Ciaran’s Omnipurpose Blog

It’s that time again. The time to buy the bits, bite the bullet and build a new PC. I’ve been building my own PCs for the last 10 years or so, and wouldn’t buy one off the shelf (laptops excepted, obviously). I like to have control over the specifications of the machine, know exactly what’s going into the system, and know how to fix it myself. Plus, it’s a lot of fun!

My aim was to build a PC that would be fast, stable and quiet; would let me do my usual productivity stuff quickly and also allow me to go loose on a bit of good gaming occasionally. Having done my research, I plumped for the following components:

• Intel i5 2500k - This runs at a stock 3.30GHz, but the “k” denotes that the multiplier is unlocked so it can be overclocked to 4.5GHz fairly easily even on an air-cooled system.
• ASRock Extreme3 Gen3 Motherboard - Choosing the motherboard was tricky. I just wanted a good solid performer that would overclock easily, but there appear to have been no duff boards in the running this time around. When I built my Barton-based system in 2003, there was a really stand-out board in the form of the ABit NF7-S. There were no such standouts this time around, so I picked this board more on a hunch, really.
• Antec Kúhler H2O 920 - My first experiment with watercooling. This replaces the fan on the processor with a radiator and pump system. It’s a bit like a fridge. I wanted a nice quiet system that would handle the overclock I might subject it to, but I didn’t want to have to worry about the intricate maintenance you have to schedule in with self-built watercooling. The unit is pre-filled, so there’s only a tiny likelihood there’ll be a leak.
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR-1600 RAM - 16GB is perhaps excessive, but when it’s cheap, why not? I was planning to run Windows7 64-bit, so I knew it would be addressable by the Operating System.
• Corsair TX650M 850W Power Supply - Again, a little bit of overkill on the PSU. However, I wanted a lot of headroom for future expansion, as well as the safety margin of not stressing out the PSU. I’ve had power supplies blow before and it’s not a lot of fun at all.
• Crucial RealSSD M4 128GB SSD Drive - Solid State drives, although relatively new, have reached that point in the innovation lifecycle where they’re becoming ubiquitous in high-end systems. They’re well supported by Windows 7 and have a couple of big advantages over standard hard drives. Firstly, they are super-fast with high seek- and transfer times – they make a perfect disk for the operating system. Secondly, if they do fail, they can still be read, unlike standard hard drives. This means your data won’t be lost, you’ll just have to get a new drive. The downside is that they are expensive for their size (about 12 times the cost, per GB of storage) – for that reason it makes a lot of sense to buy a second, standard drive for data:
• Seagate Barracuda 1TB Hard Drive - This monster is there to hold almost everything apart from the OS and what’s on my desktop.
• MSI ATI Radeon HD 6950 Twin FrozR III Power Edition 2048MB - Like a lot of computer gear, it’ makes sense to aim for the non leading-edge stuff where possible. For perhaps double the price of this card, I could have bought a card that would have given me approximately 10% more power. That isn’t sensible, let alone economical.
• Anidees AI6 Case - A brand-new design on the market. Lovely styling and excellent functional design: good airflow, good cable management, and enough space for my fat fingers to work in.

So, that’s most of the components. On with the build!

Here’s a view of the CPU socket (Socket 1155), ready for the PU to be installed. Lining it up is a little fiddly and actually installing it is rather scary. You hear all these stories about static from your body blowing the chip or even some people forcing the processor into place and bending the pins. The trick is to get the balance of delicacy and force just right: some force is needed to get the locking plate in place.

Here’s the CPU locking plate in place. At this point I have no idea if the damn thing will work. Oh well! Note, for point of reference in later shots, the memory slots on the right hand side of the CPU socket.

The next stage was installing the CPU cooler. Having installed air coolers before, this was going to be the main divergent point in this build. The cooler in question is the Antec Kúhler H2O 920. It was easily th hardest part of the whole installation process and took well over 30 mins to do. The instructions were appallingly written and had very little poor visual clues as to how to install the thing. Thankfully, I had this great video on YouTube to learn from, by Kevin Cozma. In the video, he pretty much scratches his head at the same things I was wondering about and it gave me confidence that I was fitting everything correctly. This confidence was essential given that at some stage I would have to use adhesive and wouldn’t be able to easily undo any mistakes. In the photo below, you can see the pump assembly (mounted over the CPU) with rubber hoses leading to a radiator and fans on the left hand side. The unit runs very quietly and cools brilliantly.

Here’s the finished build side on. To the left of the photo is the back of the case, to the right is the front of the case. The MSI graphics card in the middle of the chassis is a beast as you can see, and this reflects the emphasis on graphics nowadays. To the right of the card are two hard drives and below them the SSD. Look at how huge the radiator is on the left hand side of the picture (mounted into the back of the case)!

A lot of the cabling is tucked behind motherboard to encourage good airflow and make things look neat in the main compartment. The main issue for me was what to do with the unused cables from the Corsair Power Supply. For now, I’ve just bundled them at the bottom of the case. It looks a little messy, but it works. You can also see on this side of the case they’ve thoughtfully cut out the back of the motherboard panel so that you can access the back of the CPU. This was very useful when mounting the cooler bracket.

Here are the initial results from the build. I’ll be looking into overclocking the processor at some point to get its full potential, but happy to use my time elsewhere for now. I’m very close to perfect scores (7.9 is perfect) across the board on this system. If I get the inclination and time later, I’ll pull together other performance stats like 3DMark. The PC runs like a beast: it takes 18 seconds to power on and be ready to use Windows, and everything runs very snappily.

I took this during a recent trip to New York at Zucotti Park. It’s a collection of banners from the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Today, at 2am local time, Police raided and evicted the protesters. Unconfirmed reports say that:

• The first thing the police did was remove the press “for their own protection”
• The airspace was locked down to prevent news helicopters from reporting
• Legal monitors were prohibited from witnessing the serving of any papers
• Sonic Weapons have been deployed.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a whole year to the day since my Dad died.

So much has happened in the year since we lost him – so much that he would have wanted to see, so much that he could have shared with us, so much that we could have laughed together about. Of course, there are also regrets – so many things I wish I’d hurried up and done with him before he died.

It’s been a busy year, a year where we’ve all learned new things about ourselves through the pain of loss; a year where we learned a few things about Dad, especially how much people loved him and miss him.

Only yesterday, I was contacted through Twitter by an old friend of Dad’s who found out that he had died through this blog.

And on the weekend, Dinah (Rebecca’s sister) gave me the photos from an old mobile ‘phone I’d lent her, which had some old pictures of me and Dad on our travels or just messing about. This first one is from a trip to Prague:

And this second one is from a slightly tipsy Saturday afternoon, post-pub, when we had decided to go get some munchies together before heading home. I think he thought my obsession with taking pictures on my ‘phone a little daft, so he stuck his nose into the lens – I still remember his weird giggle at the time:

Today, we’ve already received cards and text messages of support – it’s not just me, Rebecca and Mum who are thinking of Dad one year on. That means a lot to us.

To find out more about Dad, please have a look here: My Father, My Teacher, My Friend and Dad’s Memorial Lunch.

This post is part of a series on The Alternative Vote Referendum on May 5th.

The polls are not looking good. Tomorrow’s once in a generation opportunity to make a small progressive step is set to be lost in the face of distortions. I was handed a postcard at the station today from the “No” campaign, which claimed that Labour and Conservative voters would have 1 vote under AV, but the BNP would have 6. This is false.

So let’s have one last review of the falsehoods spread by the campaign and put them to rest:

AV will not result in more coalitions

AV does not cost more

AV does not give more votes to some

AV is not about Clegg/ Cameron/ Miliband – it’s about you

AV will not deliver weak governments – it will deliver stronger mandates than FPTP

A vote for AV is a vote to increase your power!

This referendum matters – get out and vote!

This post is part of a series on The Alternative Vote Referendum on May 5th.

Democracy is one person one vote!

That’s one of the “No” slogans. The implication is that, under AV, some voters have more than one vote, whilst others do not. This video is from the “No” campaign:

(That’s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nz1R8NZrJ0 for facebook pals)

It would, of course, be terribly unfair if some people were given more votes than the next, but this is not what happens.

What does happen is that some people’s second (or lower) preferences are taken into account and other people’s are not. This is because their first preferences are knocked out in the first round(s).

Is this a bad thing for the people whose second preferences are not taken into account? In short: No.

The NO2AV camp says that supporters of unpopular parties get more votes. What they actually get is more opportunities to change their vote. Their vote changes according to the preferences they put on the ballot. Because each change is from a higher preference to a lower preference, changing one’s vote is a compromise.

To put it another way:

Having your second preference counted is not an advantage over first preference voters – it’s a disadvantage!

No voter has an unfair advantage over any other voter — and supporters of unpopular parties are the worst off.

AV gives one person, one vote. AV is democratic.

Something I vividly remember my Dad telling me about was the Moon landing in 1969. He told me that he watched it with my mum and with friends, marvelling at the “Giant Leap for Mankind”. Let’s savour that giant leap for a moment, shall we?

I remember thinking that the September 11 attacks were going to be the world event that I ended up telling my kids about. I’ll tell them how tragic it was and how upset their mum and I were as we watched it together all night long on the TV. It was one of those events where you should at least remember where you were when it happened? The “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” of Generation X and Y.

Where were you when Osama bin Laden was killed?

I was in bed, fast asleep. Wasn’t me!

Osama bin Laden is dead. Good. It serves him right. I’m even willing to turn a blind eye to the lack of due process in this case – it would have been a nightmare and possibly encouraged terror blackmail to try to get him freed.

At the time of writing, the War on Terror has cost almost $1.2 trillion and taken 10 years. In that ten years countless lives have been lost and immense damage to the relations between countries and communities has been wrought. From a westerner’s perspective our champion superpower has been humbled. And in that 10 years we have come full bloody circle:

We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose

I would like to add this about my admiration of Obama. He ordered the killing on Friday 29th April. The next evening, he trotted onto the stage and delivered this wonderful, funny speech that roasted his opponents and dealt with the stupidity of his opponents’ fascination over his birth certificate. He was hilarious! Were it me, I’d be too anxious about the operation going wrong, but he was cool as a cucumber.

(That’s http://youtu.be/n9mzJhvC-8E for all my Facebook readers)

So now bin Laden’s fishfood, I hope we start redoubling our efforts on space exploration, sustainable industry, balanced worldwide development. Let’s not burn our treasures on killing people – let’s invest them on things that move us out of the ever-decreasing spirals of violence and hatred, things that improve the Human condition.

Where were you when 9/11 happened?

Where were you when Osama bin Laden was killed?

Where will you be when something that fundamentally advances the cause of the Human species takes place?

This post is part of a series on The Atlernative Vote Referendum on May 5th.

Vote splitting is a real problem under “First Past the Post”, the system we have here in the UK, and which we share with the USA. Vote splitting occurs when two parties representing very similar viewpoints share votes between them, allowing another candidate to come out ahead. This can lead to the election of a candidate that represents a minority viewpoint.

Imagine being at a house party where a poll is taken to find out what soft drink everyone would like. Asked “Pepsi or lemonade?” the vote would go 60:40 and Pepsi is served. If the question becomes ”Pepsi, Coca-Cola or lemonade” the vote may return 30:30:40, due to the ‘split cola brand vote’, and everyone gets lemonade.

This effect had profound implications in the 2000 Presidential elections in the USA. Al Gore’s vote was split in some cases with that of Ralph Nader. Bush won by a whisker: remember the court proceedings at the end of the election? Who in their right mind can continue to trot out the idea that First Past the Post confers strong legitimacy?

Remember Neil Hamilton? His involvement in scandal after scandal did not stop him from being selected to stand for election in the fourth-safest seat in the country. Angered by his selection the BBC journalist, Martin Bell, resigned his position and announced an independent run in the constituency.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats, seeing Bell as having the best chance to kick the Tories where it hurt, in a safe seat, withdrew, and Bell won with 60.2% of the vote. Under AV they wouldn’t have had to withdraw because votes could have transferred between candidates. They only withdrew because they were afraid of splitting the large anti-Hamilton vote, which is much less risky under AV.

Vote splitting allows candidates with a pathetic share of the vote to win. In the last election, a Liberal Democrat won his seat with 29.9% of the vote. In 1992, a Liberal Democrat won with just 26% of the vote.

Vote splitting is a serious problem in the UK. Consider Johann Hari’s take on it in today’s Independent:

In Britain today, we have a centre-left majority who want this to be a country with European-level taxes, European-standard public services and European-level equality. We have had this for a very long time. Even at the height of Thatcherism, 56 per cent of people voted for parties committed to higher taxes and higher spending. But the centre-left vote is split between several parties – while the right-wing vote clusters around the Conservatives. So under FPTP they get to rule and dominate out of all proportion to their actual support, and drag most of us in a direction we don’t want to go. That’s why the Tories are united in supporting the current system, and throwing a fortune at preventing any change.

AV, because it corrects for vote-splitting, is more democratic than FPTP. That alone is reason enough to vote “Yes” on May 5th.

This post is part of a series on The Atlernative Vote Referendum on May 5th.

Our nation is in a “time of austerity”, goes the argument, so we can’t afford £250m to reform our electoral system, especially when we have to make cuts to things like maternity provision or flak jackets for soldiers.

There are several problems with this:

• It won’t cost £250m – part of the £250m figure is made up of the cost of the referendum itself (£80-£100m). Voting “No” won’t get that money back. About £130m is factored in to pay for electronic voting machines, which AV supporters have said won’t be needed. It’ll cost a little more each time, but not much, especially compared to the £600 Billion UK budget.
• Austerity is for the “little people” - We seem to have been able to fund pretty much anything we want when it suits the elite, such as banking bailouts or tax breaks to corporations.
• We were miserly during the good years – We went to war in Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003. Even during those economically “good years”, we still had the situation where soldiers had to buy their own kit. Do you really think the pittance saved in keeping a broken electoral system will really be spent on hospitals, schools or soldiers?
• What price democracy? – We’re rightly proud of our democracy. Elections cost money, even under First Past the Post. Should we save money and scrap elections altogether?

We need hospitals, schools and kit for the troops, as well as a fairer system that makes our government more accountable to the population as a whole and not just big business.

This post is part of a series on The Atlernative Vote Referendum on May 5th.

David Cameron has said that he feels in his “gut” that AV is wrong:

“It’s about what you feel in your gut, about the values you hold dear and the beliefs you instinctively have. And I just feel it, in my gut, that AV is wrong.”

So it’s just as well that his associate, Sayeeda Warsi (Minister Without Portfolio) can so ably demonstrate the feeble-mindedness that comes from just using your gut:

(That’s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVRtL20Ue54#t=1m10s for those of you reading this on Facebook)

This post is part of a series on The Atlernative Vote Referendum on May 5th.

In a previous post, I poked fun at the idea that ranking candidates in order of preference on the ballot (as is proposed under AV) is somehow too complex for the ordinary voter to understand.

Here’s the thing. I think First Past the Post makes voting more complicated than AV. In the last election, I knew whom I wanted to vote for, but before voted, I had to do the due diligence and do some research into the 2005 election (here) to make sure that my vote did not split the vote so that my least favourite candidate would get in. This is clearly far more complicated than ranking the candidates on the ballot paper.

This flowchart sums it up quite nicely:

Chart from www.anthonysmith.me.uk

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is against AV. He was elected under AV, so this is confusing. Is he saying that Londoners are smarter than the rest of the country? I hope not!