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Well what an eventful week. I shall be writing a series of entries over the next two days about everything that has happened.

First topic: New heat sink and fan.

One week ago, last Tuesday (20/05/08) I shut down my machine due to failure in the internet, there was no reason to leave it on if I couldn’t get connected. However, on Wednesday the following day, I boot up only to be hit with a stop error screen!

What! Re-starting I become puzzled, only to be hit with another stop error! What!! After a second re-start I see a screen telling me I have an incompatible bios, which I get twice so decide that’s the issue.

I heads off to the computer shop to see Carl and find out what he makes of it, to which he becomes as confused as me, never coming across the issue before. I’m all for new findings but not with pc’s.

After some initial prodding and un-connecting, we ruled out a memory fault; hard disk fault; optical drive fault; and power pack fault. Leaving us only the processor and motherboard.

As I had jumped the que of other jobs on the bench further fault finding was left for a few days. Further investigation lead us to try a new motherboard, which had to be ordered in. So, having finally received the new mobo, the bits where un-screwed; un-slotted; and un-plugged, to which Carl noticed the heat sink wasn’t sat correctly over the processor.

Hmm, that can cause an over heat, and we don’t like that. Trying out an old heat sink my machine booted up and ran first try. All that waiting eh.

I now have myself a brand new one, which screws into a backplate instead of some weired clips ‘holding’ it to the mobo. I must say it looks nicer, and is supposed to run quieter but doesn’t.

So after eight days of inactivity I’m back on-line again.

It turns out that my phone line had a cut in it.

After two weeks of trying to have the issue resolved I had an engineer sent round this evening to repair the problem.

The line at the junction box was fine, so that left the box or something in between. Two minuets of investigating and the problem was found, a cut in the line. The cable was re-routed to avoid any slack, and the chance of the same issue arising.

After re-fitting the wall socket and ringing the house, I had a working phone again.

I’m going to send an email to praise the engineer for the work he carried out.

I decided yesterday was the right time to order my brand new laptop, an Inspiron 1525 which looks great and comes with some nifty stuff.

At 23:52pm my order was sent through, and I received acknowledgment via email about it. Having just checked my email box a few moments ago I had another mail from Dell, confirming my order. Upon reading this I noticed the ‘Estimated Delivery Date’ (27/05/2008).
Well, clicking the order status link and reading the top box it said:

Your order has been dispatched as of 12/05/2008

Wow, dispatched somewhere within 20 hours! The delivery will take about 2-5 days though, which means I hopefully get my new toy before the weekend.

I’m now impressed, the drastic thoughts of it having st00pid vista pre-installed are slowly residing as I shall be formatting direct to Xubuntu, due to the Ubuntu and Kubuntu cd’s being in delivery aswell. I don’t burn iso’s very well so prefer to have a disk done for me.
I did try to get the same machine with Ubuntu pre-installed but it wasn’t to the same specifications, and the price was the same. Logic then dictated to buy the better box and format completely. I won’t be dual booting, I’ve never tried it before but who honestly wants to keep vista. I’m now another statistic though, which is disappointing.

As always, I shall update with comments below when the situation changes. Who knows, the laptop may arrive early.

Are Microsoft after something you think?

The first beta release of the latest browser update has been available since Thursday, which quite frankly not that many people will care about.

News of the newest version does mean that I now have to make sure the site works correctly, as Microsoft are finally stepping into the same boat as every other browser and are going standards compliant. Yes you heard right, they’re going to make the internet work again, yay!!

As i don’t actually have IE 7 installed, and I won’t be installing IE 8 neither, I’m going to have to crash someones house and “borrow” their computer to test the website and weblog. Might be an issue there.

Since the forums are belonging to IPS I’ll leave it up to the guys over there to make everything compatible, as screen shots show a few iffy parts.

Why can’t all you open source gods collaborate with the w3c and just make one sexy browser, that works well; looks good; runs fast; and is customisable for all us “I don’t want that feature” users. That would solve all design issues.

Oh well, I’m just going to have to find someone silly enough to install a Microsoft beta and see how scary the sites really are.

Now XPS – P3 would be such a cool name! XPS is total hardcore, while P3, well I’m not too sure about the P3 to be honest.

Anywhoo, why not be late? The second release candidate for this service pack has been around for a week now; and the news of SP3 has been around since last year, but I’ve only known of it for two weeks! Two weeks is well laaaaaaaame.

As I haven’t blogged much else I’ve decided to have my say. So there. Microsoft “loves” .. us?

This pack will include all of the previously released updates for SP2, which is good seeing as how I don’t install them.

I dare say this so called news won’t really appeal much since when I manage to buy my laptop I’ll be installing Ubuntu onto the desktop! .. and no, I won’t be buying a vista run laptop!! Don’t get me wrong, it looks nice and everything, I just prefer it on someone else’s machine.

If I have no luck with my laptop I may go for one of those air thingies, you know, with an apple on it. I would need a wage package first though! Starting at £1199, that’s just like asking the guy wearing the ski mask to hold your money.

I suppose if the pack is fully released before I become employed I’ll install it and break everything.

Well I’m still after a notebook computer (laptop) and decided to contact Dell to see what they could do for me after noticing the Inspiron 6400 was no longer available with good old trusty Ubuntu.

This is the chat I had:

• tony ichirō: Basically I’m looking to purchase a laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed. Is there any chance I can have one built?
• Agent: Thank you for contacting Dell Sales Chat. This is Agent, your Sales Advisor. Please give me a moment while I review your query.
• tony ichirō: Do note I’m not after the xps.
• Agent: I understand that.
• Agent: Please give me a moment.
• Agent: I am afraid, only one Laptop is available with Ubuntu
• Agent: and that is XPS 1330.
• Agent: with 13.3″ screen
• Agent: and the Price range starts from £579 Inc VAT and shipping.
• tony ichirō: I would like to query if it’s at all possible for Dell to build me one to my specifications?
• tony ichirō: .. as that is what they do no? Build machines?
• Agent: sure i can try my best to do that.
• Agent: if you can tell me what would you need with the Laptop, then i can configure and let you know about that Laptop.
• tony ichirō: Firstly would it be possible to have Ubuntu as the Op system?
• Agent: only XPS 1330 is available with Ubuntu.
• tony ichirō: Why is that?
• Agent: That is only Laptop available with Ubuntu.
• tony ichirō: Is there an email address I can contact?
• Agent: Regarding what ?
• tony ichirō: The subject matter we are discussing.
• Agent: i am afraid we do not have any Email address, where you can discuss about that.
• tony ichirō: So to clarify .. there is absolutely no possible way Dell can build me a machine to the way I would like?
• Agent: its all about Demand.
• tony ichirō: This is demand.
• tony ichirō:
• Agent: Most of the UK customer choose Vista, not Ubuntu
• tony ichirō: News flash .. vista sucks
• tony ichirō: :p
• Agent: i am afraid, but that is a wrong information.
• Agent: Vista is the best operating system than any other operating system.
• tony ichirō: Do you work for Dell or Microsoft here?
• Agent: I am sorry, but i work for Dell, however its the decision of Dell to offer which Laptop with Ubuntu and that is on Demand.
• tony ichirō: Ubuntu is on demand I know.
• Agent: I know, but not more than Vista.
• tony ichirō: Because it’s shipped as standard .. most people don’t realise they have free choice!
• Agent: I am afraid, only XPS 1330 is available with Ubuntu.
• Agent: if you wish i can explain you about that.
• tony ichirō: I’d prefer not to format to Ubuntu in case of an issue that Dell would then say my warranty is void.
• tony ichirō: I asked why that was before so yes, please explain.
• Agent: I will send you the link of that Laptop, so that you can take a look at it
• Agent: Agent pushes page, [link]
• tony ichirō: I stated at the beginning of this chat that I wasn’t after the XPS!
• Agent: Please click on the link and then take a look at the configuration.
• Agent: you can also customise it.
• tony ichirō: To something a little over my budget.
• Agent: and i have also mentioned, that is the only laptop which is available with Ubuntu.
• System: Agent has left this session!
• System: The session has ended!

Well they certainly don’t like to be corrected. Having stated I wasn’t looking for the XPS they preceded to “sell” it to me.

I would prefer not to have the trouble of formatting in case something goes wrong, and I would also have another XP license laying around, which is a waste of good storage space.

Dare say I’ll see what comes up, or maybe contact PC World. I need to find a decent machine though!

Funny title I know but It’s late.

At around 4pm GMT time I headed in to my local game store and purchased myself a shiny new xbox 360.

Yes I know it’s old news and everyone has one, but I don’t care, I need to blog about something. Wasn’t too bad a buy, at £249.99 with free Assassins Creed (RRP £39.99 currently). I tried to have the choice of game changed for CoD4, but they wouldn’t go for it as the discount wouldn’t of worked, since I managed to buy the bundle a day after the offer ended.

I bought myself the premium console as you may have noticed from the price, so I now have a legible reason to stay in bed all day, playing games wirelessly.

The surprising thing is I haven’t actually switched the console on yet. It’s all plugged in and sat waiting, I just ended up watching CSI (new series) and Shameless (new series). I’m also moving into my new flat tomorrow, so the console will go back into the box!

Oh well, at least I have something to look forward to opening .. again.

Due to the manufacture date of my console I should have the new 65nm ‘falcon’ chip installed. The guy in the shop seemed non-to-happy that I actually asked if it had the newer CPU.

Well I would say it’s official but anything Microsoft related has been for a good few years now .. content inside tables, inside divs, inside tables, inside divs, inside internet explorer 6 severely suck!

I’m talking about the skin I currently have in production for InvisionFree. The effect I have includes nice little corners around the content boxes and the main page. Explorer doesn’t like this when I add a little bit of padding to make it all look nicer. Having spent some time adding everything inside another table and stuffing widths on them the effect sort of works correctly, or is livable for those st00pid enough to actually use a Microsoft browser. However, now that one thing works something else breaks, well it isn’t actually broke, just to wide in some places.

I’m considering taking a few leaves off of the Microsoft tree and releasing the skin half finished; un-viewable within their own product. But that isn’t fare to the poor people unable to download a decent browser.

I dare say the whole issue will be solvable but I’m just worn out. I’ve considered removing the nice effect and having the skin standard. Either that or attempt a different method to get the same effect. Yea, that sounds good.

Next weeks news: An unknown male; about 22, was found breaking into peoples homes and removing a piece of software from peoples computers. When questioned by police as to why, he simply stated “because I care”.

Update to this: I have now managed to produce the same effect I was after in a different way, using st00pid tabhulz0rz!!11!11 .. As I’m going to be unavailable next week both of the skins won’t be finished until the second week of November .. hopefully.

Late one evening I was aimlessly minding my own business on my computer when, for no reason at all, my machine restarts itself.

Panic kicks in at this point, as it re-boots and comes up against a blue screen with error messages. I switch it off and restart, but once again the blue screen, so I repeat the process and this time I have an apology screen and some options. Trying these in vain I had to take my machine to the shop for repair.

Initial diagnosis, windows was corrupt. A repair was initiated but wouldn’t run, and actual hard-drive corruption was thought to be the problem. After a few weeks of nothing, and no data recovery possible, the disk was formatted and OS re-installed.

Back at home I switched the computer on and it started. However, after about two hours of re-installing programs and system tweaks, boom .. the machine re-boots.

So it’s now back in the shop to undergo more testing with some new software. Hopefully it will be fine otherwise I’ll need to purchase a new £36, 80-gig SATA hard-drive.

I won’t be paying for diagnosis and repair since the problem wasn’t solved and it cost £55 the previous time.

Fingers crossed I have it back for Thursday, the IF web Design Competition has been extended again until then.