OCN: Blu-Ray Wins?
February 16th, 2008 § Leave a Comment
I’ve started a more hardware-orientated blog on Overclock.net recently, for a few good reasons. First was that I didn’t feel like posting every single rant and thought about everything here, and secondly because having a blog in a place that already has a very targeted audience yields much more comments and pageviews, which makes me feel good 
. Despite the fact that I promised to myself that I wouldn’t be cross-posting my stuff from one blog to another, which I think defeats the purpose of having 2 separate blogs, I can’t help myself but link to a pertinent (according to me) article I recently wrote. I won’t be cross-posting ALL articles, but the best ones I most likely will, in hopes of giving this under-used blog something to live on. </explanation> On with the article.
If there is one thing on the tech scene that pisses me off, it’s those silly proprietary format wars that keep raging on for everything. It’s seems that companies don’t get together to talk about how to solve problems and make formats standard, but rather how to make them as different and incompatible as possible in order to give the end user a bigger headache.
Everybody can recall at least one of the famous format wars that have been going on in the past decades: PPC vs x86, USB vs Firewire, Minidisk…
Moo!
February 13th, 2008 § 1 Comment
I should of done this when I got them, I know, but a week or so ago I got my free trial of Moo mini-cards, thanks to my 2 year renewal to Flickr Pro.When I got them I was amazed at how small these things were. I was thinking normal business card size in a panoramic format, but heck these things are shorter than your index and pretty much on par with the thickness of the average thumb. After the initial shock of receiving something so small, I actually liked them. They fit way better in a pocket, and the quality is awesome. The paper is thick and sturdy, printing is A one… major epic win for Moo. If I actually had a use for these suckers, I’d order a hundred more for sure! Ideal for anti-conformist hipsters who want to stand out while still presenting kickass cards.
Check out Moo for more paper goodies.
New Server Build: Annabel!
February 12th, 2008 § 1 Comment
I’m really miles deep into hardware now: A meager couple of months after completing my first ever custom build, I’m already starting another build, for a home server this time. Don’t be fooled by the term “home server”, this isn’t going to be a recycled P3 on Slot 1 in a fancy case sporting some big drives, it’s gonna pack some serious punch. Hell, it might even come close to making Fr0stbyte sweat on SuperPI runs.
The necessity for this box came from my dad shutting down the current server “Laggboxx” every night. Since I don’t like uploading torrents while I’m gaming for obvious reasons, night-time is the perfect time to get cracking at making my ratios better, and a closed server doesn’t seed a whole lot. I couldn’t open it in the morning either, so bottom line what was supposed to be a server spent more than half the time closed. Hurray for uptime.
This led me to want to build myself a server. I knew that I wanted something relatively cheap, but still something that could churn out decent work units and be quite futureproof, all while staying in the less than 700$ range, including storage drives. The key word in this whole thing was value: solid, quality used parts with good overclocking potential, and a fast yet cheap final product. After reading several build logs of such projects and/or dedicated folding boxes, I figured that my target price could yeild a pretty damn powerful machine. At the time that I wrote this article, the part’s list looked like this:
- CPU: Core 2 Duo “Allendale” e4300, 1.8 ghz stock
- Mobo: DFI Blood Iron P35
- RAM: ???
- Case: Ultra Grid with 500 XVS PSU
- Storage
- 40 gig Western Digital on IDE, OS and applications drive
- 250 gig Seagate 7200.10 on IDE, movies, install files, non-critical data, torrents, buffer NAS
- RAID 1 (mirrored) array of 2 Seagate 7200.11s on SATA, for music, media, important backups, stuff I really really want to keep.
And that’s pretty much it. Why these parts? Here comes the long part.
First, going with Intel was a sure thing. Not only because of fanboyism and because Intel kicks the shit out of everything else on the market, but also because I’m much more experienced at Intel overclocking, and I know a stable Intel OC when I see one. An AMD rig, even with the relatively new AM2 socket parts would have been much cheaper, but since my last AMD OC was horrible EPIC fail (I loled and wtfed at trying to lower DDR latencies, nowhere near DDR2), I decided it might be wise to shell out a bit more, get a bit more, and be more comfy with my stuff. The e2XXX series, commonly called Pentium Dual Cores, are known to be very good overclockers and generally retail for under 100$ dollars. I was looking for an e2180 (1.8 ghz, 9 x 200, 1 MB L2), which I’ve seen many times overclocked to as far as 3.5 ghz, but then an OCN member named Kopi posted his e4300 (1.8 ghz, 9 x 200, 2 MB L2), which is basically the same thing with more L2, so I jumped right on it. It has done 3.5 ghz on an older Intel P965 board, so getting it to 3 or 3.2 ghz on a more recent board is guaranteed to be easy.
Next, to attain and hold the high (at least considerably higher than stock) FSBs that I want to make this chip endure, I needed a solid board, while remaining in my mini-budget. I knew I wanted to go P35, but what I didn’t know is that I could get an overclocker’s favorite, the DFI Blood Iron, for just over 100$. As soon as I saw one on OCN, I snatched it.
As for the disk, I wanted to go Seagate because I’m a total fanboy, but I’m still hesitating between the classic 7200.10, the newer 7200.11 which are said to make some Raptors jealous and more solid server-grade drives the ES1‘s.
The rest of the stuff is basically whatever I had handy or what I could get for cheap. The Patriot RAM I bought looks ok, some reviews are saying that they can do 1 000 mhz on CAS 5, which isn’t bad for something I paid 60$.
Total cost up to now?
Not bad for the price eh? All I’m missing is the discs now.
Be sure that I’ll post a couple of pictures once it’s done, but if you want more info, pictures, or a complete overview of my project check out the worklog hosted on the Overclock.net forums.
Flickr Uploadr Hits Version 3, Massive Improvement
January 28th, 2008 § 1 Comment
It’s a first: I’m one of the first to blog about a piece of software. A happy coincidence really: in the process of the downgrading from Vista to XP x64, I formatted and lost all of my software, and it’s today, while trying to upload a single stupid little diagram, that I thought that I might want to download the Uploadr again. And guess what? The boys and girls at Flickr have been building a newer, more complete versions of the oh so plain Uploadr 2.
Stunning ain’t it? You can now edit all the information about uploaded images right from your computer either individually or as a batch, which makes for a easier management of tags on individual photos and quicker file naming compared to the original “load a page, edit, repeat” process. The original photo management interface was pretty slick, AJAXy and all, but for those with trying to edit titles and description on a tethered cellphone internet connection, loading a complete page is pretty frustrating and a desktop application makes much more sense. Right before upload, everything can be edit; title, description, tags, privacy settings and all. Hurray for Flickr for not going several steps deeper into the browser-based hype that is clogging up our intertubez.
Nice thing since I just renewed my Flickr Pro account for another 2 years.
Check it out: Flickr Uploadr 3
Lifehacker also tells us that Pro users also get an addition goodie, Flickr stats, which keeps tracks of views, reposts, linkage and a ton of other metrics, but I enabled that just a few minutes ago, I’ll have to wait a bit to review it.
Oh and for the record. Flickr >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Picasa.
Synergy, Productivity++
January 16th, 2008 § Leave a Comment
On a computer, we power users don’t just do something, we multi-task, ALL. THE. TIME. It’s a known and documented fact, we like to juggle with multiple apps that do multiple things, on multiple computers with multiple displays. We want to, no have to, keep constant situational awareness on a shitload of RSS feeds, our 3 email addresses, 6 IM accounts, a couple dozen IRC channels and the newest funniest crap on Youtube, all this while writting LISP and the half complete English assignment that’s due for tomorrow. It’s a sort of megalomaniac, control freak aspect of NADD I guess.
However, problems arise when comes the time of controlling all of these machines simultaneously: there can only be so many keyboards and mice on a desk, and I’ve not yet seen 3 level keyboard trays. With a workspace containing 2-8 computers, a KVM switch is a viable options, but the price of those things is outrageous. Another possibility remains: using the connection to your home network as a bridge between your desktops with Synergy, the software KVM.
Synergy is an open source tool hosted at Sourceforge which does the exact same thing as those multi hundred dollar hardware KVMs, and even a bit more, using your existing network as a medium. For the average basement geeksta who scrapes the pennies to afford his new toys, this is really a blessing. How it works is pretty simple, you basically need 2 components to get Syngery working. The server, which is the computer which shares it’s keyboard and mouse, and that holds a record of what machines are physically next to each other, and the client, which connects to the server and is totally independent until the mouse from the server moves off it’s own screen into the said client machine. You get the transition that you usually have when running dual head monitors, but each machine is totally independent apart from that. This means that you can go from making some 3d design on one computer, to playing your music on the other, to sorting your photos and replying to emails on yet another, in one quick sweep of your mouse. I’ve used it countless times to switch quickly between my laptop for MSN and reading RSS to my main rig for power-browsing and work on Google Sketchup.
If you own many machines on many OS’s, fear not: Synergy has a release for Windows, Linux and MacOSX, so managing your Linux server no long means finding a spare keyboard and crawling under your desk. Since it works in tandem with X, runlevel 3 and under won’t work though.
It has 2 drawbacks though. The first one, major concern for those of you planning to use this in a LAN with potentially devious users, is the lack of encryption. This means that using Synergy in a hubbed network environment means turning all your machines into multicasting keyloggers. Tunneling is a possibility, but it isn’t really accessible to all users. The second is that there is some slow-downs related to sending timing critical information such as mouse movements over a network, which makes it almost impossible to use in standard wireless G or hubbed environments (security problem solved!). With a wired server and a wireless client, I was able to use some apps like browsers and IM clients, but such things as image edited on a wireless client isn’t something I would recommend; as soon as the wireless client puts a slight bit of stress on it’s connection, you can start feeling it in the movements of your mouse. On well built 100 megabit networks with good quality switches and low latencies though, you shouldn’t have a problem.
You can download the latest version of Synergy, 1.3., from it’s page at Sourceforge. It’s pretty old, not having been updated for almost a year now, but it still gets the job done, and I can certify that it is Vista x64 compatible, as long as it’s run as administrator.
Motorola PEBL U6: Solid, No-Fuss Phone, and it's not a RAZR
January 6th, 2008 § 1 Comment
Razrs are everywhere. My friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, septic tank drainers, pushers and hookers have Razrs. It was quite a revolutionary phone at it’s launch, but today they are some many in the wild that owning one of those will get people to whisper “conformist” to you on the streets. I’m usually more of a right side kind of person, but really, some trends, like the Razr, get to a point where it’s almost an insult to individuality.
When I was looking for my first phone, I wanted something like me: really hot. Just kidding. I wanted something functional, with decent looks and that extra special touch that makes it mine, as well as mobile internet, Java and Bluetooth ready. After looking at the Motoral L series, my choice landed on the PEBL U6, still from Moto, mostly because it had all I wanted, but also because my service provider, Fido, didn’t carry it, and after buying 2 of those phones, I have no regrets.
2007, A Yearly Retrospective
December 28th, 2007 § 2 Comments
2007 was a very big year indeed. For the sake of archiving all the memories and accomplishements of the year that has passed, this article will highlight the main events of the year 2007.
- First big event in my year, my 15th birthday on the 30th of January: one year deeper in adolescence, and getting closer still to adulthood and all it has to offer. On the personal plan, I feel that I have gone through great personal evolution throughout this year: a change in tastes, change in mentality, but most importantly, a feeling that time goes by WAAAY faster. As much as last year my weeks seem to stretch out and last forever, now it seems like my bi-weekly paycheck comes in every day.
- Once again a step closer to adulthood, 2007 was marked with the obtention of my first ever job at McDonalds, in the month of March. Being the first one of my posse to get a real job (the kind you have to do declarations for), I had no friend to give me advice on the thing, so the concept of working was totally new for me. My job helped me on many aspects, notably social interaction, negociation and diplomacy, and it gave me my first real taste of what money was really worth. The only sad thing about it is that it got me used to a certain level of comfort that makes me feel poor whenever I fall under, but hey, something’s gotta give.
- Also a big first in 2007, the construction of my first custom PC, and my introduction to the hardware side that came with it. In fact, if this year were to be named after a geeky sphere of activity, it would be without a doubt be called hardware. It’s pretty regrettable, but in the end DIC has been slightly shunned in the favor of OCN, and the tendancy looks like it’s going to continue. Unless I decide to finally get a grip on my code, which is going just as good as the American economy.
- ’07 was also the year of my first parentless trip out of Quebec. With the help of my school, various fundraisers and the federal tax-funded SEVEC program, I went to Peace River, Alberta, with a short stop to Edmonton. Although on the spot I didn’t really care of what was happening to me, if it wasn’t for the immersion in a totally different culture, I later realized that this trip was a very important part of my year, if not my life, for lots of reasons.
- It may sound weird, but this past year feels like the first one where I really have explored my limits with alcohol, and that it is openly discussed with members of my family. I’ve been drinking for quite a time (I know, teen drinking is bad, bla bla bla), but until Q3 2007, I just drunk whatever I had brought to the social event currently ongoing, or whatever was given to me or “found” in the basement fridge, but now I think I know my limits and feel like I can drink to the brink, while having drunk and still not being sick. Examples? Party of 30 at one of my rich friend’s house, probably the biggest all summer, I was one of the only 3 that weren’t sick. It’s not something big, but it’s an accomplishment that I am proud of, a skill that I think is going to be very useful in the college years up ahead
.
- 2007 also marks my transfer to Chavigny High School from Three River’s Academy. I’ve been at TRA (formerly St. Patrick’s) ever since pre-kindergarten, so over time I’ve been used to my little 200 student high school, so the switch to this full fledged 2000 student institution was quite a shock. Despite my integration was quick and painless, and to this day I have no regrets about my switch.
- Also on the academic plan, 07′ is the first year where I get courses relative to the job that I want to practice later on. One of the main reasons I was switching ot Chavigny this year was the Cisco CCNA course given there, in which I was accepted. At the date of writing of this article, the CCNA 1 module is one chapter short of being finished, and so far I’m doing good.
- I’ve gotten way better at biking in summer 07, and I’ve ridden over 2000 k for sure. Great use of all that McDonalds I was eating back this summer.
- I’ve been introduced, thanks to Mark, to Payperpost, and made a couple of bucks from it. Besides putting a little bit of money in my Paypal account, it also helped with my writing a lot. Plugging something while not sounding like a plug is kind of hard.
With this said, let 2008 kick off and be a good one! That’s what my yearly horoscope promised anyways .
Widescreen Gaming: Not That Simple
December 22nd, 2007 § 3 Comments
With the purchase of my monitor a few weeks ago and new graphics card just a couple days old, I’m still pretty fresh to the way of life that is using a wide screen monitor. Although with most apps using any resolution is no big deal, as 16:10(monitors) and 16:9 (HDTVs) are supported by Windows natively, but it’s really in gaming and web browsing that a wide monitor stands out. Again, on the web the format usually isn’t a problem (at least not for the Firefox rendering engine; hurray FF!), but there are some problems in some games. For those trying to play older/crappier games on new monitors, I have set up a small list of games that I personally have had trouble with. Here they are.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
It’s a great game, with a gameplay that IMO will outlive Counter Stike, but unfortunately it’s already getting pretty old. Just look at the system requirements…
600 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, 32 MB OpenGL graphics card, 56.6k Modem/LAN
–Wikipedia
Hrmm. Yeah. Fortunately, the Quake 3 engine being very flexible, there is support for just about resolution you can possibly dream of. Getting it to work correctly is something else. For those who hate fixing up config files, you’ll have to endure a slight bit of it: there are 3 and possibly 4 cvars to be changed in the config file. Look for etconfig.cfg in the etmain folder of your Enemy Territory install and fire it up in your favorite text editor. Find the following cvars with the search function (Control + F).
seta r_mode 3 //Sets the rendering engine to default mode.
seta r_customwidth “” // Set to nothing
seta r_customheight “” // Set to nothing
And change them to this :
seta r_mode “-1″
seta r_customwidth “1440″
set r_customheight “900″
In this case, the last two variables reflect my resolution: 1440 x 900, change that to yours. Start the game, and the game should be in the resolution that you have specified. If not, the config decided to not stick. Vista preventing the writing of some files, the game uselessly trying to revert to an old mode, whatever. It’s frustrating but there is a way to bypass this. If you used to be a server admin, you might remember creating server start shortcuts and setting some variables on the command line to force the game to load mods from the appropriate folder; well this bypass works the same way. Just add the variables above to your shortcuts in the following form: “et.exe +set r_mode -1 +set r_blablabla..”. It’s a foolproof solution, just remember to add this to ALL your shortcuts: the Xfire and Rocketdock ones included. Now that you have it running widescreen, you may notice some distortion in the far ends of your screen: mess around with the cg_fov cvar to tweak that. Usually, a 16:10 monitor is gonna work with an FOV of 100.
Battlefield 2
I really don’t know what’s up with EA, but they don’t seem to be digging the whole widescreen thing. Despite the fact that it is WAY more recent than ET, it still doesn’t support widescreen without some hacking, minor hacking that is. Still, that doesn’t make it any more acceptable. With the unreal amount of patches that EA release, they could of at least thought into making 16:10 an option. Meh… Well anyways, here is how to force it to take your resolution. It’s kind of like ET, only there is no configuration files to be edited, it only works with command line variables. Just add the following line to your command line arguments on your shortcuts:
+menu 1 +fullscreen 1 +szx 1440 +szy 900
+Menu and +fullscreen are important, but I forget why, while szx and szy values are to be replaced with your desire resolution. No need to tweak FOV, the game looks fine with no additional tweaking.
NFS: Carbon
Despite the fact that this game is still relatively recent, it STILL doesn’t support widescreen. And guess who’s the publisher? That’s right! EA! This time, the process of putting it 16:10 is a tad tougher. First, you’ll need a no CD fixed EXE. Not only will this liberate you from EA’s annoying tendency to keep asking for a CD in hope of saving themselves from piracy, which is totally retarded because nobody uses optical drives anymore, but it is also a mandatory part of the widescreen patching process. Because of possible legal issues, I can’t give you the crack right here right now, but I can point you to Gamecopyworld, which is the best site I know for files of the kind. Look for a working crack, and don’t forget to always backup your old executable and scan all shady files for viruses. Once you got the cracked game working, you can go ahead and download the UniWS patcher from here, and follow these instructions to patch your exe. Once that is done, your game should be working properly. If you’re like me and you use Xfire, you might want to change back the game exe to NFSC.exe after you have patched it, anything else will not be detected by Xfire, hence no game hour logging, no in-game chat, etc, etc. Of course, the same process applies to Need For Speed Underground 2, since the patch was originally created for that game.
Although this isn’t a big list, they are the one’s that I have found up to now. If you’re looking for more wide screen gaming resources, check out WSGF, which looks like THE big resource on the thing. Have fun.
So Many Projects, So Little Getting Done
December 13th, 2007 § Leave a Comment
I don’t know if the cause of this is school, lack of stimulation, change in my temper or some other factor that I can’t control, but it seems that I have tons of things currently in progress, but nothing is getting done.
Take this blog for example. In the part couple of months, I’ve been updating it only very scarcely, to the point where my last article dates from over 2 weeks from now. Not that I don’t have anything to write about: I have about 10 computer component reviews to get started on, my cell phone to review, tutorials, a half finished Instructable, heck I even have a Gimp tutorial and an article on widescreen gaming written up on paper waiting on my desk, just asking to be typed up. Thank god for the school bus arriving early at school and substitute teachers in history class, if it wasn’t for the I wouldn’t be writing at all.
While my blog is supposed to be a list of all the projects I currently have, I have since September started many projects without even mentionning them here. Project Niobium, and acrylic case that I am building for myself, probably my biggest project up to now, is currently in design phase and most likely to get concrete somewhere near the month of January. I’ve been logging all of the design phase down at Overclock.net, which I’ve been pretty active on in the last couple of weeks also. The log is here for those of you interested. That, coupled with the arrival of my new 8800 GT bundled with ET:QW and Farcry which has forced me back into gaming, overclocking and everything that comes with it, and then you’ve got all the regular stuff… Christmas, friends, family, snowboarding, school, exams, the school radio which I have recently been introduced to, the upcoming driver’s license, and trying to make all of the above fit into a burger flipper’s wage. Not that I don’t have any free time, but it’s that whenever I do, I just vedge around my computer and play Trackmania Nations all day long, which besides being entertaining we must admit isn’t exactly very productive.
Meh. Welcome to RL, right?
