Archives: 'Tech'

New iPods

Monday, September 18th, 2006

The new Nanos are out. They’re more colorful, brighter, thinner, and more scratch resistant. I want one. I might have to accidentally break or lose my shuffle. I think mine is dying anyway. It doesn’t want to work in my laptop’s USB slots anymore. The pricing on the Nano is nice too. 149/199/249 for 2/4/8 gigs. Good deal!

Apple also unveiled the new generation of shuffles. Now even more diminutive! The price looks nice, $80 for the 1 gig model.

Internet Speeds

Thursday, August 17th, 2006

Here’s the type of speeds my new Verizon FiOS can pull:


Bandwidth

RMAing my RAM

Monday, July 24th, 2006

Well, the problems I’d though I’d fixed by upgrading my power supply have returned, and I believe my RAM is at fault. So, I got an RMA, and will be sending my RAM away tonight. I hope this was the issue, if not, I’ll keep RMAing other stuff, starting with my motherboard.

/target Thinkpad /cast Ressurection(Rank 5)

Friday, July 7th, 2006

It’s true! My little Thinkpad laptop is back from the dead! Last Saturday, I revisited the issue about why my Thinkpad had suspiciously stopped working, and I finally found the answer in this thread in some random forum I found on Google. The symptoms listed matched mine exactly, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Sure enough, the “magnet” like piece on the motherboard was barely connected. I yanked the piece off, resoldered it, and began piecing my laptop back together. To my amazement, it worked!

To reflect this great occasion, the My Computers page has been updated!

New Power Supply

Friday, July 7th, 2006

On Monday I recieved my new power supply from Newegg. Prior to getting this new one, my computer had had stability issues when running 2 gigs of ram. Removing one of the stick temporarily fixed the problem, but I found that it made game performance sluggish. Now, with a new more capable power supply, I can return to 2 gigs of bliss.

Here’s a picture of my new PSU:
My new power supply, OCZ GameXStreme 600

It’s a OCZ GameXStream 600, which boasts about 125 more watts of power (600) than my previous power supply, the Rosewill RP 500. I gave my old power supply to a friend, who said it made his processor overheat. I’ll believe it when I see it! Regrettably, this new power supply is a bit noisier than my old one, but it gets the job done!

Turn Windows XP in Windows Vista!

Sunday, June 11th, 2006

Using the transformation package here, you can transform your boring old Windows XP into the shiny new Aero theme from Windows Vista. This package includes everything: icons, logons, boot screens, sounds, and of course, the theme.

Here’s a screenshot of my desktop, and of this post!

DIY Hard DDR Pad

Wednesday, December 31st, 1969

I was tired of slipping and sliding on my soft DDR pad, so last night (at like 2:00 in the morning) I decided to convert my soft pad into a hard pad!

Here’s my result:


First, I took apart one of my old soft pads that was “broken”. After opening it up and poking around, I found that the inner layers were merely out of alignment, and that the sensors themselves were fine. I taped the layers down one at a time to a piece of plywood with my trusty blue painters tape and ensured that they were perfectly positioned.

I found some wood squares that my dad cut for who knows what. First, I tried just taping them down, but an E on No. 13 said that having to retape the squares after each song wasn’t going to work. So, I found staple gun. But the staples weren’t long enough. So I grabbed some screws and a screwdriver and went to work.

The first prototype (pictured here) had some critical flaws. First, the screws couldn’t be too tight, or else the sensoes would be constantly pushed by the wood. My playtesting revealed that you had to stomp on the wood boards because it wasn’t very responsive because the design of the sensors necesitates some sort of curved force to work correctly. I decided I needed to make some revisions.

This afternoon, I ran to Lowes and picked up some rubber washers and felt feet. I used the rubber washers as spacers for the screws, and attached several feet underneath each wooden pad. I was proud of my handiwork, and after adjusting the tightness of a couple screws, I determined that it was suitable for use.

Initial playtesting was a mixed bag. I found it hard to adapt to the raised buttons. Apparently I had developed a style of “sliding” on the soft pad that resulted in some hurting feet when I tried it on this pad. I did like the tactile feedback the raised pads provided, but my scores said differently. I was getting more “random boos” on the hard pad than I used to on the soft pad. This was because the wood occasionally stuck down. I AA full combo’d a couple 7 footers, (which I think was luck), but most of the songs I played were riddled with random boos (mostly the left and back buttons). I kept adjusting the screws, but never really found a sweet spot.

So, I think I’m going to ditch the wood raised platforms and go with a flat surface. I still want some sort of tactile feedback, so I might try changing the texture of the edges of teh buttons with like velcro or something. I suppose it was mostly a waste of time (and of $15), but it turned out looking cool (thanks to my pro blue tape).

I’ll post again when I revise my pad!

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