Hot Crashy Computer

In response to this hot weather lately - which has been causing my PC to crash and run loudly - I went out and bought a new CPU cooler on the weekend. Ok, I'm not a nerd anymore (so I proclaim), but I still know what I am doing when it comes to this kind of thing.

I got a well known and respected heatsink/fan, a Zalman CNPS9700 LED. It's an 'Ultra Quiet' CPU fan and heatsink which is gigantic! It also blows air across the CPU/motherboard, as opposed to down onto it. This means the air is circulated, and not recycled, as some put it. Installing it wasn't much of an issue, and I actually like the way they have done it.

My only complaint about this unit is that plugging it into the motherboard, its speed simply maxes out; it doesn't get managed by the BIOS CPU fan speed management thingamybob. But I've found that it runs cool on the lowest setting anyway, which is almost completely silent. My computer is so quiet now!

Here are some photos (before with stock Intel cooler and after):

I want a Palm Pre!

The Palm Pre is getting closer. I really want one of these. I haven't had a new gadget in a long time so I hope this isn't crazily priced!

Watch this HD video on Youtube (click the 'View in HD' link). It's someone from Palm demonstrating the Pre. Ahh it's so nice.

Funny because Apple just got their patent on touch-screen devices using your fingers. They have previously said they will 'go after' anyone using their IP, so I'd like to see this shit fight start.

Facebook and Flickr Play Together

On my Facebook feed, I keep seeing something saying "xxx uploaded a photo to Flickr" or "xxx uploaded x photos to Flickr", like this:

(that happens to be me).

Anyway, I had been wondering for months how to do that myself as I don't like to use Facebook to store photos, but I'll discuss that later.

So here's how, if you have googled your way here and want to know!!

1. Go to your Profile page
2. Click on Settings at the top of the feed:

3. Click Flickr link:

4. Enter your username and click the button.

I tried all sorts of applications including "My Flickr", which is not what I wanted and did not publish anything to my feed. It had millions of options as well, and I couldn't be bothered trying to make it work. At least this way, there is no application involved!

Now the Facebook-Flickr photo management argument...

I like to keep my photos on Flickr as it's a proper photographic website which has excellent interfaces for uploading and managing photos. It also keeps the originals of the photos and gives you the option to view different sizes. Finally, it allows you to keep the rights to your photos via various licensing options like Creative Commons.

Facebook on the other hand, has some bullshit Java uploader, owns your photos once you upload them and only allows you to view the photos in one size-fits-all. It destroys the quality of your photos by resizing them to 1/8 of your screen size and downsamples the JPEG to quality of '5' or something resulting in blockiness and bad colour. Yeah, Facebook is free, and Flickr-for-free limits you to 100 photos, which pissed me off at first, but I then realised that if 1,000,000 people upload 1000 8MB photos each, that's a lot of space and backup/networking infrastructure required (now they have over 3 billion photos hosted and are #32 on the top visited websites). And without any ads on their site, they need to charge people to keep operating. I think US$29/year is fine for what it is and I pay it happily.

Without this application, photos I'd upload to Flickr were not getting any exposure on Facebook (unlike if I upload photos to Facebook), but now they do!

Banana Bread

I like banana bread. I just discovered how good it is.

It goes down nicely with coffee.

Holidays, Speakers, Xmas

That's how fast holidays go. My last blog post was in the days before I wrapped up work and did what I wanted for 3 weeks. That was about 4 weeks ago. I must say though it is reflective of what my holidays were like - fast and busy.

Xmas was good, except my sister was in hospital the days prior, for something she's been dealing with for a while. She was allowed to leave for half a day on Xmas day so that was good, as our family likes when everyone is present on Xmas day, it's traditional. Ness and I made a stellar chocolate mousse for Xmas lunch dessert, and it was popular!

I serviced my car and gave it a good clean before taking it to my parents' place in Heywood, western Vic. I spent 5 days there during which my dad fixed various small dents and I fabricated (out of fibreglass) speaker pods for my doors. I have been planning on doing this for ages, and I had the perfect opportunity whilst there. I spent the first day cleaning out the interiors of my doors (behind the trim) and removing dust, dirt and glue that was there.



The next step was to apply Dynamat sound absorbant material on the metal 'skins' of the doors (there are 2 plus side intrusion bars). That was a day's job in itself. But worth it! It makes the door metal panels heavier, which technically, lowers their resonant frequency a lot. In other words, it makes the panels immune to vibration and therefore they don't transmit sound energy outside the car or add vibrations and distortion. That means more sound energy being kept in the car. It's just like insulation for your house to stop heat being conducted and lost outside!




After that, I began work on making a wood frame which is like the skeleton, then dad and I dropped by the local country Op shop to get a women's stretchy top, to use as a 'mould'. It was funny, dad walked in and asked the little old lady if she had anything for making speakers, and she thought about it a bit and said no. I was in the clothing part looking at nice tops for old women, assessing the size, stretchiness and texture. I found one, slammed 2 bucks on the counter and went back to my parents' to continue work, 300m down the road (Heywood is a small place).


As you can see, the idea is to spread the stretchy fabric over the wood frame to create the basic shape.

Then it was time for fibreglassing. Basically it's a simple process as follows. Apply a thick coat of resin (which dries hard as a rock) onto the material, then slap on some pieces of fibreglass matting (flexible, strong glass criss-cross fibres) then apply more resin. Wait till it dries, then repeat. Then again. Once it was about 4-5mm thick, I let it dry overnight, ready for sanding. I sanded out all the humps and bumps until it was a nice smooth, flowing shape.


Then it was time to add vinyl to the units, which is the desired finish.


I did a couple of trial runs as I'd bought a lot (1.6 sq. meters) of black vinyl (to match the interior of my car), and it was a first time for me doing upholstery and using a heat gun. I used the heat gun to stretch out the wrinkles in the material, and as you can see in the above photo, it resulted in some stretch marks, but I strategically did it in areas which nobody will ever see (on the bottom).

Anyway, this is what it ended up looking like!


I'm really happy with them. The sound is amazing. I was out driving tonight putting fuel in my car and I was listening to some great hip hop on 90.7FM (Syn) and the sound was really impressive for 6.5" splits. The bass is strong all the way to down what seemed like 30-35Hz, where it's more of a 'whommbbb' or 'ooommmbb'. And the whole doors shake (but not rattle!!!!). The speakers are Hertz HSK-165, which are 6.5" mid-bass and tweeter splits, made in Italy and are great quality. They retail for about $450, which puts them at about mid-range. Their big brothers are about $1000, getting into high-end. I am after a good sound quality whilst not being crazy. These speakers take stinky dumps on my al cheapo Kenwood 6x9s in my parcel shelf (was there when I got the car).

I took a heap of photos while doing the whole job, see them here on my flickr photo set (with commentary!).

Well I better get going, it's bed time.

Cheerio!