I put my laptop video card in the oven. Srsly [Updated]
For starters, I was reading wikipedia when my computer decided to die. It didn’t die die, but there were horizontal lines all over the place, resolution was down to the lowest, and things were extremely unreadable. I blame fight-or-flight for my next action : I did a system restore to some random date hoping it would be a driver bug and it would fix the issue. What I did was permanently screw up Windows by randomly clicking updates without thinking. Flight or fight, guys. It was instinctual.
Anyway, at this point even the boot screen was having horizontal and weird diagonal line issues. Letters were interchanging while I was looking at the screen. The effect can only be described as the Matrix effect. Letters shifted back and forth. Greek letters, Latin letters, Numbers, blonde, brunette, redhead. David said it was the CPU, my dad said it was the GPU, the diagnostic test said it was my Hard Drive. I said, I need a beer.
And boy did I need it, because taking apart an Inspiron 9400 (Also known as the Dell Inspiron E1705) is a pain, especially when it’s been taken apart before and some of the screws are worn down (Thanks Dad). After lots of toying around and trying to avoid the worn down screws, I got to the video card. It looked fine on the outside …
Now, why did I decide to bake my video card even though there is seemingly alot of opposition to it and people making fun of the method as a joke? Because I can’t really buy a new one – I’d have to buy something used or refurbished and it would soon cause the same issues. Old video cards die, it’s just a fact of life. My dad, who has a really good poker face after a glass of wine, explained that the fissures would be reflowed if I baked it, while occasionally giggling. So either this would work … or I would be the butt of all oven jokes for a long long time. For the record he also leaned in and in a quiet voice said, “I’ve always wanted to ask you this … what was it like on that gypsy’s lap?” No comment.
So I stuck my NVIDIA Go 7900 in my oven on a fresh aluminum foil cookie sheet, at 400 degrees for 9 minutes and 5 seconds. I let it cool down in the oven with the door cracked for about 2 minutes. Then I took it out and let it cool on my stove with the fan going on max. There were weird smells. My dog started clawing at random things. I figure either we get cancer or superpowers.
I ventilated the room a bit and waited for the video card to cool. BTW, I put it in upside down – and the GPU did not fall out. I put an aluminum ball underneath the GPU (and the four corners of the video card) just in case.
I shoddily put my laptop together without screwing anything in – just to give this oven-baked card a test run.
The boot screen was good – no weird lines. The windows boot screen was also flawless, but windows wouldn’t start because of the stuff I did earlier to it. Regardless, I backed up important information on a different computer and then re-installed windows. (The old girl deserved it, I don’t remember the last time she got a fresh re-install. This computer is from 2006.) So, I’m writing this on a laptop with a baked video card.
It worked – nuff said.
Update: 2 days later. Getting weird lines again. But I’m letting the computer sit and power through it. After it had a couple seizures for 10-15 minutes it got back to normal.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.Blogs I wrote with my left hand Graphic Design Jumpino Media Nerdy Computer Stuff Web Design
by Noemi x
Did Google Plus steal design elements? [or the things money cannot buy.]
I don’t want to write this post right now, but I have to. I damaged my wrist pretty badly yesterday and its in a splint. So here goes blogging with my non-dominant hand. I designed the website Jumpino.com. Recently me and my brother have been getting lots of comments on the similarities with Google+.
I care more about my wrist right now, honestly. Because I write with my right hand, I draw, I paint, I sew, I sketch, I type/use the mouse with it. I can’t even continue my lighting project without my right hand. And this is the crucial difference between me and Google – I am a creator. Google is a company. They pay people well to come up with ideas, to design them, to market them, and to monetize them.
I got paid nothing, I took a break from school, I didn’t work – I dedicated half a year of my life to creating something I thought at the time was revolutionary. Give me a break, I was a teenager. Two people. Zero funding. and a HELL of a lot of determination. More importantly, I gave all this up for a project that ultimately failed – and I’d do it again.
So did Google steal my idea? No.
Ideas are a dime a dozen and if you put 10 smart kids in a room and tell them to brainstorm on social networking ideas, the Jumpino idea (live discussion grouped in the construct of social circles) will be brought up much faster than you think. It’s a great idea, but not a genius one. I am no Tesla. In fact, I’m surprised I was the first person to use the term “Private Circles” in the context of live web discussions.
So did they steal the design? Maybe.
I think there is a good chance my design heavily inspired Google+
Here are four solid things that feel uncomfortably similar:
1. The terminology, specifically, “Private Circles.”
2. Hand drawn crayon style, specifically arrows and circles.
3. Circle Icon. You can make a circle a million different ways. The red, the edge thickness, the fact that it’s hollow. This was the first thing that struck me.
4. Multiply Color Effect.
I think all of these separately don’t mean much – but in the context of an app based on the similar idea of social circles, it raises a few flags. I’m still willing to believe it might be a huge coincidence or synchronicity.
I think watching our “ad” videos, looking at the graphics below and visiting the Jumpino site will help you make up your mind.
Crayon style design elements. Still on the live website today.
Similar terminology. Still on the site.
Circle icons. still live.
I don't think this is live anymore but it was on the about page for a while
an early icon for circle linking
About 90% of people I’ve asked that compare the graphics say that there was probably some inspiration going on. For one, I guarantee there is someone at Google who has the responsibility of scoping out competitor products. We did that and we were just two people. (Fun fact, there are lots of other startups based on the same concept, but only our’s has this design and only ours used the term circles pre-Google+)
So what is it that I want? Nothing, actually.
I don’t need the recognition. I already know what I made, what I’m capable of, what I will make and that I will figure this life out without a footnote in the commented code of some big corporation. I know my startup failed to get a huge following and the lessons I learned were priceless, which brings me to:
I don’t need compensation. I’m lucky enough to get freelance work here and there on top of having a loving family that gave me a roof and sustenance and a computer to start programming on at the exciting age of 7. I have enough – and I have the tools to create more.
and lastly,
I don’t want Google plus to fail. After all, I use Google Reader, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and much more.
I’ve already won – because I make stuff without caring about recognition and compensation. Google – How many of your Google+ employees would still work if you never paid them or gave them credit for their work? Maybe one, two?
Google can’t afford authenticity.
This is why real web innovation will still come from kids and young adults screwing around with code, people with or without degrees, of any gender(!), ethnicity, and class. I think alot of people get discouraged when they hear about what happened with Dodgeball and Google – but remember that we have the drive and the authenticity to move the web forward. Your competitor is not Google or Microsoft or Apple. You are competing against yourself and against time. Small time developers have this huge advantage of actually caring about what we program. We are 5 steps ahead of Google, all the time. How else did I come up with a similar idea to the circles in Google+ 2 years before they did? I’m not a genius, I’m just passionate.
I would say I’m off to make the next big thing but I’m really just going to google wrist injuries, elevate my arm, eat ice cream, and take a nap.
xoxo!
Noemi
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.Dear Google Calendar Developers
I would like a snippet-link that I can put on my favorites tab that I can use similar to the Google Reader one. I can select some text and it will use that to create an event. This would make organizing my school stuff alot easier. Ya know, in case you ever feel like improving Calendar.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.This is the free wi-fi internet I get in Romania
Hey, free is free. When I connect to the landline its much faster. I just don’t have a cable that’s long enough right now. And this speed is pretty good for most of the stuff I’m doing right now (blogging, emailing), but I doubt it’s good enough for Skyping.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.My weight in the past 2 years. (Wii Fit Graph)
Wii Fit has been pretty useless for me as far as losing weight (you can tell where I used it a lot because there are a lot more weigh-ins .. I used it daily for a while.) Within those concentrated dots you don’t see that much improvement, except for October, where I distinctly remember losing my appetite, directly related to my cessation of a SSRI medication, and not related to Wii Fit activities. Overall, you do see improvement, because I started eating less in general (probably 1500-2000 cals a day), less at night, avoiding sugar (I seem to have lost my constant craving for it, probably SSRI related), & drinking almost only diet soda. Actually this is the least I’ve weighed since I was 16, probably.
The endurance exercises like running and biking on Wii Fit are waste of time and it doesn’t help you lose weight, or gain muscle. Actually I find that most of Wii Fit is a waste of time, unless you enjoy doing it. (ie, yoga)
Edit: Actually I did increase my muscle mass in my thighs with lunges. However I wasn’t happy because my intention was to lose weight in my thighs. My thighs actually got thicker, not in a bad way, but enough that I got a stretch mark. This upset me and that was the first time I quit doing it. Alot of the exercises are marked incorrectly like this and I wasted alot of time doing things that were not bringing me closer to my goals. (Overall weight loss, definition in arms and stomach area.)
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.I hate oversimplified, ugly RSS feeds.
I use Google Reader and I find it frustrating that I can’t use RSS for some of my favorite blogs (which I’m slowly reading less of) because the RSS is ugly. Here lies my standards for the ideal RSS feed:
- At least one image, but no more than 2. I like visuals, and alot of the blogs I follow are mostly about the visuals. Even the one’s that aren’t – I like to see the photo on the post. So many feeds strip the photo. This is annoying. I’m not going to go to the website to see a picture for every single post.
- Too much shortening. I’m gonna have to see more than 2 sentences. I find that mostly news sources are guilty of this. This is tolerable, if the article seems interesting I’ll go ahead and click & go to the website. I wish there was a built-in RSS thing to expand however, so there would be less clicking, tabs & pages involved.
- Not enough shortening. I don’t shorten my posts at all but I feel like my posts aren’t big enough to clog up your feed. When you have a post with 10 paragraphs and an image between each paragraph, it’s annoying to scroll down through the stuff I’m not interested in. Google Reader also doesn’t have an easy way to close/hide/mark read an item. You usually have to click the preceding item to hide it. I write a long post from time to time, but what annoys me with this is blogs that have consistently long posts without a more tag.
I admit that when I did PinkZap I had alot of readers through RSS, and I never took care to make sure my RSS looked good. I was mostly focused on the look of the website. I’ve heard recently that RSS is dying. But I hope RSS doesn’t die. I like using it.
Have something to say about this post? Contact me.New Starcraft 2 Cinematic Trailer
So pretty ^^ Isn’t it funny how all Blizzard games sort of have the same theme .. Arthas and Kerrigan both are corrupted and there’s the whole conflict within themselves. I still like it though.
Dynamic jQuery Art: Random Pixel Project
This is pretty neat. If you just want to see the work, click the link at the end.
The story: While I couldn’t sleep last night, I was messing around with my random color script I made for Jquery. I started thinking about the Infinite monkey theorem and how it could apply to visual art. Basically the Theorem states that a monkey writing on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time could produce anything, including a Shakespeare play. Well, visual art is alot more forgiving than literature, so I wondered how I could display the infinite monkey theorem in a visual manner. I don’t have a monkey, but I have a computer, which fits the role well.
I created 363 “pixels” (33×11) that are all random colors. The goal is to see something recognizable. Occaisionally I see geometric shapes and such, but not very well. The only part of the experiment I can’t do is the infinite time thing. Bummer.
As a secondary purpose, this is a great visual illusion. If you draw something (just hover your mouse over the squares to draw), you can see your strokes only for about 5 seconds, before it blends back in with the static. The grayscale makes it alot harder to see what you’re drawing. The gray-scale drawings disappear in under 5 seconds on average. I think this is because the grayscale randomizer outputs much less information (no hue or saturation) so its harder for your brain to differentiate between blocks. At least, that’s my theory. :) If anyone is a psych researcher, please let me know your thoughts on this. I’d really like to learn more about it.
For the above experiment, I recommend drawing an infinity sign. ∞
Click here to try it out.
So far all I’ve spotted is a backwards P. Send me screenshots if you see anything interesting!
jQuery trick: Assigning random colors to each object of a class.
Random colors can come in useful in web design. You can use them for background colors of certain elements (like posts). You can limit the randomness of the colors to light colors or dark. I originally came up with this script to create a replacement for gravatars – basically get rid of avatars and just give commenters a random color based on their name (or email). The first step was to create the random colors. With jQuery installed, this is all the code I needed.
$(document).ready(function() {
$('.examplebox').each(function () {
var hue = 'rgb(' + (Math.floor(Math.random() * 256)) + ',' + (Math.floor(Math.random() * 256)) + ',' + (Math.floor(Math.random() * 256)) + ')';
$(this).css("background-color", hue);
});
});
For this simple example, I’m going to be changing the background color. This is the CSS for my little divs below.
.examplebox {width:50px; height:50px;float:left;margin:10px;background:red;}
Refresh to see more colors. I’m still working on the plugin to base the random color on the commenters name.
Oh, and to use only light colors, you modify the rgb formula to your liking. This will only yield light colors:
'rgb(' + (Math.floor((256-199)*Math.random()) + 200) + ',' + (Math.floor((256-199)*Math.random()) + 200) + ',' + (Math.floor((256-199)*Math.random()) + 200) + ')';
I love the visual effect these random color boxes give off, don’t you? :)
PS. If the boxes are all red, the script isn’t working.
Sneak Peak of Jumpino 2.0
As you can see, we’re going for a much more appy look, and straying from the cutesy creative look. We want to expand our users to include more serious based discussion. This is just the side bar – everything will be dynamically adjustable. The major downside to this is, of course, less customization for the end user. We will introduce post color customization (limited to sane, pastel colors only) and we hope that will offset the disappointment from taking away backgrounds.
I’ve always liked customization - and think it’s important. But you have to go with the flow and follow confirmed trends. We’re also going to be releasing a survey soon, to get the current user’s take on the new layout. All in all, I like where we’re going and feel like this improvement will drastically improve our retention rate. (Not to mention the use of Open ID will increase use rate, in a general sense.)
- Noemi
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