Category: Tech

My current gaming computer is:

This rig is about 2~3 years old and I think I’m going to upgrade. Before, I’ve been avoiding upgrades because of my harddisk setup. RAID 0. In simple terms, it’s 2 harddisks working together as 1. The risk is also doubled. If 1 harddisk fails, data on both harddisks are as good as gone.

But I’m lucky as my harddisks have been running fine and non-stop(well, at least 90% uptime) ever since I bought them.

The biggest hassle is backing up files and restoring them on the new rig. But with less FFXI addiction now, I have more free time.

Things I’m going to upgrade:

But first, research must be done!

Update:

Here’s what I’ve chosen:

Total: SGD$1921 – Which is within my budget.

Decided not to go for SLI.

If I sell my old parts, I think I can get back $300~400.

I was experiencing weird internet problems. I’m on ADSL. My DSL signal would drop and try to reconnect. It was so frustrating because I can’t have a good game of FFXI. I got my entire PT killed when I DCed during a pull in a BC.

But I think I may have discovered the problem. And I’m a little embarassed about it because I was so sure that wasn’t the cause.

The fucking phones in my living room. They were probably faulty or maybe just the phone lines.

I’m guessing they are generating static onto the lines which affects my DSL stability.

As to how I discovered it, here’s the story.

One night, during one of those frustrating constant disconnecting sessions, I went to the living room and picked up the phone. I could hear static noise. And by holding the receiver for a while, it would gradually go away.

Then I noticed my DSL going back stable.

I tried it the next morning and wallah, it went worked again.

After work, I went to buy 2 new phones and some phone wires to replace the ones in my living room.

Till now, I haven’t seen that problem anymore. I really hope I fixed it. Because it has been irritating me for almost 6 months.

As to why I denied the phones to be the cause, I have tried connecting my modem directly to the wall and it didn’t work. I think static was still there on the phone lines and it didn’t go away easily.

Also, I don’t use phones at home. If my friends want to contact me, they would call my handphone directly. Only my mum uses the phones at home to chat with her friends.

Just need a few more days to confirm that the problem has been solved. *crosses fingers*

It was a sunny sunday afternoon. I took a few shots on my new camera. I need to learn more about ISOs and exposures and stuff…

Click on them for a larger view

A photoshopped version of the previous photo. Submitted to deviantart.

Here’s 2 photos taken in macro mode. The first one was resized from a much larger image. The second one (ring on my finger) was cropped.

One of my mum’s potted plants. Lots of life.

Can you solve this puzzle?

Comments table:

id = primary key, auto increment
entry_id = id of the blog entry

Target Result:

Explanation:
Can you come up with an SQL statement that retrieves all the comments for the entry of entry_id=10?

For each user that was retrieved, also calculate the sum of comments he’s made in total.

All this to be done in 1 SQL statement.

Should have done backups!

I was tweaking the database when I changed the datatype of my comments field from TINYTEXT to MEDIUMINT, I wanted MEDIUMTEXT.

So yea, the change in datatype cause me to lose 265 of the latest comments posted on my blog. I managed to find an old backup of the database but it was very old. Sigh…

*goes off to perform backups*