Thursday, April 16th, 2009
It’s not often I endorse or mention products for simply being products, but this piece by The Play Coalition is too good to pass up! Odd it is though for its implication of a type of suicide, if the bulb-headed figure were to release himself from his conduit via the saw they would not only plummet but their brain would cease to receive electrical impulse to brighten our world.
genius!
Monday, March 30th, 2009
now if they only had that with a bit of *bling
Friday, November 30th, 2007
while I have said before that I don’t like to turn my blog into a document of my materialist purchases, every now and then I simply find something that excites me and is after all part of a larger construct, as one finds relations between the hardware one uses and the work they produce.
I’ve never been a Macintosh user and I think it will be a long time before I ever am. I can appreciate what Apple have done in bringing advanced computing and a luscious user experience to such a large market, especially in recent years (I would go so far as to say the last decade). They’ve simplified the knowledge needed to use the computer as a tool, so that people can focus further on the content of their work. They can do this simply because they control the software as well as the hardware tied to their products. But one reason I’ve always been put-off from being a Mac user is the hardware: lack of diversity, of choices, and the absence of an ability to mod together a system that’s tailor-suited to your needs. Also money, but this stems from the lack of hardware choices, not the other way around. As Apple control the hardware used in their systems, they can charger a higher price for the product, a product which I ultimately absolutely cannot afford. I will elaborate:
I have had my current desktop machine since August 2004. I built it myself, as I have built every PC I’ve used for the last decade or so. It’s an Athlon XP 2800+ 2.0Ghz with 1Gig of DDR SDRAM. Those are the crucial stats. At the time this was a beefy machine. Everything else is pretty straightforward: a DVD ReWriter, firewire card, GeForce3 AGP video card with 256Mb of RAM, and lots internal hard drive storage. After 3 years that 1Gig of RAM is starting to be overwhelmed, and the processor just can’t handle the amount of programs I want to throw at it. An upgrade is in order.
I shop almost exclusively at newegg.com, with occasional purchases from tigerdirect. But newegg have great customer reviews, which I’ve always trusted and even contributed to myself. I spent about two hours researching components and reviews and have decided to upgrade the vital organs of my desktop machine: the motherboard, CPU, graphics card, power supply and RAM.
My laptop uses an Intel processor, but I’ve been more-pleased with AMD for my desktop solutions, so I settled on a Athlon 64 X2 5200+ running at 2.66Ghz frequency. This chip is dual-core, so it’s nearly tripling my computing power. The graphics card will be capable of running DirectX 10 should I ever upgrade that, and has 512Mb of Nvidia’s 8500GT chip to handle any games I might throw at it. Power supplies are more-crucial than people think, so to power these chips and the board I’m getting a full-650W PSU that can go up to a max load of over 700W. This should be more than enough energy to last me another 3 years!
All of these components are costing me just over $600, and that’s only because of shipping! After some rebates, the actual cost of the upgrade will float around $604! The comparable machine at the Apple store has two 2.66Ghz Intel Xeons and only supply the Nvidia 7300GT video card with 256Mb of graphics. Granted the processor is arguably better, but the graphics are cheaper and the rest of the hardware – firewire, DVD, wireless, etc. – is pretty standard. And that comparable Macintosh desktop? $2499!
Oh! MEMORY! I forgot about memory! (Or I planned to forget to defend my argument!)
My upgraded machine will include a whopping 8Gigs of DDR2 800 memory. 8 GIGS! 8 Gigs for an Apple Mac? Add $2099 bringing your total costs to $4598!
Fact is that all computing slows down over time, and all hardware becomes obsolete compared to the standards of the future. But if every three years I can save nearly $4000 then I don’t think Apple will make a convert out of me anytime soon. Especially not in a city like NYC where so much of my income already goes to rent and transport just so I can have the luxury of living here in the first place! I have the knowledge and the means to make this work, cheaply, and thus far my experience has been extremely rewarding. So be it!
Saturday, July 28th, 2007
The Hardware Aisle, my newest favorite blog, recently reported on this wall held together entirely with Titebond III glue. I can’t speak for other artists or crafty folk but I’m a total tool & materials dork, and love to hear about a good glue! Makes me want to head straight to the studio and just start gluing some wood together – 4,000 psi is no joke!
Oh yeah, The Hardware Aisle also introduced me to the SUPERPENCIL! Must. Have.
Any other good tools blogs out there?
Sunday, November 26th, 2006
so Turkey Day came and went. go figure the evening before Thanksgiving I started to feel a little sick in the throat; someone I’m living with had similar conditions so I wouldn’t be surprised if I picked up something from them, combined with being stressed out and overworked from the intense work this past week at work. However I did manage to sense the sore throat coming on a little earlier than usual and think I managed to suppress it quite well by consuming nearly a litre of whiskey these past four days. Although not looking forward to the context I’ll definitely give that cure-all another go!
But not all was lost this weekend. I did manage to construct my tool shelf, which I have been planning for some time now but was for a while unable to find the proper shelving brackets, which I finally found a few days ago during a tool run for another item. Sweet! So the shelf sits above the photocopier and the desktop monitor, and kind of frames off a previously-dead space part of the wall, while still allowing me to reach all the hand-tools. These are tools I use most-often, or in the case of the button maker are large and odd-shaped and otherwise difficult to store anywhere else.
The complete list of tools on the shelf are:
two tape guns (one in photo)
tape rolls
sanding block
laser level
analog level
three sizes glue
two hammers (one in photo)
button maker
two button die cutters
staple gun
jar of push pins
spray glue
three tape measures
power screwdriver
screwdriver battery charger
drill bit tray
And then I get to spend the rest of my day driving a 16-foot Budget rental around town, helping a friend move house. Guess I should just about get ready for that. And maybe eat some breakfast.
