Monday, January 24, 2011

OS's

So i finished installing WOW on Ubuntu. And it plays just fine; but with the new Cataclysm update, wow can now use some of the more advanced features of my video card. Unfortunately either OpenGl or the gnu/linux version of the video card drivers aren't up to the task yet.

So I'm installing winBLOWS again.

Maybe I should do a small Gentoo installation and virtualize my computer so I could run, Gentoo, Ubuntu, and 'the operating system that is only useful for games' all at the same time.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Bleeding Edge

So some time ago when, what I consider to be, the second generation of SSD drives first hit the market. I went and bought one. It's a Gskill Falcon 128GB (230 MB/sec read 190 MB/sec write). It was bleeding edge at the time, and is still quite a fast boot drive.
Unfortunately like most bleeding edge hardware, the software support is usually quite primitive, as in just barely usable. Well time has passed and several new firmware revisions for this drive have been released, including a trim program. I've been reluctant to update the firmware because the drive manufacturers in there wisdom made it so that a firmware update destroys all data on the drive.

Brilliant!!!

But the SSD delays have gotten a bit too long for me to ignore, it needed trimming. So after three hours of burning boot disks, rebooting, changing things in the bios, swapping around SATA plugs, and general hair pulling I'm happy to announce my success! Firmware version 2030 is now installed, and I'm off and running reinstalling my operating systems.

For good measure I updated my motherboard BIOS, and increased the overclock on the processor as well. Fun times!

Monday, January 10, 2011

E-reader

In the past few days I've been thinking about getting an e-reader. I've been trying to read in bed, and I was thinking that an e-reader might be much easier to hold. With a paperback, I spend a bit of effort holding the spine open and twisting back and forth to comfortably see the page. Then again; maybe I've just gotten soft. I remember a time when I used to hold a book over my head for what seemed like hours every night before falling asleep.

Then again I also really like the idea of carrying around thousands of books in a tiny little gadget. We'll see.

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Household projects update

The bedrooms that I've been working on are coming along just fine. Unfortunately there have been other setbacks...

The cat situation exploded! A cat we had been caring for started fighting in earnest with our cats; and one of them started peeing! A cat that pees once is forever a pisser. It had to go; but the reason it was in my house was that it had no where else to go! So I'm building a cat house for the garage. It's heated, and should be quite comfy; especially when the thermostat I ordered from Amazon arrives.

Another set back lies in our new furniture. We bought a new bed and nightstands from IKEA. My visiting father and his sig-o slept on them fine, and on new years Gretchen and I crashed on it; no problems. Later that afternoon I leaned on the bed and, the frame broke; the box-spring and mattress went crashing to the floor in one corner. So now I have another opportunity to use my new welder. I'll have to go buy some steel and weld up a bed frame; or at least a structure to reinforce the new broken one.