Archive for category Miscellaneous
Problems with nVidia cooling over long term?
Posted by eric in Hardware, Miscellaneous, Windows Vista on June 15th, 2009
I’m an avid SETI@home cruncher have been for years. My bragging note is that I recently passed 3,000,000 credits on SETI@home and part of that is thanks to the SETI@home CUDA enabled client they released which enables GPU crunching of SETI@home work units!
I’m currently running the CUDA client on two machines that have video cards that support the CUDA API. My home GeForce 8800GTX and my work Quadro FX 4600. From what I’ve read in specs and reviews, they’re basically the same card. So although this issue isn’t TECHNICALLY apples to apples, there might be a connection.
I noticed after a month or so of running the CUDA client on my home GeForce 8800GTX, my Vista machine started to become unstable. Blue Screening (BSOD) or rebooting randomly. It struck me as odd because I had not changed anything and for the most part, the system had just been sitting idle crunching work units.
Your GPU running SETI@home CUDA Client
After some basic trouble shooting I was able to determine that the instability was due to my video card overheating! This struck me as strange, because I know nVidia uses variable speed fans on the 8800GTX, so you’d think that if the system was reaching an unsafe operating level, that the fan would kick on, right? Wrong.
Time Warner Cable — Have They Gone Mental?
Posted by eric in Internet, Miscellaneous, Opinion on April 7th, 2009
I’m sure you’ve seen it in the news lately, lord knows I have seen it on every technology related website and blog across the internet. Time Warner Cable has announced a monthly bandwidth cap on their Road Runner Cable Internet service. Time Warner is touting that the 40GB plan should be enough for a majority of users and barely anyone should incur overages.
What are they not telling you? That the 40GB plan is $54.90! The comparable in price plan they’re offering to customers who currently subscribe to Road Runner standard for $29.95/mo? A paltry 5GB! That’s right! Time Warner Cable is going to be charging home users almost THIRTY DOLLARS per month for a pathetically small 5GB of data transfer. Don’t think the marketing genius stops there! In addition to these new ridiculous bandwidth caps, they’re going to be charging you $1 per gigabyte over!
Your Netflix client been crashing on your TiVo?
Posted by eric in Internet, Miscellaneous, Multimedia, Reviews on December 9th, 2008
I was excited as probably many of you that Netflix had finally come to TiVo! I was tired of Amazon UnBox and although it was super cool that I could get Netflix on my 360 it’s far more conventient that I have it on my TiVo 
Well, the other night my wife was watching a movie through Netflix on the TiVo and about four times it just quit out to the main TiVo menu. What the frick?
I told my wife to give the XBox 360 a try and see how it handles. Well turns out that the 360 had a hiccup too, but you know what it was? A buffer underrun! That’s right! My internet connection for whatever reason couldn’t keep up with the Netflix stream and it ran out of data. Of course the XBox client was smart enough to realize this, displayed a message and buffered some before streaming again.
My TiVo client? Crashed out. Talk about two code bases not up to par with one another. 
So if you’re having the same issues, odds are your network connection (for whatever reason) is not keeping up with the Netflix stream and it’s just crashing out to the main menu of TiVo.
My suggested work around for the time being is try watching it on your XBox 360 if you have the option. Otherwise, you might want to contact your cable provider or stop torrenting all that norwegian snow porn
Cheers!
Good News Everyone!
Posted by eric in Internet, Miscellaneous, Reviews on September 15th, 2008
I finally got off my butt and purchased an actual web hosting account!
I felt bad that I kept mooching off my friends bandwidth and had to keep asking them for help in setting up my services and whatnot. This way is going to be much better!
Also, I thought I’d pimp out the name of my web host because so far I’ve been super pleased with the service. The company is InMotion Hosting and what totally sold me on them was that they offered a hosting package with freakin unlimited bandwidth and storage for only $8.95/mo! This was dirt, dirt cheap compared to other hosts. Check them out if you’re looking for some sweet affordable web hosting.
I also Google-Fu’d for a bit and found a grip of positive reviews! So here’s hoping!
Cheers!
Does a DVD player that outputs 480i over HDMI really need to be more than $100?
Posted by eric in Audiophile, Hardware, Miscellaneous, Multimedia, Opinion on September 15th, 2008
I mean seriously!
There is no simpler a solution than a DVD player that outputs the 480i signal decoded from the DVD to an HDMI output. There’s no processing, no deinterlacing, no scaling. Just decode it and output it. Bam! Done!
My current home theater is based around a Denon AVR-2308CI Receiver which handles all my video processing thanks to it’s magical voodoo (and a DCDi video processor ). When searching for a DVD player to solve my previously mentioned DVD watching dilemma, I wanted just a simple DVD player that can output 480i over HDMI. Why should I waste my money on an upconverting DVD player when my receiver can do the same function (and probably better). Seemed simple, right?
WRONG!
It seems the internet defacto DVD player that does 480i is the Oppo Digital DV-980H which weighs in at $169 MSRP! 
There are a couple other options as well, including the previous Oppo Digital DVD player model, DV-970HD which was specifically marketed as a ‘cheap’ player that supports 480i over HDMI. The problem you ask? It’s no longer offered directly from Oppo and it still sells for > $100 in the secondary used market.
An hour or so of Google-Fu later I landed on the Pioneer DV-400V-K DVD Player! Pioneers own website lists its MSRP as $99 and with some luck I found it refurbished through an Amazon reseller for $49! EURIKA! At last the lords of the Internet blessed me with a little devine intervention on my search results
I got to wondering after my pilgrimage to find this DVD player, why does it have to be so hard? I mean, if manufacturers like Denon offer Receivers with video upscaling and deinterlacing already included, why do they also sell DVD players with the SAME functionality? You’d think they’d try to offer a family of products that not only work well with one another but don’t waste your money on duplicate hardware that you won’t be utilizing. Denon is a prime example of this because even their ‘low end’ DVD player still carries an MSRP of $169 (and even then, it uses the built in DVD hardware deinterlacer without offering pure 480i output).
So as I said, there HAS to be a good quality family of products out there that are symbiotic and AFFORDABLE because they’re saving money on not having to waste it on unused hardware. 
Samsund NV24HD — Choppy High Definiton Video?
Posted by eric in Hardware, Miscellaneous, Multimedia on July 5th, 2008
I recently sold my entire DVD collection in order to buy some things I’d actually use around the house. On top of a small upgrade for my desktop computer, I also purchased a new Samsung NV24HD Point and Shoot Camera. I decided that I wanted a Point and Shoot in addition to my SLR because it seemed silly lugging around a giant camera and lens when going to simple events such as a friends birthday party.
One of the selling points for me on the Samsung NV24HD was the fact that it was able to capture high definiton video in 720p (1280×720, MPEG-4 H.264). Combine this with the 16GB Transcend SDHC memory card I bought to use with it, and I now had a point and shoot camera AND an HD video camera that could record over five hours of HD content.
After a couple test trials using my cat among other things, I started to notice when playing back the files using Quicktime on my computer that the video seemed fairly choppy and also the audio would drop out and then come back from time to time.
My first suspect was the memory card thinking that it might not be fast enough to record the video. But the Transcend 16GB SDHC card I purchased was certified Class 6 SDHC (guaranteed minimum 6mbps), which is the fastest you can buy for SDHC cards, so that couldn’t be the issue.
I then tried perhaps using another computer to play back the file, so I fired up my wife’s Black MacBook and used Quicktime on her machine. I had the same issue of choppy playback (at the beginning of the file) as well as the audio dropping out at the same points.
I suspect one of three things:
- This is an incompatibility with the MP4 files generated by the NV24HD and Quicktime, which I should probably e-Mail and ask Samsung about.
- It’s an issue with the memory card I’m using not being able to keep up with the recording device and thus losing data while recording video.
- It’s an issue with the NV24HD itself or an issue with the hardware encoder that’s used to compress the H.264 video stream.
I imagine it takes a bit of CPU power to compress video to 720p real time, and it’s evident on the NV24HD because after shooting continuous video for over five minutes the camera gets noticeably warmer.
ANYWAYS, if you have experienced this issue or have some ideas for a remedy I’m all ears
Cheers!
Out with the XP, in with the Windows 2008 Server!
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous, Opinion, Reviews, Virtualization, Windows Vista on July 1st, 2008
Last year I wrote a blog entry about how I was done with Windows Vista as a desktop operating system and thusly downgrading to Windows XP Professional. Things over the last year have changed though and it seem more and more applications and drivers are being released and updated for Vista (or newer , hah! ). I decided to take a look at my current options being that Windows Vista SP1 was released not so long ago.
Through my research and experiences at work, I actually decided that I would take a stab at running Windows 2008 Enterprise Server as my desktop operating system. In my research I happened across this blog on MSDN by Vijayshinva Karnure which documented the step by step instructions of taking a standard Windows 2008 Server installation and convert it to a Windows Vista like desktop.
I also settled on the 64-bit version of Windows 2008 Server Enterprise because it would allow me to run it in hypervisor mode with Hyper-V enabled, thus allowing me to migrate my Virtual PC VM’s to Hyper-V. Couple this with Hyper-V recently being RTM and I now have a virtualization ready desktop with the latest support for everything Vista!
So far over the past week I haven’t had any issues or concerns while doing development with source control Virtual Machine running a Windows 2003 VM with Team Foundation Server installed running in the background under Hyper-V.
All in all, I’m very happy with this option of operating system. It allows me the convenience of XP (such as running as Administrator with no UNC) as well as the newer features and benefits of Vista (such as DirectX 10, latest drivers and technology). Virtualization is a must have for any developer these days because it gets rid of the need for a test lab of computers. Or even for the home user, it gives an option to perhaps run the Microsoft Zune host service under a Windows XP Virtual Machine to stream music from your NAS to your XBox 360
Hope my experiences and findings are able to help someone else out in the decision on what to do about Vista and their next choice of a desktop Operating System!
Cheers!
Where have I been?
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous on May 15th, 2008
I’ve been busy, to say the least
About two weeks ago my wife and I decided to make our small family a little bigger by adding a new animal to the mix. Everyone, please welcome Eleanor to the Nusbaum family fold!
She’s a fourteen week old Pug! We got her from Cyndi Daiello from Luv-D Pugs! She’s a small female, so she’s just going to be our baby and not for show. Our eight year old cat Franklin (Get it? Franklin and Eleanor?? ) seems to be non-plussed by the idea of a puppy in the house, but so far has basically avoided any contact with her.
Because she’s basically our new baby I’ve been spending a lot of time putting her on a schedule which will make for easy house training (5:30am wake-up, 10:00pm bed time). She only whined the first night or two but now she sleeps through the night without problem!
Anyways, just thought I’d share why I haven’t been terribly active in my blog as of late. As she grows and learns the rules my wife and I are getting some more of our freedom back
Cheers!
Gas Prices — What YOU can do to save some extra $$$
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous, Opinion on April 20th, 2008
Not exactly IT related but I wanted to get this information out there in hopes that someone else might find it handy
Recently my wife and I purchased Quicken for her Mac so we could keep a tab on our expenses and after tracking trends for a month we were floored to find out that I was spending $350 per month on gas alone! That’s $4,200 per year, or an extra $21,000 over the life of my five year loan! What the hell man!
Of course things will keep getting worse because gas prices here in North County San Diego keep going up! My wife actually had to pay $4.25 per gallon of 91 octane gas for her Mini Cooper! It’s a tiny little car and only takes like 13 gallons, but still cost over $60 to fill it! I was irate!
I thought, as a consumer, what can I do to just save myself money let alone try to stick it to the man. I decided on the following tactics:
- Drive no faster than 65 on the freeways
- Always use cruise control when I could
- Do not use AC/Heater unless it was insanely hot or very, very cold
- Do not use a ‘jackrabbit’ start, and try to gradually accelerate from stops
I figured these would be the easiest things to change that wouldn’t have a major impact on my commute or pocket book. For safe measure, I checked the pressure in my tires and also cleaned my reusable K&N air filter.
Now, I drive a 2004 Acura TSX which has only a four cylinder engine, but it’s a large four cylinder at 2.4 liters. My commute to work is 40 miles round trip with mostly freeways and on average I filled up every six to seven days getting an average of 26.4 miles per gallon.
I’ve now been driving using the above listed method for over three weeks now and I’ve filled up twice. Each tank had the following statistics:
First Tank:
29.5mpg
425 miles traveled
Nine Days Between Fill-ups
Second Tank:
31.5mpg
465 miles traveled
Ten Days Between Fill-ups
These were OUTSTANDING results! If I can keep up this trend I’ll be cutting my monthly gas price in half and saving about $150 per month or $1,800 per year! And the way gas prices keep going up, it’ll continue to save me more money
I suggest you give my above suggestions a try and let me know your results! I think you’ll be shocked at how much money you’ll be saving with these astronomical gas prices.
Cheers!
Soap Box — A Couple Links and Information I Wanted To Share
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous, Opinion on March 24th, 2008
Hey Everyone!
I figured I’d take some time and use up some more space in my blog for some fun information and links that others might be interested in.
Fun Links:
- PostCrossing.com (link) – This is a very interesting social networking site where users connect across the world via postcards! It works like this: People send you post cards from all over the world and you send out post cards from YOUR part of the world! How simple and fun is that?! A friend of mine turned me on to the site and she has already received postcards from Indonesia, Hungary and Germany.
- Audioholics.com (link) – I’m sort of an audiophile and will probably start using this blog to talk more about Home Theater and how it and IT/Computers are becoming one. This is a great review site of consumer level electronics as well as a super community of users on their Discussion Forums. I suggest everyone give it a look see!
- Needledoctor.com (link) – This site is AMAZING if you own a turntable or are looking into getting a turntable. They have everything you need and their prices are very competitive (or so says Google) I recently purchased all the parts for my new “listening room”.. but more on that below!
Also, after eight years of participation I’ve passed the 1,000,000 credit mark in Seti@Home. Not that I feel that my contribution to this project will be a major cornerstone in modern science, but I feel that it’s something I’ve done that might have SOME impact of improving the human race as a whole. Not that I think E.T. is trying to phone home… so to speak
So as I said above, I’m going to start doing some Audiophile reviews or blogs here and there. The first thing I’ll be doing is reviewing the components I bought for my turntable listening room. I wasn’t able to find some reliable reviews online so I thought I’d write my own. Some of the hardware I bought for the system that I’ll be reviewing include:
- Pro-Ject Tube Box II Phono Preamplifier (link)
- Jolida JD 202A Integrated Stereo Tube Amplifier (link)
I’m sure someone else on the internet will be looking for the same information I was, so I’ll try to get that up as soon as possible!
Cheers!
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