that we are in the 'green zone' (ie: good coverage)? Try it yourself - here's Telstra's Coverage page (choose GSM / 3G).

Well, so now we are left with two mobile phones that are useless for making or receiving calls around the house - we'll just retain them for emergency use when we are out and use VOIP (voice over internet) for all our calls, to mobiles or otherwise. Our phone company (Southern Phone - who we are very happy with in every other respect) won't get hardly a cent from us for calls. I guess they aren't too happy about that, but they are reselling Telstras 'service' and if we can't use it then that's not our fault is it?

My advice to others is to do as we did - complain, loudly to as many organisations as you can. You probably won't get anywhere but at least your concerns will add to the growing unrest!

I was prompted to write this after a customer of mine brought his family PC into me to look at. He has only recently gone online and like any 'newbie', made the mistake that many computer users fresh into the world of the internet make - they believe anything that appears on their screens!

It all started with a visit to YouTube - a great source of videos that is used by millions of people every day - but apparently someone (who shall remain nameless!) decided to view a Pamela Anderson video or a similar kind of thing and during this a window popped up informing him that he really needed to improve his security - and to 'click here' and all will be well...

Well. Seasoned 'net users will recognise the scenario only too well, but a 'net newcomer wouldn't have realised the danger he was in. Of course, the inevitable happened and the system is now loaded with 'ErrorSafe' and other spyware junk that has to be removed.

The school holiday periods are usually busy for me because the kids - especially on rainy autumn days like this week - are bored and surfing the 'net is a good way to pass the time. Parents often tell me that 'their kids know a lot more about PCs than we do'. My response to that statement is often to say 'well, they sure know how to get into more trouble online than you do for sure!'

The reality is that while some, and I stress the word some, kids know what they are doing and the pitfalls to avoid, the majority just don't have any idea what kind of problems they can cause by their 'click-happy' approach.

Here's a few tips to try to prevent costly repair work -
1. Tell the kids to stop and think (or ask you) before clicking on any warning message or offer to fix their 'security or spyware problems'. The only genuine warning messages that you will get are from your own installed antivirus or antispyware programs.

2. If there seem to be limited options available when one of these bogus warning messages appear - eg: you only get 'Ok' not 'Cancel' - then try to close the message window using the red cross at the top right if there is one. If there isn't, close the internet browser, shutdown any other programs that are running and restart the PC. The bogus warning may complain but just let Windows end any programs and restart.

3. If your system does appear to be 'behaving badly' and you suspect an infection is the culprit - firstly, disconnect the broadband modem (turn it off if necessary) and get it looked at sooner rather than later. I often get asked to look at PCs that have been infected for days or weeks. The problems never fix themselves, believe me!

Andy Turner
Coastal Computers & Design

Edit: Free spyware removal software is available, but beware - there are a lot of bogus ones out there. My personal favourite is SpyBot Search & Destroy. But, please, ensure you get the right one as there are hundreds of 'knock-off' products with similar sounding names. The genuine article can be found here:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html