Hi everyone!
If you’re reading this then everything has gone well and SouthanUK is in it’s new home.
If you’re wondering where the theme went, I’ve had a few problems with it so its really going to have to be rewritten. So I’m back on the good old default theme; Twenty Eleven, for now.
That’s that for the moment, expect some more updates soon!
-Joe
Hey guys it’s been a while since I posted and thought it would be a great chance to tell you about my new PC that I built. Bare in mind, I did build this some time ago.
Side view
The case I chose, after much deliberation, was the Sharkoon T9 Black. It’s got support for USB3 and filtered intakes to stop all that dust.
Never straying from my roots, I went with an Intel 2600K. With that I also went with a Cooler Master TX3 for some after-market cooling action. Some Arctic 5 seals the deal. Now, I’ve found that my temperatures are a bit on the high side and it could be to do with the thermal paste application, however, Arctic say that it takes some time for it to “cure,” so I’m going to wait and see.
Asus 560 Ti
Now you can go on for ages looking at different cards and such, but as I was on a budget, the Asus nVidia GTX 560Ti DirectCUII was my choice. It’s got a great “after market” cooler on it and barely goes over 50°C. Very happy.
Mobo of choice was the Asus P8Z68-V/GEN3 Motherboard. Supports DDR3 RAM, Crossfire/SLI and has a Bluetooth module. Went with a Z68 because it straddles the line between Sandybridge and IvyBridge, so I could upgrade if I really needed to, unlikely though.
Now I went through 3 different power supplies here. The first two were; Cooler Master 400W and a Corsair 600W CXV2. I sent the first back because I’d underestimated the power requirements and the second because of really bad coil whine from it. I eventually settled on a Seasonic M12II-620 which is fully modular which helps with the amount of clutter in the case. No problems since.
Nothing too fancy here, just 8GB (4GB*2) of Corsair Vengeance RAM.
I was able to salvage 2 of my old HDDs from my old PC, a 1TB and a 500GB. However, I felt the need for speed. Oh I did. A Sandisk 128GB SSD satisfied that need and, yes, SSDs are worth every penny.
Now this isn’t the most fancy of computer parts, but hey, airflow matters. I originally had the stock fans that came with the case, however, after some months, the sound of them sounded like a plane about to take off. So, today, I swapped them out for some Noctua NF-F12s. Nice and quiet now.
So there we have it, my new computer. Now I built this back last August after some intense decorating and I’ve only just written this up. Must say, I’m very happy with how it’s working.
Catch you later!
Hello all! Yes I am alive, just life and stuff has got in the way recently.
For those who might not know, I’ve just come to the end of my BSc after 4 years. After all those years of strife, I graduated earlier this year. The sense of relief to actually hold the confirmation letter in my hand was great. I had a great time over those 4 years and (cliché as it may sound) changed me for the better.
Even after all that, I thought it’d be a clever idea to go on and do a MSc. This time round its Bioinformatics. “Why Bioinformatics?” I hear you screaming from the top of your lungs. Well, my final year project was an in silico analysis into a protein using homology based modelling techniques for both secondary and tertiary structure (Wiki if confused). This lead to me becoming rather interested in bioinformatics, hence my choice in Masters. After doing my BSc in Medical Genetics, Bioinformatics is a big change in direction for me and getting my head around things like Perl and R is taking some getting use to.
As to the future, I’m not all too sure, I’d like to do something like Genomics or Epigenetics for a PhD but knowing me I’ll probably change my mind a million times before settling on something. Lets see what this year brings first.
As I probably should have mentioned at the beginning of the post, if you couldn’t tell, I’ve revamped SouthanUK for the umpteenth time. This time round it shares some of the features from previous iterations but the focus this time is less on tweets, more on content. I came to the conclusion that sifting through millions of pages to find posts was not the best idea so now the tweets have been banished from the main index of pages and are now searchable if you so wish. The top 5 or so tweets are available to view at the top of the index page only. Follow me on twitter for latest news and ramblings.
Just a quick little post to say to have a look at my new redesigned page templates for the Podcast and for Twitter posts.
If you can’t be bothered to click here are some pictures;
Been an avid follower of NASA and their antics since the unfortunate accident in 2003 with Space Shuttle Columbia. One thing that has never ceased to amaze is the photos that NASA returns. These are some of the most mind blowing and awe inspiring photos you will ever see. No digital trickery or CG, just good old mother earth.
A peaceful shot of night time Egypt.
The above photo is just but a microcosm of what the NASA Spaceflight Gallery holds. So if you get the chance take a look at the latest Expedition 26 photos held in the gallery or check out some of the great shots from Expedition 25.
For a very interesting photoblog of this very subject check out Triggerpit’s post here.
Looking forward to STS-133’s launch next week [24th Feb] Lets hope all goes well, will post some more on the day.
Today is 10 years [Believe it or not] since the first article on Wikipedia was created and in those 10 years over 3.5 million articles have been written in the English Wikipedia alone with around 17 million [17 657 955 to be exact – 14/01/11 20:41 GMT!] in all the language variants, of which there are more than 278.
I do remember the first time I went on it way back in 2002, I believe I was looking for something to help with my homework [As is every other person who checks in to Wikipedia], and to my surprise I found this wealth of information that seemed very relevant indeed. Wikipedia is a great starting point for looking up something but one must use caution on the site since it is of course freely editable by anyone in the world. However, it is a brilliant starting point and can provide many happy hours of flicking between entries.
So here’s to Wikipedia’s eternal reign over our informational needs.
Happy New year everyone! Here’s to a great 2011 from SouthanUK!
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From everyone at SouthanUK, we wish you a Merry Christmas!
Now get off my blog you crazy people and have a good Christmas!
Hello all again, sorry for the blip in the old posts, many things have been happening in my life.
Had a nice big pileup of work to do at University that I’m slowly getting through so I haven’t been able to post.
A little status update;
All of my hate
So there you have it, a small snippet into my life.
More… eventually…
When I got my HTC Desire a few months back, it truly revolutionised the way I ran my life and how I interacted on the move.
Back on my old Nokia N95, the limitations of the Symbian operating system and the lack of any proper push email service really stifled what I could do with my phone. Sure I could view Youtube [When it decided I could,] and surf the web [with it crashing every now and again], but there was no proper integration with social networking services. The Facebook “application” was just a link to the mobile version of the site and Twitter was nowhere to be found. Here ends my Nokia rant.
The HTC Desire, from the box, was such a refreshing experience. Things just worked, everything flows, applications talk to each other and Android’s eyecandy really helped to set it apart from my old Nokia.
Now to the main point of this post, Google’s integration in this phone. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad thing at all! It just works. I have all of Google’s services at my beck and call at any time. Push GMail to my phone, Google’s Calendar service in the phone’s calendar, Contacts synced with the other services Google offers and my Youtube with its favourites. Well. Google Docs is missing at the moment, but I suspect it will appear very soon.
I write this post because I was imputing in my timetable into Google Calendar and totally forgot that I had my calendar on my phone synced with it, 10 seconds later I look at my phone, bam, there it all is, ready to go.
It makes me wonder how much Google does run my life…