08.25.06

What the terrorists want

Posted in General at 11:34 am by jw

My last post wasn’t as interesting in hindsight as it first seemed in my mind.  Oh well…

Saw this great piece from Bruce Schneier today though:

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.

George knows how the world works!

Posted in Opinion at 12:18 am by jw

Apparently anyone who doesn’t agree with George Bush simply doesn’t know how the world works.  It’s the kind of argument you’d expect from a kindergarten playground – “Yeah, well you’re dumb!”

Of course, this sort of argument would hold the ring of truth if the person making it had demonstrated an ability in the past to accurately predict how the word did, in fact, work so in fairness to George let’s have a look to see just how well he and his advisors know how the world around him does actually work (and I’ll even be nice and ignore his “Bushisms”):

  • Saddam has WMD and we know where they are
  • We’re talking weeks, not months [for the Iraq effort]
  • The Iraqi people will welcome us with open arms.
  • [The Iraqi violence] is the actions of a few dead-enders
  • Mission accomplished
  • Terrorism is the opposite of Democracy” (yet, Hamas and Hezbollah both won many democratic seats)
  • Bring it on
  • The violence is a last ditch effort that will end soon
  • The timetable for Iraq finished when the government was formed
  • If you aren’t with us then you’re against us
  • I have political capital and I intend to spend it

In fact from all of that, I find it hard to remember a President who knew less about how the world worked than the current one.  He’s really managed to bungle practically every foreign affairs matter that he’s touched, so when George Bush stands up and says that he has to spy on Americans for their own protection and if you don’t agree with him then you don’t know how the world works, it’s a fairly good bet that, once again, George really doesn’t know how the world works and sometime soon another of his half-baked plans will come crashing down on America once again.

08.19.06

Water Pump Fixed

Posted in General at 2:50 am by jw

It took longer than I expected, but my PC is up and running again with a new water pump and a whole new cooling system to go with it.  Was fun putting together a system from parts rather than just using a kit like I did last time.

Yeah, I’m kinda proud of it.  It’s got half inch piping through it, a 150gph pump, CPU block, GPU block, external radiator (the black blob attached to the glowing blue fan on the back of the case) and internal reservoir (the green blob in the centre of the case).  I got some fun UV reactive coolant and the side panel fan has a fairly strong UV light on the back of it which makes the whole coolant glow.  You can even see the coolant in the CPU block glowing away happily in the top left of the case!

Now, the cooling performance is interesting – idle temperature for the CPU is about 30 degrees (C) and it goes up to about 40 degrees under load.  This is actually a fraction higher than the air cooled temperatures but the real difference is on the GPU which used to go to 80 or 90 degrees under load but now has the same temperature as the CPU!  I’m really not complaining about a fifty degree drop in GPU temperature.

One thing I did find about setting up the water cooling is the value of clamps on all the hose connections.  When I first plugged everything together (outside the case, fortunately), the whole thing leaked like a sieve.  A few cable ties later (the glowing yellow bands on the hoses) and everything was incredibly watertight – the real advantage of thick silicone hosing.  The additional cable ties around the pipes are to prevent kinking, as well as they look pretty good under UV light.

In the end, I’m pretty happy with the outcome.  The cooling performance is far better than the old quarter inch kit system I had and with the GPU block I’ve been able to run with far less fan noise in the system.  The biggest downside is the fact that there’s really barely any room in the case now because the hoses and reservoir take up pretty much all the available space.  I guess that’s the price you pay for a fun water-cooled PC.

08.10.06

My Water Pump Died!

Posted in Shorts at 12:13 am by jw

Monday night, the water pump in my PC died. 

It was making a strange noise, so in a fit of inspiration I took it and shook it a bit, hoping it was just some grit lodged in there.  I guess it wasn’t, because once I did that not only did the noise stop but the water stopped flowing as well.  From there, the CPU temperature on my PC started jumping about a degree a second so I figured it was a really good time to just turn the whole system off.

Of course, this now gives me the opportunity to be a bigger and better pump in it, but while I’m waiting for the parts to arrive I now have a girlie little fan on the CPU, which is annoyingly keeping the processor cooler than the old water system did (though I do admit I have the side off the case and a bunch of components left out because I know I have to pull it apart again when the new cooler components arrive.

08.06.06

Some site updates

Posted in Shorts at 12:45 am by jw

Added a subscription function for those people who might be interested in what I say but don’t want to hit my site in the vain hope I’ve posted something in the last month.  Also finished uploading most of my old camera shots to the gallery, hard to believe how many files there are in that thing now.

Next entries » · « Previous entries