Cyberclogs

Ah well, it'll be a pretty quiet one this weekend (unlike last weekend) but come this Wednesday I shall see Rush at the classy dinfest that is the SECC, and I'm pretty sure they will rock the place. Need more be said? Nah.

Well its been a fairly busy weekend for me for a change, as on Saturday night I went out to the Arches and watched play, GAG, which featured one of our acting tutors, Bill, whom I'd never really seen before (cos I didn't get him as a tutor). The play itself was pretty good and the cast were all on pretty good form, the young girl in particular playing the part of a cocky, troubled bulemic teenager was very good, although she took a while to shift into gear. Bill was also very good in his role, having never seen him before this, he was pretty intense, but I was already warned of that beforehand by my acting fellows. The play was also just about the right length as it was only about an hour, and the story structure kept me watching and I didn't catch onto the story "twist" until towards the end. So it was well worth a watch. After that us acting lot went and had plenty of drinks and I ending up feeling rather drunk and knackered (well its par for the course really!). So cheers again to Scott for organising the night (he always does it!) and it was great to see all who turned up.

So out again tonight having seen Incubus, an alt american rock band for those who don't know them, and they were pretty good too. The band played a decent cross section of their most well known material (well to Incubai-heads at least!), some of the highlights included "Megalomaniac", "Sad Sick Little World", and "Circles". As usual it would have been nice if they played a few other songs off of their latest Light Grenades album and Crow left of the murder, which is their best album in imho. But it was all mostly good although I must admit Brandon Boyd is pretty unremarkable as front man, as he doesn't really project any kind of charisma ofestage presence at all. He's like the William Baldwin of the rock music scene (watch Backdraft and you'll know what I kind of mean!). But it was a pretty good gig, so can't really complain.

Well I'm off ramorra as its September weekend, so guess I will enjoy lulling around doing as little as possible, oh and purchase the new Foo Fighters album, which is well worth the purchase folks!

PC technie nerd warning: Don't read this if you don't like PC tech stuff. But feel free to read it.

Well well well, further to my last blog post, turns out the noise I was banging on about all along was the graphics card after all, and not the chipset fan (although that was the whirring noise!). But as it turns out I think the culprit behind the noisy mother was really the power supply, which I've been using of late, a cheap Q-TEC one now those who know their Power Supplies will know that in a word: Q-TEC don't have a good reputation, in fact most people think they suck ass.

And to an extent I think they are right as I used to get a number of cheap PSU's from an old PC retailer and they were also QTEC and they didnt work. Although I have an old faithful one (rated 550 watts) which does work well enough, but the PCI-Express graphics card definitely noisies up more with it, I guess because it is a cheap PSU which doesn't dissipate heat well, and yes one day it may just blow up my system, so guess I don't want that to happen, especially as I've just got a new board fitted and everything seems to be rosy again, well for now.

So finally I've put back in my more powerful and stable OCZ Game XStream power supply (which I bought with my latest graphics card anyway) and the PC runs much quieter now with games. Anyway as an amusing footnote to this whole problem look at what one young guy thought of Q-TEC on youtube (he gives them a kicking so to speak!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZTvxAjf_DY

Warning: This blog entry contains technical details of PC's which may leave some people bored and baffled.

I'm a bit of a PC enthusiast to quite an extent so I have to admit I spent a fair wad of my cash on upgrading my PCs now and then, and can it drive my family near to madness every time I purchase something (mostly because of the inevitable delivery of many parcels!). But this time I'm kind of in need of proper genuine replacement.

The motherboard for my PCI-Express (OK going to get into technical terms here!) system had annoyingly loud and distracting chipset fan mounted on it. At first I thought it was the graphics card I had at the time which noisied up when it was playing games (which I guess fans kick in when it runs hot, but gfx cards don't really run that noisily). But after a while with different components the same noise presented itself. And it was only until recently I realised it was in fact the chipset fan on my board which was the noisy mother making all the fuss. I've also looked up my Asus board on the internet and various users have had the same problem with this fan do I really need to listen to a suprisingly small fan make a loud whirring racket or noise like a small jet taking off when I play a game? Don't think so. So I tried to replace the fan with a heatsink (which is a silent cooling solution which Asus should take note and install on all their boards!) but it wouldn't fit properly as my graphics card was too big and would interfere with the positioning of the heatsink. Sooooooooo, I plugged in the old Asus noisy beast and to my limited surprise had gone dead.

So I've now ordered a new board, an Asrock one, which doesn't have a chipset fan on it but a proper heatsink. Word to the wise: Do not buy a motherboard with a chipset fan installed, cos it will keep you distracted all hours of the day (if you play games that is).

As a footnote to my problem here's an amusing web page I found on which some guy describes the same problem I had with a similar board:

http://digital-lifestyles.info/2007/03/29/driven-mad-by-a-whining-asus-fan/

Was up the town the other day to meet up with Paul, one of my acting class pals, to give him a graphics card for his PC (I've got too many spare PC bits now, they need to go!) and while we shopped around I was pleased to see that Fopp has re-opened again. Yowzer!!

Apparently they've been bought over by HMV now although there are only currently 6 stores open throughout the UK, 2 in Glasgow, 1 in Edinburgh, and 3 in England. Doesn't sound like much but I guess they want to avoid trying to expand too soon again and end up at square one once again. Bit of a shame for all the staff that lost their jobs but I guess we'll just have to wait and see how Fopp will progress. At least now I'll be able to check out the Edinburgh Fopp in Rose Street if I ever head out there. But kudos to HMV for buying them over, at least we can get some decently priced CDs again.