Firehed’s Blog

Looks like I was accepeted at Babson.  I’m psyched, it’s definately my first choice school.  The last of my eBay stuff is about dealt with now, too.  Finally.  I picked up a couple more lenses for my camera as well; +17 close-up-lens power gives you a helluva zoom level.  Now I just need to go spend even more money for a camera bag, as the little slip case thing I had just won’t hold all the other stuff.  It’ll be worth it, though, since I’ve got a couple hundred products to get pics of if Aquamods is to ever get off the ground.  It may never happen, but I’d really like to see where I could take it before I make any decisions.

Oh yeah, if you can’t tell, the site is now wider.  Took a bit of photoshopping thanks to how the template is made (and more than it should of, as I was way too stupid to just stetch the thing rather than re-copy a 5px width about forty times), but I’m happy with it.  When you run at 1920×1200, it’s rather painful to have templates made for 800×600.  It should still be suitable for 1024×768 (which is what my iBook will have if I get one, assuming an Intel version, perhaps a vanilla MacBook, doesn’t go widescreen), but in all reality, I don’t want any connection with someone who just leaves the default ‘improved resolution’ as being sufficient.  If you need bigger text, just hold control and play with your mouse wheel (or is if shift?  I dunno, I have no problem with 8pt at my res, even if my distance vision isn’t quite what it used to be).

Now I’ve just gotta wait for that eCheck to clear on the laptop, pay off my selling fees and ship the thing.  With luck, someone at work is quitting soon (trust me, it’s good for everyone; I’m not just being mean) so I could pick up some extra hours; I’ve got the spare time and could use the money.  Maybe I should sell off some of those various piles of cables and whatnot sitting around too.

Need to put that 2405FPW review together too.  I’ve been meaning to post a comparison between that and the 2005FPW up in the Bit forums, and I’ll probably toss it up here too.  It’s an incredible display, superior to the (already outstanding) 20″ in every way, and apparently it’s still for sale at $800.  Totally worth it.  It’s something about 7,000 posts that makes me want to start the next grand with something special (as I’ve got no FrozenFire update to post, seeing that it’s effectively finished).

I’d have never thought it possible, but there you go.  I’ve almost covered the costs of that 24″ Dell widescreen already, just by selling some unused parts on eBay.  And I picked up some macro lenses for my camera.  Not that I need a 3.2MP picture of a dime, but that’s gotta be good for something.

Anyone out there with stuff taking up space?  eBay it.  Like I needed a second subwoofer to act as a stand for my functioning one… and I’d say that selling that 6800GT that’s been collecting dust ever since I got it back from RMA was a wise choice.  Whoever bought it must not have known about Newegg, since he could have got a 7900GT for $50 more and had 2x+ the performance.  But there you go.

Only problem is that I now have this insanely large box from the 24″ sitting in the middle of my room.  Oh well.  That and I need to rearrange my room again.  But that comes with the aquiring stuff… shame really.  Bad closet placement always causes problems.  Hm… maybe I can take the other door off the closet and put the desk right inside it.  It could work.  In fact… time to break out SketchUp again, I think.

2405FPW: Arrived! The UPS guy came with a box big enough to rival what my v2000 came in (which is a REALLY big case). Signed the little thingy and brought it inside. Wow. When my 20″ came in, I marvelled at how big it was. See that smaller monitor on the right? That’s the 20″. The screen in front in the top pic is my old 15″ just for reference, which looks even bigger than it is since it’s a good eight inches in front of the others. As far as resolution goes… the bottom pic has the wallpaper for the 20″ being displayed in the picture viewer. Quite the extra real estate there. While the 20″ is monsterous, it’s just not big enough for running dual windows unless you keep the screen in portrait mode, as it is in the pic. I can have four windows open on the 24″ and still be covered. The quality is astounding. 2.304 million pixels, all in excellent working condition :) Contrast and brightness are increased over the 20″, which were great to start. The viewing angle is much better as well - while there’s only a degree listed as a difference, the 20″ looks a little purple in dark areas when viewed from the sides - it’s perfectly black (no backlight bleeding whatsoever… there’s just the slightest bit that’s only noticible if you’re looking hard on the 20″). I need to tweak the colors a hair (actually, 50/50/50 is pretty good), but I can deal with that easily enough.

Have some pics. It looks like it’s still on sale for $800. A worthwhile investment from my opinion at this point. Five inputs are nice… though the video out on my DVD player could be better. Distinctly better than the S-video I had to use before, though, even though 480p upscaled by the screen to over 1080p isn’t beautiful. At what I’d consider to be a good viewing distance, it looks pretty nice. My lossless Xvids have never looked better. This thing is practically HDR. Yes, my first impressions are that good. The only very minor niggle is that when you turn the power off, the USB ports disconnect too - really just different and not problematic.

I’m happy with my ebay auctions so far too. Graphics card sold at almost what I paid for it (incredible, considering how fast computer tech depreciates), the sub and PSU have a good number of watchers and I’ve gotten a private offer in the PSU as well which should go through and make me quite happy. Laptop isn’t there yet, but it’s got another day and a half or so, so I’ll see what happens.

Woot, 24″ flat panel is on the truck out for delivery. It should look nice next to my existing 20″ Dell Widescreen. I know I’m ready for some 1080p goodness. I’ll reserve judgement till I see it in the flesh, but it should be an awesome value at $799 shipped. 5 different inputs, 1920×1200 resolution, 1000:1 and 500mcd/m^2. More or less double the specs all around of the 20″, which is incredible to start.
I’ll post some pics once I have it. School’s over in an hour for me, I’m in geology right now and our IT department is too incompetent to whitelisted the program we need to run (they go with the blacklist-everything-but-explorer.exe approach).

You know you want it. That SilenX is a no-reserve, and is awesome for anything where you need a quiet PSU.

eBay: Gateway Laptop 400VTX 15″LCD 2.2GHz, 512MB RAM, 30GB HD
eBay: Brand New! eVGA 6800GT 256MB PCI-E SLI-Ready!
eBay: SilenX 460w Fanless Power Supply NOISE-FREE

I don’t need it anymore, and you know you do. Or I’d like to think so anyways. I’ve got a new toy coming in on Thursday and need the space. I think I’ll put up that unused sub I have sitting around too.

Update:

Arr… Here it  Be!  Fun for mod projects or whatever.  I have no use for it.

Well, the debit card is now hurtin’. 24″ widescreen flat panel coming my way. Now all I need to do is sell off everything else in my room to pay for and make room for it, and I’ll be okay. Laptop is listed on eBay, I’ll probably put up my spare 6800GT on Tuesday or so and then see whether I can pawn off my old 15″ LCD to a family member before eBay’ing that as well.

Oh yeah, Nigerian scams suck. If you get a contact this rediculous about your eBay item(s), do ridicule the sender:

Am highly interested in your item placed on EBAY. Am willing to offer you US$3,800 for this item and I want the laptop to be ship to Nigeria, Please make enquiry about the shipping cost to Nigeria by [USPS Global Express EMS 3-5 Days Delivery Service] and get back to me with the shipping cost as soon as possible. Am willing to make the payment by Western Union (Money Transfer) .
Please reply me with your personal E-mail Address.
Best Regards
Seun Adedoja

My advice to you all (still none of you, right?) for the day: If an offer seems too rediculous to be true, it obviously is. Anyone with $3800 to drop on a laptop isn’t going to scour eBay for one that the seller is hoping to get $400 for.

Okay, I lied.  Anyone else that has to have three interviews done by Tuesday - don’t ask people to do them at 5pm on Friday.

Well, I was originally planning to run Aquamods with an osCommerce-based shopping cart (well, technically ZenCart, something derived from the former), but it’s looking like that might not be the best way forward. Unfortunately, it has downright horrid support for multiple images per item, and while leaving the code alone is easy enough, it’s so sloppy that having to do almost any code mods is a huge headache. Anyone with some input on the subject, please drop me a line. I think I’m going to screw around with CubeCart for a little while and see what comes of it. Thankfully I’ve only put two items in the current AM catalog, so it’s not as if converting will take… uhh… any effort at all, provided it works out.

Ugh, eight page paper due on tuesday complete with proper citations of six (real) sources, and I spent my few days home alone during vacation just killing time and cranking the tunes.  Only time I actually did any work on it was at, well, work.  At least typing stuff on the computer looks more productive than just watching the up-to-PG movie that’s playing.  I did relocate a strip outlet in my room and the accompanying fileserver box, failing to realize that I’d have nowhere to plug in.

Oh, all of my currently zero readers can take advantage of Dell’s special going on right now, their 24″ 2405FPW widescreen LCD for $799 shipped.  Quite the deal, if you ask me, especially considering most 24″ panels start upwards of $1300.  I’m quite tempted to get one - while I don’t care for their actual computers (nor would any self-respecting DIY’er), their large flat panels are top-notch.  I really could use the component-in that isn’t present on their 20″ model which sits in front of me.  If I have any luck selling my laptop and “spare” graphics card, I’ll have to indulge.  Of course, ignoring the fact that I’d probably need to go back to SLi to run games at the insane 1920×1200 resolution.  Screw it!  I haven’t been doing a whole lot of gaming recently… though Oblivion, due out in a few weeks now, looks very promising.

And it has a card-reader built in.  My Lian Li one has a loose wire, and I really don’t feel like repairing it.  Not until I’m ready to redo all of the wiring for my case, and that probably won’t be until spring break.

Thanks to some awesome guy at Slashdot, my Remote Wonder II is now useful again, thanks to an iTunes plugin.  Now if only all the new music I, umm, bought, could be easily burned to a CD without actually making a playlist out of it, I’d be all set.  Come on, Apple, just add “burn this album to CD” into the context menu of the browser!  Hopefully the guys at jHYMN get it working with iTunes6, because there are a good number of tracks I’d like to buy but I don’t want to deal with the DRM.  Oh well, can’t have everything.  It’s not as if I’d let DRM drive me to piracy or anything *cough*yeahright*cough*.

Oh yeah, for God’s sake, someone buy that laptop and 6800GT.  I don’t like dealing with eBay much, but I’m going to have to soon.

Meh, back to paper-typing.  I’ve almost finished one page!  Too bad I can’t just combine my forum posting history, I’m sure it would add up to a decent-size novel.  A thoroughly incoherent novel, but a novel no less.  I’d wager I’ve got up almost 10,000 posts on the interweb, almost 7,000 of which at Bit-tech, and most of them are pretty decent-length.

When making brownies from a box, open the bag of brownie powder stuff with a pair of scissors. Being a bit too forceful when you’re not located over the bowl it’s supposed to go into makes one hell of a mess. Verdict is still out on what they taste like… who’d have thought they need to cook for 45 minutes?!

Hm, they actually came out pretty good.  Unusual, but that’s because I added an extra egg for a more cake-like texture.  Flavor-wise, much better than I’d expect for missing half the sugar/flour/chocolate mix.  Still, I’d suggest not missing so much of it - it’s still a PITA to deal with the mess.