Winter Placeholder For Interesting Post

I really want to post something interesting but I have no time! Actually, I probably do have time but I don't manage it correctly; rather than posting something meaningful, I instead use the time to think and type an overly drawn-out placeholder promising my readers of something interesting in the future.

Okay, here are my blog-related to-do's:

• Edit and post videos from my summer Europe trip.
• Edit and post videos from my rock climbing outings!
• Record more songs on guitar (it has been a while).
• Work on my non-existing singing talent - which reminds me of Will Farrell uttering 'I have the voice of an angel' in a movie whose title alludes me.

Actually, I have a feeling I won't be posting my videos until some time in the New Year since I'm starting a video editing course at George Brown in January. I'll then actually know how to edit video properly.

Okay, bad time management. Sleep time.

/end of placeholder

The Most Interesting Man In The World

I agree with this assessment.

i7 Build

In the picture, you can see the giant Noctua heatsink with the fans in a push-pull configuration. At the rear of the computer case, it's a Thermaltake 120mm Magma fan. The Magma fan is extremely quiet due to an unique 'bat wing' blade design which seems to lower the perceived noise. In addition, the rotor assembly can be separated from the motor housing for easy maintenance cleaning.

Having no 2.5" mounts for the solid state hard drives, I decided to attach them to the bottom of the case using velcro pads. It should be okay since SSDs have minimal vibrations and heat output. However, the part about SSDs being 100% silent is false. I can definitely hear them when the drives are reading/writing small chunks of data (e.g. 4kb). The noise is very high pitched so it's very possible that only certain people can hear it because the frequency is so high.

I opted for the EVGA Nvidia GTX260 Core 216. This video card is the first one from Nvidia that I have ever owned. In the past, I was an ATI fan but it seemed like the drivers for their cards were always lacking. Got a great deal on the 260 and I pounced on it. The card is huge though. I have about a half-inch clearance to the hard drive cage in my original Antec Sonata. It fits though so I have no regrets buying this card.

The Coolermaster 700W Silent Pro PSU lives up to its billing. I can't confirm or deny whether it's truly silent or not but it's definitely the quietest PSU I have ever owned.

The rig is running on Windows 7 (64-bit). I've never used Vista so I can't compare but coming from XP, Windows 7 is fantastic. Super stable, fast boots and shutdowns, and familiar but improved user interface. I'm finding I'm using the Sleep function daily. Instead of leaving my computer on 24/7, I now allow it to go to sleep after 30 minutes of idiling because to return from Sleep literally takes 2 seconds on my computer. I never use Shutdown anymore since Sleep turns off all fans and hard drives (no noise) and only uses minimal power. I forget the exact amount of power, but it's practically nothing. Shutdown is fast becoming unnecessary.

[HD] Niagara Falls Speedboat

Here's a video I shot while bouldering at Niagara Glen. Not much to see here - just testing out YouTube's quality with high motion video. I'm still plugging away at editing together footage from my Europe trip. Meanwhile, I'll probably upload some episodic videos to YouTube featuring Stan haha...

[HD] Paris - Champs-Élysées (Eurotrip 2009)

I think this was my best shot the entire trip. I waited for a break in the traffic, ran to the middle of the busy avenue with my camera on the tripod, took my shot, and returned quickly before getting run over by a car.

[HD] Stan Drunk in Rome (Eurotrip 2009)

This is the first video from my Europe trip that I uploaded. It's a funny one lol. Make sure you watch it in HD!

Heat Sink

Studi's ingenious solution to my video card heatsink noise problem. Haha....

Intel i7 Build Parts List

I'm building an i7 machine to replace my Core 2 Duo E6300. It's not beefy enough to watch much less edit 24Mbps HD video (from my Canon HG21).

Here's my current build list:

• CPU: Intel i7 920 Nehalem @ 2.67GHz (planned overclock to 3.8-4GHz)


• Heatsink: Thermalright Ultra Extreme 1366RT with stock fan


• Alternative Heatsink: Noctua NH-U12P SE1366


• Thermal Paste: Artic Silver 5


• Motherboard: Asus P6T ATX


• Case: Re-use existing Antec Sonata (original)


• Case fan: Re-use 120mm Panaflo L1A with 7V mod


• RAM: OCZ 12GB DDR3 1600MHz Gold (CAS8)


• Solid State Drives: Dual Super Talent UltraDrive ME 32GB configured in RAID0 as system and pagefile drive (64GB effective)


• Storage/Apps Hard Drive: Seagate 7200.12 1 Terabyte


• PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro M700 (700W with 135mm low RPM fan)


• Video: Undecided (Radeon 4870??)


• Tuner: Re-use Hauppauge HVR-1600 Dual Tuner (Analog and QAM HDTV)


• Secondary Analog Tuner: Undecided...

One of my primary goals is to keep the system as quiet as possible. The part that gives me the biggest concern regarding noise is the video card. If anybody knows a quiet solution, please let me know. Everything else as far as I know is near silent.

Comments on build is welcome.

GSP is not impressed

UFC 100 is this Saturday! My predictions to win in bold:

Heavyweight Championship bout: Champion Brock Lesnar vs. Interim Champion Frank Mir
Welterweight Championship bout: Champion Georges St-Pierre vs. Thiago Alves
Welterweight bout: Jon Fitch vs. Paulo Thiago
Middleweight bout: Dan Henderson vs. Michael Bisping
Middleweight bout: Yoshihiro Akiyama vs. Alan Belcher

Expressing Music

I found a very creative website that lets you express music. It's hard to describe. Check out my interpretation.

Create your own here!

Remi Gaillard

Here are some funny videos from a french prankster.

Urban gymnastics:


Rocky:

Hotel California Acoustic Cover

Here's my first foray into YouTube. It was shot using my Canon HG21. It's underexposed because there isn't enough light in my room and I didn't want to gain up too much the exposure since the picture then gets really grainy.

Good video about the US credit crisis

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

I-Beamer's Presentation Video

Star Trek: The Sexed Generation

Lol.... Too funny.

I-Beamers Wins Bridge Building Competition Again

Making final adjustments to our bridge as other members of the team look on. (Photo by Mayo)

My team, the I-Beamers, won the 2009 Ryerson Popsicle Bridge Building Competition. Our bridge weighing just over 1 kg resisted a load of 805 kg and scored 97 points out of a possible 100 points.

Thanks to Mayo, Ryan and Mike for their hard work. Best of luck to all of us at the national competition in Montreal, March 6.




Competition scoring breakdown:

• Judging of originality, workmanship and aesthetics = 25 points


• Ultimate load = 40 points


• Design efficiency = 35 points

Official scoresheet:

Man Trapped In Elevator For 41 Hours

Forget shark attacks, this is much more scary. Also make sure to read the story. I learned so much about elevators. One being in most modern elevators, the Door Close button does not work!! It's merely there to fool us into thinking we have control over the elevator to put our minds at ease. I hate living in a condo.

Guitar: More Than Words

Here's a song I recorded in October but never uploaded. It's from the band Extreme. I think my singing improved considerably since my first vocal recording found here.

• Listen to More Than Words

I fixed all the dead links in previous posts to my guitar recordings.

Ryerson Bridge Building Competition 2008

Here's a video from last year's popsicle bridge competition held at Ryerson University. My team, the I-beamers, won the competition with an ultimate load of 588kg on a 1.2kg bridge.

The result of this competition qualified us for the Canadian national competition at Concordia University, Montreal where we placed 3rd.

In two weeks, my team will defend our title in the 2009 Ryerson competition. My bridge design for 2009 is based on last year's design but with vast improvements. I'm hoping it will hold over 1000kg.

Best Browser Nobody Knows About: Maxthon

Love Firefox's customization but annoyed that it sometimes doesn't display pages properly? Frustrated with how slow it opens compared to Internet Explorer? Then by all means give Maxthon a try.

I've been using it for 5 years and I am still convinced it's the best browser out there. Firefox is great, but it requires a bit of customization to realize its full potential. With Maxthon, everything you need is included in one package ready for download. I'm talking about auto-filling forms, password tracking, mouse gestures (this is probably the best thing for browsing most people don't know about), ad blocking, pop-up blocking, url aliases and much more. And it's free!

The best thing about Maxthon is it's 100% compatible with Internet Explorer. That's because it uses the IE engine. When you open Maxthon, you are essentially opening Internet Explorer, but with a bunch of addons that make browsing faster and better.

Here are some things I can do with Maxthon:

Mouse gestures - I can program Maxthon to recognize the movement of the mouse when I hold down the right mouse button and program it to do a certain task. The most popular task is the 'left' gesture which makes you go back a page. No more searching for the 'back' button at the top of the browser.

URL aliases - I can assign aliases to URLs. So instead of typing out the full URL out, for instance for this site, http://brian911.blogspot.com, I can simply make it recognize the word 'blog' and I will be automatically directed to this site.

Search aliases - Let's say you want to search Wikipedia. You can type out the full URL, go to the site, look for the search box and conduct your search. You can save a bit of time if you make an URL alias for Wikipedia such as 'wiki'. However, the best thing you can do is to create a search alias. Then in your address bar, you can simply type 'wiki' followed by your search terms and it'll take you directly to the results.

Give it a try:
Step 1: Register
Step 2: Download Maxthon 2.5