Still As Life

Here it is, the all new Still As Life design on Wordpress. Check it out at blog.stillaslife.com or head to the new portal page at www.stillaslife.com!

This old Blogger blog will remain here, accessible at stillaslife.com/blogger.html so that the articles on it are still available for everyone.

The new Still As Life blog also incorporates a gallery system for my fractal art and wallpapers, which are free for anyone to use as their desktop background and so on as long as my little copyright statement remains intact. The gallery is of course, very empty at the moment as I have not yet put many of my completed ones up, and I am re-rendering some of them at higher quality on the new computer. There will of course be new ones as well as time passes.

That's it for this blog. I'll see you at the new one!

Labels: art, code, design

Today, along with plotting to take over the world with Rhi, I rearranged me desk setup, and for that matter, most of that side of the room.

I've chucked one of my bookcases up on the back of one of my desks. I've run out of room on the ground level, so logically, start building up. Tetris style.

It turned out that the bottom shelf of the bookcase is the perfect size to fit my pair of 19" widescreens with about 3mm to spare above them and about 2cm in total to spare horizontally. Sweet.

I've migrated the main work stream applications over to Quadzilla. As a result of this, I've noticed about a 50% performance decrease in the performance of Adobe Photoshop CS3 when working with large files compared to the old XP box that is around a quarter of the power of Quadzilla. That doesn't make any sense to me and I sure hope it's just a temporary problem.

I have left the old box up and running next to the new one. I need it for access to the RAID 0 array in it. At the moment, I have it plugged in to the second input in my secondary monitor, however I am accessing it predominately via the Windows Remote Desktop Connection software as this saves the trouble of switching the inputs and the keyboard and mouse.

Since moving the bookcase, I all of a sudden seem to have so much extra space. I need it since I'm planning on getting a filing cabinet soon, all the same though, it's remarkable the amounf ot space it seems to have made. I'm also thinking about getting a fourth desk from somewhere to get myself some more desk space since I seem to keep running out.

Labels: other, software

I have Folding@Home running on all of my computers, I have run it for quite a while. I have no real reason not to. Now having it setup on the new computer, and watching the usage on the CPU, it is nothing like what I had expected.

On everyt other computer I have used it on, it consistently keeps the CPU usage up at 100% except when it is sending and receiving a new block to work on. On the quad core CPU though, even though it is set to use all of the idle CPU time, it seems to sit between 30% and 50% of the CPU time, it is also getting through pieces quicker than the old computer, despite only using such a small amount of the available CPU time.

No, this does not mean that I have gotten the new computer completely stable. It is close. I am still having a couple of problems. It seems that I cannot reboot. I have to shut it down and then manually power it back on. If I tell it to reboot it will get stuck in an infinite loop of rebooting. The only way around this is to either force it to power down and then switch it back on, or to boot into safe mode and then reboot from safe mode.

This seems to be the only problem remaining. I have a couple of times had the 200gb drive become read only, however, a shut down and then power back on has fixed that.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have put a fan in the front now as well. I accidentally killed my spare 120mm fan (I accidentally put a screwdriver through it. Don't ask.), so it's got my only spare 92mm fan in now instead (which is noisier than any of the 80mm ones that I have lying around). This seems to have fixed the problem of one of the drives constantly spinning up and down for no reason. It will definitely have to be replaced by a 120mm fan though as this single 92mm fan is producing as much noise on it's own as the entire old computer did.

Labels: hardware, software

I have been working on my new baby since I got home after watching Sweeney Todd this evening, trying to get it up and running. It's been over a week since I bought the parts, that's the longest it is has ever taken me to get a new computer up and running! Normally it's done in a day, two at the most.

I seem to have gotten it running pretty stably now under 64 bit Windows Vista. I also have the majority of the hard drives moved over to it. There are two remaining, the two 320gb drives that are in RAID 0. I haven't moved these two across yet as I will have to rebuild the RAID array when I move it over to the new computer and as with anything like that, there is no guarantee I won't lose my data. This means I have to backup around 500gb of data first. I can't quite do this sadly. I have about 320gb of free space between all of my other hard drives and I really don't want to burn around 200gb of DVD's. So what is the solution? Well, I'm thinking I will pickup another 500gb hard drive, the same as my other recently bought 500gb drive and backup the RAID array to this drive and the free space on my other drives. This takes care of the back up before rebuilding the RAID array. Then once that is done and the RAID is setup correctly on the new computer, pickup a third 500gb hard drive and setup a RAID 5 array between the three 500gb drives. This will give me a terrabyte of striped data with parity backup for all of the really important things, like my locally stored web work and related information.

This wouldn't replace the RAID 0 configuration as it will still be faster than the RAID 5 configuration due to the parity in RAID 5. While it is not a huge speed gain, it's amazing the difference that RAID 0 makes when working with many gigabytes of raw video files. Since I'm not working on any and not expecting to be working on any soon, it is not vital to get the RAID 0 over too soon, but it would be nice.

I have, of course, encountered a few problems with moving the hard drives over to the new computer. Surprisingly, not due to Vista. I know, it's amazing hey?

No, the problem is purely in that my case is not quite as spacious as I had thought. Put simply, the power and SATA cable for one of the hard drives runs through the video card heat sink because they physically cannot plug into the hard drive any other way.

As you can see in the photo, all three of these hard drives are very close to the video card and yes, the PCI-e power cable is turning very nearly at a right angle in order to fit.

Yes, there are two spaces below the bottom hard drive where I could have put the middle 400gb drive, but I need those two spaces for the RAID 0 array, and those two drives generally run hotter, so the bottom two spaces should be cooler for them.

I also uncovered another, hopefully only temporary problem. The 400gb drive in the middle is very slow to access, and it does seem to be spinning up every now and again, even though it isn't actually switched off. The cables seem to be connected fine, and it has been fine in the old computer and hadn't shown any signs of problems, so being the drive in the middle I'm thinking it might be overheating.

One of the main reasons I'm thinking this is that the hard drives are actually getting very close to being the hottest components. For that matter, this is the first time I have ever had a CPU that is the coolest component in the computer. Just using the stock cooler, it is cooler than the north and south bridge heatsinks on the motherboard, cooler than the RAM, much cooler than the video card, and the hard drives are pretty much on par with the video card heat wise. You could burn yourself on them, especially the middle one, if you touch it for too long.

I'm currently putting a 120mm fan in the front bay in front of the hard drives. I've been meaning to do this since I put it together, I just haven't gotten to it yet. This will hopefully help keep them a bit cooler, if not, than I guess I will have to find another solution.

You know what else is weird? I had my 5.1 channel surround sound speakers connected to the new computer, yet I could not seem to get it to output anything to the centre, sub, rear left, or rear right channels, only the front left and right. I could not figure out why though, there was no real reason. I ended up just unplugging them from the computer and plugging them straight back in. Didn't switch off any power or make any other changes, and instantly all the speakers are working. I really don't get that. I have no idea if it's to do with any of the hardware or if it's Vista or if it's the drivers, but ah wells, at least it's working now.

Labels: hardware

Wow. I saw Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the cinema's with Rhi and her mum this evening and boy can I tell you it was definitely not what we expected. If you haven't heard anything about it yet, have a look at the trailer below.



Okay, so I assume you have seen the trailer now, according to the trailer, it gets an R18+ rating, however, in Australia it is actually only MA15+, bit of a difference.

It gets the rating for "graphic bloody violence" which is, in my opinion, an understatement.

Tim Burton has loaned his amazing directorship to the production along with Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd) and Helena Bonham Carter's (Mrs. Lovett) excellent acting to create a stunning movie. Put simply, Sweeney Todd is an amazingly well done movie. Burton has achieved an unusually high level of immersion in the film and story, and let me just say this now, there is no way I am ever going to a barber, ever, regardless of how sane he appears.

The story of Sweeney Todd is that of a barber who has a beautiful wife and a baby daughter, until a local judge removes him from the scenario with false accusations and so on so that the judge can take Todd's wife for himself. Todd's wife dies and his daughter becomes the ward of the judge.

When Todd comes back to London, he is a completely different man to who he used to be. He seems to be a reasonable person, though bordering on insanity and he is bent on killing the judge who stole 15 years of his life from him,.

As the movie and story line progresses, Todd and Mrs. Lovett develop an unusual relationship and their apparent sanity diminishes to manic psychosis (I don't know if that is existent, but it's the closest thing I can think to describe it). With every murder they get worse and worse, especially Todd, to the point where he kills the wife that he thought was dead, he kill's Mrs Lovett, he almost kills his daughter without realising who she is, and then he himself is killed, the way that he was killing people, by slitting their throats in his barbers shop with his barbers knives.

The story is a very unusual story, though not what I expected it to be, it was very well done. However, there was way too much gore in my opinion. Honestly, I lost count of how many times you saw someone's throat slit on the screen with blood spraying everywhere.

Amazingly, Burton managed to turn a real life film into a cartoon-like atmosphere. The atmosphere was very much like that of Burton's animated Corpse Bride (where the lead roles were acted by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter as well).

While it is not an action film, in fact, the majority of the time, it could hardly be called a violent film. It is extremely gory though and it gets to the point that every time you see Todd with a customer in his barbers shop you don't know whether to keep watching or to turn away because you don't know if it is going to be a slit throat, or if it is going to be a real shave.

Todd's motto is "I am going to give you the closest shave of your life," and he definitely delivers.

It is not a horror movie either, IMDB lists it as being a crime/thriller/musical and this is probably the closest way to describe it. If it wasn't for the massive amounts of gore, I would highly recommend this film, but really, I don't think I could watch it a second time, despite how good the story is. So really, I can't recommend it, even though it is a testimony to the skill of Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter and is absolutely amazing!

Labels: movies

Thanks to Tim and his wife Judith of Spy Journal and Jethro Consultants for inviting Rhi and I over for dinner last night. We had a great time and the food was awesome.

Tim and Jude keep Stimsons Pythons, bearded dragons, lizards, heaps of fish, and even more pets. I got to hold a snake and a dragon for the first time! Probably something I should get used to since Rhi is hoping to get her spotted python on Thursday (she didn't get her license in time to get it this weekend).

It still amazes me how placid they were, and how content they were to be held.

Tim also has a very, very awesome computer setup. 4 screens in a curve following the curve of the desk, 80" of screen, nice.

They also showed us some interesting games I have never heard of before, Tim, you are going to have to show me the computer version of Carcassone (is that how it's spelt?) sometime.

Thanks again Tim and Jude.

Labels: other

I received this in an email, I don't know who originally made it, if you do, let me know so I can credit them.

Labels: other

I've been talking about it, so where is it?

The new Still As Life blog?

Well, the design is virtually completed, and setup for Wordpress, I just have a few more small things to sort out in it along with setting up the basis for the second half of the website.

That's right, there's a second half!

Don't all pass out at once, I have been working!

The new Still As Life design is, I am proud to say, in my opinion Web 2.0, though as Web 2.0 is as flexible as any other definition of a design style, that is open to interpretation.

So, I can safely say, it will be alive soon.

Since I'm changing over to Wordpress instead of Blogger, and the file paths will be changing, that does mean a different RSS URL along with other changes, but in the long run, I think it will be very beneficial.

That's all for now, catch ya.

Labels: code, design, internet

Well, as of today, the TerraMedia Email Exchange is up and running.

Using Microsoft Exchange Server, the TerraMedia Email Exchange provides email, contact and calendar synchronisation whether you are accessing your email from Outlook, via a web browser, or even via a smart phone. So you can access your mailbox wherever you are in the world.

Pricing starts at $29 a month per mailbox and includes 500mb of space and a free Outlook 2007 license. There is absolutely no setup fee, so the total cost to have your own Exchange email accounts are drastically reduced to a low $29 a month.

If you need more than 500mb, there are larger capacity options available to suit.

All of my email accounts are running off of the TerraMedia Email Exchange Server and it is proving to work very effectively.

Check out the news article on TerraMedia for more information as well as the TerraMedia Email Exchange information, key features and pricing pages.

Labels: internet, software, work

Gecko's!!

We have so many gecko's around this place. There have always been lots of average to big ones like in the photos on the left.

The last week or so, there have been a few tiny little baby ones!

There was also one the other night, that was gigantic!

I'm pretty sure it's a different breed to the ones that we get all over the place in the house because it is twice the size, both length and breadth, as the bigger one in the sliding door frame here.

I wanted to get a photo of it, but by the time I got back with the camera it had vanished.

Excuse the blurriness of the photo's, but I wasn't using the flash because I didn't want to risk damaging their eyes.

Oh, and just in case you didn't guess, the hand with the baby gecko on it is Rhi's, not mine. Mine are slightly less girl-like and somewhat bigger.

Labels: other

With my installation of 4gb of RAM in my new computer it became time to figure out what operating system to use. As I mentioned in my earlier blog about installing the OS on my new computer, Windows XP Professional 32 bit, Windows Vista 32 bit, and Windows Server 2003 would not see more than 3.5gb of RAM, even though I have 4gb installed.

I have been aware of this limitation in 32 bit operating systems for a while, but I had to try it out for myself, just to be sure. There is one thing though that has always had me confused about it. In everything I have read about people finding 32 bit OS's not seeing their full amount of RAM, it has seen various different amounts. Sometimes it would be 3.3gb, sometimes 3.5, 3.7, 3.8 etc.

I could not figure out why it was always different.

I've done some reading up on it though, and the reason for this is not that 32 bit operating systems can only handle 3.something gb of RAM, it is that they can address a total of 4gb of RAM.

This means that any devices that have their own RAM, such as video cards have their RAM saved first so that it can address the entirety of the video card RAM. If there are any other devices, such as some high end RAID controllers and so on, this RAM is added to the list of addressable RAM.

Then the system memory is the last lot of RAM to be added to the total amount of RAM.

So since my video card is a 512mb video card, and I don't have any other devices with their own RAM, and 4gb is the maximum RAM that can be addressed it is worked out as follows:

4gb - n = addressable system RAM

Where n = the total amount of RAM in other devices.

As I have 4gb of RAM, and 4gb is the total, and I have already lost 512mb of it to the video card, that leaves 3.5gb of addressable system RAM. That is why 32 bit operating systems would only see 3.5gb of RAM in my computer.

It turns out there are hacks available for both XP and 32 bit Vista to have them show the full amount of RAM, however, they will still only address the amount as worked out above.

In some of my reading it has also indicated that the 4gb limit is only a Windows limitation and is not present in other 32 bit operating systems such as Linux and BSD variants.

I am not certain on that last point though so don't quote me on it.

Labels: hardware, software, technology

My current workspace as you can see in the photo on the left is quite crowded, with both the old and new computers, the laptop, 2 keyboards and 2 mice. Yes, I have a KVM switch, but I prefer to work with separate gear for each computer where possible.

Getting an OS to work has been quite a mission, and I'm still not entirely sure that I have succeeded.

First off I installed Windows XP Professional, the standard 32 bit version. I didn't expect this to recognise my full 4gb of RAM due to it's being only 32 bit, and I was right, but I wanted to confirm this anyway.

Next up I installed Vista Business Edition. I was not aware that it was the 32 bit version when I got it, but it turns out it is, so again, this did not recognise the full 4 gb of RAM.

As I have received Windows Server 2003 through uni, I decided to try it out and just see if it would recognise all the RAM. However, it was unsuccessful as well.

Windows XP 64 bit has had driver problems, so I got a 64 bit version of Vista. This seemed to work well. It recognized the full amount of RAM and was running fine for about a day. I got to try out Unreal Tournament 3 which was absolutely amazing. However, today I was planning on moving all of my hard drives over to the new computer since Vista seemed to be working.

I put in the first one and low and behold, Vista shows its true colours. First off it write protected the drive. Upon a reboot it was still write protected. If I move the drive back to the old computer under XP, it is perfectly fine. Back to Vista and it is write protected. I have searched for solutions to this to no avail. The only solutions I have been able to find are to reformat the drive from Vista, which I simply cannot do as there is nowhere else for me to store almost 300gb of data at this time.

I decided to shut it down and switch the drive over to a different SATA port, however, upon doing this and booting it back up, Windows Vista BSODed twice before booting again properly.

When it booted up finally, the drive was all of a sudden able to be written to and data modified. So here I was thinking this is great, it's fixed. However, as I rebooted it to confirm that it was in fact working properly, it BSODed 3 more times before it would boot into Vista, and again, the drive was write protected.

By this point, as you can imagine, I was getting extremely annoyed. I shut it down and moved it to another different SATA port. Boot it up, a continual loop of BSOD, reboot, BSOD, reboot, BSOD etc. Force power it off and switch it back to the previous SATA port and the same story.

This was becoming very old very fast so I decided to reinstall Vista with the second hard drive already in the computer.

Upon the reinstall being completed, the drive seems to be writable and it seems to have remained that way after installing all of the latest updates and various reboots.

There was a single BSOD after installing the first required Vista update, the new update installer I think it was from memory. However since then it seems to have been fine.

Hopefully it will remain this way or I will seriously start to consider other solutions.

For anyone interested, Quadzilla achieves an Experience Rating of 5.2.

Labels: hardware, software

The Alstonville Pathfinder Club forum is now live. It has actually been live for a week or so, I just haven't had time to blog anything about it up until now. It is based on the Simple Machines forum system.

For anyone that doesn't know what Pathfinders actually is, it is similar to the Scouts teen and youth programs. There is a lot of information available at Pathfinders Online. Basically though, if you come across someone who is a Pathfinder, they are part of a worldwide organisation of people that are sponsored by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Of course you don't have to be religious to join, or of the SDA denomination.

As I said, it is similar to the Scouts organisation and includes activities like camping and survival skills, leadership training, community outreach programs, various training programs in more fields than you can poke a stick at, including recreational, artistic, nature based, conservation, vocational, and outreach area's. These training programs all have various levels and awards (or honours) for their completion, many of which are recognised in Australia towards formal qualifications.

Pathfinders are all led, not only by adults, but by their peers. Each level of Pathfinders gains more responsibility and as their rank suggests, Guides and Master Guides, the highest ranking Pathfinders before the leaders and councillors, are guides and role models for the younger Pathfinders. They assist the younger Pathfinders in succeeding in their completion of honours and attaining their next rank.

Pathfinder activities include regular camp outs as well as hall meetings, the yearly expedition where Pathfinders from each division go on exactly that, a hiking expedition with each other and their leaders. Of course, you can't mention Pathfinder activities without mentioning the Camporee's. Camporee's have various sizes from the more common division Camporee's where Pathfinders from every club in a division all effectively go on a giant camp out, similar to a Scout Jamboree, then of course there are the bigger state-wide, national, and world-wide Camporee's that are less common.

I find I am quite often explaining to people what Pathfinder's are because they simply have never heard of them, so it may come as a surprise to many people just how large and wide-spread the Pathfinder clubs are. Clubs can range in size from very few people, even as small as 10, up to clubs in excess of 100 Pathfinders, and that's just in North NSW. The last national camporee that was held in Australia at Yarrahappini had over 5,000 Pathfinders in attendance from all over Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and other Pacific Islands. That's just the Pathfinders that could attend as well. There were many that were unable to make the trip. World-wide Camporee's are, as you can imagine, significantly larger.

Labels: design, special interest, work

This has to be one of the most interesting marketing ideas on a web store that I have seen. This page from Hema is almost entirely Flash based. It takes a few seconds to load, but it's definitely worth seeing.

It gives an excellent idea of the company image and what they sell, even though I don't understand the majority of the writing.

Check it out.

Labels: design

Why did I pick this case? Why the Cooler Master Elite 330?

Well, I've always liked the Cooler Master cases, especially the various models of the CM Stacker. Anyway, when I decided to buy a new case rather than just replace the contents in my old case, it had to be something reasonably cheap, particularly because I was already spending $150 on a new Antec Neo 650w power supply.

Normally I'm not fussed on most cases because under the paint and external cover, they are all a very similar chassis. However, this time I decided I wanted to get something with a more "user-friendly" chassis.

The vast majority of these better cases, Antec, Lian Li, Silverstone, Cooler Master and so on, are generally more expensive, some even ranging up to the $400 mark with no power supply.

This case caught my eye though because it was only $55 without a power supply and is the same as the one I chose for one of the new computers at work. As I've been inside the case at various times with the work one, I knew that it had a decent chassis and included some very simple, but also very effective devices that make it much easier to work on.

It is far from an ugly case as well, and like all Cooler Master cases, it is designed for maximum airflow. It comes with a 120mm fan pre-installed in the back of the case as well as an air intake duct leading from the side of the case directly to the CPU fan.

In addition to this there is a large vent in the side of the case that runs just short of the length of the video card, thus helping vent it.

Now, this is far from the least of the cooling idea's in this case. There is space for another 120mm fan in the front of the case, or if you prefer, an 80mm or 92mm fan.

Not only this though, but as you can see in the photo's, the majority of the front of the case is filtered vents. Even the 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" drive bay covers are filtered mesh. So even with just the CPU/video card fans, single 120mm out take fan in the back and the 80mm power supply fan, the case has heaps of airflow!

There is of course more to it than this. I needed a case that would fit at least most of my hard drives. I was looking at getting a 4U rackmount case purely because they support full ATX motherboards and expansion cards along with fitting 10 hard drives. However, this was out of my price range.

The Cooler Master Elite 330 has room for 7 3 1/2" drives, I have 8 hard drives, I am going to do a little rearranging though and drop it back to 6 or 7, at least temporarily.

As I have this many hard drives and they are constantly being changed around as necessary, the easy to use, tool-free locks make it very easy to add and remove drives as necessary. They are definitely not the best ones on the market, but for the price of the case they are very decent.

I have been wary of tool-free expansion slots as I had one in a previous case that used a single screw to control every slot and this was extremely painful to use. However, the Cooler Master Elite 330 implements a very easy to use tool-free design. I imagine that once there are additional expansion cards in place it will start to have similar problems to the other ones I have used since it locks and unlocks every slot at once, however, as the design is significantly better than others I have used, I am hoping it won't be as bad. Then there is also the fact that with the amount of features on newer motherboards, I am using less and less expansion cards, so it may not become an issue at all.

Yes, I do have a beige drive in a black case, but that's okay. It will be getting replaced sooner or later anyway as it is starting to play up, for now though, it is perfectly fine.

Since taking these photo's, the first hard drive is in place and I have been working on getting the operating system running on it properly. As that seems to now have been successful, expect to see a blog about that soon.

Labels: hardware

Rhi has decided that she is going to get a pet snake. At the moment she is hoping to get a Spotted Python by next weekend. However she has to wait for her reptile license before they will let her get one.

We went and had a look at snakes at Pet City, the people that we talked to there about snakes really knew what they were talking about. There was one reptile sales person there who keeps and breeds his own snakes as well.

We worked out it will be about $700 all up for a neonatal Spotted Python as well as a reasonable size terrarium, heat mat, thermostat and all of the other accessories she needs.

It's all very interesting for me as I don't know anyone who has had a pet snake before, so I get to learn lots of new things.

So, assuming Rhi gets a reptile license by next weekend, expect to see photo's then. If not, then soon after.

Labels: other

Putting the new computer together was really no more complicated than any of the computer's I have put together in the past, except, the video card is gigantic.

Normally, I build in this order:
As you can see in the first picture though, the video card is not in yet, it is just sitting there because I realised if I put it in completely, I cannot get the RAM in because it is in the way of the clips opening enough.

Thus my order had to be changed so that the video card came after the RAM. No big deal really.

As you can see in the second photo, my 2 sticks of Geil CAS 6 RAM are very shiny, 4gb of awesome.

Thank goodness, it all fits. The video card is almost as long as the motherboard is wide though, so while I know it has been designed this way, I wonder if it may need a little extra support. It is not very obvious in the photo, but the end closest to the hard drive bays starts to bend down under the weight of the video card, which is almost as heavy as the motherboard.

I'm hoping that the motherboard southbridge isn't going to have a heat problem as well, as the video card covers part of it. Luckily it doesn't cover and of the SATA ports, as I am going to need them all, but it does come very close indeed.

I'm thinking that the video card fan should help with air circulation over the southbridge heatsink so that it doesn't get too hot, but you never know.

This case looks like it should give enough room to put hard drives in the couple of bays that overlap the rear end of the video card, but I am a little bit nervous that with the video card power cable and hard drive SATA data and power cables that it may become a bit of a problem. It shouldn't, but just one of those things since I am going to need all of the hard drive bays I can get.

Labels: hardware

As I mentioned the other day, I have been stuck at the same place in Jedi Academy that I was stuck at last time, and was quite frustrated. I just solved it, and realised how stupidly simple it was. I have no idea how I managed to get stuck there twice. Ah wells. Crisis over.

Labels: games

First up, the new motherboard, a Gigabyte P35-DS3P.

Isn't it pretty?

Anyway, I was originally looking at a couple of different Asus boards when I came across this one and a couple of other Gigabyte ones.

My old motherboard is an Asus A8N-E, and apart from having to replace the southbridge heatsink a week after buying it because the fan failed, I haven't had any problems with it. Yes, I could have gotten it fixed under warranty, but then I would have had to wait to get it back and it needed to be working then and there.

Prior to the Asus though, I have almost always used Gigabyte boards, in my opinion, they are some of the most reliable motherboards in the desktop market. I used 2 of them in my own computers prior to the Asus, one of which was sold to a friend, the other is in my parents media PC, both of which have been going for 5 years plus now with no issues at all. In addition to those, we used Gigabyte's in both my brother and sisters computers. There have never been problems with these either except when there was a power surge that took out one of them.

So, when I realised the Gigabyte's were around $50-$100 cheaper than the Asus boards, and had roughly the same features, it was naturally very appealing. The deciding factor on this motherboard was the fact that it has 8 SATA ports, all supporting RAID 0 and 1, 6 of which support RAID 5 and 10, 2 support JBOD. Now, really, I only need RAID 0 and RAID 1 since they are what I have been using anyway, but RAID 5 would be far more useful than RAID 1. All of the Asus boards supported RAID 5, some of the other Gigabyte ones did.

The two Asus boards I was looking at, the P5KE Wifi and the P5N32-E both had decent sound, the P5N32-E included a Supreme FX/DTS sound card. The P5KE Wifi logically, came with wireless. Either of these things would be useful, but in the end, I already have a PCI wireless card, and the Gigabyte uses Realtek ALC889A audio with high definition support and is able to run surround sound up to 7.1 which is really more than enough for me. As much as I love my high quality sound, the Realtek audio on all of my previous motherboards has been good enough for me, so as long as it supports up to 5.1 surround sound, seeing as how thats what my speakers are, I am happy.

Finally, external I/O played a big part in the choice. The Asus boards had 4 USB connectors via the backplate as well as Firewire and e-SATA. The P5N32-E lost the mouse PS/2 port though.

This was a bit of an issue for me, I wanted Firewire, I don't care about e-SATA, and if I am going to lose a PS/2 port, there should be a reasonable amount of USB devices available without the need for a hub, especially since I have 5 to 7 devices regularly connected to my current computer, not including keyboard and mouse.

The Gigabyte had a much better solution to this problem. It has e-SATA, it has Firewire, and it has 8 rear USB connectors as well as support for another 4 via front case connectors. Excellent.

So it has the Firewire and USB bases covered, and if I ever need e-SATA, well, it has that too.

So not only was it a cheaper motherboard, but it is a brand I prefer, and it has a better feature set for my needs.

The reason I chose this model over other Gigabyte's comes down to very small differences. The other models I was looking at either did not have Firewire, or the only had 4 or 6 SATA interfaces, which is definitely not enough, especially with only one IDE connector.

I do not care about Crossfire or SLI, I mean, I got a Crossfire motherboard and an Nvidia video card, so this was not something I was worried about, as long as it meets my main requirements of being made of awesome.

That is all for tonight, more on the developments of the beastly Quadzilla tomorrow.

Labels: hardware

As you would have seen earlier, the box for my brand new Gainward Nvidia 8800 GT Golden Sample is bigger than my new motherboard box. Now, the unveiling of the contents.

As you can see in the photo on the left, there is a smaller box within the big box. In the other sections around it are the manuals, disc's and other accessories.

Basically, a TV out cable with HDTV support, molex to PCI-E power adapter, DVI to VGA adaptor and a DVI to HDMI adapter.

It came with the usual Cyberlink PowerDVD bundle along with the standard software. Additionally, it came with a full copy of Tomb Raider Anniversary.

Now, as you can see on the left, once I opened the smaller box, it was literally ALL video card!

Sweet.

This is easily the beefiest video card I have ever owned, and is also the first Nvidia graphics card that I have bought in a good many years, I have previously used predominately ATI cards.

So what is so special about this video card? Why did I buy it over any of the other brands of 8800 GT's, or for that matter, why did I buy it over the other Gainward 8800 GT's?

For starter's, the Golden Sample cost only $359 compared to the $308 for the standard version from Gainward. Now what is the Golden Sample? Basically, it's faster. It comes factory clocked at higher speeds. The core clock speed is 650mhz and the memory clock speed is 950mhz. The standard model is 600mhz by 900mhz. In addition, the Golden Sample comes with a bigger cooling solution to cope with the higher speeds.

In my opinion, the extra $50 is well worth it considering that to overclock the standard model to the same speeds and then add a better cooler to cope with the higher speeds would add up to $50+ anyway. Plus, it would no longer be under warranty where the Golden Sample is.

The reason for this brand over any other's was initially the price, it is on par with the prices of all the other brands and is actually cheaper than some others. In my previous experiences, Gainward are an excellent video card manufacturer, so to find that their prices are now equal to other brands, but with higher clock speeds, I jumped at it.

Next up, putting things together.

Labels: hardware

This is officially important news.

I have gone down a belt hole. My belt is now one hole tighter. That's about 2cm shorter than the previous hole.

As of when I put my belt on before going to work this afternoon, my belt is now 2cm shorter than it was yesterday.

Amazing?

It's funny, I've been walking every day or 2 for the past couple of weeks before breakfast, which sometimes means breakfast isn't until 12 or later, but all the same, I have been walking before breakfast. I have been going for an average of 45 mins to an hour and 15 mins each time, aiming for an hour of course.

It looks like it's started to pay off. No big surprise though, but despite my belt size going down, I weigh more. My legs don't look any musclier than they did before though.

In addition to the walking, the past few days I have been doing a shorter walk, 15-20 minutes or so, as a warm up and then jogging. Yep, me, jogging. I bet you didn't see that coming.

Not a long jog mind you, only 200m or so, then my lovely weak ankles decide that they aren't going to jog any further and if I decide to keep going, they will stay behind. Thus I walk again for another 15-20 mins to warm down and yeah.

It's funny though, I find an hour walk doesn't tire me out anymore, my ankles start to ache, but that's about it. That's why I decided to start doing a bit of jogging. Even the jogging I feel like I could go further if it wasn't for my ankles giving out.

Ah well.

Have a good one, only an hour and a half until I get to go home and play with my new computer parts.

Labels: other

Here it is my friends, the beginning of a computer upgrade!

What you see in the photo is what I have purchased today.

Yes, the video card box is bigger than the motherboard box.

There is also a brochure for Luigi's Takeaway Cafe in the photo, they make very good Italian food. I strongly recommend them if you are in the Sunnybank area, and even if you aren't. Their phone number is 3344 3005.

So, what goodies do I have?

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU
• 4gb DDR2 800mhz kit of CAS 6 Geil RAM
• Gigabyte P35-Ds3P motherboard
• Gainward Golden Sample PCI-e GeForce 8800 GT 512mb
• Antec 650w Neopower PSU
• Coolermaster Elite 330 case

If you are anything like me, or even if you know me, you will know how exciting this is.

The only problem is, as soon as I finish my breakfast, I must go to work for a few hours before I can start to play with my new toys.

Labels: hardware