Friday, July 28, 2006

And we're back

If you can forgive just one more geek out.

My computer problems appear to have been an aging CPU, which was an AMD AthlonXP 1800+ (Palomino core). Very much old technology, although it was top of the range for about 2 weeks when I bought it in late 2001.

Tonight I installed a new AMD Sempron 2500+ (Socket A, not Socket 754). This is also very much old technology, but it's absolutely smoking my old CPU, not to mention that it's running at least 10° cooler, notwithstanding the Vantec cooler I bought last week as well.

Aw.

Yeah.

The real test will be how well this boots up tomorrow, but I've got a good feeling about this bad boy. A really good feeling.

Also, much love goes out to Stonebridge Computing, where I purchased this new little lovely. The Express Post parcel, which guarantees overnight delivery did not arrive yesterday as it should have. I let Stonebridge know (mainly so that they could claim their money back from Australia Post because they broke their guarantee), but they were also suitably concerned that the parcel arrive to me. They also began making arrangements to hold my parcel to one side if it ended up being returned to sender.

Thank you Stonebridge. Your concern (and the fact that you actually had some Socket A chips in stock!) means that you guys will become one of the first places I check online when looking to order stuff.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Geeking out for just a second

Actively maintained, currently in beta browser - iCab. Can't use Blogger.

Out of date, legacy version of a browser built upon the strong and robust Gecko engine - Netscape. Can't use Blogger (and pretty sluggish in normal use too).

Bug laden, crash happy, long since abandoned browser - Internet Explorer for Mac v5.0 (.0, people - that means no patches or updates). Can use Blogger - after a fashion. Less of the pretty pictures come up but at least I can actually type in the text box when creating a new post.

Browser incompatibility must be a very frustrating thing. I'm most definitely glad I am not a web designer.

Edit: 25 July to fix a link. 1 time in total.

The Perils of Geekdom

My geek pride has taken blows and boosts of equal measure this week.

Firstly, the blows. My PC just plain does not want to work. Over the last couple of months I have replaced the hard drives, PSU, motherboard and now CPU cooling unit. After replacing the HDDs, PSU and mobo, I thought I had the problem all sorted out. The computer was working fine (more or less - it was still a little flaky but I put that down to usually Windows instability). In the last two weeks it started randomly rebooting and not POSTing. I reapplied some thermal paste with the old stock cooler I had and it seemed to work - for a while. I then replaced the stock cooler with a shiny new Vantec one, but that only worked intermittently and now, not at all.

The beep code errors when it does POST have told me at various times that it's a heat issue, a bad RAM issue and a video card issue. I've got a new CPU on order (a Sempron 2500+, which is way better than my old Athlon XP 1800+) and I'm preparing myself for the possibility that I might need a new video card as well (I've got my eye on a model that retails for about $200 - we'll see). If I had known that all of these problems were going ot happen at once, I would have just sucked it in and bought a new bare bones system rather than do this piecemeal trying to minimise expenditure (because we didn't, and still don't, really have the money for this). Instead, I'll probably spend just as much and end up with a significantly inferior system.

On the upside, I've managed to get ADSL working on my wife's old Mac G4, without having any real idea of how to do it. I even managed to apply some of the telecommunications/networking stuff I learnt last semester at uni to set up a new ethernet connection. I've also discovered a new web browser in iCab, which is possibly the only OS9 browser still being actively maintained. It's not perfect, but it does have tabbed browsing. It doesn't work with our bank's online banking (which bank doesn't really give a rats about Mac users? Exactly), but I've downloaded an older version of Netscape Communicator that is apparently supported.

Geek pride at equilibrium. If the new CPU (which hopefully will arrive this week) doesn't work, it'll be sliding down pretty quickly.

Friday, July 21, 2006

When the cat’s away….

… the mice will play. Apparently.

The boss has been away today so this particular little phrase has been tossed around the office with restrained abandon (if you think that’s a tautology, you’ve clearly never been a public servant).

The phrase might be fine, in and of itself, except I’ve never actually seen a mouse do anything that would suggest to me that it was in a particularly playful state of mind (excluding, of course, these two. However, I have been (un)reliably informed that they are, in fact, not real mice. Sure. Next they’ll be saying a weird little chick in a tu-tu didn’t buy all the teeth (at greatly reduced rates, mind) I put under my pillow when I was a kid). Every mouse I’ve ever seen was desperately emaciated and scrounging for rancid scraps; skittish and fleeing in terror at the slightest movement; mindlessly running around and around in some sort of wheel-like device, never going forward, never going back, just spinning and spinning, trapped in a lab; or cruelly crushed in a spring loaded death-trap.

If that's play, I think I'll pass.

EDIT: And then the boss returned, discovered there were a couple of things that needed to be updated yesterday (literally, not figure of speech) and we've all been hammered with work in the last 45 minutes. Woo. And now I go home...

Driving me crazy

(it seems that posting via emails is an inexact science at best. I'm posting manually now, and hopefully this won't show up as a dupe)

People do stupid things that I plain don't understand. The stupidhuman activity currently bugging me is commuting somewhere (usually towork), getting out of the driver's seat and farewelling your partnerwho then proceeds to hop into the driver's seat and drives away.

Why would you do this?

Obviously, you are both going somewhere, and one person gets droppedoff and the other person continues on their journey. It doesn'tmatter where that journey is – workplace, doughnut shop, back home –the important thing is that the journey is clearly ongoing for oneperson.

Here's what I don't get – why is the person being dropped off the onedriving? Huh? Surely it would make more sense to have just the onedriver. It has to be more efficient for a start. Changing driversmeans changing seat positions, rear view mirrors, steering columns (ifyou have a la-di-da car that allows that level of customisation) andradio stations (maybe that one is just me). Even more confusing isthat more often than not the kiss goodbye means that these people, ifnot living together, are at least intimately acquainted on some level. What kind of message does this send?

"Honey, I love you and trust you with my deepest emotions but there'sno way I'm going to be a passenger when you're driving."

I don't get people. Really, I don't. You're all weird.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Not OK, Computer

Stupid computer is refusing to POST again. I've ordered a new CPU
cooler, but in the meantime I'm just going to have to deal I guess.

At least with access at work I won't have complete withdrawal...

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Non-photo #1

A common Canberra bus shelter is a cylinder for concrete with a large opening (about one third of the cylinder) as an entrance and a hole in one side as a window (so you can see oncoming buses). The roof is flat, solid and generally grimy and slimy with algae (I’m sure following a nuclear armageddon the only survivors would be algae and the cockroaches that eat it). The roof bus shelter has to be at lest 3 metres (9-10 feet) off the ground.

This particular bus shelter is on a well-trafficked road (Constitution Ave in Reid if anyone is local). It sits underneath a collection of dead-looking trees as it’s winter and all the leaves dropped months ago. It also sits outside a tech college.

One tree stands directly above the shelter, its lifeless branches forming a substantial fork about 2 metres or so (6-7 feet) above the roof of the shelter. Firmly nestled in the cold embrace of the barren fork rests a shopping trolley, empty and alone.

The sheer effort and ingenuity to haul a shopping trolley 3 metres off the ground, and then wedge it into fork of a tree that is at least another 2 metres off the ground, all the while standing on a filthy and dangerously slippery and slimy surface, simply astounds me. I hope it was worth it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera on me when I saw this slice of human endeavour while staring out the window during my morning bus commute. Some things just need to be acknowledged or recognised whichever way you can.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Forgotten Updates...

Two quick things....
  1. I have a nano again! Using some loyalty points from my credit card and some top-up cash, I picked up a black 2 gig nano. Once again I am happy with my piece of wanton gadgetry.
  2. We finally won another football match. It's been weeks since we last won a match and it means we've only won three this season and still sit second bottom on the table. It's been a bit of a humbling experience for a team that played the grand final last year and only lost in a penalty shoot out. We are pretty much only playing for pride at this stage of the season.

Happy birthday to me...

...happy birthday to me,
I've been looking after Elijah,
And now I smell like wee.

Flexed the day of the work which meant I got to spend my little day at home doing not very much. I had planned to reinstall a whole heap of music software that I hadn't done since The Upgrade but instead I battled a computer that once again wouldn't even POST.

In desperation I dug out my old tube of thermal paste, cleaned up the CPU and heatsink and reapplied the paste. Seems like the computer is working fine now, but we'll see if it boots up tomorrow before I get too cocky about it. The plan to reinstall the software will perhaps eventuate tonight, or maybe later in the week. It may sit off my hard drive for even longer as uni starts back next week, although they are doing their best to keep my away it would seem (a SNAFU with my fee payments means that at this stage I am technically behind $3,732 in tuition fees when that should already have been taken care of).

I'm not going to list the pressie I got, but suffice to say I'm happy with all of them (including the funky little cuff links my brother sent over from London - OK, so I'll list one pressie).

Back to reality tomorrow...

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Why keep studying?

I stumbled across a story on Slashdot that discussed whether or not going to graduate school was a Good Idea™? . The Slashdot Effect is still in full swing so I haven't read the linked article yet (or, since my geek is already showing, I have yet to RTFA, but that's never been counted against anyone on Slashdot anyway) so I'm not entirely sure what the original article was about. Since I don't live in the States, I'm not overly familiar with grad school but I'm assuming the following:
  • people in the States do a three (or four) year bachelor level degree
  • if they want to, they then go out and get a job
  • if they want to specialise, they will go to a different university (or should that be college? I don't know) and study for 2 years for a Masters level qualification in something or longer for a doctorate
I'm not going to prattle on about the Australian education system (if you want to know more, let me know and I'll post about it) but it's enough to say that most people will only do their three year degree (four years if they do an Honours year like I did, or 5 years if they do a double degree eg B Laws/B Arts or something). If they want to research a specific topic, the student might do a Masters research degree or even jump straight to a PhD. If they just want to do further study (or looking for a career change) they'll do a Masters coursework, which involves post-grad level subjects but doesn't have any research or a need to write a thesis. I'm not sure where the US system of grad school falls here - maybe a combination of the two? I'm off track here anyway...

The thought of "grad school" got me thinking, given that at the start of the year I re-entered the world of study to (eventually) obtain a coursework Masters in Science (IT - probably Systems Administration but I've still got some time before I sort that one out). More specifically, it got me thinking as to why I'm doing it all.

When I finished school I originally wanted to do an IT degree but changed my mind at the last minute after being put off by my abysmal maths efforts (I could have passed maths but I had no motivation to do so - boring teacher and the rest of it - at least I wasn't disruptive in class I guess) as well as a horror last semester struggling with the joys of SQL in Oracle (gah!). I changed my mind and decided to do Psychology and then changed my mind at the last minute to do Journalism instead (big mistake - maybe I'll blog about that some other time). After a year of Journalism, I switched majors and studied Sociology before doing Honours (First Class - yay! I worked damn hard for that, too) with a thesis topic that examined the impact of globalisation on rural and regional areas. (as a side note, it's strange how globalisation just isn't sexy anymore. In the late 90s it was all the rage, and now it's just, well, accepted I guess. Makes all my hard work seem a little redundant when I look back on it).

There is a point here. Trust me.

I've spent the last 5 1/2 years working as a public servant (or civil servant or government worker - however your culture defines it) doing "knowledge worker" type roles using all my research, analysis and critical thinking training (on a good day anyway). Deep down inside I was still a geek at heart who just wanted to fool around with computers. I didn't know if I had any particular talent in any particular area of IT, or even if I would be any good at any of it at all, or if it was all just a flight of fancy and one day I would look back and laugh at my follies.

After playing around with the thought of going back to study, at the start of this year I made the plunge. Studying part time, working full time, paying a mortgage and raising a baby boy has made this a considerable challenge. So, why am I doing it?

Because I need to know. I have a burning desire to discover if the flood of bits in my blood is a temporary affliction or if I really have missed my calling. It's got little to do with money. In fact, when I graduate and start looking for work in my chosen field, I will likely have to take a pay cut of $10,000s in the short term, which is not something to be entered into lightly. In recent years, the pull of tech has got stronger, not weaker.

Because I need to keep learning. If I stop learning, I stop moving. I stagnate. Sit still. Tread water. Run on the spot. Sure, life is one big lesson. I get that. Experiential learning without structure doesn't sink in with me. I need lessons. I need directions. I need goals. Without these, my life starts to drift and my brain starts to atrophy.

Do I need to be paying what will be close to $20,000 once it is all over? To learn with lessons, goals and directions and receive recognition of my learning outcomes - yes. To see if this is a lifechoice (it's probably not a real word but as a trained Sociologist I'm good at making up new words) I want to make - maybe not. I think only time will tell on that one.

I promised a point somewhere in there, didn't I. Sorry. I'm not sure I ever really had one. I think I was hoping one would materialise as I went along. My bad.

How's this one?

That's why I continue to study.

And if you got to the end of this, no, you can't have those 10 minutes back. You probably were only going to waste them on something else anyway.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Hmmm....fruity *drool*

Mosquitos don’t dig fruit smells, apparently.

Some scienticians in the UK have been conducting research into why mosquitos will attack some people and not others. It would seem that everybody produces a cocktail of odorous chemicals when they perspire (in other words “you sweat you stink”). Some of this cocktail smells pretty good to mozzies (eg lactic acid). However, some people produce these other chemicals which mask the smell of the first chemicals which in a concentrated form “have a fruity smell”.

It is likely that these chemicals are in everybody’s sweat, just some produce more than others. Who says we are all created equal? (it was probably Oscar Wilde).

The researchers constructed a Y-shaped chamber and wafted the scent of the subjects (probably grad students) towards the swarm and then studied which people the mosquitos avoided. They then collected the sweat of the unattractively odoured ones by, and here’s the fun bit, “sealing their bodies in a foil sack, tied under the chin, and collecting and distilling the seat that poured off them”. How’d you like that job?

This startling new research follows hot on the heels of some stuff in the 1990s that revealed that mosquitos are just bang up for the waft of a bacteria that grows on human feet and limburger cheese. I couldn’t find any full text of the article, but a Google Scholar search will show this study has been cited out the wazoo, and this United States Department of Agriculture article can give you the low down as well.

The moral of the story? If you don’t want to be bitten, you need to wear a little less of this and a little more of this.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Screening into the night...

I had a minor (major?) rant on Little Elijah about the impact of electronic screens on the development of infants. It got me thinking about how many electronic screens we face in our daily existence.

There are TVs in shop windows. There are the TVs in our homes. For many of us, we work on computers every day, in some form or another. For less of us (but probably anyone reading this), not only do we spend all day working on a computer but large chunks of our leisure time on the computer as well. There are closed circuit TVs that we can see at the shop counter when we duck into the servo for a chocolate fix. Airports and bus terminals provide scheduling information on electronic screens in various forms.

Our digital cameras have LCD view finders. Our digital watches have LCD screens. Sporting grounds have large screens for the "instant replay". In fact, I once found myself at a rugby union ground watching the game televised on the big screen at the ground almost as much as I watched it happening right in front of me!

There are kids toys with screens! In fact, there's a growing market for "new media" toys for little 'uns (this NY Times gives you a run down of that).

I'm pretty sure that, in the end, the revolution will be televised. We'll all watch it, too. It'd be damn near impossible to escape it.

Do I have a point? Not really, apart from take a look around you tomorrow. Take a good look. See how many screens there are? Smile. You're probably on most of them...