On the Go

So I'm writing another blog post from the "comfort" of my iPhone. I'm in the car on my way to see the results show of Xfactor. I'm personally not mad about the show but Diana Vickers and Katy Perry will be there. So why not :)

But yeah my lovely Sony earphones are currently MIA. I haven't really had a good look for them yet so they'll probably show up but as a result I'm heading out with my Big Razer Carcharias headphones. Why not :-P. This week I also recieved my Corsair 60GB SSD and it is AMAZING!!! everything happens SO FAST! the difference is phenomenal, especially if you like to have lots of startup programs (which as a matter of fact i do :-) but yeah it's awesome. Got my OS + Documents + Game Saves + iTunes library file on there. Really makes for a nippy machine :D

In other news my brothers graphics card upgrade didn't really happen to plan :-S we fitted the monstrous graphics card in there and the board just couldn't see it. It just beeped no graphics card at me :-( I wondered if the card had gone kaput but it worked when I subsequently tried it in my machine. So after every conceivable test I had to conclude that the motherboard just wasn't going to play ball :-( in the end we replaced it with a GA-790X-UD3P (rev1.1) which my brother is half way through fitting now. He also received a Portal Mousemat and Aperture Science Mug that he ordered from Valve store in the US. Cost an Arm and a Leg to ship, but it made him happy so what are you going to do :-P

I meanwhile have been struggling to make time for anything that involves games or even re-setting up my OS. I still haven't got stuff like winrar installed yet. But I'm getting there slowly.

It's my birthday coming up soon and I've been trying to think of something awesome that my parents can get me (it is my 18th) they don't have the budget for a car or anything like that and really I don't need one. Living in London having a car would just be a hole I would pour money into rather than anything really useful. It would speed up a few things like getting to my GF's house or going out but all in all I don't really need one.

Just driving past D-Link's headquarters. Probably could of sapped some wifi for a few seconds but It probably would have broken in that time... D-Link :-/

Anyway I've been looking at Tablets and there's not the budget for an iPad or a Galaxy Tab. Which sort of leaves me in the realm of cheap Chinese tablets. But of course you ask "but why oh why would you want a tablet? You have an iPhone and a Netbook! What use could it be?" and id say, correct Matt ;-) however when it comes to watching a but of video on the go I do sometimes find the iPhone's screen a little small , which Is a subjective view yes but in some cases for me it just is. My netbook on the other hand is blessed with a beautiful 11.6" 1366*768 Display and also has a 320GB HDD. So you would think that would be perfect. But alas, my netbook has a keyboard and being essentially a small laptop. You sorta have to rest it on your lap. Which is fine, except in situations like when you are on the Bus, or in Public, or standing up, or having se... Anyway yeah there are times it is awkward so I though let's go for a 7" Android 2.1 / 2.2 tablet with a nice SD Card slot. That way I can buy a couple of cards and bung stuff on there. Watching video would be ideal! But as with all things Chinese there is one thing that let's them down. Battery Life. With the iPad apple has the entire SOC completely under their control and also have access to the most expensive battery tech out there. Combine those and in a 10" iPad you can get a good 10Hrs of battery life while browsing the net. Unfortunately Chinese tablets are cheap. And the two areas in which they suffer are battery life and stability. Whereas the iPad has it's 10hour battery life the Chinese's are lucky to get 5. Worse if you max out brightness and switch on Wifi you can cut it down to 2 1/2 hours. Bad times. So I'm questioning the wisdom of dropping £140 of birthday money on one which tbh. I couldn't really do much with away from a socket. They don't even charge off USB so It's not even like I could charge them from my U2O battery. The "best" on the Market is either the Wistech A81-E or the X5A. Neither of them are great. On the other hand Archos are coming out with their new 7o Internet tablet soon. With either 8gb of flash or a 250gb hdd. And it also has a 7hr video playback time (10hours browsing) so I'm waiting for that I guess :-/

All in all I'm pretty down. I've sent off the UCAS but I'm not optimistic about my chances of getting in some places. I'm hoping I can go to somewhere good. I just feel so crap lately. Ah well

Need to catch up on work anyway.

Video Of the Day has to be thisssss...

So that's that from me. Need to do this more often. This is Me, Saying it a it is in IT (and me) and the Weather is COLD!!!

Motivation

Well it's been a while since I published a piece to my blog and there are various reasons why. I sort of got frustrated that it gets no comments. It's just me talking to myself. It's kinda sad really. Also I am carrying my laptop to school less regularly, and until right now i did all my "blogging" on there. There's also the fact that my google adverts are broken :-( its not going up in pay even though it is going up in count. It's just that no one wants to read about my thoughts really. They're boring computer things that are only interesting to me. But oh well.

Alas my IT world moves on. My Main folding machine has been down for a week (cries) and I honestly thought the motherboard has finally bitten the dust. As I may have said before the P5N32E-SLI Doesn't support the E1400 so occasionally goes spastic. Anyway even after changing the CPU, fiddling with ram and graphics cards, I still couldn't get any display from any cards :'-( So I built the second folding machine, with the £20 Asus A8N SLI 939 board that I have running an 8800GS with a very custom cooler and the 8800GTS 512 from my folding machine. I also over-clocked the Athlon X2 3800+ 2.0Ghz to 2.4Ghz and am running a little SMP Client on it for around 650ppd. In total it's kicking out about 9.5k - 10.5k which is very nice. I've overclocked both gpu's by little bit and chucked some extra fans in with them. Its installed on a broken 80gb 2.5". I say broken because I believe it was stopped being used because It had bad sectors, but it's doing fine for now.
Anyway only last night I managed to get my main machine going. Didn't do anything different, it just decided to come back to life. I've left the 8800GTS 320 In there with the 9800GX2 and they're both doing fine. I decided to leave the 88 at it's factory oc'd clocks rather than the huge over-clock i've been running it at for months. It's getting old and the gain probably isn't worth the reduction in it's life. On the other hand I have found a nice OC for the E1400 :) I've got the chip running at 300*9 = 2700Mhz and because of the way the bonuses are awarded, the ppd has jumped from 680ppd to 1150ppd :-D a nice jump and the temps are still manageable. I tried for 3.0 but I got a lock in windows under load so I left it at the happy 2.7. It's now doing about 15k ppd which is not bad at all :) a combined 25k is a nice amount.
I am planning, however, to add either a GTS 450 or a GTS 460 768mb to the main machine (hence the empty slot) I'm hoping (with -advmethods) this will pull an extra 10k-14k ppd. If I can get up to 35k/40k ppd that would be really awesome.

In other pc news I'm thinking of getting an An android tablet. Specifically the Herotab X5A or the wistech A81-E I wanted something running android OS so I could learn the OS and have something to write apps on. I'd also like something with a bigger screen (than my 3.5" iPhone) to watch videos on while I'm on the go (or at home). Its an idea, but I'm looking at £120 -£180 which unfortunately money I just don't have :-( I also found a Point of View 7" Android 2.1 tablet with a decent battery. At £175 its not bad, but still my penniless state makes it look unlikely i'll get one.
On the positive side I managed to nab myself a 1 month old Corsair 60GB F60 Sandforce SSD for £70. Not bad at all. Should be coming soon and I'll have a nice super fast OS drive. :)

My brother has also (slightly unbelievably) bought himself a Sapphire 5870 Vapor-X 2GB Graphics Card O_O It's A beast of a card and will set you back ~£380 new. And I got it for him, 5 months old, for £240! He's a happy bunny. He also wants to buy the new NZXT Phantom Case (in White) and He's paying me back for a £100 BeQuiet 650w Dark Power Pro PSU. He got it brnad new (as an RMA replacement) but he's giving me £60 which I reckon is fair... He is my brother :-P

My gaming fortunes haven't changed alot :-( I bought F1 2010 which I loved for a while. But then the bugs set in. I was getting far too regular punctures as well as the fact that the pit crew would break and the pit lane would get blocked. Also the AI don't change their lap rate correctly all the time. This ultimately ended up with on my 4th race, my save file corrupted and i lost all my progress. I put it down but am now "trying" to get into it. I've finally managed to get it going with SLI (By using the same driver profile as Grid) and now it REALLY raggs my system! Both GPU's are running seriously warm and the CPU utilisation is massive, on a 4Ghz Quad! It's a seriously heavy game (I guess its lots of Physx Calculations) but at least now I am getting Silky-Smooth Frame-rates :) I'm still looking forward to TDU 2 and SW:TOR but there aren't many games other than that which interest me... Kinda Sucks.

Been Watching Lost on my Phone and Been listening to the Bit-Tech Podcast (Catching up should I say) Working at Work and falling behind on School Work. I'm coming to one of those Crux Points. UCAS App has to be in next week (If I want to apply to Oxford/Cambridge) and I've got tests and Homeworks I'm behind on (11 pieces), Bad Times.

Instead of Doing this Blog every day now I'm going to try and write about 2 entries a week. Maybe more maybe less. No one reads it anyway so I guess it doesn't really matter :)

Video of the Day has to be this one, Johnny Depp Showing the World what it means to be a good person. And how to make other people Happy. He got nothing out of this, and I'm sure made that little girl very happy.

So that's me, Telling it like it is in IT. No one's reading this anyway but who cares//.... Weather's Not bad.