How do You Carry Your Skis?

I’ve always found the worst part of any ski trip to be carrying the skis on the walk between the hotel or car and the lifts. Unlike the old straight skis, modern carvers just don’t stay together, and end up separating from each other at the most awkward moments. Add to this the fact that every time I turn someone gets brained, I also invariably end up carrying everyone else’s skis too, or some other unpleasantness. Trying to balance with all that ungainly weight perched on your shoulders, especially in icy footing is just a pain in the fundamental, and very dangerous.

That’s why this little device is a godsend:

Rolled up SkiSling Ski Carier

It’s called a SkiSling ski carrier, and it’s a nifty little device that allows you to carry skis slung across your back, in perfect balance. It also means that the children can’t moan any more, as they can carry their own skis quite easily:

Children carrying skis using SkiSLing ski carriers

Yup, they’re wearing it over their backpacks, it’s that easy to use. They’ve even got their poles in the slings.

When you’re not using it, it just rolls up into a little bundle that fits easily into a jacket or pants pocket. You can get them from http://www.skisling.com

The Wyse 9450 WinTerm – More than just a WinTerm

I recently had the opportunity to obtain a couple of Wyse 9450 WinTerms, including their PSUs, for the princely sum of NZD45.00 each. Now these are not some crappy WinTerm, they’re highly hackable beasts. Take off the covers, and inside you’ll find a Via EPIA mini-ITX motherboard, with Disk-on-Module(DOM).

Let’s have a look:

As you can see, it has a single PCI slot and two SDRAM slots. Now, see the jumpers just below and to the left of the memory? Those are the FSB jumpers, and as shipped, the board is set up for an FSB speed of 100MHz. Change the jumpers to the selection shown in the photo, and you up the FSB speed to 133MHz, and consequently, you up the speed of the CPU too. Don’t worry, it can handle it.

It can handle a maximum of 1GB RAM (2 X 512MB), but it’s very finicky over exactly what will work. Hi-densisty RAM will only read half the capacity. So will some lo-density RAM.

Another nice little trick this box has up its sleeve is the 44 conductor cable. This usually goes to the pin header you see on the right(Which is actually the base of the machine), and it has the requisite 5V supply on it, so you can plug in a 2.5 inch HDD, or a 44 pin to CF adapter.

So far, what I have done with one of these is made myself an Asterisk server, instaling the Astlinux C3 image on to a CF MicroDrive. I added an X100P PCI telephony card to handle inbound and call hand-off to PSTN for local calls, the rest of my calls going outbound via SIP. Next project is a Smoothwall firewall, using a four port NIC.