Archive for the ‘Gadgets’ Category

The computer is done, but may suffer from an identity crisis in the future.

May 7th, 2011 at 8:49 pm No Comments

When shopping around for cases, built-in LEDs were kind of a factor. I’m not a fan of glowing blue cases — they just feel far too chilly and emotionless. Red, while potentially demonic looking, generally resonates with me better. (White would’ve been neat, but those seem to be pretty rare.) I ended up purchasing a case that didn’t come with any prominent colored lights so that made things easier, and since the case had no lights I looked for fans with no lights (my shopping philosophies are guided by powers beyond my own comprehension). Unfortunately, with fans I prioritized performance + price over visual consistency, and due to Microcenter having limited inventory I wound up with 1 red fan and 2 blue ones. I killed the lights on the blue fans, but the plastic itself is blue and my motherboard apparently has blue LEDs. I’m sure there’s a way to turn the mobo lights off… Starting to think the red/blue combination looks cool, though.

Stopped keeping track after these items. I believe the total, including monitor and fans, cames out to about $1050. Ran memory and CPU stress tests over the course of 1-2 days without any issues turning up, but haven’t done major overclocking and am still wary that some random component’s going to go kaput in a week or two. Most painful part about this entire project? Threading the plastic fans by hand using a screwdriver. Cursed fans.

Categories: Gadgets, General No Comments

Time to build a new computer, but let’s get the big shiny thing first.

April 16th, 2011 at 5:45 pm 2 Comments

The last (and first) time I built a computer was maybe in 2006. Since it was my first attempt and I’d just graduated from college, I went fairly budget. It still lasted me about 3 years with minor upgrades which seems to be the average lifetime of PCs before they become obsolete (I actually have no idea what the average lifetime is). In 2009 I purchased a gaming-style laptop (number pad required) in order to game/work while hanging out at Trent’s place, so at that point my desktop got phased out. With 2 years on the laptop now I’m feeling the need to have a full desk setup once more. How fortunate that a friend of mine built his own computer literally 1-2 weeks ago so I’m more or less referencing him & his build, which saves me a lot of time on the tech-catch-up research part.

Purchased the CPU & monitor yesterday for in-store pick up from Microcenter. Love that instant gratification feature, by the way. Set up the monitor and laptop in a way that allows me to pretend I’m using a desktop until the full computer’s built. If only I had a USB keyboard :|

Don’t mind the ziplock change bag and plastic fruits…

Categories: Gadgets 2 Comments

Tethering on Ubuntu Netbook

March 29th, 2011 at 12:00 am No Comments

I realized a day after my first Thailand post that my netbook wasn’t actually tethering to my Fuze properly. The Fuze side was fine and easy with the custom ROM, and Ubuntu would detect the connection and connect…yet nothing would load in any browsers. After scouring several forums for answers that did not involve purchasing anything (cheapo mode, remember?) or installing subversion because that would take the length of my trip on the hotel’s Wi-Fi, I found a suggestion to set the MTU to something lower. The default was at around 1400 and the suggested value to try was 1000. I probably know as much about Linux and networking as I do about cars (sigh. Always sad to admit these things) but dropping it to 500 did the trick. While transfer speeds became significantly lower, for my basic needs it worked fine.

Categories: Gadgets, Travel No Comments