Hand Coding

What started as a PC-upgrade project about a year and a half ago is now well underway. I’m upgrading just the motherboard/processor and the case, but it should perform like a new box after that. Ordinarily, I’d buy a higher-end motherboard in order to have it last through a few incremental upgrades, but I decided instead on a cheap Soyo motherboard as part of my new buy-cheap-and-buy-often strategy. So, the remaining decisions were the heatsink/fan and the case.

The case was actually an easy decision. A few months back, I read a review on Ars Technica for Antec’s Sonata case and it seemed to be just what I was looking for. In particular, the Sonata was designed to be quiet and that was one of my primary goals for this new machine:

OK, now we get to what makes this case special. Antec’s marketing term for its cooling management system is “Antec Low Noise Technology.” It consists of a handful of things, but the most important of these is the TruePower PSU that comes with the case. The TruePower 380W unit adjusts fan speeds based on the temperature in the case. Two Molex-connector power lines coming off of the PSU are marked as “fan only” lines. Those lines will adjust fan spinning speed (via voltage) to minimize noise, and frankly, it works really well. […]

In addition to the quieting features, I was also stoked about their innovative “sideways” hard drive mounting:

First, you can see on the bottom right that hard drives are installed “sideways,” that is, with the connector end facing you in this picture. This is a great design; it makes accessing drives very easy, plus it means that all of your drive cables can be made to easily run up the side of the case. […]

So, the case was an easy enough decision but the heatsink/fan was a bit tougher. At first, I had planned on going with a Zalman heatsink as it’s both an effective and very quiet cooler. However, I then saw Zalman’s motherboard compatibility chart where my motherboard was listed as not compatible (the only Soyo with that designation, natch).

So, I checked on Zalman’s other primary competitors to look for a suitable substitute. I first checked on Thermalright and since their heatsinks seemed a bit on the large side, I headed off to their support section to see whether any of their heatsinks would fit my motherboard. However, even though they have a motherboard compatibility list for each of their heatsinks, they’re not entirely comprehensive — my motherboard wasn’t listed on any of the lists (either way), so I was left unsure. I didn’t want to take a chance on buying a heatsink that wouldn't fit, so I crossed Thermalright off my list.

I next checked on Thermaltake and what first caught my eye there was their SilentTower. It uses heat pipes, which not only cools well but lifts the large heatsink well out of the way of any low-flying motherboard capacitors. In all, the SilentTower pushes about 52 CFM (about twice that of a normal fan setup) while remaining at 21 dB. This looked like just about the perfect heatsink/fan until I tried to buy one — it turns out that Thermaltake only released the SilentTower earlier this month and it wasn't available in stores anywhere yet.

So, I looked over Thermaltake’s other offerings. I had heard of some of their fans from their Volcano line, but I chose to avoid those they’re known for being a bit loud. But, their Silent Boost seemed more like what I had in mind. Granted, it only pushed 27 CFM, but it was only 21 dB and I wasn’t planning on overlclocking my box anyway. I didn’t see any motherboard compatibility charts on Thermaltake’s site, but the Silent Boost visually appeared that it would fit my motherboard easily (especially since it’s tapered towards the bottom).

So, I’ve ordered a Thermaltake Silent Boost ($25.75 w/ free FedEx Saver shipping from AccuPC) and an Antec Sonata case ($84.57 + $20 shipping from Provantage). Somehow seems as if my current PC has become even slower since ordering all these parts for my new PC — I can’t wait to assemble it and put it to good use :).

It all started on Thursday when I saw an offer for a free-after-rebate Soyo motherboard on DealNews (via the daily DealNews newsletter). Not that I was particularly in the market for new PC parts — I was trying to hold out for an Athlon 64 — but I was intrigued by this unusually good deal. As a first step, I looked up the retailer (Mwave) on ResellerRatings and found that they have a 8.73 rating along with a Gold consumer-excellence award.

From there, I mentioned it to Mike to get his thoughts on it (since he’s a professional IT Guy, I trust his opinion on this kind of thing). He confirmed that Soyo is a decent brand and he went on to say that his previous motherboard was even a Soyo (though he has an Asus now). Mike was even considering buying one for himself, until he read the offer details and discovered that the deal required a CPU purchase from Mwave as well.

Being the skeptic that I am, I figured that Mwave was overcharging on the processors to cover the costs of the motherboard. So, I cross-checked their prices against NewEgg’s. As it turns out, Mwave’s processor prices are actually lower than NewEgg’s (!). Mwave’s Athlon 2800 is $108 (compared to $116 at NewEgg) and their Athlon 3000 is $144 (compared to $166) at NewEgg.

At this point, both of us had all but discounted the idea of going for this deal. In Mike’s case, he already had a spare AMD 1700 and so he could have just about built a computer from spare parts and this “free” motherboard. But, with the required processor purchase, it would be far from a free PC for Mike.

And, in any case, I was only really considering this as a stop-gap measure to hold me over until Athlon 64s (Socket 939, specifically) became widely available. And, under that scenario, I would have bought a cheap Athlon 2200 or something to go with it (which would still work out to a decent speed upgrade from my current Athlon 700 for not much dough).

For those wondering why I’m even bothering with another PC upgrade when I already have a new PowerBook ;), I have my reasons. In the short-run, I still haven’t found an editor that I like on Mac OS and, in the long-run, I still need a PC for games (Doom III, Half-Life 2, and so on).

Anyhow, I got to talking with Mike about how we missed this great deal “by that much” (since it required a processor purchase). And, at that point, Mike shared with me his newly formed buying strategy which I like to call the “cheap but often” approach.

Summarizing my thoughts on the matter up until that point, it seemed reasonable to me that it would be cheaper to buy higher-end PC parts since they last longer between upgrades (as opposed to buying cheap parts which have to be upgraded much sooner). However, Mike expressed that, with the price difference between high-end and low-end parts, it's actually cheaper in the long run to buy cheap or mid-range parts, even if it means buying them more often.

Logically, his point of view made sense to me, though it was a little jarring at the time since it wasn't the way I was used to thinking. So, to prove it to myself (one way or the other), I decided to whip up a spreadsheet to calculate PC upgrade costs over time (using both strategies). As I made the spreadsheet, I held these assumptions:

• A “cheap PC” will last three years and, after that time, neither the motherboard nor CPU could be migrated to the new box. That is, it’s assumed that the CPU is maxing out the cheap motherboard’s capabilities already and that an upgraded CPU wouldn’t be possible.

• An “expensive PC” will also last three years; however, a refresher CPU could be bought at that time which would extend the life of the box an additional two years.

• And, lastly, each “new” box would built by scrounging parts from the “old” box whenever possible — I wouldn’t be building a completely new machine each time.

And, for the spreadsheet to make sense, here’s what I have in my current PC with notations of which parts can’t be reused in the new box:

• Asus Slot A motherboard [nope]
• Athlon 700 [nope]
• Western Digital 120 GB hard drive
• Maxtor 10 GB hard drive [probably not]
• Plextor CD-R drive
• Pioneer SCSI DVD drive
• GeForce4 Ti4600
• Floppy drive
• D-Link NIC
• 1 GB PC3000 RAM (bought earlier)

With that out of the way, the spreadsheet is available in OpenOffice.org Calc format (7k) and PDF (62k). You may notice that the “now” section for the “Expensive Route” includes both an SATA drive and a DVD+R/DVD-R recorder (as both of those parts would allow the expensive PC to laster longer between upgrades). Not to worry, the “Cheap Route” gets those parts also, though only as needed (as part of the 3-year “Cheap Route” upgrade where it’s assumed that the motherboard of that time will predominately feature SATA controllers).

So, as you can see from looking over the spreadsheet, the cheap route is cheap not only in the short-run (as expected) but also in the long-run (which I didn’t initially expect). With the exception of Year 3, the cheap route remains cheaper than the expensive route right through the 8-year projections (even though it requires replacement parts sooner).

So, with the numbers in-hand, I ordered the Soyo motherboard and an Athlon 3000 to go with it. With FedEx Saver shipping, they should be arriving within the next few days :).

Update 03/31: The original spreadsheet had an error in one of the formulas, but that’s been corrected. The end result (the “cheaper route” being cheaper in the long run) is the same.

The inspection on my car was coming due this month (expiring at the end of 3/2004), so I knew I had to get that done within the next few days. In past years, I’ve gone to the Jiffy Lube at Greenville & Mockingbird and they’ve always been fine (just an ordinary car inspection).

Since buying my PowerBook, I’ve been keeping mental notes of local businesses with WiFi support and I had in the back of my mind that one of the oil-change shops had WiFi (though I couldn’t remember their name or whether they were authorized for inspections in the first place).

So, I first checked the TX Department of Public Safety’s site for inspection stations in my area. Sure enough, there was the “Kwik Kar Lube & Tune” which sounded familiar. And, a quick check at JiWire — a site listing WiFi hotspots — confirmed it. So, I packed up my PowerBook yesterday afternoon and headed off.

It was a great experience, or as good as a car inspection can be. I pulled into the parking lot and an attendant greeted me at my car door to ask how he could help me. I requested an inspection, handed over my keys, and he got started right away. I headed off to the waiting room and unpacked my laptop. Mac OS found the access point right away and I was connected.

As I waited, I downloaded the latest Thunderbird build, chatted a bit on iChat, and the inspection was complete in about 20-30 minutes. It was fairly pleasant and I wouldn't hesitate to go there for my next inspection.

OS X users are fortunate enough to have Preview for browsing PDFs, but Windows users still have to rely on Acrobat Reader. And, by many accounts, the latest version of Acrobat Reader wasn’t much improvement on the last one. In particular, it tends to load much more slowly.

In an effort to reverse that trend, Darrell Norton figured out that much of the slow-down is due to all the plug-ins that Acrobat Reader loads at startup. And he discovered that by moving a few files around, Acrobat Reader loads faster since it only load the plug-ins when it needs them:

1. Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader (replace C if you installed on another drive, like D or E).
2. Move all files [and subdirectories] from the “plug_ins” folder to the “Optional” folder.
3. You’re done.

You can always leave a few plugins in the “plug_ins” folder if you still want them to load at startup (maybe you use search often, for instance). In any case, I tried this on my box and Acrobat Reader does seem to load a little more quickly. And I’m guessing that speedups may be even more noticable on other systems — with 768 MB RAM in this box, just about all my apps are cached after I load them the first time.

I’ve never been much a fan of Flash. These days in particular, it seems to be mostly used for ads on the web. But, there are occasional uses for it (mushroom mushroom comes to mind).

Now you can have your Flash and eat it too. As a spin-off from bug 94035 (“Allow blocking of any media type”), Jesse Ruderman wrote some code to cover Flash elements with a “Click to Play” box. And, from there Ted Mielczarek packaged that into a handy XPI browser extension for Mozilla & Firefox.

Once installed, each Flash element in a page will be covered with an unobtrusive gray box labeled “Click to Play”. If you want to view that Flash, just click the box. I’ve found that this browser extension makes Flash much more palatable since I only view the Flash elements that I want to see. And, because it installs to your profile directory, you don't have to reinstall it each time you upgrade Mozilla.

As the weather gets nicer in the coming weeks, I’ve been thinking that it could be rather nice to work outside some days, just sitting under a shady tree enjoying the spring breeze. I already have the PowerBook but it would be even better if I had WiFi outside…

So, on Friday afternoon, I decided to go warwalking. You may have already heard of wardriving — driving around with a laptop looking for WiFi access points — but I needed more granularity than that. So, I made sure my battery was charged and I loaded MacStumbler onto my laptop (MacStumbler is an app which continuously scans for access points).

I had to carry my PowerBook open as it would just go to sleep if I closed it, but I found a comfortable position where I could support it with my left forearm as I rested it against my chest. From there, I just started walking around my apartment complex.

I didn’t really want much road noise as part of my hypothetical spring afternoon, so that actually made my search a bit easier. Heading away from the major roads, I walked towards the trees & paths near the Village clubhouse. I had a good feeling about this area since it was wooded enough to be quiet and peaceful yet there were apartment buildings not far away (hopefully with WiFi emanating from them).

Sure enough, I found a few good spots there. As I don’t yet have a GPS receiver for my PowerBook (still looking for recommendations, if you have any), I just had to record each hotspot’s info the old-fashioned way — with TextEdit. I made notes to myself primarily on how to find each spot (in some ways, like a squirrel trying to remember where he buried his nuts).

I also ensured that each spot had a shady tree nearby :). Then, just to be sure tree was still in range of the signal, I sat down under each tree and tested the signal there (usually by browsing a couple pages from Slashdot). Of course, as long as I had signal-bars, the test-pages would usually load fine. Occasionally, however, I couldn’t connect through some of them :-/.

I also didn’t want to have to walk that far to my WiFi Tree(tm), so I limited my search to about a 15-minute radius from my apartment. I ended up with about half a dozen prospective hotspots and I narrowed it down to two likely candidates. One in particular is a hotspot that’s reachable from one of the benches overlooking the small lake in that area. I figure that a bench would be comfortable and I could also bring along a flat object (like a book) for use as a mousepad next to me.

So, the next time a sunny day comes along, I’m ready. I'm guessing that my one-page list of findings wouldn’t be useful to many people but if you live in The Village, I’d be happy to pass them along.

I found these XHTML Jokes at Photo Matt though they’re originally from HTML Dog. I’m guessing that only standards-aware web developers will get these, but I found some of them rather amusing:

Q: Why did the XHTML actress turn down an Oscar?
A: Because she refused to be involved in the presentation.

Q: Why was the font tag an orphan?
A: Because it didn’t have a font-family.

Q: Why do CSS designers have too many children?
A: Because they employ lots of child selectors.

Q: Why was IE5’s 3-metre wide cell in the insane asylum smaller than IE6’s 3-metre wide cell?
A: Because the width of the cell included the padding…

Q: Why was the XHTML bird an invalid?
A: Because it wasn’t nested properly.

I think the XHTML/Oscar one may be my favorite, though I liked the IE/cell-width one as well. And considering geeks’ general penchant for tech humor, I’m almost surprised that these jokes have only come about now. In any case, they brightened my day a bit :).

I made blueberry muffins yesterday and they turned out fairly well so I thought I’d post the recipe here. I had decided on blueberry muffins a few days beforehand, but I didn’t have a recipe in mind at the time. So, I next checked AllRecipes.com — a handy recipe website with ratings and reviews for each recipe.

I found my way to their recipes for muffins & scones and, from there, to their section on blueberry muffins. They had about twenty blueberry muffin recipes, but the To Die For Blueberry Muffins caught my eye as it had a rating of 5/5 stars and it was also selected for one of the Allrecipes cookbooks.

Here’s the recipe:

To Die For Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients — Muffin Base:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

Ingredients — Crumb Topping:

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup butter, cubed [half a stick]
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
2. Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups right to the top, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.
3. To Make Crumb Topping: Mix together 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, 1/4 cup butter, and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon. Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.

The muffins turned out well — light and fluffy on the inside with a crunchy-sweet topping. Sliced in half and with a touch of butter, they’re rather delectable. And, other than the blueberries, most of the ingredients are items you probably already have in your pantry.

I wasn’t sure how they’d turn out with Splenda, so I just made them with regular sugar this time. But, I would imagine that Splenda would work fine (though the crumb topping may not have that characteristic sugar crystal crunch without the sugar).

As written, the recipe works out to 1.5 Tbsp sugar in each muffin along with an additional 1 Tbsp sugar for each muffin’s crumb topping (for a total of 2.5 Tbsp sugar). At 16g carbs per Tbsp, that’s 40g carbs per muffin that could be cut out (or at least 24g if you kept the sugar in the crumb topping).

MSNBC has an article on console-based electronica making a comeback. These days, consoles like the X-Box and PlayStation 2 have full music capabilities, but I still remember playing my first 8-bit NES back in the 80s and its music seemed fine at the time. And even today I find it amazing what the composers of the day were able to do with such limited hardware.

This 8-bit music — or “chiptunes” as the sound is also known — may be the one video game related subculture you’ve never heard about. Built around the “bleeps” and “bloops” of video gaming’s Paleozoic era, the music has gained a following over the years among assorted hackers, gamers and musicians. It’s particularly large in Europe, where Micromusic.net sponsored music festivals have attracted upwards of 5,000 attendees. And in the United States, “the scene” also appears to be growing thanks to a number of factors including the diversity of its music, the hacker sensibility underlining the scene and nostalgia for old fashioned video gaming. […]

The Register also has an article on old hardware put to use where they mention the Dallas band TreeWave:

We were also informed about Dallas band TreeWave, which performs on two Commodore 64s, an Atari 2600, and an old Compaq luggable. The brains behind Treewave have also programmed Epson assembly language to use a dot-matrix printer as an instrument. […]

Using Commodore 64s is cool in itself, but a musical printer rates highly on the scale of geek cred. I may have to check out one of their shows sometime :). And as it turns out, they’re actually playing tonight at the Curtain Club with The Polyphonic Spree — I might otherwise be tempted to go, but I’ll be going to the DFWBlogs Cocktail Event this evening at the XPO Lounge.

Once again, I’m heading off to SXSW. I plan on leaving around lunchtime today (Friday) and driving back Tuesday evening (after the last panel of the day). In case you’re going also, here're some of the panels I plan on attending:

Saturday:

• Accessibility is for Everybody — a general web-accessibility panel[3:30 - 4:30]
• Web Navigation Without A Guide Dog — accessbility techniques with JavaScript, Flash and CSS [5:00 - 6:00]

Sunday:

• Virginia Postrel Presentation — she wrote The Substance of Style about the look-and-feel of people and places [10:00 - 11:00]
• Red Vs. Blue Case Study — Red vs Blue is an amusing set of animated shorts created with the Halo game engine [11:30 - 12:30]
• Wikwiki, What? — a Wiki is a collection of Web pages which can be edited by anyone [3:30 - 4:30]

Monday:

• Hi-Fi Design With CSS — with Doug Bowman [10:00 - 11:00]
• CSS: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — with Tantek Çelik, Eric Meyer and and Doug Bowman [11:30 - 12:30]
• The Frontiers of User Experience — on information architecture and user interaction [3:30 - 4:30]

Tuesday:

• I haven’t yet decided on the panels for Tuesday.