2012, End of World

With the movie coming out Hollywood has been gunning to advertise.

Which leads us to this piece of work from the comments;

H-i-l-a-r-i-o-u-s.

I’m not sure who to give credit to, but thanks for making me laugh uncontrollably until I needed an inhaler.

DirecTV (Spoof): JFK, Jesus, and Heath Ledger!

What do JFK, Jesus, and Heath Ledger have in common? They all use DirecTV!

Ponderance.

Not knowing who you are is dangerous. You never know what you’re capable of; good and bad.

Robots! Hooray.

Oh man. What I wouldn’t have given to have this toy as a child — it’s way cooler than those furbies who looked cute at first until you related them to gremlins and realized that they would for no reason start moving and talking like they were plotting against you until you were so freaked out you stuffed them in a plastic bin because you were afraid in the middle of your sleep they would axe you. Ahem. Anyways…

This technology is absolutely fabulous. It not only is a small object that has been finely engineered, but it responds to voice commands and in a surprisingly fluid manner no less. Notice its greetings and how familiar they are and how easily they are done. The running and jumping movements are the most noticeably robotic, but the other movements? Relatively flawless. That’s quite impressive.

Android!

Android is seriously making me rethink my iPhone. … :{

Why must you be so awesome Google?

Coming soon to Post: Take on Google Chrome (AMAZING)
If you are using anything other than Chrome. Stop it. Now.

Download Chrome Here

Moving!

This blog will be moving to thecottondream.com.
… hush, my last name is Cotton. There is only so much one can do.
So domain name change probably pending at some point.

Funny

Date my Avatar? The Guild!

I love this video. Felicia O’Day is awesome and so is the rest of the crew from The Guild.

Building a Computer: Part 1

Intro
I am building a computer! Why? It’s infinitely cheaper and you can get a really awesome machine for about $600-800 cheaper than if you had Dell, HP, or Gateway build it. Have I ever built a computer before? No, but I’ve learned a lot already about compatibility and my thoughts walking away from Phase 1: Ordering parts is that there should be a bit more standardization.

Why build your own computer you might be asking yourself? Well, here are my reasons…

1. I wanted a deeper understanding of how the hardware comes together on a computer. I’ll get into this a bit later.
2. I build a computer from Dell for $1500 and then built the exact same one on Newegg.com and it only cost me $800. Since I had a budget for $1500 I was able to upgrade parts and find better deals on parts which led me to only spending $978.08, only $19.01 on shipping since most items on Newegg.com have free shipping.
3. Having a computer of your exact specifications. Your exact desires.

Phase 1: Ordering Parts
This is probably one of the toughest parts of this entire experience I must say. Here are things to keep in mind when you are ordering parts:

1. Make sure socket types line up. All Motherboards (Mobo), Heatsink + Fan, and Processors will list the type of socket they are compatible with. Be sure these line up. In my case, my Mobo, Heatsink + Fan, and Processor is a 1366 Socket.

2. Make sure your pins match with your Power Supply and your Graphics Card. Mine is a  6 pin.

3. Make sure that your Ram matches up to your Mobo. Mine supports 6×240 pin DDR3 1600. What that means is that the ram must be DDR3 and have 240 pins. It also means that the maximum speed of my ram for my Mobo is 1600, so when I’m ordering RAM I should try to hit that number. You can go over that number but your Mobo just wont be able to process it and will still process at 1600. If you go under it you will fail to get your peak performance.

Those are the biggest considerations when it comes to compatibility and if anyone reads this and begs to differ, please let me know. I’m not claiming to be an expert, I’m a novice, and I’m sure I’ll run into a few mishaps and shennanigans, but this is a novice taking other novices through their first PC Building experience. It’s a time to learn, ho ho!

Checklist
Motherboard
CPU
Heatsink + Fan
Memory (RAM)
Thermal Paste/Grease
Power Supply
Graphics Card
Case/Chassis
Hard Drive
CD/DVD Drive

So this is kind of how I chose my parts…

1. The biggest decision and the one I felt everything revolved around was the Motherboard. The Motherboard is the brain, the center component, and the heart of your computer. So it was highly important to base everything around it’s specifications. It was easy after I chose the Mobo because now I knew what parts to look for to fit for it compability wise. I knew my socket type, I knew what it supports, and the size of the Mobo so I knew what chassis (or case) I could get. I ended up getting the

EVGA 121-BL-E756-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 Micro ATX SLI Micro Intel Motherboard

2. After that I moved onto the Processor. I knew I needed one with a CPU Socket Type: LGA 1366. Thanks to Newegg I was easily able to view all Processors that supported that socket type. I found the Intel Core i7.

Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor

3. Then I moved onto the heatsink + fan. Now, here’s a sticker. The Intel Core i7 does come with a Heatsink + Fan. However, I went ahead and bought another one just incase I was disatisfied with the standard. According to a friend of mine, they aren’t usually impressive. Since my system is rather intense in heat, I want the best cooling device I can get. So I went ahead and found the oh so compatible…

ZALMAN CNPS9900LED 120mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler

4. So I wouldn’t forget, I went ahead and bought the thermal paste next. Some heatsinks + fans will come with it, but this didn’t read that I did. Thermal paste is cheap, only like $6.99, but I must stress that  YOU MUST USE THERMAL PASTE. You absolutely 100% have to. You will destroy your processor if you do not. So do  not forget to buy it.

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound

5. Next I made the choice of a Power Supply. Now, I already have a Graphics card. This might be the step where you choose to get a Graphics Card. The one in my current computer I bought for $79 not too long ago and it’s a

PNY GeForce 9600 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI
Unfortunately I don’t have a link to it! However, a lot of these links will probably break so I’ll be taking pictures at a later data and writing down specifications.

It requires 6 pins according to the manual. So! I went with the following 600W PS. I had to take in account total voltage of all my parts, but 600W should suffice just fine.

COOLER MASTER Silent Pro 600 RS-600-AMBA-D3 600W ATX12V V2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

6. Great. What does ATX mean? You may have noticed that popping up repeatedly. That involves case type. Which leads us into case selection! Most cases are ATX, but some cases are BTX. BTX was supposed to be the “new standard” rushed in by Intel (who also rushed in ATX), but it really hasn’t taken hold. As a result, ATX is. So what this means is the following;

A full size ATX board is 12 in × 9.6 in (305 mm × 244 mm). This allows many ATX form factor chassis to accept microATX boards as well.

It’s about fitting your Mobo in and coincidently making sure your PS is compliant with ATX standards.

This led me to getting this case!

XCLIO A380BK Fully Black SECC 1.0mm thickness ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Now, as a newbie, I have reservations about this case. The plus sides is that it’s Aluminum and thus will disperse heat better as opposed to a plastic case. It also has 2 very large fans. Tip: Large Fans = LESS noise. So it was another perk that it already came with 2 really large fans. However, I’m timid of a side mounted fan because that could potentially lead to problems with my rather ginormous graphics card or my rather ginormous heatsink. However, I also read that it has plenty of mounting holes in it which is a perk. This way my Mobo should mount no problem.

Lets take a second to review and recap the parts I’ve gone through…

Checklist
Motherboard
CPU
Heatsink + Fan
Memory (RAM)
Thermal Paste/Grease
Power Supply
Graphics Card
Case/Chassis
Hard Drive
CD/DVD Drive

So that leaves us with the last 3 parts.

7. Next I had to decide on a Hard  Drive. Now, I already have a HD in my computer, but it’s only 250gb and I honestly can’t remember anything about it. I decided that it was time to up the bet and move on.

Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive – OEM

HD’s are relatively easy.  They are pretty standardized, so when choosing when you will just want to take into consideration the size of it, what you will be using it for, and the speed at which it transfers data (RPM) as well as the cache which temporary memory storage and 32MB of temp. memory can be stored via this HD. That means information will be accessed quicker.

8. RAM! So, the important thing to note here is that you need to pair up the pins to your Mobo and also the speed. So my Mobo supports 240-Pin DDR3 and it also supports up to 1600. So, as you can see, the RAM is 240-Pin DDR3 and it maxes out it’s speed at 1600. Perfect! Easy as that!

CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C8 G

9. A CD/DVD is really up to you. In fact, there are multiple parts you can add at this point — for instance a SD Card Reader or multiple drives … depending on what you want to build. I happen to be taking the CD/DVD drives from my old computer. There’s really nothing special about them. This is really an <insert anything else you want>.

10. Don’t forget to buy an OS. I happen to have one already, but you may need to remember to do this! For instance, you can get a free OS like Linux, but you’ll want an OS. I bought the $20 Windows 7 from my school.

So at this point, my computer is ready to be built — that is, once I get the parts!

In total this cost me: $978.08!

In the next installation “Building a Computer: Part 2″ I will take you step by step through the process of building a computer. Have I ever built a computer before? No. So this should be very, very interesting. I’m either going to do it in a series of videos or a step by step guide or perhaps both! Depends on the quality of camera I can get my hands on.

Either way, once my parts arrive — it’s computer building time! Woot.

Windows 7: Not too shabby.

Today, thanks to Twitter and Shawn, I became aware to the fact that my University was selling Windows 7 for $20. Yes, the full installation, a whole 2 months early. Of course I went and bought it (Windows 7 Ultimate: 64bit V). Now, I am a skeptic and I refused to buy Vista and have been running Windows XP until about 2 hours ago, but I have been following Windows 7 closely and while I did not partake in the beta test, I have seen Windows 7 in action.

My thoughts now? FINALLY MICROSOFT, FINALLY. You get it.

It has become an Operating System once more. A real operating system. It isn’t Vista that dresses up in a slutty (want-to-be-Mac) barmaid costume that continually asks you want beer you want over and over again while asking if you are sure that you really want that beer until finally you threaten to slap a ho and it listens.  No, it runs in the background like a good little system and while it does want to be the almighty Administrator (and thus to do a winsock fix you’d still have to run cmd in Administrator Mode <gag>) it is quite a bit less annoying.

My favorite part about Windows 7 GUI is that it now has the “Active Panel”.

And look what it can do!

Shiiiiiiiiiiiny.

You can actually hover over the Active Panel (in this case Chrome) and select between the two open windows. It’s visual gloriousness since we are such a fantastically visual society.

And because I can’t help myself, get a load of the new Paint interface!

That’s right! The old paint is a thing of the past and it looks like they’ve incorporated a bit of their Microsoft Suite ideology behind it. You notice a lot of the icons and functionality of Word is appearing all over the new and improved paint! Including a much needed, quick and dirty resize and crop tool!

They didn’t stop there, though. Look at what they did to Calculator!

Isn’t that clever? They finally put in a way for you to see your previous numbers. No more mistakes for me! I’ve been victim to putting in wrong numbers and wondering where I went wrong oodles of times! Now I can track!

Windows 7 thus far proves to be similar to Vista in design. It still aims to be a “pretty” operating system selling itself similar to the beautiful Mac OS X, but they finally understand that people want something that runs quick and smooth in the background and not a RAM hog.

The only redeeming feature I ever found in Vista was the Search Bar which as of course been carried over in Windows 7. It reminds me of Finder on a Mac. I don’t even have to look for files anymore, I can just type in a name and it quickly searches it out for me.  The nice thing about Windows 7 though is while it takes a lot of good ideas from a lot of different places, it managed to still be Windows and that’s what I like about it. I like Windows OS, I really do, and Windows 7 is user friendly and overall has a more approachable and easy to navigate feel without bogging you down.

Other neat features:

Pressing this button will bring you to your desktop, closing all open windows. You could shortcut it and press Windows + D, but for those who aren’t shortcut savvy, windows finally thought of you!

Anyone who is a Mac user is a friend and lover of Notes! Windows finally snuck this idea right into their OS giving you — Sticky Notes! (Kind of like their fingers when they took the idea from Mac! Oh ho!) No, but really, a good idea is a good idea and it’s great that Microsoft incorporated it. It’s about building a usable OS in the end, so if you take some ideas, you take some ideas. This was a good one to use and it’s definitely helpful and makes sense to have available!

Now if only they could fix IE…

However, since I have an unfaltering loyalty to Google (until the refuse to hire me…) I must stick with the almighty Chrome which has turned out to better than my beloved Firefox <3 and IE put together.