Category Archives: Computers

Software, hardware, you name it!

On the Tech Front

★ Posted on at 07:48 am ★

soba and alfie

This was taken at a friend’s place during New Year’s eve. The other dog is Soba and both of them were always looking to go indoors when someone opened the door. As I was going out, I saw their expressions and decided it was too cute to let pass, hence I quickly grabbed the camera and took a snapshot.

* * *

It’s been a while since I indulged myself in tech rants, so here goes.

I’ve been fiddling with the network setup of the HTPC with the NAS ever since I’ve had them, using an existing wireless G card, before swapping that over to a wireless N card, buying larger antennas for the router and the HTPC. They worked for a while before I started getting higher resolution files and 720p sometimes worked depending on the circumstances.

So I finally decided to get ethernet over power (EOP) adapters and 720p (high definition movie files) worked fine after that but recently it got a little flakey and after resetting them, it started working again. 1080p files will worked if they are heavily compressed but you’d be watching a slideshow with the higher quality stuff.

So I start looking at actual numbers and after some investigation, found that my 200Mbps EOP only manages a paltry 14-15Mbps on the HTPC. Wifi N with a strong signal will hit 20Mbps. I tried the EOP with a different computer and that also gave me 20Mbps. Heh, over gigabit LAN on my desktop, 300-400Mbps is easy. To play heavy duty 1080p files, you’d need a constant 30-35Mbps connection minimum to keep it stutter free.

So I’ve been looking at various solutions, like buying a uber long outdoor LAN cable to be hooked through the room to the centre courtyard. It’s the simplest solution, but it’s ugly. There was also a thought on rebuilding a HTPC with dedicated storage, and the 15Mbps is adequate for downloading and if it’s local, you won’t have buffering issues. Heh, then my NAS will be relegated to backing up photos, which have become a substantial chunk of the data I keep.

Heh, I had a running spec on the kind of HTPC I’d build, from a small mini ITX system to a slightly larger micro ATX one that would house media files. I’d want it to be low power consumption and was looking at AMD’s Brazos platform to begin with. That was pretty low powered but if you wanted to do any heavy duty computing, it does not cut the mustard, and I’d like to future proof things a little more this time (I thought SD content was adequate but you start noticing the differences after a while, not just the video quality, but the sound quality that’s baked into the file as well).

So here is the spec I’ve come up with that would be what I’d build for January 2012. An Intel Celeron G530 (apparently it consumes as little juice as the purpose built Core i3 2100T which has a 35W TDP) on a H61 board with 4GB of memory. It has built in graphics and also has hardware acceleration for decoding video files, so that’s a big plus. A 32GB SSD since I only need to run an OS off it. I’m still unsure about sticking an optical drive in as I barely touch my DVDs anymore and the Playstation is still around to play disc formats. All of that stuck into an Antec ISK-300-65. It’s a power brick so no spinning fans. The SSD is silent because there’s no mechanical parts so the only whirl you’ll hear would be the stock cooler and one case fan. It would be a zen computing experience. Heh, you know the current HTPC in the living room is on with the whirl of the PSU and case fans. It’s 4 years old and I’m sure it would last a couple more years easily but it’s always good to have a build plan in place (just because I’m a geek) so that I know what parts to get to instantly replace it.

Heh, the above parts were also chosen because I wanted to keep it really affordable and inclusive of shipping, it’s under $350 for the above setup.

For a HTPC that stores the media locally, the price goes up by a lot very quickly. There’s the Antec Fusion Remote case that fits micro ATX boards, has a built in IR receiver and I’d probably need to chuck in a couple of 2TB hard drives for media. The philosophy behind this build could probably take up another post but it’s not the way I’d like to handle it currently.

* * *

These things fascinate me and there will be a whole new slew of products to be announced in the next week or so at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) so it would be interesting to see what other fancy gadgets they release.

Jaded

★ Posted on at 06:55 am ★

KA

Something not from the archives. Got Vyanne a Kitchenaid mixer in Boysenberry. I grabbed a standard front view shot and this was just something a little alternative. I’m trying to find new ways and angles to take photos.

* * *

Was reading through online reviews of games and it just hit me that I’m not that into games anymore. Either that they don’t make many of the kind of games I play anymore. I used to spend a lot of time on RTS and RPGs. There’s nothing new in RTS and Starcraft 2 is something I still play quite a bit. RPGs are a little different depending on how it’s setup. I’m more of the linear kind of gamer, as in guide me from point to point and I should be good. If it’s too open ended, I probably have no idea what I should be doing. It’s probably because it’s drilled into me that what you do in game have consequences (or none at all) and maybe I’d just like to play through the game only once and I have known myself to make characters that just don’t cut it towards the end of the game, and you get stuck with being unable to finish the game.

Heh, if I really want to get stuck into one, I need to immerse myself in the game, and unless my time management skills improve, that’s not going to be happening any time soon.

* * *

On taking pictures, I keep telling myself I want certain kinds of shots. Heh, then it hit me, I shouldn’t be waiting for opportunities to take the shots I want. I should be making them whenever I can. I’m still struggling with making photos where the tiny details are the main focus of the subject matter, like just showing feet because they are wearing brightly coloured socks and things like that. These things don’t draw me as much as it should because I don’t take notice enough.

On the other hand, I’ve been spending so much time editing photos and reading up on imaging techniques that I have learned ways to guide the eye’s line of sight to focus on things or not get distracted by other things. That’s when I get reminded that if you want to improve something, you just have to keep going at it. You can’t always wait on things to happen to you, you have to make things happen.

* * *

Heh, it’s the start of another week. Need to get busy.

Tech Rant

★ Posted on at 08:14 am ★

20110721-travels-0199.jpg

Revisiting the photos from my Europe trip. This is outside the Louvre museum and you don’t see the long queue already waiting patiently for the doors to open at 9am. It was raining quite a bit while we were there, some unusual weather for the French summer, but then again, weather’s pretty unusual these days.

* * *

Just read about the Google Galaxy Nexus review on the Verge, a new gadget review site run by the people who were previously at Engadget. A year ago, I’d be happily soaking in all stuff new on tech. I still do these days but I seem more reluctant to embrace new stuff now only because of a lack of time.

The Galaxy Nexus is a curious phone. I like my iPhone 4 and am quite satisfied with it, plus I’ve already invested a little in the iOS ecosystem like productivity apps and games, plus I’m wondering whether the massive 4.65″ screen (relative to the 3.5″ iPhone screen) is a good idea for my pocket.

Then again, it’s just me being curious to try things out (I’ve played with the Nexus S and find it a bit sluggish) so it’s probably something that might happen when I get a new mobile plan later next year.

* * *

The graphics card on my PC finally died. Seems to make sense in hindsight, as it was a pretty unstable mess, and I sort of suspected that the card was returned to the shop (it was the last unit) and it seemed to crash a lot until finally when I was having a game of Starcraft 2 with a friend that I started seeing weird polygons and the whole screen just turned blank. Restarted the PC, it looked fine until it tried to boot into Windows and when you try to start rendering Aero and all the nice effects, the card just flaked and spat the dummy.

So I went and got myself a new card. The product lines are slightly different today as there used to be the budget cards, the mid range cards and the high end cards. The one I have seems to sit in the middle of the latter two and I plugged it into my system with no issues whatsoever. Downloaded the drivers and everything was good as new. Then for the first time in my life, I was able to max out every setting in the games I tried and everything was smooth. No micro stutters, gorgeous details in games and it brought out a little excitement for me in gaming again.

Heh, today’s games run fine on current hardware only because the console market is still dominating sales and corporations that always look to maximise the bottom line will cater for these markets. Lots of games today are built with the console version in mind and make a parallel port to the PC version. Today’s consoles are fairly antiquated in terms of technology, with the Playstation 3 and XBox 360 already more than 3 years old, so any modern card today can render the games pretty darn well, at least up to a resolution of 1920 pixels across. If you are lucky enough to have a 30″ display, you’d be needing two of the cards I bought in Crossfire just to keep up with the pixel pushing.

* * *

The year is coming to a close, so things are slowing down a bit. I have a pile of stuff to do, so I need to kick my own butt and find the motivation to do it. Haven’t really had a chance to be expressive about anything of late. Time to move on.