PCI cards are easy to install. The first thing you obviously need to do is turn everything off, unscrew your case and remove it so you can get in. Your PCI slots will be near the pack of the unit, and will be brown ports (usually). You will have anywhere from three to six.
Next you want to push out the panel on the back of your computer. They put these metal strips on so that you don’t have a hole in the back of your computer when you don’t have a PCI card in there. Keep this safe somewhere as you will need it again if you ever take the PCI card out.
Now get your PCI card and insert it into the spot. Push it firmly until it lines up, you will notice the metal strip end will replace the area where the old metal strip you pushed out used to be.
Once it’s in place and fits nicely lining up with the edge of the case you want to screw the metal strip into place so that it can’t move. Now close your case and switch your PCI back on. Chances are it will be picked up automatically but if not go to install new hardware or use whatever software you were supplied with.
The latest thing to arrive through my letterbox from Screen Select is Dawson’s Creek series 5. They have really slowed down by the way. They seem to take more time to dispatch and Royal Mail seems to take more time to deliver. But that is a different story.
I got watching the first disk. Disk 2 arrived two days ago but disk one only got here today so I thought I would stick the first episode one. End result is by 2 pm I had watched the entire first disk.
It really got to me. I think I had an anxiety attack at first as everything had changed. DC was always a safe insular place for me in Capeside but now everyone is off in different places. Well it’s not that bad, at the moment everyone is in Boston which reassures me a little.
It really got me thinking though. I’ve spent the last 40 minutes, an hour starring out of random windows and walking around. I’m trying to get some revision done but I just keep starring at the page of the book thinking about DC. Dawson is at a crossroads in his life and I think I am at the same point in my own.
Which is what scares me. The series, right from the opening doesn’t seem to be about Dawson and his creek anymore. It’s about Joey and as Dawson put it "this city of yours." It’s almost become a show titled Joey’s Boston. I don’t want that I want the story to be about Dawson and for him to get his happy ending. Because I want my story to be about me and my happy ending.
I’ve always considered Dawson to be my counterpart in the world of fiction. As I think I have explained before we are quite a like. Except obviously he has this perfect life in a beautiful creek and I have, well, Leeds, and currently a life that sucks). So what seems to be a downturn in his fortune has a knock on effect for me.
Dawson has always known what to do. He was going to be a film maker. I know what I am going to do. I took comfort in that. But for the first time I feel that he doesn’t know what to do. Or that he is making the wrong choice. What if I am doing the same?
As Cassie was disappointed that she didn’t come up in the images search, I decided there was only one thing to do – post a pic on Nerd Fed and trying to get it listed.
Sorry, this image is no longer available.
As you may have noticed, Nerd Fed has changed slightly. Well actually only two things appear to have changed at the front end – there is now a search on the right hand side and the text at the top has changed slightly.
The reason is that I finally got round to upgrading to pLog 1.0.1 (previously we were running 0.3 or something like that). The real changes to the script are at the back end though, and it looks a whole lot different to before.
The admin panel looks much better. The old one wasn’t actually that bad although the improvements are huge. It’s a much more slick and cleaner interface now; I no longer have to be jealous of Blogger.
I’m tempted to start a second blog just so I can do some track backs between them ;).
Finally! After ages working on the site, re-designing it to fit in with other things, many crazy projects, a VPS (which I will talk about in a later post sometime because its soooo cool), Celeb Storm has finally taken to the internet in full flight. Well, as far as I know.
It’s totally integrated (well pretty much) with Rawice which launched version 2.0 of the site last month and so when that update it updates Celeb Storm with the end result being that it should actually get updated.
Two routers on one network, that is crazy talk. It is indeed but the problem is that with everyone trying to provide out of the box home network solutions at cheap prices, routers are bundled in with everything. It seems these days you can’t buy a networking hub without getting a router with it.
Picture the situation. A few years ago you bought a Linksys 4 port switch / cable router so you could connect several computers to your internet connection. Now you want to go wireless with your laptop and so you buy a wireless access point. However it comes bundled 4 integrated wired ports and a router too. It happens, it happened to me.
They can co-exist quite peacefully though. That said it isn’t plug and play. I never expected it to be though. I thought when I got the first router it wouldn’t be but that plugged in and worked fine pretty much straight away. And to be honest, this wasn’t much harder.
First thing you want to do is to plug your new router into a separate computer disconnected from the network and head to setup. Here you want to change its address on the network.
The main problem I had was that both routers were trying to use port 192.168.1.1, which was not a good situation. So I connected the second router to my laptop and changed its port to 192.168.1.5.
Then you connect everything together. In this case I connected a cable into the uplink port of my first router and plugged the other end into one of the standard network ports on the second router. I’m guessing you can also plug a cable into a standard network port on the first one too, though I didn’t try that.
As only one actually needs to route internet traffic and such I then went to my second router and disabled the local DHCP server. This one was basically just acting as more ports to my main router.
And that is all you need to do? Simple huh? Well actually save the relaxation for when you actually have it working as you know how reliable technology is ;). Once done, sit back, log onto IM and brag about your advanced network.
A while back Channel 4 showed the first Lord of the Rings film, The Fellowship of the Rings. While I was watching it I think I wrote a load of points about it as I have just found a text document full of them. So obviously I thought where else should I dump them other than Nerd Fed?
I have to say, if I was the dark lord, I would not have messed it up. I mean he has huge armies at his disposal and he gets beaten by some little four foot creature, it’s pathetic.
They get caught before Buckleburry Ferry – the rider is right next to them – how did the Nasgul fail to take them out?
I mean, they even got a stab at him at Weathertop and still they couldn’t kill a little hobbit creature.
They had him again when they were chancing that woman on the horse. I mean there were 7 of them all coming at her from different sides and she got past them all.
Then when the water came down the river they didn’t try to get out of the way. At first they stud around and then later then decided to ride down the river. Surely you would ride up the bank to saftey?
NOTES
What are the ods that a falling ring would fall in Frodo’s finger as he fell back in the Prancing Pony inn?
Gandalf managed to escape on the Eagles – so why didn’t they keep them for the journey?
Is it me or are elves simply Vulcans with longer hair?
Do they not have any form of guards at the secret meeting of the council? I mean how did 3 hobbits spy on everyone else without any noticing.
I have three pieces of coursework to hand in on Friday. We only do a total of three for ICT in the year. I am on study leave now, I should be revising. But that is ICT for you, nobody ever gets anything done in that department, it’s like there is some kind of force surrounding it.
I really have to question the marking in it though. I was reading through my training manual which I wrote for my coursework and on the lesson plan after introduction and health and safety it says vicious sack beatings. I had forgotten I had written that so it was really amusing but then I thought – this has been marked. Why did nobody pick up on that?
I mean if I hadn’t have gone back to re-write it, it would have gone off to the examination board like that. Would they have noticed? I’m not sure though I am tempted to leave it in and find out.
Satire has always been part of my coursework. For instance by hardware unit still says go to Tools > Internet Options and wait for the administrator restriction box to appear confirming that you are unable to complete section E3 of your coursework due to a zealously protected network.
Still, things like this should not slip past teachers eyes. I know they have a lot of marking to do but maybe leaving it until school has actually broken up to require everything to be handed in is not the best policy.
Welcome to Hardware Tutorials! Over the next however long it takes me to get it sorted, various tutorials and such will be posted on the site to help people get to grips with everything from installing a printer to installing Windows (not strictly hardware but there you go).
With the subscription to WoW now officially on hiatus I decided I would test the waters with these crazy new online DVD rental services – for those in the dark you pay a fixed monthly fee and you can rent as many DVDs as you like – you get to keep so many at home (usually 2 or 3) and you get new ones when you return them.
I was torn with which one to go with originally. Blockbuster was the
obvious choice as they offer a good deal. Worth noting here is that
Amazon suck – it isn’t unlimited rental, even their big package only
lets you rent 6 per month. However I ran some searches to see choice
and Blockbuster was pretty much beaten.
Problem is there are a lot of films I want to watch that aren’t mainstream. I ran a search for a few items (some of them stuff I have I just wanted to search range) – American Graffiti, THX 1138, So Little Time as well as others and the results showed quite a different so I decided to go with Screen Select.
I was slightly skeptical of them. Before I would have gone with them although their customer service didn’t get a great write-up. My experience so far hasn’t been so bad. I phoned them once and the person I spoke to was fine. The system was down so she took my details and phoned me back which was good.
The selection is pretty decent; I managed to hit 70 items on my list. Dispatch wasn’t fast though. Although they offer one day turn-around to members it is slower for new customers – two business days. I registered Wednesday night and they failed to get them out by the end of the week so they weren’t displayed until Monday (ie, today).
I had around 6-7 things on high priority, the three they sent me were all on that list. That said there is no priority system other than a high, medium, low so you end up with lots of things on each priority levels rather than being able to order exactly. Also, when you add stuff it automatically goes onto medium priority so a lot of the time I had to go to my selection page and change it.
Of course the true test of the experience will be yet to come. The three disks they have dispatched to me are scheduled to arrive on Wednesday (I was hoping they would come tomorrow, I could maybe watch one and mail it back so I get the next one before the weekend). No doubt I will be blogging about my experiences later.