Author: Jack Scott

Silence!

After months of complaining, researching components, finding good prices, and so on, my computer is now virtually silent… and that makes me very happy. When I built the most recent incarnation of my desktop computer, I chose pretty much the cheapest components available at the time. I even stooped so low as to use a triple-core processor (AMD’s Phenom X3 8650). Choosing components this cheap turned out to be a nightmare.

First of all, the CPU’s fan was insanely noisy. When the computer started up you could have sworn a Boeing 747 was in my bedroom getting ready for takeoff. It settled down after a few seconds, but it was still enough to make using speakers pointless. I resorted to headphones.

I fixed this by buying two components. The first was a rear case fan to exhaust more hot air out of the computer. I chose a Scythe model that ran at 800RPM. They are renowned for being virtually silent. Not without reason, too. The second was a Cooler Master Hyper-212+ heat sink. The heat sink itself is about 600g of solid aluminium with copper pipes running up through it. It’s very good at getting the heat away from the CPU. It comes with a fan attached to it, but I took this off. Since I had the rear case fan, and nothing else that produced much heat in the machine, I didn’t need it. So this solved the CPU noise issue.

The next issue was the power supply. The power supply I originally had was a no-name 550W power supply I bought for $50 AUD. I suspect it was worth about $5. The efficiency of the power supply was also questionable. In the end I bit the bullet and decided to buy a new power supply. I did a bit of research on the PC hardware site SilentPCReview, and found 3 power supplies that fitted the bill. One was Antec’s Signature 650w. This is basically the premium model from Antec. The ‘Signature’ in the name comes from the fact that the quality-control checker signs the power supply when they check it. It was a bit on the pricey side though. A similar power supply from a different manufacturer was  Seasonic’s X-650. This was cheaper, and even quieter, but had a few quirks that I didn’t really like. The final power supply, and the one I chose, was Antec’s Truepower 550w. It was slightly noisier than the other two, but not by very much, and was significantly cheaper.

After replacing these components in my desktop, I now have a machine that I can’t hear over background noise (the nearby highway, birds outside, etc) during the day. I can hear a slight hum during the night, but I usually turn the machine off while I sleep, so it’s not a problem. Overall, I’m very happy! I’ll never again buy cheap computer components… it’s very expensive.

Peanut Butter & Choc-Chip Biscuits

Peanut Butter biscuits on a cooling tray.
Peanut Butter & Choc-chip Biscuits

In my mind, there is very little doubt that cooking is both one of life’s greatest pleasures and one of life’s greatest skills. Far too many people still cannot cook well enough. Jamie Oliver seems to agree with me.

Luckily for me, when I still only a small child my mum started teaching me how to cook. One of the first things I ever cooked by myself (of real recipes, not toast and the like) was these biscuits. They are extremely simple, and extremely tasty.

It’s quite possible to leave the chocolate chips out of this recipe altogether, in which case you’ll end up with peanut butter biscuits. You don’t need to make any other modifications to do this.

Ingredients

  • 110g of peanut butter (whether it is smooth or crunchy doesn’t matter, but I prefer crunchy)
  • 110g of room-temperature butter (use refrigerated butter if you like playing life on hard mode, and use margarine if you like me haunting you in your sleep)
  • 200g of caster sugar (or any other sugar you like)
  • 1 large egg
  • 220g of self-raising flour (you can substitute plain flour for denser cookies, and gluten-free plain flour will work too if there are people in your life you like keeping alive)
  • 200g of chocolate chips

Method

  1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius (320 degrees fahrenheit, 430 degrees kelvin).
  2. Put the peanut butter in a large mixing bowl.
  3. Add the butter and sugar to the bowl, and mix together until there aren’t any lumps of butter left.
  4. Add the egg, and mix together.
  5. Add the flour and the chocolate chips, and mix together.
  6. Grease some oven trays if necessary (I use three trays, your trayage may vary). I have used a spray can of vegetable oil to grease in the past, but these days I just use non-stick oven trays.
  7. Spoon the mixture (using a teaspoon) onto the trays. The size of the balls should be about 1″ across and 0.5″ high (roughly). Leave about 3-4″ between biscuit centres. If you wanted to measure by weight, I make each biscuit around 40 grams.
  8. Then flatten down the biscuits slightly with a fork, creating faint lines in the top.
  9. Put them in the oven. The hardest part of the whole recipe is figuring out when they’re done. About 12-16 minutes is usual. 12 minutes will get you softer biscuits, 16 minutes will get you harder biscuits.
  10. About 5 minutes after taking them out of the oven, pry them off the trays and place them on a cooling rack.
  11. Enjoy!

Tips

  • It’s easiest to put the mixing bowl on the scales, tare (zero) the scales, then add the ingredients by weight.
  • If you don’t have a cooling rack, put the biscuits back on the oven tray upside-down. The idea is to let the moisture out of the biscuits so they will be chewy and crunchy instead of soft and floppy.

Going without Google

This article on Zen Habits caught my eye today. Basically it’s about going without Google. Having done basically the same thing about a week ago, I thought I’d share how I went through the process.

The reason I decided to close my Google account was for the same reason as Leo (from Zen Habits). I don’t like the idea of a single corporation having access to all our personal data, no matter how “Don’t Be Evil” they are.

Gmail: I hadn’t been using Gmail for a few months anyway. I use the mail server on my web host, and download it via POP to Outlook on my desktop. I don’t care much about IMAP; if I’m on the move I don’t care about my email.

Calendar/Reader: For these I also use Outlook. For calendar, Outlook is second to none (basically, it was designed for corporate scheduling). For RSS, it’s less than ideal, but it’s decent. It’s nice to have it all in one program. If you don’t have Outlook, Thunderbird will do the same thing for free (and has better support for GPG to boot).

Search: Unfortunately I’m still a sucker for Google search. Along with all the sites Leo tried, I also used Dogpile. None of them even come close. Without an account however, Google only really can store my IP. Since I have a dynamic IP address and I’m behind a NAT router, that isn’t very useful.

Maps: Another hard one. There isn’t really an alternative (Microsoft’s solution within Bing is awful). I just use it without an account. Same functionality, less data stored by Google.

Other Google services: I never used them. I use Firefox, not Chrome. I use Word and Excel, not Google Docs. I use Facebook to share my photos.

You’ll notice in that last sentence there I mentioned Facebook. You may have read my essay Why I no longer use Facebook…, and in which case are wondering why I went back. The answer is simple. Within my circle of contacts, no Facebook equals no social life. Let’s hope the same doesn’t happen with Google.

Back at University

Today, seeing that I haven’t done so for a while now, comes an update on my life.

I’ve just started my second year at university. My degree is supposed to be three years long, but I’ll stretch it out to three and a half because I failed stuff bigger is better. I’m still doing computing. This year comes one of the units I’ve eagerly anticipated: Algorithms. It’s programming in C, finally, after a year of Java. Also comes a not-so anticipated unit, ICT Project Management. It’s as dull as it sounds.

I’m not really sure why I’m at university. Mostly just because I can’t figure out anything else worth doing. I could go get a job, but having done that before, university seems much easier. I enjoy playing around with computers and programming, but I’m not quite confident that I really want a job as a programmer… I should probably figure that out soonish.

After resigning from Principal Computers again before I left to move to Berlin in July last year (which I ended up not doing, sadly enough), I’m now back there working Saturdays again. And I still jump every time the phone rings. Talk about Pavlov’s dog.

I’ve started playing around with Cisco networking gear again. This time I’ve got a 3550 switch, which strangely enough is more of a 24-port router than a switch. It can do some weird and wonderful things. I can’t wait to do the networking unit at university.

Genealogy Scraps: Families extinct or removed out of the County of Derby

The following is a transcript of an original manuscript given to me by my grandmother. I believe it was written by one of my ancestors as he was investigating the history of the Agard family. Through the power of Internet search engines, hopefully it will become useful to somebody.

Note that I’m not expecting any of my normal blog readers to read this.

Families extinct or removed out of the County of Derby

Since 1500

Agard, of Foston & Judbury

This ancient family settled at Foston as early as the year 1310. The estate was sold in the reign of Charles II. & about the same time of the co-heiresses of Charles Agard Esq: the last heir, Male, married John Stanhope, of Elvaston, ancestor of the Earl of Harrington. One of the Agards, of Sudbury, married a co-heiress of Ferres of Jamworth. We do not find when this branch became extinct.

[Image of a coat of arms] Arms of Agard of Foston. – Argent a Chevron engrailed, Gules, between three Boars Heads. copued, stable, langued, Gules.

Chatsworth was sold by Frances Leche, who died in or about the year 1550 to the family of Agard of whom it was purchased by Sir William Cavendish.