PC Upgrade 2010, Part 2

I eventually got all my parts and upgraded the PC. It was not without its own set of drama. The first problem I encountered was with my memory. I bought 4 x 2Gb OCZ Gold DDR3 1333MHz memory. After I installed Windows, I could only use 4Gb, the other 4Gb was 'reserved'. Three hours later I found a post on the OCZ forum suggesting that my BIOS detected my DRAM settings wrong and they were right. I manually had to set my DRAM settings in the BIOS, but at least that worked.

i7 Stock Cooler

I then decided to run memtest86+ just in case, and the horror! I had errors in test number 8 in memtest86+. I took out all my DIMMS and reinserted them again, ran memtest86+ and no errors, and just to be sure I ran 5 passes of the tests and another 2 passes the next day.

Cooler Master H212+

My next challenge was heat. The i7 870 with its stock cooler was not good enough. The i7 under load went up to 90C which is not good. Idle temp was at 35C, not bad, but not good either. I wanted to replace the stock cooler with the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ but no one had immediate stock so I had to take whatever was on stock at the first computer shop that had any CPU coolers.

Zalman S9700

This turned out to be a Zalman S9700 LED, which is a massive heat sink and heavy, 790g heavy, so mounting that vertically in my case seems a bit excessive. The good news though is my CPU idle at 22C and with average use it goes up to 35C. I still need to stress test the new cooler.

I will also run some benchmarks. The current feeling is that this machine is very very fast. Running a VM and developing on the host at the same time is no problem at all.

PC Upgrade 2010

My current development PC at home is getting close to 3 years old now. I decided it was time to do an upgrade.

I browsed and read lots and lots of blog posts and articles around the different CPUs available and eventually settled on the Intel i7 870.

I like the new Turbo Boost functionality on the i7, but the i7 870 was priced well. I also prefer dual channel instead of triple channel so the 870 seemed to be a good fit.

Dual channel also means my motherboard was cheaper than the triple channel versions.

I am not into over clocking at all, so I settled for a motherboard that does what I need and nothing more. I did investigate its performance on some of the well known benchmarking websites.

The MSi board performed on par with all the other expensive boards, the only thing about the MSi board is that over clocking is not its claim to fame, which is fine with me.

The RAM in my new machine will be OCZ DDR 3 1333MHz, a full 8Gb. I bought the OCZ RAM because it was on special at Take2.co.za.

The RAM also looks nice.

I also decided to make an investment in the new SSD hard drives. This SSD was expensive compared to what I could get if I bought a normal hard drive, but according to all the benchmark tests the difference in speed will be huge.

Only problem is I will only have 60Gb space, so I will need to micro manage my hard drive usage again like back in the 90's.

Hard drives are so big and cheap lately, that I almost never delete files any more.

My PC components should arrive on Monday, so Monday night will be PC building night.

Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age Origins

I bought Mass Effect 2 for a mere R 99.00, it was on special and it is the full game and fully legal. I was just at the right place at the right time.

I also got Dragon Age Origins for R 150.00, again the same shop, just lucky enough to walk in when the special was still running.

Also I feel the need to mention that I was actually on a mission to buy milk and coffee for the house, when I found this. So basically I went out to buy milk and coffee and I came back with Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age Origins.

Australian Computer Society, Part 2

So it would seem the ACS is not striking like the rest of South Africa. Probably because the ACS is in Australia, the land where people work to make a living.

I got my results back from the ACS assessment. They accessed me as a Class A Software Engineer. This means I can now apply for my Visa as a Software Engineer.

The  only obstacle now is obviously the South African government. I need to get an unabridged birth certificate and an unabridged marriage certificate. The South African government is striking at present. So hopefully they will stop their nonsense soon, so I can get my stuff and get on the plane.

The Samsung 24" LED LCD (BX2450)

I just saw this amazing Samsung at Take2.co.za, and I am impressed. More than impressed, I want it.

The monitor is really very easy on the eyes. It has the standard HD resolution that everyone has standardized on, but it has no DVI port.

My current graphics card, the NVidia 8800GT does not have HDMI out ports.

I did find a conversion dongle at Amazon. So I can use this with my existing graphics card.

Debranding my C905

I have a general hate relationship with Vodafone. I am not a Vodafone subscriber, I am a Vodacom subscriber. Vodafone bought some shares in Vodacom and now most if not nearly all Vodacom cell phones are now Vodafone branded.

I bought a Sony Ericsson C905 and one feature that everyone was talking about was the conversation thread you could have on your SMS messages. Vodafone in their wisdom decided to take it out of their Vodafone branded C905 cell phones.

Another thing that bugged me endlessly was the fact that my Java applications was so slow, very slow. I assumed it was the C905 that was not too good with Java applications.

I eventually decided to debrand my C905.

I found a nice post on debranding my C905. It took a while to get all the software ready and in place but after following the easy steps my C905 is now working the way it should be.

Not only do I now have SMS conversation support, my Java applications are much faster too. So Vodafone even broke the JVM on the C905.

I unfortunately did manage to reset my MAC address to 00-00-00-00-00, so no Wi-Fi for me. The fix is quite easy, but I will do it at a later stage.

Source Code Highlight in Blogger

I always wanted to have syntax highlighting in my blog posts but I thought Blogger didn't allow it. Thankfully I was wrong.

The code snippet below shows how pretty it can look. I am using SyntaxHighlighter version 3.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace Core.EFT.XXX
{
    /// 

    /// This class will decode the XML from the XXX service.
    /// 
    public class XXXTCPResponse : TCPResponse
    {
        #region Properties
        /// 

        /// The request type.
        /// 
        public string RequestType { get; set; }
        #endregion
    }
} 

I will probably start posting more C#, C++ and Java code snippets on this blog.

New Lenovo G550

My old Hewlett Packard desktop replacement laptop was starting to show its age. It was time for a replacement, but I did not want another desktop replacement laptop.

I found for development I prefer a desktop. I can easily add more monitors and upgrading the desktop is much simpler and easier. Cost wise it is also many times cheaper.

I found a special on the Lenovo G550. The initial reviews on the internet were good enough and for the price it was excellent. So I bought the Lenovo G550.

Over the next few days I will install my favourite applications like Firefox, Directory Opus etc.

Australian Computer Society

I completed all my documentation and I mailed it to the ACS. So within the next 12 weeks I will know if they like me or not.

Another tick on the list.

IELTS done.

I finished the IELTS tests. My overall score is 8.0 and I only needed to score a 7.0, so I qualify for the 25 bonus points on the Visa.

The next application I need to do is the ACS certification of my degree and work experience.

I also need to start the process of acquiring my South African documents, like my marriage certificate etc. That will have to happen in the next two months.

Cell phone carry bag part 2.

So I bought this carry bag last year. It lasted all of six months. Totally forgot about it. Really not a good product at all.

IELTS Part 1, done

So the past weekend I did my first part of the IELTS test. I need to do the IELTS test because South Africa's official language is not English. South Africa has 11 official languages but listening to the politicians I would have sworn the official language is talking poop.

Back to the test. No one really knows what language we speak in South Africa, so in order to go to Australia I had to take the IELTS test. It is a lot like Grade 7 English, maybe even easier, so all in all a waste of time and money.

Part 1 of the test was reading, writing and listening. Part 2 will be the speaking test which I will be doing this coming weekend.

So one more tick on the checklist. I picked up our passports yesterday, so the next stop will be the ACS assessment of my degree.

New Skilled Occupations List

The Australian government created a new skilled occupations list (SOL) that will come into effect on 1 July 2010. Luckily for me I am still on the list. They reduced the occupations from something like 400 to just 181, or something in that line. So basically a more than 50% reduction in occupations.

I am only concerned with the IT related occupations. On the old SOL the following occupations were catered for:

• Computing Professionals (Catch all)
• Applications and Analyst Programmer
• Computer Systems Auditor
• Software Designer
• Systems Manager
• Systems Programmer

The new list only lists the following IT related occupations:

• Systems Analyst
• Analyst Programmer
• Developer Programmer
• Software Engineer

So they basically removed the Computing Professionals option. Many IT occupations came through on that catch all description, anything from a database administrator to a network administrator could be seen as a Computing Professional. It would seem the Australian government plugged that hole now. Basically if you want to go to Australia as an IT specialist your occupation must be closely related to actual programming or building of systems from scratch it seems.

Australia

I haven't blogged in a long while. I had some nice Trinchado at different places the last few months but I will blog about that later.

My family and I decided that it will not be suitable for our little girl of 14 months to grow up in South Africa anymore. A few weeks ago a small baby of 12 months was assaulted by criminals and she is still in I.C.U., so we decided that if the criminals do not even spare a baby, then we need to leave.

I started the whole process but it will take some time. Currently we are trying to get a state sponsorship from Victoria in Australia. We want to settle in Melbourne. We have a few reasons for this but just the fact that 1/3 of all IT people are employed in Melbourne makes the choice easier.

So I guess I will be blogging about the whole Visa application for the time being instead of nice food.

Trinchado @ Mesa Portuguesa

It was Trinchado time again Saterday, the 29th of August 2009. This time I went to Mesa Portuguesa in Pretoria to try their take on the Trinchado.

Just the photo alone shows that the Mesa Trinchado is different than the O'Galito Trinchado and the Braza Trinchado.

The Mesa Portuguesa Trinchado was not hot spicey but it was full a flavour spicey, if that makes sense. This time the sauce was a red wine sauce and not a white wine sauce. Mesa also gives a nice Portuguese roll with the Trinchado.

So I would rate the Trinchado 7/10, I prefer the creamy white sauce. So it has the same rating than the Braza Trinchado but the Mesa Trinchado just looks tastier when it gets to the table than the Braza Trinchado.

Dead Space

I played Dead Space almost a year after it was released. The game is really brilliant. I was captivated right up to the end and the ending was quite scary, my heart skipped a beat.

I would definitely play Dead Space 2, the follow up story will be great. I have a lot of unanswered questions around The Marker.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

So after a very long time of having this game I eventually finished it. The game was fun but it wasn't anything like KOTOR 2. My favourite is still KOTOR 2.

I chose the light side, so the ending was a bit of a let down, but it couldn't be anything else since the game is between episode 3 and episode 4 of Star Wars.

Trinchado @ O'Galito

It was Trinchado time again Sunday, the 2nd of August 2009. This time I went to O'Galito in Centurion to try their take on the Trinchado.

Just the photo alone shows that the O'Galito Trinchado and the Braza Trinchado are different. The O'Galito Trinchado has a nice creamy white wine sauce where the Braza Trinchado did not have the creamy part, only white wine part.

The O'Galito Trinchado was also not spicy, so again a nice chilled out Trinchado. I prefer the Portuguese roll that came with the Braza Trinchado. The O'Galito bread was fresh but the Portuguese roll just enhances the experience.

So I would rate the Trinchado 8/10, the sauce was better than Braza but the bread not.

Cellphone carry bag

I always have a problem when it comes to carrying my cellphone around. I really do not like the cellphone wrappers like the Body Glove products and I also do not want to carry my cellphone in my pocket the whole time. Carrying it around in my pocket is not always comfortable and it limits what pants I can wear.

Now previously I bought myself a digital camera carry bag which could fit both my cellphone and my wallet. I would wear it like a normal carry bag over the shoulder but it looked a bit like a purse. I called it my 'Man Bag' but my wife called it my 'Man Purse'!

When it came to getting a new cellphone I decided to look around for something different this time to carry the cellphone in. I discovered this nice little digital camera carry bag from Golla. Thank goodness the digital cameras became smaller over the last few years, now my cellphone fits snugly inside the carry bag and it has a little space for my credit card and driver's license.

So now I do not need to carry my wallet with me the whole time and the carry bag is small enough not to look like a 'Man Purse' any more. Now it just looks like a Leatherman hanging from my belt.

The Goonies

A childhood favourite movie of mine, The Goonies. At long last my favourite online shop Take2 had stock and I ordered it. So now I only need to make time to watch it again. Will need some popcorn and a soda for this classic.