Calculator: The Pool Calculator: how much of what should you pour in to your pool to get it to sparkle?

If you ever needed to figure out (say) how much acid to pour into your pool so that the PH would be adjusted to the ideal? Well, The Pool Calculator (by Jason Linhart) can help you do that, and much, much more....

Simply enter your pool's size and pool surface, then configure your goals, change the units to metric, then you're on your way to getting those answers.

Enter your current chemical levels (test results) and The Pool Calculator tells you how much of each chemical to add to keep your water in balance.

There's even an iPhone app that you can purchase here: http://www.apptism.com/apps/pool-calculator
or here: http://download.cnet.com/Pool-Calculator/3000-18495_4-10911482.html

Available calculations include:
- FC = Chlorine
- pH: Raising and lowering
- TA = Total Alkalinity
- CH = Calcium Hardness
- CYA = Stabilizer or cyanuric acid
- Salt
- Borate (Borax)
- CSI = Calcium Saturation Index (similar to LSI = Langelier Saturation Index)
- Recommended ranges for each chemical level
- Volume

See here for a detailed description of each parameter: http://www.poolcalculator.com/chemistry.html

Here's a step-by-step guide to using the calculator:
1) Change the "units of measure" (top right of the screen)
2) Go to the bottom of the screen, to the "Estimating pool volume" section to calculate the amount of water in your pool. Enter the width, length (average) depth and shape of your pool. This will calculate the number of litres.
3) Take this number and go to the top of the screen and put it into the "Size" of the pool
4) Go to the "Suggested Goal Levels" section (at the bottom of the table) and choose which suggested goal levels you would like to use (Traditional or TroubleFreePool.com's goals. This will set different goal values and adjust the amount of chemicals so that your pool's water reaches those goals. Suggested goal levels will be displayed for FC, pH, TA, CH, and CYA. Suggested goals are simply a starting point. There are many situations that are not covered by these basic guidelines.
5) Your calculator is now set up and in the next steps you can enter the current chemical levels and The Calculator will give you the amounts of chemicals to pour in so that the goals are attained.
For example, if your pH level is 8.0, and the ideal is 7.5 to 8, then you should add 500ml of dry acid.

Note: SWG - Salt Water Chlorine Generator

How to block your own PC from skewing your site’s Google Analytics statistics

So, your web site is live and you're making small tweaks here and there and connecting to your site to test the changes - but you don't want your own PC to skew your site’s Google Analytics statistics… ie: you want to see how many "real" hits your site is attracting.
Here are 2 tricks that should assist you:

Method 1 relies on installing and configuring firewall software on your PC;
Method 2 involves editing the Windows hosts file.

Method 1: A crude way of blocking access to the Google Analytics site – so that you don't clock up hits would be to configure a firewall on your PC to prevent connections to the whole www.google-analytics.com domain.

I have tried it with the free Comodo Internet Security (which is a free bundle of a firewall and virus protection) and configured the firewall part to have a “blocked network zone” -> and added the “host name”: www.google-analytics.com
{and google-analytics.com}

This will then block ALL traffic from your PC to the www.google-analytics.com site. {That’s why I said that it’s “crude”}

The page will load, but appear to wait for a connection to complete – that’s the browser trying to connect to www.google-analytics.com

Download from here: http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/download_firewall.html

Note: it’s a bit of a pain to start with because it’s got to learn which apps are safe - so it pops up and asks you if an app or connection is safe. To start with, I put it in “learning mode”.


Method 2: You could add google-analytics.com and www.google-analytics.com both as 127.0.0.1 to the windows host file as follows:
Edit the 'hosts' file: edit %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
and add the following 2 lines:
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com

Save the file and voila - all traffic destined for google-analytics will get routed to your local PC!

I prefer method 2 (although installing a firewall and learning how to use it is not a waste of time!)
Let me know which method works best for you?

Update:
Here's Method 3 which I found on the Google Analytics help page - so I guess it's the preferred option ;) but method 2 above is simpler.
From here: https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55481&ctx=sibling

In summary,
if you have a fixed IP address (or range) then use Google Analytic's "filter" that will "filter all traffic from an IP address".
if you have a dynamic IP address (ie: using an ADSL line) then create a filter that will exclude traffic by Cookie content.

Calling all DIY enthusiasts... here are some great DIY calculators

Are you renovating or building or thinking about it... here are some great calculators that will help you in budgeting and planning for that!

Thanks to CashBuild for creating them!

DIY calculators:

1. Brick, mortar calculator
2. Concrete calculator mix-on-site
3. Concrete calculator readymix
4. Floor tile calculator
5. Mortar calculator
6. Paint calculator
7. Paving calculator
8. Plaster calculator
9. Roof area calculator

See here for more/updates: http://www.cashbuild.co.za/DIY_Calculators.php