New System, New Post
February 23rd, 2007It’s about time I built a new system. My last desktop, which I built way back in high school gave out on me about a year ago and I’ve been living off a laptop for a while. My laptop is nice. With its 17-inch screen, Intel Core processor, and a Geforce Go 7800 it’s still a viable machine. It plays many a game at native resolution (1680×1050) and decent quality settings, but with its 5400 rpm drive it gets pretty bogged down with day-to-day multitasks and it takes forever to boot.
I spent about twenty hours researching for this build. Shopping was half the fun. The only easy choice was the case: I got this handsome all-aluminum mid-tower for free. I also saved money on my processor, getting the slowest Intel Core 2 processor available, the E4300. Why did I get a slow processor, you ask? I’m reminded of my post of last May, Un-be-liev-able, where I exuberantly explained how one could buy a cheap Pentium D and make it scream, make it faster than anything they sell on the shelves. Well the E4300 overclocks great. As I type this I’m running it at 3.0 GHz and could safely clock it a little higher. It was sold as a 1.8 GHz part! The fastest Core 2 Intel sells comes in at 2.93GHz, and that costs about $1000.
Here’s the rest of my system. Note the lack of a gpu. I still haven’t decided what to get and when to get it. For now I’m using a crummy ATI X300 my roommate discarded. It can’t even render my Vista desktop at a decent framerate as I drag a window across the screen.
COOLER MASTER Praetorian PAC-T01-EK Case
ENERMAX Liberty ELT500AWT ATX12V 500W Power Supply
EVGA NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 Allendale 1.8GHz Processor
ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 800 SDRAM
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
SAMSUNG 18X DVD±R DVD Burner
Microsoft Windows Vista 32-Bit Ultimate
NEC Black 1.44MB 3.5″ Floppy Drive
Props to newegg for quick delivery. My next task is to overclock the ram. Maybe I’ll snap some photos too.
Search and replace newlines in Vim
September 27th, 2006Vim’s replace function does work with newlines, but there’s one quirk. To search for a newline, the standard \n works, but to include a newline in the replacement string, you need to use \r. Say you wanted to convert the ^M’s in a file to newlines. Use the following command:
:%s/^M/\r/g
To input the ^M, use CTRL-V CTRL-M, or CTRL-Q CTRL-M (if your CTRL-V is mapped to the paste function).
Patient Gaming
September 8th, 2006I wish I were a patient gamer. But I’m not.
It’s taken me years to realize that some games just don’t do it for me. Take, for example, role-playing games. I liked Diablo 1 and 2 well enough, but try as I might I couldn’t get into Baulder’s Gate. I must have played the opening dungeon of Baulder’s Gate 2 five or more times but I never got more than five hours into the game. As for massively-multiplayer games, don’t even ask. I was a beta tester for Star Wars Galaxies – and I’m a huge Star Wars fan – and I had some fun moments playing the game, but over the whole testing period I doubt I logged more than twelve hours. I also tried Dark Age of Camelot for a month or two, but killing frogs and giant insects in the forest got old too quickly. Maybe I didn’t play these games right. Perhaps I missed out on the “social aspect” of massively multiplayer games that folks love so much. I think the truth is that I’m just not patient enough to spend my nights leveling up a character. I see the appeal, I really do, but I’d much rather jump into a quick game of Counter-Strike or a level of Age of Empires III. I like games that don’t require a huge investment of time to really enjoy.
There seems to be a trade-off in games between depth and accessibility. Take X3 and Freelancer for example. X3 is an incredibly sophisticated, open-ended space combat and trading game. Freelancer is quite similar in many respects but it’s not so sophisticated; it’s approachable and it fit in my brain. One of the things I liked about it – this is sort of backwards – was that I noticed places where it *lacked* depth and could be developed further. X3, on the other hand, overwhelms with features. That’s not to say it’s a bad game. It lacks some polish, sure, but I’ve seen my roommate build up an awesome empire in the game, something you’d never do in Freelancer.
I guess I’m a casual gamer, or a strictly action/strategy gamer. That’s fine by me. If I have to be inferior at something in this world, I think I’ll pick gaming. As long as I can still cream you in Ghost Recon 
.
Bandwidth Test
July 21st, 2006Speakeasy DSL has a bandwidth tester that works well and looks nifty too:
I’m not thrilled about what the test tells me, though: my connection is slow. You’d think that in the technology capitol of the world, we’d have laser fast web access. You’d be wrong. The fastest DSL package AT&T offers us is 1.5 mbps (downstream). Sure, Comcast offers 6 mbps here and that’s fairly standard nationwide, but I have and happen to like DirecTV so Comcast web access isn’t an option for me. I want uber-fast fiber optic internet access, like they have in New Jersey. Not fair.
Best Text Editor Ever
June 28th, 2006With its latest release (7.0) my favorite text editor, GVIM, has resolved one of its few shortcomings: it now has tab pages, AKA tabbed windows.
For those of you who are partial to editors like Visual Studio and notepad, if you are interested in learning a more powerful editor try this new release. It has all your favorite keyboard shortcuts like ctrl-c and ctrl-v (copy/paste), ctrl-z (undo), and more. The mouse behavior is excellent too. This is a polished app. The default settings are good and the potential for customization is awesome. It is taking me a while to get up to speed with vim’s real power – the modal interface – but it is so worth it. I’ve tried a ton of editors (including emacs for almost a year) and had a lot of doubt about what to invest my time in. No more. Want a text editor that’s free, fun, and cross-platform? Get GVIM.
Corporate Espionage
June 17th, 2006Here’s a fun article (link) written by Mark Whitehorn for The Register. It’s titled, “Microsoft was caught stealing secrets from Borland”.
More Packing
June 5th, 2006It’s done. I’m packed. It took days to go through all of the junk I left at my parents’ house when I left for Pittsburgh two years ago. I sorted through old photos, trophies, clothes, receipts and a host of other trifles. It was time-consuming but fun, especially when I got some Claritin to take care of my dust allergies. In the end I threw out four full trash bags of stuff and took two car loads of things to the Bryn Athyn Thrift Shop. I’ll take one bag of things I collected here with me on the airplane and I’ll mail one box. The rest I condensed to a few containers that I’ll leave at home (thanks, M+D).
I wish I had something profound to say about this leap across the country I will take tomorrow. At the moment the only thing I can feel is my head leaning towards the floor: I’m tuckered out. Tomorrow as I land in San Jose I’m sure that this move will take on whole new meaning. For now, sleep.
A Makefile Tutorial
May 31st, 2006There’s a nice GNU Make tutorial at this Swathmore webpage. I like how it hides those overwhelming .h files and obnoxious .o files in sub-directories, keeping the project root clean.
For the curious few who wonder what on earth I just said, GNU Make is an open-source utility for compiling code. It takes Makefiles, which are sort of like batch files (remember the old .bat extension in DOS), and uses the instructions they contain to compile one or more files of source code into a program you can actually run.
Last night in Pittsburgh
May 26th, 2006There’s something about packing that brings home the reality that life is about to change. Maybe that’s why I always seem to put it off until the last moment. As I clean my desk I think of all the hours I spent here working. As I disconnect my desktop and wind up the dozens of cables tangled at my feet I think of the roots that I am pulling up – strong roots that have grounded me here in Pittsburgh. I think of my housemates and how after tomorrow I may never see them again. I think of the streets I will not trod, the house I will not grace, the bed that held me as I dreamed. As I leave this city part of me will stay behind, just as part of it will be with me forever. Moving is an opportunity to take lessons learned and start fresh, one which I intend to use.
Thank you Pittsburgh.
Makeover
May 22nd, 2006Since I graduated yesterday I decided it was time to freshen up and fill out my site. I changed templates and replaced the broken email notification plug-in I was using with FeedBurner’s blog-to-email function (see Subscribe). I also (finally) came up with a name for my blog – The Jog. I like the title because it sounds so deep and intentional. If you’re wondering about the inspiration behind the name, I’ll give you a hint: it’s a contraction of two words that are quite relevant to this site.