To replace my main drive, I sent off to Newegg for a Seagate Momentus XT, a 500G hybrid hard drive that uses 4G of NAND memory to make it almost as fast as a flash drives, at least on reads. I got my drive the next day, even though I’d paid for standard UPS, probably because I’m in MA. and Newegg ships from NJ.

I have to say, I’m impressed with this little 2.5″ drive. It’s about the size of a pack of baseball card bubble gum. I had to get an adapter to make it fit into one of the 3.5″ slots in my RaidMax Smilodon case. The holes in the adapter didn’t quite line up, but I was able to convince the mounting rails that came with my case to fit into the holes on the adapter.

My computer now boots with pretty incredible speed. I guess I won’t be going off to brew tea each time I start the system up, now.

I also purchased a 2T WD Caviar Green drive, to use for bulk data. I like to play around with graphics and animation and that eats up space fast. Plus, I like the idea of having a drive on which I can back up every other machine in the house.

So far, everything is working fine. Keep your fingers crossed.

During your testing tenure in the original Portal game, you discover that GladOS is not the benign entity she’d like you to believe she is. She has some rather sinister plans. By the end of the game, you succeed in destroying GladOS, but you never get any cake.

The first thing I noticed about Portal 2 is that it looks even better than Portal did, and that it’s easier to play. There aren’t as many puzzles where you have to create portals while flying through the air. For me, that’s a good thing. There are also several more characters introduced in the game. Another plus is that this game now includes a 2-player mode where you and a friend can play as two robots designed specifically to test for Aperature Science.

So far, I really enjoy the game. My wife, who has already finished the game reports that it’s not much longer than the original, which is surprising, considering how much more it costs. But perhaps the 2-player mode will make up for that.

I’ll post more after I’ve finished the game.

Recently, some less than reputable companies have started repackaging and distributing Blender under different names, so they can charge people for a product that can be downloaded for free. They’ve also been stealing graphics done by members of the Blender community and using them in their advertising without any compensation being paid to the artists.

While it’s perfectly legal for anyone to redistribute Blender and even charge a price for doing so, these companies are doing it in a way that is misleading to their customers. Since the customers might not even know they are actually using Blender, they never know about the great user community and tutorial videos that are available.

3DMagic and IllusionMage are the worst offenders.

You can read more about this at the following link:
3DMagix, 3DMagixPro, IllusionMage, scam

I’m going to try developing some apps for the Android. So I’ll be writing more once I’ve had a chance to try it out. The charging light just turned green, which means I can play!

—

Well, I mostly love my Nexus One and Android, but with any open system, there are some issues. The most annoying of which is the infamous FC or Force Close, which happens when there is an unrecoverable error in an application or when the system runs out of resources. Your phone can be working fine, then you load a few new applications and all of a sudden you can’t do a thing because of the constant Force Close messages.

I’m not as frustrated as I might be with another phone. For one thing, I can hook up a debugger and see what’s going on, making it a bit easier to figure stuff out.

Since Android runs on lots of different phones, it has to deal with a lot of different configurations. Android developers don’t have the luxury of knowing the exact hardware configuration their software is expected to run on.

Another contributing factor to some of the problems people have been having is the comparative ease with which you can develop Android apps. That might sound contradictory, but the ease with which you can develop and publish an application is deceptively easy. There seem to be a lot of first-time developers who are writing applications for the first time.

– more later –

My first thought was that this had something to do with the digital changeover, since the problem seemed to start about that time. I first tried the usual stuff, like resetting the cable box and the TIVO, but neither of those seemed to do the trick. I googled the problem, looking for TIVO, Comcast, “This channel will be available shortly,” but didn’t find anything right off that suggested a solution. So, I sent emails to both Comcast and TIVO technical support to see if they had heard of this problem and how to solve it.

I went back to googling and found a couple of forums where there were active discussions. One guy suggested that Comcast might be sending updates to the cable boxes on the hour, and if I started recordings a minute early, that might fix it.

I tried the record early fix and it didn’t work.

By this time, Comcast got back to me with a formula answer. From what it said, it was clear that once the tech saw TIVO, her brain shut down and she just copied in some boilerplate text that said they didn’t support TIVO … blah blah blah.

Another suggestion was made on the forum: try switch to the IR Blaster for channel changing. That made some sense, so I tried it. No joy.

Finally, I stopped including TIVO in my search criteria, and found that lots of people who’d just installed cable splitters were having these problems, and it seemed that when the signal was a little weak, for some reason the channels that would go out were all low numbered, just like what we’d been seeing.

My wife, Heather, spent some quality time with the nest of cables in back of the TV, and came out of it with several loops of cable she’d eliminated plus a splitter and amplifier she’d managed to eliminate. She’d also tightened all the connections up. That solved the problem.

So, bottom line is, if you encounter this problem, try making sure that all your cable connections are secure, that all unused connectors have terminators on them, and that you don’t use any more cable or splitters than you absolutely have to. Hopefully, you’ll find the problem easier than we did.

The first thing to do is go to the documentation for your motherboard and see what standards your power supply must meet to be compatible. Usually this is only a problem if you’re trying to re-use an older power supply.

Next, you need to figure out how much power you really need. The best way to do this is use a power supply calculator. If you google for one, you’ll get a lot of links to the eXtreme PSU calculator, http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp , which charges for advanced features. The advanced features include amperage requirements for each voltage, so it’s probably worth the $1.95 they ask for.

Antec has a free PSU calculator at http://www.antec.outervision.com/ which will let you list your CPU, video cards, etc.  Unfortunately, it calculates a very low value for my configuration, only 509 watts. It actually takes an 800W PSU for my system, and even that is somewhat borderline. The biggest problem is that it doesn’t tell you what amperage you need on the various voltages.

The key value, lately, is the 12V requirement. High end video cards have enormous appetites for power and most of it comes from the 12V line. Often, a single graphics card will demand more than the common 20A limit on most 12V rails. You can usually find this number listed in the detailed specifications for your video card. For instance, the latest nVidia video card, the 295, nVidia recommends a 590W PSU.

The nVidia GeForce 295 demands a whopping 289W all by itself. That means at least 24 A on the 12V line, and since you can only be sure of 80% efficiency, you want at least 30 A. (I got this number by taking the wattage requirement and dividing by 12 volts to get amps.) If you were to select a PSU with multiple rails, you’d have to make sure that at least one of the rails could carry 30 A.

A single rail design shares the power among all the users of the 12V line,

TERMINOLOGY: Many PSU vendors divide up the 12V line into multiple “rails,” often four or more.  Each rail has it’s own individual capacity and is isolated from the rest of the system. That means that if you have one device that needs more power than it’s rail is rated for, it’s out of luck, even if there are several unused rails. For this reason, it’s generally best to go with a single rail system. (Single rail does not mean there is only a single cable, just that all the cables draw from the same 12V source.)

PC Power & Cooling has a great page on terminology: http://www.pcpower.com/technology/terminology/

Modular cables are also attractive but can introduce noise and power fluctuations. I haven’t tried one yet, but probably will, despite the dire warnings, because of how difficult it can be to work with the huge mass of cables that come out of most PSUs.

Also, make sure that the wattage being reported is the power delivered for continuous, full-load operation. Often this isn’t reported, or the testing is done at artificially low temperatures, like 80 F when a more realistic temperature is 104 F .

Another consideration is the efficiency of your new PSU.  These days,the better PSU are certified as being 80% efficient or better. Typical PSUs of the past often didn’t get into the high seventies. That can make a big difference.  A 750@ PSU at 83% efficiency really gives you 662 Watts. At 70% you get only 525 W.

Enthusiast System Architecture

nVidia has come out with something called the Enthusiast System Architecture, or ESA, which is meant to enable PC components like the chassis, PSU, and water cooling systems, to communicate their state in real time, making it possible to react to changes rapidly. This is a real boon for people who want to try overclocking, or just those who want to build a super reliable system. But it has to be supported by your motherboard, too.

 Recommendations

In the future, I’ll be buying PC Power and Cooling power supplies because they have an excellent reputation and everyone I talk to who has had one has sworn they’ll never go with anything else.

I hope this rambling helps someone. I’ll try to find some more good related links and post them.

LINKS:

I found a great PSU calculator that also figures what you need for your backup UPS:

http://web.aanet.com.au/SnooP/psucalc.php

1. You plug in a new card/printer/USB device
2. The computer’s operating system, OS, sees the new device and sends a Friendly Utility Query, or FUQ.
3. The new device responds with a Reply to Your Friendly Message or RYFM, which reveals the nature of the device and it’s specific capabilities.
4. Now the OS sends a Polite Request for OS specific Driver, or PROD.
5. The Device responds by transmitting providing a basic driver and a URL where the OS can download the latest driver or patch.
6. The Operating System installs the generic driver, getting things running, and can then download the latest and greatest driver.

Now, I understand this will cost a little money, but Flash RAM is pretty cheap. The hard part will be getting some industry group to put the standard together and get companies to agree to it. Still, isn’t it about time? This idea originally occurred to me years ago. I’m really surprised it hasn’t been done already.

A lot of terms that are used in science and in science fiction are from Latin, and I got tired of having to check each one and add an exception to my spell checker for it. So, I went looking for a way to teach Latin to Open Office.

I found the answer in a posting here:

http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5814

To summarize, you grab a Latin dictionary file here: http://www.drouizig.org/oo/la_VA.zip

and put it into:

If you use Windows:

C:\\Program Files\\{Your Open Office Directory}\\share\\dict\\ooo\\

If you use Linux:

[HOME]/.openoffice.org2.0/user/wordbook

Then, you can set the language of a selection of paragraph, or even the whole document, by selecting:

Tools->Language->For Selection …
Tools->Language->For Paragraph …
Tools->Language->For all text …

It worked like a charm for me.

Read on for more …

An interface is the way one system talks to another. Right now, patents on interfaces are used to create monopolies that really have no benefit for society. Patents are intended to reward innovation that contributes to society in some way, not just to make people rich.

How about some examples? Printer ink cartridges have patented interfaces in order to block competitors from making replacement cartridges. This allows the printer manufacturer to charge exhorbitent prices for printer ink and sell the actual printer hardware at a loss, turning it into a throw-away product that clutters our landfills. These consumer printers aren’t meant to be repaired. If something goes wrong they are thrown away. In a world that needs to rapidly reduce it’s carbon footprint, we need to rethink the idea of what should be disposable and what shouldn’t be.

How about music file formats? Apple uses patents on iTunes to exclude others from the music business, then they produce iPod players that are more expensive than competitors devices. The ipods also have batteries that can’t be replaced. When they go bad, you have to throw it away and buy a new one. Many people disposing of their ipods won’t even think about the fact that the batteries have cadmium, a dangerous pollutant. So rather than tossing the ipod into a battery recycling bin at the local Best Buy (Kudos for Best Buy on providing those.) they toss the iPod into the trash.

Microsoft, for year, blocked competitors from creating products that could compete with Word and the rest of the Office suite, by using proprietary file formats. Converting from Word to any other file format and back again has been problematic until very recently. What I find astonishing is that it has taken so long for companies and governments around the world to realize that depending on a single vendor for the software they need to conduct day to day business is incredibly foolish. I applaud Massecheusetts for paving the way towards rationality by adopting a file format which really is free and open, Open Document Format.

If we abolished all patents for interfaces, life would go on. Perhaps, instead of ripping people off for ink cartridges, the printer manufacturers might build printers that are robust and easy to repair. Instead of depending on proprietary document formats to force companies to upgrade to the latest version of their software, Microsoft might be forced to actually provide compelling new functionality.

There’s another benefit, too. If all interfaces were free to use, I suspect it would be easier to develop standards and get people to adopt them. This would reduce the cost to develop many products. We could spend less time reinventing the wheel, and more time working on that fusion power plant we need.

A world without interface and file format patents would also be one in which it would be far easier to build and maintain open source software. I’d be able to get open source drivers for my nVidia graphics card, or open source drivers for the broadcomm wireless chipset used in my laptop. That would make it a lot easier for me to use Linux full time.

We need to rethink things. It bears repeating. Over the next few decades, we’ll have to wean ourselves off of oil and other fossil fuels. We’ll have to start paying the full cost of products, including the cost of energy and the cost to clean up the environmental damage done while producing those products. We can’t continue to live like teenagers, tossing our dirty laundry on the floor and hoping Mother Nature will clean it up for us.

We can do better than we have done.

Fortunately for Microsoft, but not so fortunately for me, the people who write the games I love to play don’t write them to run on Linux. They write them to run on Windows. So, while I’d love to use Linux as my normal desktop operating system, I’ve been reluctant to make the leap.

An announcement on June 18, 2008, brought the day of my emancipation from Windows a little bit closer.

You can read about it on SourceForge News – WINE 1.0 Announcement . WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator) 1.0 has been released. This is a project that has been working hard to provide a stable working Windows API (Application Programming Interface) on Linux, which would allow you to run just about any Windows program on any Linux operating system.

“Hah!’, you say, “but that is only 1.0, how can I trust it? It’s barely a baby!”

But that’s not true. The makers of WINE long ago decided they wouldn’t release a 1.0 version until they had something rock solid. It has taken them fifteen years of beta testing and ongoing development to get there. While it’s still not 100% perfect, there are thousands of Windows programs that now run successfully on Linux, courtesy of WINE. You can check this list, at the WINE Application Database Headquarters. They rank programs by how much configuration you have to do to get them to work cleanly. There are over ten thousand applications listed in this database, so you can probably find yours.

One of the ones I care most about, Dungeons and Dragons Online, is rated Platinum. Lord of The Rings Online, my other MMO addiction, has some issues with the launcher, but there are people outside of Turbine (the company that built LOTRO) are working on. Since games, and in particular MMO games are extremely fussy, it’s likely whatever business application you want will work just fine.

Linux now looks a lot more like Windows than you might expect. You’ll even find that many of the eye-candy features of Vista are readily available on Linux, without the other problems.

Still, Linux is not yet the best choice for those who don’t like to have a bit of a learning adventure, you’d be surprised at how similar it looks to the OS you’ve been using, and all the things that it can do. (It’s pretty cool to install an OS that already has the word processing, spreadsheet, accounting, email, web browsers, drawing packages, and almost anything else you can name, already set up and ready to go.)

Oh, if you are interested in trying out Linux, you can download and burn a CD for a Live installation of most of the various flavors. I’d suggest starting with Ubuntu, which you can find at www.ubuntu.org. Once you’ve downloaded the .iso file, you can use your CD burning software to create a CD. If you boot up with that CD, you’ll be running Linux, but it won’t alter anything on your computer, without your permission. (That’s kind of nice, huh?) If you decide you like it, you can install it. There’s lots of good information on how to do that and lots of friendly Linux users that are ready to help you, all over the Internet. Maybe it’s time for you to get away from Windows, too.