Following my splurge on speakers, I managed to snag up the PricesEngine special today of 2x WD 2TB Green 64M cache drives for AU$240 (+$10 for shipping/surcharge).  Cheapest I can get a 2TB drive here is AU$153 from MSY, which is why I couldn't resist the deal.  Have been filling up my 1.5TB drive at home (about 95GB free) so I did kinda need a new drive.

Am planning to buy another one so that I have 3x 2TB in RAID5 for around 3.6TiB of storage - should be enough for all my files, including all the anime I have on DVDs, and anything I'll need in the near future, all with the knowledge of it being RAID protected.
Woot!

By the way, the saving of $50 kinda paid for my speaker I guess.

Decided to randomly buy some new audio stuffs despite not really needing them.  Well, I guess the speakers on my parents' comp is kinda screwy, so I guess I have some justification.

I originally planned to spend no more than AU$30 for some 2.1 speakers, then I saw some really positive reviews for the DiVoom XForce 1, so I was like 'what the hell', and chucked $50 on them.
Also decided to get myself a sound card as well, just to see what one was like.  Grabbed a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI-e card for $37 (cheaper than I had expected for a X-Fi card).

My mobo has a PCIe x16 (GPU), PCIe x8, PCIe x4 and 3 PCIe x1 slots, and a PCI slot (TV Tuner), so I thought there'd be plenty of slots, however, the topmost PCIe x1 slot, the card wouldn't fit, because of a mobo heatsink in the way.  Another PCIe x1 slot was covered by the GPU, and the third was too close to the GPU fan for my liking (the card would've covered the fan).  The PCIe x4 was too close to the bottom for my liking (would cover the mobo switches), so I reluctantly? plugged it into the PCIe x8 slot.

DiVoom recommends placing the subwoofer on the floor (where it is at the moment), but this hinders my leg room under the table, so I might end up sticking this on the table (and use it to boost the height of my monitor, instead of wooden thing I have now).
I did somewhat imagine that better speakers generally had optical connections, but this didn't (maybe only for 5.1 and above speakers?).  I have been getting interference with my old speakers (ie would hear some random noise when the HDD span up) - despite the analog connections for these speakers, I haven't heard any interference, though I haven't been using them for that long anyway.

The quality of the sound card is definitely better than the integrated Realtek chip, though, the difference isn't big enough to objectively notice it (ie, without doing comparisons).
I had trouble ABXing 128kbps MP3s on the Realtek, but I could easily do it on this sound card.

So I decided to see how far I could go with this, using my pair of $30 Sony headphones plugged into the speaker remote (am unwilling to turn speakers up really loud at this time of the day).  Tried 192kbps MP3s - managed to tell the difference, using these samples, although it was quite hard.  So then I tried 320kbps (LAME 3.98a -V0)... and, wow!  I actually managed to discern a difference between it and the original.  Very difficult though - I often had to listen to the tracks multiple times before deciding, but I did get it.
So I guess people who claim to hear a difference between 320kbps MP3s and FLAC do have some justification, though you need to be pretty crazy to do so.  However, at 192kbps and above, although I could tell a difference, if I were given the two samples, I wouldn't be able to confidently state which would be the original, so in all seriousness, 320kbps MP3 really isn't much worse than FLAC.

Though I will still lol at FLACfags who use integrated audio.


Oh, as for additional options that the card gives, here's a screenshot of the audio dialog:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/VDxJX.png[/img]
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I can't seem to tell any difference between the EAX effects, even with the dB slider all the way on both sides.
CMSS-3D seems to be aimed at upsampling stereo to multi-channel speakers, so probably does nothing for me.
Can't seem to tell the difference with the Crystalizer either, though I haven't really tried listening to it that much.

When navigating a folder, sometimes when I want to enter the last folder (or open last file) on the list, I press End, followed by Enter.

Main problem with this strategy is if I slip and end up hitting End, Delete and Enter.
(and there's no Recycle Bin for network/USB drives)


Nearly happened to me once...

Well I'm in my Uni's computer lab doing random crap.
Just two people beside me are talking about random computer crap - one acting like a know-it-all and the other just listening to what's being said.

Except the know-it-all seems to be talking half crap (eg "XP doesn't use the GPU to render windows, so it really sucks"), and I'm finding it disturbing lol.  Am listening to music on my PSP so I can tune out of the discussion >_>

As most people here are somewhat techy, anyone ever had this urge to correct people saying the wrong things?

No seriously, how much "sPa/\/\" have you gotten in your Hotmail account that is actually legit?

Our Uni decided to use MS's Outlook.com for mail about a year ago.  Since it's a crap-ass web app, I quickly got Thunderbird to access it rather than going through the stupid web interface.
However, Thunderbird doesn't seem to be getting stuff in the Junk mail folder.

I just realised that MS's crappy filter was filtering out the majority of my mail when I wasn't receiving emails from someone for some reason.  Checked the Junk mail folder (using the web interface) and I had like 50 emails in there.  Not one of them was junk (and I seriously can't even understand why most of the entries there would be marked as sPa/\/\ in the first place).  And this is only stuff from a few weeks ago.  Who knows how much stuff I've lost in the past.


But recovering from this, once you actually realise the issue, isn't always easy either.  For one, there's no option to disable the junk mail filter.  Actually, there is, but it's not shown in Firefox.  Wonderful when I was getting really pissed trying to find out how to disable the thing.  It's only shown in IE8.  What the fudge and great work MS.
So, you've disabled the junk mail filter, and now need to move those 50 emails marked junk back into your inbox.  Nooo, there's no-way to simply move everything over.  If you select all the mail, "junk mail" options disappear (happens in both IE and Firefox).  So you're stuck on right-clicking every single email and choosing to mark it as not junk.  Absolutely wonderful when you're in Australia and have to deal with sh*tty latencies with these f***ing web apps (I'm gonna get hell pissed when everyone starts replacing these with regular desktop apps).

/rant

Without saying, this is my copy of Sensei's thread.
Except my life is perhaps less interesting, as I enjoy weird things.

Anyway, today in Brisbane was a weird day in terms of weather.  Started off rainy, remained cloudy, but it seems damn hot now (night time right now).

One of the courses I'm doing at Uni is Introduction to Web Design - yeah, it's a required subject for my degree, otherwise I wouldn't waste my time with this crap.  As far as I can tell, there's two main components - coding (ie HTML etc) and design.  Apparently, there's more focus on the design component, so this looks like it's going to be a boring course (have done the following on to this course, Human Computer Interaction).
Had a lecture, and the guy pretty much seems to be rewording what's said on the slides, just saying it in a long winded fashion, almost as if he's just blabbing on >_>
Had a practical session straight after the lecture, which was to write a basic HTML page.  They make you attend tutorials by allocating some of your final grade to your attendance - most courses don't do this, but I guess that so many people just decided not to turn up to these sessions that they enforced this...

My other courses for this semester, with the exception of International Finance, seem really boring too.

Okay, you may have seen my rant about how a new HDD kills a GPU, which spent me hours to diagnose.  And me having to wait before being able to get a new one due to random stock issues...

And so here my rant continues (leave now!).

And when I finally got the new GPU, I discovered the Samsung 1.5TB HDD having the "clicking" issue (basically when it powers on, it makes clicking noises for about 10 seconds).  Although this is rather disturbing for something you're shoving a huge amount of data onto, I guess I don't mind the noise.  The problem is, however, resuming from standby.  Basically the HDD only seems to be fully on once it finishes its clicking spazz.  The computer obviously resumes long before, finds the HDD isn't there, so assumes that you unplugged it.  Am not sure why, but even after the clicking stops, Windows doesn't seem to detect the HDD, the only solution being to open the case, and re-plug in the SATA cable.
Interestingly, have not been able to find anyone with similar issues, although Googling the Samsung HDD clicking issue turns up many results.
Anyway, obviously having to keep pulling out the SATA cable when I want the computer to go into standby is really unacceptable, so I went back to return it.

People at the store were pretty insistent that this was normal behaviour however, and tried a second Samsung HDD of the same model and it had the same issue.  Wouldn't give me a refund, their point being that "this clicking is normal [for a HDD]" (yeah, sure, especially so many people over the internet returning drives over this issue).  Really sucks, but I did manage to convince them to swap with a WD 1.5TB 64MB Green drive for $5 more.  Just sucks that they didn't have any in stock, so I now have to go back again on Friday to pick the thing up.
Just hope that the WD doesn't have any issues.

And I thought getting a 1.5TB drive was as easy as buying it and plugging it in...



/rant

Long time no post here.
Anyway decided to buy a new 1.5TB HDD yesterday and plugged it into my PC.  Oddly though, it failed to boot afterwards.  Taking out the HDD didn't help, in fact, I spent many hours trying to figure out what was wrong.  I did manage to eventually narrow it down to the graphics card (seriously didn't expect that) - very odd indeed, but it's definitely the GPU after swapping cards with my old 7800GT.

Dunno if it'll get any warranty, as it was bought in Dec08, but I'm going to have to get a new card regardless.  Unfortunately, most of the desirable cards are out of stock around here (What the fudge?).  After much thought, I decided to go for a PowerColor Radeon 5670 for AU$105.  Not exactly a great card, but should be suffice for my needs, and it looks better than the other options:

Radeon 4670 ~ $80: my current card - really want to get something a little different :P
Radeon 4770 ~ $120: more powerful than 5670, but costs more too, plus no DX11 (even though I don't care about it that much)
Geforce 9600GT ~ $90: cheaper, but less powerful, less energy efficient and no DX11
GT240 ~ $103: still not as powerful as the 5670

Am also hoping the PowerColor isn't as loud as my current MSI Radeon 4670 (there's no fan control, so the fan is always blasting at 100%).

Card will apparently arrive in about two days.
So just a heads up to anyone who cares - I can't really do much until then, so yeah...