About me

Hello, my name is Johan Helmer and am a self confessed geek!

Among other things I am also a;

• PhD candidate currently writing up a thesis in biometric security
• Developer working for a market leading ERP solutions company
• Bit of a gym freak
• Hacker!

It's to the last of these traits that this blog is devoted to.

By hacker I do mean the true sense of the word, I enjoy inventing, programming and modifying. In the past I may have touched upon the more malicious meaning of the word, but more out of curiosity, and always with the permission of the owner.

To start with I will be posting old projects that I previously hosted on my own server (now been retired) but keep posted as I have plenty of other projects that I'm waiting to start

If you wish to get into contact with me I can be emailed at johan (at) helmer.com

TripRecorder

So the application still needs some polishing before it's ready for the market, but I think you'll agree it produces some great footage!

Calais to Rimini in 5 minutes, lets go!

Time laps videos

I've been messing around with developing an application for Android to produce a time laps recording of the Rally.

The program is called TripRecorder, and it's in a very early alpha stage, but here are a couple of example outputs.

It works in theory, just need to mess around with the settings.

Moto Dext Car Holder

I'm loving my new Motorola Dext/Cliq/MB220 a lot, but one thing that has pissed me off since I started using it, was that in spite it having GPS built in, I wasn't able to use it for in car GPS navigation because it doesn't come with a car holder!

After much searching online I couldn't find a holder that would hold my Dext in a landscape orientation, with the keyboard out (hey typing using a touch-screen whilst driving is dangerous after all!) without the holder fouling the keys or sockets required to use the phone.

So... to the drawing board!

4850X2 Replacement Cooler

So recently I was lucky enough to recieve a 4850X2 and as happy that I was to get it, I couldn't help but notice that it is just to noisy for my nice and quiet build.

After much research and a small thought that I would be voiding my warrenty I thought I'd venture into making it queiter. The only problem being that the lack of aftermarket coolers for this card ment that it would not be an easy ride.

The major problem with finding alternative cooling for this card is the proximity of the two R700 cores being so close. This greatly reduces the number of coolers available.

After a bit of browsing and seeing good results with a single GPU, HD 4850 I thought I'd give two Zalman VF900-Cu LED a try.