Electrical and hardware updates for Sunset Chaser

My five-metre runabout Sunset Chaser has been undergoing an assortment of repairs this winter. Here's a brief overview of the wiring and hardware updates I've been doing on this boat, in the hopes of keeping her going for another decade or so.

Farewell old computer: Motherboard failure (and an easy recovery)

We'll miss you, computer.

Seven years isn't a bad run for a low-end desktop. But everything dies eventually, and the old Celeron-based eMachines desktop that's lived under Katy's desk since before university had its turn last night.

No viruses, here. No trojans, toolbars, keyloggers or other malware either, for that matter. The little beast was still on its original load of WinXP Home. Not bad for a computer that's seen as much use as this one has. No, this was purely a hardware issue, as the photos below will show.

Useful tools: Electrician's fish tape

No, not that kind of fish, although you could probably bait the end and see what bites. This handy tool is an electrician's fish tape, a simple and useful gadget that could come in very handy aboard a boat.

Has display technology stagnated?

I came across an old Jakob Nielsen column this afternoon, dating from November 1995. He predicted / hoped that, when computer monitors and network connections caught up with the human factors research of the day, we ought to have 27" x 40" displays at a whopping 1200 dpi (that's 1.5 billion pixels), driven at 120 Hz by graphics cards packing close to 5 GB of memory.

Ice-up day

It's that time of year again... ice-up day in Kingston! It's hard to tell whether the lake is frozen clear across to Wolfe Island (I don't dare walk out on day-old ice), but what's here is clear, clean and covered in ducks.

These little guys insist on sticking around, whatever the weather. They're not particularly well sheltered from the wind, though.

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