Author: bt

Sent in my D70 for checkup and repair yesterday. The typical waiting time for Malaysia’s Nikon Service Centre to know what’s wrong with the camera is 3 weeks! They’re asking me to call them back after about 2 weeks to check the status.

I was in Kuching Sarawak when it hit so I didn’t even know about it till it came out on BBC and CNN news. I’ve heard that you can feel the tremors in Kuala Lumpur when you’re in a high rise building but when I got back yesterday everything in my apartment looks intact.
In Penang and the northern states in Malaysia with coastlines facing Andaman Sea the story is not the same.

Was on the flight from KL to Kuching today and when I got back I realise that the new PC just wouldn’t start. after a little troubleshooting, I realise that the processor fan has come loose from the motherboard during transit. It took some time to put it back on and the computer just won’t start becuase the fan connector to the motherboard just isn’t connected at all.
So far I managed to put it ogether but I think the contact between the processor and the fan is not that great anymore… got to look for a new proceesor fan unit.. maybe a Cooler Master!!!!

Whats up with that? I usually try to go in last so that I dont have to fight to get into the plane but by murphys law, 60% of the time, someone’s already sitting on my seat. Its always they misread what’s on their boarding pass, or they’re just ignorant. The fact that they face humilation when I tell them they can’t read for nuts just don’t sink into their mind. Continue reading “Suckers sitting on your seat on flights”

Ok, is xmas today but I’ve been thinking about how I can modify MT on this site so that I get less spam without limiting or crippling “allow comments” on the site. I’ve installed some blacklisting plugins, but what is lacking so far are plugins that allow you to modify whether to allow comments or not on a wholesale basis…. like a batch function. Will be looking for it today…

ITs christmas eve here in Kuala Lumpur and its getting quite. I’m the only left in the office and its just 4pm. Ok, it was suddenly announced that its half day off today so most of the guys in the office have already left, but I’m here for the aircon!
Happy xmas & merry new year! (no typo!)

Bought the new PC in parts and surveying the prices in Low Yat to put together the following system:
– ASUS P5P800 Mother board for Socket 775 Intel Processors
– Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz Socket 775
– 512Mb Kingston Value RAM PC3200 400MHz (good enough!)
– HIS Excalibur ATi RADEON 9550 128Mb
– Netgear 802.11b/g PCI card
– Antec LANBOY aluminium casing with built in 350W power supply
– BENQ CDRW/DVDROM (not DVD writer)
– BENQ 531 LCD 15″ (Cheap and good enough)

The casing comes with transparent side panels (not that large, but enough for the light to be quite obvious) and I’ve installed some cooler master blue LED fans in it.

The whole system is not meant to be super powerful but powerful enough and packed with enough quality components to last… well… 3-5 years? All in all, had a nice time putting it all together…. too bad it wont look that nice as a PVR. That I will need to use the Shuttle SB83G5 for it!

Part of the mission I had this week to was to look for the most cost effective video card that’s fast enough to run most games out there. Ok, not DOOM 3 but at least 99% of the other games. Finally settled on a ATi RADEON 9550 based card. Its based on the fact that a 9550 card can be had for USD65+ while at the next level a RADEON 9600 will cost in excess of USD100. I’m not even looking at the SE versions of the two card because they’re too much crippled. 9600SE has just 64 bit memory bandwidth while the stock 9600 has the usual 128bit. Apparently according to the benchmarks on the internet, that makes a big difference in the performance. Continue reading “Video Card: The RADEON 9550”

Just a few weeks after getting my new Shuttle PC, I’m in the market for a new one, but not for me this time. The configuration will be the same as the P4 3GHz Shuttle but for the time being it looks like its going to be a full system (not barebones) with an external video card, not as fast as the RADEON X800 but faster than the built-in card on most motherboard.
I’ve got all the price lists from Low Yat Plaza in Kuala Lumpur already and doing the comparisons.

When I tried to log into my WinXP today I noticed my ASDJKL keys are not working… which was a little strange. I managed to log into a passwordless account, and when I tried with a text editor it still didn’t work. About 5 minutes later its all working fine, just before I was going to swap the keyboard with a spare one… still can’t figure out what happened….