n3wjack's blog – Page 126 – n3wjack's spurts of the mind and other geeky ramblings

another black sunday

Elections are over in Belgium and it turned out to be yet another so called “black sunday“. Once again the extreme rightwing party know as the “Vlaams Blok” has gained lots of votes all over Flanders. What seemed to be a local phenomenon located around Antwerp is starting to spread to the other provinces now.

Politicians are shocked once again, calling it a dark day for the Flemish people, but frankly I wasn’t that surprised to see their numbers go up again. As long as none of the issues addressed by the VB are actually dealt with properly, the party will continue to use those problems (even though they have no actual solutions for them) as their main agenda, and keep gaining influence as they have done before.

It’s time the remaining parties stick their heads together and deal with this matter -which they have been ignoring for way too long already- once and for all. So instead of sticking their heads in the sand again and forget about the whole thing in a few weeks, get on it ffs, and make sure this was the last of a row of black Sundays.

geek

running hot

My new P4 box has this cool feature where you can check the temperature of your CPU and a number of other items through software with neat looking gauges. Since I didn’t really know what is considered to be a normal CPU temp however I didn’t notice the reading where kinda high.
I noticed this however when someone on a IRC channel was proudly announcing his AMD processor was now running at about 30°C using water cooling.
I checked the gauges again and noticed my P4 was running nicely at about 60°C… and AMD’s are supposed to be the hotter ones right?

A tad worried that there might be something wrong with my new system I started looking up what the normal CPU operating temperature should be, and it turned out I was quite over that all the time. Now I didn’t look into it that deeply though, since I never experienced any crashes or instabilities that could be caused by a heated box, but when this week ambient temperatures rose to 300C due to nice sunny weather I wondered if this extra heat would cause my box to call it quits and shut down before something burned to a crisp.

The funny part is that my bro’s PC was the one shutting itself down, while his CPU was only reading a value of 45-50°C, and my box kept running along nicely at 68°C (after playing a session of Enemy Territory).

Further research was in order, so I turned to Google to see what I could find related to this odd readings with Intel and ABit as my two main targets. I found this thread about the IC7 MAX-3 (also my board) on the Abit site quickly which indicated I wasn’t the only one having this issue. From that thread I found a link to an Abit FAQ indicating that temps in-between 50 and 75 degrees C are actually okay, and some explanation of how the temps displayed by software are actually calculations and not actually readings.
The CPU itself also has an internal thermal sensor which it uses to monitor it’s own temperature and shut itself down in case things get too hot.

The best article however was one on the BleedingEdge forum which proved that the ABit boards temp readings are way off, and that in fact there is nothing to worry about in my case.

Pfweeeew. Thanks guys, that’s a relief.
Now I can get back to ET. :)

photography tips

snapshots

Post author By n3wjack
Post date June 7, 2004
No Comments on snapshots

Just came across this interesting article with digital photography composition tips through a Slashdot post. Interesting because I’ve just recently got me one of those nifty 5 mega pixel cams myself, and I’ve noticed that some good usage tips are more than welcome.

Reading the damn manual is another thing that’s pretty helpful as some things just don’t seem to be coming out properly on the automatic setting. But hey, I only have the darn thing for about a week (not even) so I still have a lot to learn.

blog geek

new layout

Been playing around with the template a bit. I wanted to get a nifty oldskool terminal kind of interface, but it was just too damn green on the eyes, so I changed it a bit.

It’s still pretty green though :)

gaming geek

fr33 gaming

The boys from ID have been so kind as to release Wolfenstein “Enemy Territory”, a completely free, fully functional online 3D shooter taking after their Return to Castle Wolfenstein game.
Check it out if you’re into online shooters like Medal of Honour and Call of Duty, and you’ll probably like it.

Gameplay is mainly aimed at teamplay (so no dull running around and just shooting peeps), so you actually have to think a bit while you run around and shoot peeps. The game also lets you select what “class” (medic, engineer, soldier..) you’ll be playing, and you get experience points from staying alive and doing what you’re supposed to do.

Don’t forget to install the patch though, or you’ll have a hard time finding servers running the game.