Long Time No See
Well, last I checked, it was a rather long time ago that I last posted, so I’m sure you’re just DYING to know what’s going on. Yeah, right.
Well, regardless of that, I can probably say that school has been RELATIVELY uneventful. Last week I went to Sydney with other Music class students from school and we enjoyed the 2nd Meet the Music concert by the Sydney Symphony. I particularly enjoyed the Bartok piece, Concerto for Orchestra. But enough about that. A few weeks ago the Concert Band had the first workshop of the year. It was a Friday afternoon, straight after school, and it was tuition for each instrument group for a few hours before dinner (Pizza Mias for each individual, with some of us guys finishing off the girls’ pizzas), and then finally a Band rehearsal to finish off the night. It was an enjoyable afternoon/evening/night filled with us working hard to perfect our pieces for the upcoming competitions…
And then just yesterday, we had another one, similarly highly enjoyable, just shorter, because all it was this time was a
Band rehearsal. Oh, and a lovely sausage sizzle for dinner. We sounded pretty good, and the parents who were listening to us at the end of it liked it (or so they said). We probably have a good chance of taking on the private schools =]
At some point in the last couple of weeks, my software class was supposed to hand in a Major Work, and by hand in, I mean present it to the class (i.e. the teacher, and the three other members of the class) and talk about it as if we were trying to sell it to CEO’s (that idea of Mr B.’s didn’t work out quite so well). We got through half of one person’s before class ended, and then Mr B. went on the Yr 9 DoE camp… So we unofficially got a week and a half extension because of that and exams (plus timetabling, meaning a week and a half between the two presentations). So far we’ve managed approximately one presentation a lesson! When the teacher’s here, that is.
Speaking of exams, after the Mod B English listening assessment task (which was 10 minutes listening, 40 minutes essay. They just have to stick the essay in SOMEWHERE, don’t they?) on just this last Monday, I went with some people from ‘The Stoop’ to watch Thor (3D). I must say, of the few 3D movies I’ve seen in the last 3 or so years, they are definitely getting better at it. I remember the days when it was the cyan-magenta glasses. So darn annoying. Funnily enough, that’s almost what the RealD 3D system uses, except that the light is now polarised, not coloured (and most certainly not rapidly alternating like those annoying Active-shutter systems. Those give me headaches). Anyways, I doubt I’d be ever getting a 3D tv, and if I do, it’d probably be a auto-stereoscopic 3D tv, and when it’s cheaper.
And even further in this long post, I’ve already done some research into what build I’d use for my new computer (when I finally get the money to buy the hardware). And I must say, the research was both interesting and informative. Ah, how I like learning (easy stuff, that is. Hard stuff is annoying). Some of the questions I haven’t yet been able to have answered is “Is the stock CPU cooler provided by Intel any good on the Core i7?” or “Do I really have to calculate in a 10-20% capacitor ageing for my PSU, or is that just a rumour created by the manufacturers to make us buy their larger products more often?”. For the first one, because all you ever hear about is people overclocking their CPU, they all obviously use after market coolers, not the one provided. But I don’t want to overclock! What about the normal people?! I suppose the obvious answer to that is, yes it is sufficient for non-overclocking.
The second question, well, I’ve heard some talk from people on different forums around the Internet, and some of them have given some pretty strong evidence that it DOESN’T happen. A whole lot of them have had their PSUs for over 5 years, and they said that even if you calculate in a modest (according to the rumour/myth) 10% decrease a year, on 650Watt PSU you’d end up with only 383.8 Watts by the end of the 5th year (650*0.9*0.9*0.9*0.9*0.9 = 650*0.9^5 = 383.8185)!! Which is quite ridiculous, as these people were running the same power hungry setups on their PCs for the entire time, and if it had dropped THAT low, they’d notice (when you run your computer at say 550 Watts on a 650 Watt PSU, and it supposedly aged such that it only produced 500, let alone the 383.8 I calculated there, your computer would shut down automatically when it tried to use the full 550 it can do, as the 550 isn’t available! As that obviously hasn’t happened to people when they play their computer games, which are some of the most processor intensive things your computer can do, and hence would use a lot of power), and people’s computers certainly haven’t been shutting down because of power failure (typically it’s overheating that shuts down the computer, but that’s an entirely different issue). So, the only conclusion I could reach from that evidence (and the fact that my 5 year old computer is running off a 305 Watt PSU, and according to that theory it should be down to around 180 Watt output… And In still push the computer to the max and it doesn’t shutdown. And Dell would’t put an overly large PSU in when it could run fine off a smaller, cheaper one, so…
Anyways, I’m gonna stop writing now, because typing on my iPod is somewhat annoying. But before I go, I’ve managed to work out a modest build for my computer, and it only comes to $1439 without software. And Windows 7 Home Premium OEM only costs $99, so why PC makers charge you $120 for it is beyond me, let alone the price they charge for upgrading to Professional or Ultimate. I suppose they need to make their markup somewhere…
Anyways,
TTFN!! Ta Ta For Now!
P.S. The modest build I’ve got planned would cost around $2000 from a PC maker, not including the software they load on it (e.g. Win7, Norton, HP bloatware, etc.), so you can see how much I’m saving by building it myself.
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