!!!UPDATE!!!: PICS.

open

boxed up

in situ

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Hey guys. You might recall a while back I was talking about making a home theater pc from scratch. Well I actually built it, and I’m typing this entry on the new computer. All in all I think it was a pretty positive experience. Some trial-by-fire aspects to it in terms of wiring up the motherboard to the case and power supply, but it was surprisingly fun. Came in way over-budget but I guess that’s how it goes. Specs are:

Nvidia Ion ITX-D mobo w/ Atom 330 chip (dual core @ 1.6 GHz)
HEC 8k mini ITX case
500 GB western digital HDD
4GB kingston DDR2 RAM
lite-on CD/DVD-RW drive

Initially planned on running XP, but my old install disk didn’t want to work – probably because it was a dell-branded OEM disk. I tried my best to get into Ubuntu but it didn’t want to install the proper drivers for the display I’m using and in general is not as user-friendly as advertised. As I mentioned to Rob, about 5 minutes after installing I was already having to do shit with a command-line interface. So long story short I’m now running Windows 7, which was a big part of the cost-overrun on my part. The breakdown goes like this:

$170 – mobo/processor combo
$50 – case w/ power supply
$80 – RAM
$40 – slimline dvd drive
$55 – digital hard disk
$20 – wireless keyboard/mouse combo
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$415 total + ~$100 for w7 and we’re not only $150 over budget, but at the point where I could have probably bought the stupid thing cheaper from Dell or wherever. One nice thing about rolling your own, though, is that the number of background processes running is much reduced from a vendor-built computer. Don’t have all the shitty bloatware running around and slowing everything down.

In any case, it was a good experience, and one I’d definitely recommend, but after having built it I’m not sure I’d do it again until component prices start to come down a little more. I also think I went a little overboard on some of the pieces – I probably could have cut costs a lot if I was making a computer that was primarily just for web-surfing rather than running a home theater pc. Get some shitty hard disk (or scavenge one), forget the optical drive, cut the RAM by half, and try and find a good linux distro and you’re back down below the $300 mark for a perfectly functional computer that’s using a top-of-the-line ultra-low-voltage processor.

shamelessly ripped from corey lewis’ livejournal:

not a bad song but is it just me or does autotuned carl sagan sound just like kermit the frog?

you can also listen to a pretty deep tribute to sagan by tarentel: “for carl sagan.”

This is a very mesmerizing speed run of the European version of the nes game Rygar.

It’s like you’re watching it, then at 0:40 you’re like, o.

I had a nice conversation with zach the other night. He was looking sort of grainy and blurred.

I don’t know if anybody ever checks it but I changed some of the links on the blogroll, added ross’s podcast.

I doubt people are waiting breathlessly for the continuation of my epic ff7 fanfic. I can say that the next chapter has been written.

It feels like it’s been so long I’ve blogged about life or whatever. I recently did my thesis proposal and passed, which is sort of like, in terms of paperwork, the penultimate stage of getting a degree. Something I had been putting off, stressing out over. Worked on it a lot during November. Actually I did the examination on Friday the 13th, and had been planning a post proposal decompression the following Saturday by seeing the new evangelion movie, but I didn’t make it.

I’ve been watching some anime. Don’t know if I should be recommending titles here. I was recently quite moved by The Sky Crawlers. It’s an Oshii movie, who’s maybe best known for Ghost in the Shell, pretty well known anime that I’ve never understood why people like it so much. But sky crawlers is pretty good, if you like aerial combat than you’ll like this movie I believe. It’s a combination of 2D and 3D animation that’s quite stunning.

i love the way the guy chokes out “both.”

Somehow I get the feeling that this wasn’t the video Billy Ocean had in mind. It’s seems like somebody thought star wars is popular lets dress you up as han solo and recreate the catina scene.

Things to watch for
1:35, barbot
1:40, best dance
3:03
3:34, “yeah whatever”
3:48, NOT JAWAS!!

I had a long conversation with Zach the other day at Roaring Shark’s western branch (i.e. a Peet’s in midtown Sacramento), that touched on a lot of topics, including something I’ve been curious about for a while now – how housing cooperatives and communal societies in general run.  My only exposure to the cooperative lifestyle is through the students I’ve taught, and the university co-op tradition of hosting a professors’ dinner once a year.  As of this fall I can say that I’ve eaten stir-fried greens and a variety of styles of tofu with my students on three occasions, once at a co-op at Brown and twice now at a co-op at Davis. While the experience is generally the same, and not unpleasant, I do have to give the Davis co-op’ers credit for actually raising their own vegetables and tracking down some organic wine.  I’ve always said that if there’s one thing hippies should be able to do – if only to be true to their “live off the land” ethos – that thing would be actually knowing how to live off the land.  There’s nothing more indicative of the philosophical failure of the hippie dream than a co-op “garden” denuded of anything but the scrubbiest of plants, with nothing like a healthy-looking vegetable anywhere in sight.

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can you believe this song. the 70s electric piano is unreal.

What is it about Mappy?

I also wanted to draw your attention to this review on g4 which ross posted on his livejournal

Wet Moon 5 review

Okay here’s chapter 2 of my Final Fantasy VII fanfic. I still haven’t thought of a title. Dave’s review post inspired me to keep up the activity here. Note that the song in this works into the story later on. Cloud plays it for Yuffie later as a kind of impromptu jam. It’s sort of Vai inspired although I’m not claiming that I play like him. I’ve been doing some tremolo stuff. Bought a new guitar recently, a Charvel. Sorry about the noise.

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters or any aspect of Final Fantasy VII

Cloud sought shelter under a canopy at an abandoned turnpike between Junon and Midgar. It was late afternoon and the rain had just started up again. He was on delivery. Early that morning he had crept back into Seventh Heaven before Tifa had awoken and collected his messages. “What am I doing?” he asked himself. The fantasy of her black tresses over delicate shoulders sliced clean through his heart and he buried his face in his hands as waves of nostalgia broke over him. An old friend, who had been shadowing him since his last stop, watched from a distance for a while, before it simply became too pathetic a sight to bear.

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