Nifty Stopwatch

New Video Card Purchase

As you may have read in the previous post my 6600gt stopped working and I needed to get a new video card asap, I am going to a lan party in a few days.  The one I ordered was an EVGA 8600gt.  My system is a few years old (still single core) so it wouldnt really benefit from a faster card that much.  But what sucks is come to find out this morning I could have bought an EVGA 8800gs for the same price, after mail in rebate.  I cant cancel my current order, damn newegg your super fast at shipping (thats a good thing).

The only difference I would have seen would be in GPU intensive tasks, like folding@home.  I even tossed a EVGA 7600gt in my computer for a little bit and the CPU was pegged at 100% in TF2.  Thats why a faster card wouldn’t always lead to higher fps in games.  Oh did I mention that I don’t play games that much anymore because I don’t have the time to.

Hopefully the card comes in a day or two and I can post some reviews on it and possibly set it up to run folding@home.

I Think My Video Card Died

At least I think its the video card, I am pretty sure it is.  Whenever I load anything that has to do with 3D my computer freezes after a few seconds.  It started eariler in the day when I noticed some graphic problem’s in a game.  That didn’t alert me because that game has given me issues before.

Fast forward to the time the Team Fortress 2 pyro update was released.  Everything was running fine for a while, I was even able to unlock all of the weapons.  Although I did notice some issues with the overlay right after I loaded the game.  Ingame problems didn’t start until later.  The game began to freeze up for a few seconds and then come back.  That kept happening, so I figured it may be a heat issue.  Upon loading up the oldschool nvidia control panel, yes you can do that in the latest drivers, and checking the temperatures they appeared to be fine.  I decided to turn up the fan’s though and this is when the computer crashed.  I was able to play for a little bit longer after it restarted but there were graphic problems constantly.  Finally it came to a point where any 3D would crash the computer.

This was not a power issue, I am running a 500watt continuous powersupply (it is rated for SLI) in a machine that doesn’t even have 2 video cards.  I took the video card out and it was pretty clean, only a little bit of dust on it, and the fan still worked.  After putting it back in there are constantly graphic problems, even in 2D.

Later tonight/tomorrow I am going to try our other video card to check if it is actually my video card that is giving me issues.  If it is my video card then I’ll buy a new one on newegg.  I’ll probably buy a new EVGA card, this EVGA 6600gt has done a good job so far plus they have a limited lifetime warrenty on their new cards.  I was thinking about getting a GeForce 8600gt.  It would probably be overkill for my machine, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939 (I can only find upgrades on ebay).  But this type of card supports Nvidia’s CUDA, which means I could run folding@home on it. Awesome!

Another Team Fortress 2 Free Weekend, June 20th

With the latest information on the release of the pyro unlocks Valve also announced another Team Fortress 2 free weekend.  The free weekend starts this friday, June 20th, at 11am PDT (1800 GMT, I think).  If this free weekend is just like the other one, which it should be, players who haven’t purchased orangebox or tf2 will be able to play the FULL game for free.  As far as I know they are not limiting anyone during this weekend.  If you have been thinking about buying Team Fortress 2 this would be a great time to try out the game and see if you like it.  Mind you a lot of people will probably be playing the pyro since that class is now going to have achievements.  So give that a week or so and the game should be back to normal class balance.  You can find the announcement on the Steampowered website.

Firefox 3 Should be out Today

Today is the big Firefox 3 launch and the chance to break a world record.  But Firefox 3 is not out yet!  Hopefully it will be released soon so the record breaking can begin.  Keep checking spreadfirefox and the Mozilla website to find out when it is actually released.  It seems like their servers are getting hammered at the time of writing this.

If you download Firefox 3 and it is your first time using it you will be amazed.  It is such a better browser than the previous version and much faster.

So, What Have I Been Doing Lately?

Here’s a little view into schedule and what I have been planning.

First thing is work, it is an actual retail job.  Yes it does suck but when you have only done one year of computer science classes you can’t get a real programming job.  That takes up about 30 hours of my week.

In two weeks summer classes start and that is going to take 12 hours out of my week.  My classes are at night so i’ll still be able to work durning the day.  None of them are computer classes, just speech and political science.  While I am on the subject of school I applied to transfer for the fall term.  I already sent in every thing they needed so hopefully I will find out in the next few weeks if I will be moving.

When I am not reading/working on projects/at work/outside I have been going to the gym.  I go three times a week for 1:30-2 hours per time.  I have been doing a little bit of cardio, 30 minutes on the bike, and the rest lifting.  I’ve reached the point where I can lift more than my weight on the incline/decline press.  It’s fun and i’m looking better.

Anyway the last things that have been taking up some time are projects that I thought of.  The first one is actually done already.  It is a facebook application called TextMex.  What it does is you can put in quotes and they show up on your profile.  There is also the option to let your friends see all of your quotes.  I did a pretty good job considering it was my first time writing anything in PHP and also setting up my own MySql DB structure.  The next thing that I am still trying to figure out how do it is actually a web application.  It is going to take me a while to get it released and it is pretty complicated.  I think my friend joe might help me with the graphics since he is a graphic design student.  The only thing’s I will say about it is that it is written in PHP, using CI, and uses MySql.

That’s where most of my time is being spent these days.  Some friends are back from school for the summer so i’m planning on seeing them a bit.

Firefox 3 RC3 Released

Firefox just notified me that RC 3 is available.  I have no idea what the changes are at the moment, but I presume they are just bug fixes.  Anyway I am off to a graduation ceremony.

Firefox 3 Release Date Announced

June 17th is the day Firefox 3 will be released.  You can find the post on the Mozilla Developer Center.  I have been running Firefox 3 since beta and it is an awesome browser, faster too.  I would highly suggest updating to it because of the increased security and javascript performance.  You may want to wait for the addon’s to be update for the latest version though.  Although a good amount of addons already support version 3.

iPhone 3G is More Expensive Than The Original iPhone

This is going to be a really short post detailing how the new iPhone 3G is more expensive in the long run than the first iPhone.

The original iPhone was either $399.99 or $499.99 depending on what one you purchased.  Lets just take the $499.99 iPhone for this (Comparing the $399.99 old iPhone to the $199.99 iPhone 3G will lead you to the same difference in price).  Now lets just use the $39.99 voice plan for both of the phones (as long as you use the same plans for both of the iPhone’s you get the same result).  Since both plans are going to be $39.99 we can cross that out and not even need to do that math.  The data plans are different for each phone so we need to do the math for those.  The original iPhone’s data plan was $20 a month so we need to do 24×20=480.  We then take that 480 and add 499 (price of the 16gb iPhone).  480+499.99=979.99 .  Ok, the original iPhone would cost $979.99 for the entire 2 year contract just counting the price of the phone and data, remember voice doesn’t matter since it is the same price for both phones.

Now on to the new iPhone 3G which costs $199.99 or $299.99 depending on which one you get.  We are going to use the high end model because that is the one we used in the previous section.  The data plan is now $30 instead of the original $20.  24×30=720.  Now we need to add the $720 to the price of the phone, $299.99. 720+299.99=1019.99 .

To find the actual difference in price you take the cost of the current phone+data, $1019.99, and subtract $979.99, phone+data cost of the original phone. 1019.99-979.99=40.  In the long run you are going to be paying $40 more than if you kept the original iPhone for 2 years.

The hardware may be cheaper but in the long run it is more expensive.  Oh and also AT&T’s 3G network may not be as big as you think.  I’ve mirrored this image locally but I got it from HowardForums.  This image was last updated 4/30/08 and you can find it here.  The blue is AT&T’s 3G coverage area’s.  This sucks if you are not in a 3G area because you will still have to pay the $30 a month data fee for EDGE.

I was totally excited about the iPhone 3G until I did these calculations.  I may still buy one if it is with a family plan but even then it would be $10 more than I was expecting.  That $10 may not seem like a lot but when you don’t have a lot of money as it is anything helps.

WWDC Keynote Announcements

As you may know, today was Apple’s WWDC keynote.  Here are some of the big changes that were accounced for or dealing with the iPhone

• Push notification for all applications
• iWork and MS Office documents support
• Parental Controls
• More language support
• App Store in 65 countries
• If the app is 10 megs or less they can download it over the cellular network, anything larger is over WiFi or iTunes
• Ad-Hoc to send applications to other phones. You can register up to 100 iPhones and send those apps to those phones
• Mobile Me - everyone can get push e-mail, contacts, calenders with Mobile Me.  It is also accessible from the web, me.com.  It replaces .mac so if you have a membership you can upgrade it to me when it becomes available.  Otherwise it is 99$ a year for single user or 149$ for a family pack.
• iPhone 3G is Thinner, has a full plastic back, a flush headphone jack, GPS, 3G.  Loading a web page took 21 seconds with 3G and 59 seconds on edge.  300 hours of standby battery, 2G talk time is 10 hours, 3G is 5 hours of talk time.
• iPhone 3G is going to cost 199 for the 8gb, 299 for 16gb model.
• It is going to be aviliable on july 11th

I can’t wait for the new iPhone to come out.  With the new price it makes it a great deal.  Although I have yet to find out if AT&T is going to change the pricing plans for the iPhone.  It would be awesome if it were cheaper with a 2 yr contract since you can GoPhone the iPhone, I doubt that this will happen though.  Probably going to be waiting at an apple store to pick one up, unless theres some incentive to get it from the AT&T store.  Hopefully they won’t sell out really quick and everyone can get one.

WWDC Keynote Starts in 30 Minutes

Finally we will find out if all of the rumors are true or not.  Here are a few places where you can see updates from the event.

http://www.macrumorslive.com/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/steve-jobs-keynote-live-from-wwdc-2008/

http://gizmodo.com/5014465/apple-wwdc-liveblog-coverage