Clown College = fiat lux?
Jun. 15th, 2002 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonne"I'll trust you not to refer to Princeton that way." -Sideshow Bob's brother
Before I explain that, I must turn off Whaddya Know? I don't mind this show when I'm trying to nap or I want to feel superior to other Americans. WBUR, the NPR station here in Boston, only plays the first hour of this two-hour program. I have a theory that WBUR only plays this much of the show so that the typical Cantabridgian can think: "ha ha, we're cultured folks on the East Coast and these plebes can't tell a joke from a sausage." WBUR doesn't even break in during this pledge drive, so they must think no one wants the show.
WBUR must consider 1 to 3 pm on Saturday a write-off. Whaddya Know? comes on at 1; Only a Game follows at 2. Only a Game the sports show for people that don't watch sports and likely got beat up by jocks well into their twenties. Since Boston has a strange relationship with sports, it makes sense that OaG is a local show.
I have a very nice used monitor now. Unlike most of my recent computer scavengings, I had to pay good money for it (or at least I will in a fortnight, when I have the money for my cousin. Thanks, Nance!). It's a Princeton monitor -- couple years old, but it's a very heavy, 19-inch, business grade mack. It has color temperature presets and variable controls for each electron gun. It's fast. It's capable of 1600 x 1200 pixels. It maxed out my crummy 2-meg video card, which can only give it 16-bit color depth at 1024 x 760 (for those not hip to such scheisse, proper two-dimensional color requires 24 bits).
I've only had this puppy on my desk for a couple hours, but I suddenly have no desire to leave my apartment today. I'm postponing a run to the bottle redemption lot, which isn't open for long and I sure need a couple bucks. I will post this first, before I forget all of it. I have only been tweaking the Win98 specs so far, which means it looks nice enough to run Microslop for coding. I pulled up Visual SlickEdit, the program I use in Windows when I'm coding, and I could read everything without panning back and forth. My old 15" monitor made even LiveJournal look funny.
This is making me think about taking a bigger, more hardcore step with my computer hardware activities. This computer is four years old and was built by broke Herkimer County geeks. While it is a tank, it doesn't have PS/2 ports, USB, or even an AGP slot on the motherboard. While the former two can be slapped in, the last can only be found on a newer motherboard. This means my options for a new video card are limited.
I'm considering gutting the Frankenbox I have in my bedroom (the computer I'm using now is in the living room), since its motherboard claims to have a bootleg BIOS anyway and only has one rusty SDRAM slot. I'd buy a shiny new board and an AMD chip. I'd put in a fluffy yummy GeForce 3 or 4 video card. Then I'd add Edelbrock intakes, pop-up pistons and mag wheels. (If Vic Edelbrock Jr wanted to add a zero to his fortune, he'd start selling cast-aluminum computer towers and manifolds for chip coolers.)
(Oh, Edelbrock is a company that has been making hot rod car parts since the Thirties. Think muscle cars, too.)
I had been thinking that building a full computer was beyond my ken. When I think about how much I've been cramming into my head about computer hardware, I realize I'm ready.
I smell my future -- and it's got a lot of electrons.
-hand me that screwdriver, Dante
Before I explain that, I must turn off Whaddya Know? I don't mind this show when I'm trying to nap or I want to feel superior to other Americans. WBUR, the NPR station here in Boston, only plays the first hour of this two-hour program. I have a theory that WBUR only plays this much of the show so that the typical Cantabridgian can think: "ha ha, we're cultured folks on the East Coast and these plebes can't tell a joke from a sausage." WBUR doesn't even break in during this pledge drive, so they must think no one wants the show.
WBUR must consider 1 to 3 pm on Saturday a write-off. Whaddya Know? comes on at 1; Only a Game follows at 2. Only a Game the sports show for people that don't watch sports and likely got beat up by jocks well into their twenties. Since Boston has a strange relationship with sports, it makes sense that OaG is a local show.
I have a very nice used monitor now. Unlike most of my recent computer scavengings, I had to pay good money for it (or at least I will in a fortnight, when I have the money for my cousin. Thanks, Nance!). It's a Princeton monitor -- couple years old, but it's a very heavy, 19-inch, business grade mack. It has color temperature presets and variable controls for each electron gun. It's fast. It's capable of 1600 x 1200 pixels. It maxed out my crummy 2-meg video card, which can only give it 16-bit color depth at 1024 x 760 (for those not hip to such scheisse, proper two-dimensional color requires 24 bits).
I've only had this puppy on my desk for a couple hours, but I suddenly have no desire to leave my apartment today. I'm postponing a run to the bottle redemption lot, which isn't open for long and I sure need a couple bucks. I will post this first, before I forget all of it. I have only been tweaking the Win98 specs so far, which means it looks nice enough to run Microslop for coding. I pulled up Visual SlickEdit, the program I use in Windows when I'm coding, and I could read everything without panning back and forth. My old 15" monitor made even LiveJournal look funny.
This is making me think about taking a bigger, more hardcore step with my computer hardware activities. This computer is four years old and was built by broke Herkimer County geeks. While it is a tank, it doesn't have PS/2 ports, USB, or even an AGP slot on the motherboard. While the former two can be slapped in, the last can only be found on a newer motherboard. This means my options for a new video card are limited.
I'm considering gutting the Frankenbox I have in my bedroom (the computer I'm using now is in the living room), since its motherboard claims to have a bootleg BIOS anyway and only has one rusty SDRAM slot. I'd buy a shiny new board and an AMD chip. I'd put in a fluffy yummy GeForce 3 or 4 video card. Then I'd add Edelbrock intakes, pop-up pistons and mag wheels. (If Vic Edelbrock Jr wanted to add a zero to his fortune, he'd start selling cast-aluminum computer towers and manifolds for chip coolers.)
(Oh, Edelbrock is a company that has been making hot rod car parts since the Thirties. Think muscle cars, too.)
I had been thinking that building a full computer was beyond my ken. When I think about how much I've been cramming into my head about computer hardware, I realize I'm ready.
I smell my future -- and it's got a lot of electrons.
-hand me that screwdriver, Dante
