I got a new (to me – it was my mum’s!) car back in 2022, for baby hauling. Cars came a long way in the 12 years since it was made, so I added the following to it:

• 1 – Front and rear dashcam
• 2 – Head unit with car play
• 3 – Front and rear sensors
• 4 – Reversing Camera

Item 2 required item 4, and since I was going to be pulling large portions of it apart anyway, I figured may as well do all of the above..

Reversing cameras require power to run the camera, and that is also sent to the head unit to know when to show the camera, so I needed a feed from the reversing lights to go to the camera and to the head unit. I had installed the sensors back in 2022, but the wire joiners I used were crap, so I didn’t want to do that again, and the wire from the tail lights I hooked into was inconvenient to get to. So a friend suggested using the trailer hookup. I found that, but the documentation on exactly which wire does which isn’t super easy to find – each of the circuits is documented seperately in Subaru’s documentation, so you can’t just say “what is the pinout of connector R79?”

So here it is:

R79

• 10 – Blue – FB-1 F/B FUSE NO. 1 (BAT)
• 9 – Brown/Yellow – Reversing Light
• 8 – Black/Yellow – GND
• 7 – Black/Yellow – GND
• 6 – Red – Rear fog light
• 5 – Blue/Black – Turning – Right
• 4 – Light green – Turning – Left
• 3 – Brown – Brake
• 2 – Pink – License Plate Light
• 1 – N/C – N/C

So for the camera, pretty obviously you want Brown/Yellow and Black/Yellow. Run a wire from the front to back and also to the camera. Simples, right? Well, once you fish it and the video cable and the dashcam USB cable through the tiny tube to the liftback, sure.. The first camera I got was a piece of poop, so I got a second one which is much better – I recommend this one – https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005764743719.html

The more complex question was for the reversing sensors – they require 12V, Brake, Reverse and Negative. You wouldn’t want to use pin 10, as that is live all the time and will drain your battery, so I hooked mine up to 6 – Red – this means the reversing sensors shouldn’t work unless you have your lights on.. except I found they did anyway, so it must also work without it. Your mileage may vary.

Hope this helps someone one day!

For the interest of anyone stalking me from afar – Number 1 – that’s weird, reach out on facebook and say hi! and Number 2 – Elizabeth and I had a daughter named Avery in August. She’s amazing and we love her a lot. A very large amount even.

So.. I drooled over this for a long time, always thinking it was too much for me and my use. But I finally got one.. and it’s amazing.

In my obsession over them, I found they essentially never show up secondhand – that’s how useful they are. I got the work stop attachment too, which I haven’t seen much on youtube, but it’s also great.

Another thing that showed up, is that there are actually two versions of the joiner – an older one with metal alignment pins, and a newer one with plastic ones – and a few other differences too.

Systainers are great, the documentation is amazing.. I just wish it wasn’t quite so expensive – but buy once, cry once, right?

Don’t.

Ok, how about with Mojave?

Again, don’t.

But I already own it! and I have a Mac with firewire. I should be good to go for finally converting all those old tapes right? Hard drives are cheap now! I could copy Michael Lynch!

No.

And here’s why – VCR tapes are made for CRT TVs. This means that they’ve never been too precious about timebase, because it hasn’t mattered. Unterzuber here has a great page about timebase and why it’s important to get a good one for for video conversion.. but I’ll skip all that and say this – devices like the ADVC-100 really needed one for knowing where and when each frame begins and ends, because they use that to create IEEE 1394 digital video frames – if the timebase is bad, the audio stutters, frames drop and all sorts of bad happens.

I got my ADVC-100 probably 15 years ago, work was getting rid of a bunch of them. They were originally USD$199 new, because digital video, firewire and conversion is hard and people should pay for it. I only ever used it for capturing from my now deceased DVD-H40A, one of the first DVD players with a hard drive recorder built in, and which output a perfect timebase signal, so it was never an issue.

But I’m trying to convert some videos from tapes for family, and oo boy is it not liking it. I didn’t want to pay upwards of $100-150 for some of the retail device that might not work – but I came across this video from a channel I trust and enjoy, Technology Connections – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC5Zr3NC2PY

Again, skipping to the conclusion – I bought a composite to HDMI converter, and then a HDMI capture device for $15 each from eBay, so $30 all up, and with the exception of NTSC443, it’s perfect.

The ADVC-100 was an amazing device for its time, but its time is over. Sorry.

On this day, 20 years ago, I signed up with Internic for theducks.org. I paid AUD$110 for 2 years of registration. In the interceding 20 years, I’ve had to explain many times why my email address is @theducks.org – including once to the Federal Court as part of an anti-spam prosecution. These days I now mostly give away @alexdawson.net as my email address, but I still think theducks.org is a fun domain to have.

Not many.

These saws all seem to be varients of the Huafeng M1H-ZP2-250

Having owned the Ozito one.. they’re not terrible. My major complaint is the miter slot not being 3/4 inch width – and the shortness of the rip fence ruler – The Evolution and ParkerBrand ones have the longest, so they would probably be my choice.

So, I finally bought a house, after starting to look in 2004 ;)

In fairness – life plans etc meant buying one earlier wasn’t the right move.

But I have some rants about the process so far.

• Include floorplans, holy hell. If your real estate agent doesn’t include creating a floorplan and having it on your listing – fire them. I’m sure we skipped over many suitable properties because they didn’t have floorplans. It’s a buyers market – make it easy for us to understand what we’re getting.
• Why the hell does one of Australia’s leading property sites include “under offer” properties in search results? I want to buy houses for sale, not houses that aren’t. Yes, agents might like to think their brand is valuable to buyers and that you will call them and say “oh, have you got another like that?”, and hey presto, the agent gets a lead – and I’m sure that happens, but it’s a big data world. We have sites, not affiliated with you, with specifications and pictures of the houses for sale. Your brand is of limited value.
• Talking to a friend who sold a house recently, some agents apparently don’t do open homes, they just want it by appointment, because it “feels more exclusive”. The last thing I want to do is become a lead for you, and I want to know how much competition there is for a property. We didn’t look at any properties by appointment.
• If your block can be subdivided, but isn’t – you don’t get to ask for the same amount as it would be if it had been subdivided. Especially in Perth’s very weak market, we saw a surprising number of properties for sale with inclusion of the standardly disclaimed “subject to council approval” subdivison potential. We did the sums on a couple of them, and we’d make maybe $50K, on a outlay and risk of around $950K. “But I need to make profit too!” .. yes, that’s the capital growth you got from land banking for 15 years.
• Likewise, if you are subdividing and building units – don’t get greedy. We walked away from one of the first places we looked at because they had subdivided into three properties, then built to maximum dimensions – and there wasn’t even space for a clothes line outside! We had a look at a $569K 4 bedroom+theatre new construction property – all the rooms were TINY. 3 and a theatre may have got our interest.
• Design is always an individual choice, and when developing you have a budget – but upper cabinets in a kitchen are necessary, as are non-laminex counter tops. If your kitchen design requires putting the fridge outside of the main kitchen area – build a wall around it so it doesn’t look like it.
• Photos – please have photos of the inside of the house. Good photos, without using wacky perspective to make stuff seem bigger than it is. Well lit, in focus. Furnished or unfurnished doesn’t matter too much.. but NOT 3D rendered furniture! This seems to be an up and coming trend.. I hope it stops.

But we’d just as soon be back in time, for all the chance you’d change your mind..