Weblog’s DNS records have been updated. Now our weblog can also be accessed using www hostname. Address www.ddscentral.co.cc is now functional.
Archive for 2010
A new category “Hardware news” was added. All my hardware news will go there (I will need to do something about that GAOTD image, because it’s too big and messes up the navbar).
Also, the ReCaptcha plugin has been installed in the comment system to prevent automated bots from posting crap in comments. I had to pay my host to enable PHP sockets for this. The good thing is, they also enabled other premium features, like sendmail, database backup and file backup.
I’m also planning to update the creations section because now it’s just download links without any description except the download title.
Upgraded the HDD on my 3rd PC (the oldest of my PCs). The PC originally had a 80 GB Excelstor drive which seems to be on it’s way to death (slow speed and relocated sectors) and a VERY old 13GB Quantum Fireball. Replaced both of these HDDs with a 500GB Seagate (had to jumper it to sata 1, because the crappy VIA chipset (the PC uses a Epox Socket A MB with VIA chipset) refused to see the drive otherwise).
I’ve imaged both old HDDs (using my secondary PC) and wrote both HDD images to the new HDD and just formated the remaining space as a NTFS partition. No Windows reinstall needed, PC boots fine.
Just another happy ending. Old hdds now move to my hardware archive. I hope the new HDD will last.
I have created a couple of web services (soap) for one of my projects. They can be used to get info about domains and IPs. Although, I’ve created those services mostly for my own internal use, you can try them too.
Service listing (with source code for each service) can be found here.
All services use old rpc/encoded soap, except “WhoisIpV2 (ASMX)”, which is document/literal standard service.
Sample client (with source code) for WhoisIPV2 service is available in the Creations section.
I might add more services in the future.
I do not provide any kind of support for any of these services. If you want to know more about them, see their source code.
New Weblog is live ! I finally got rid of Blogger and installed WordPress. Our Weblog now has a new design (based on Motion theme). But yes, I kept the same background.
I also plan to move all my old pages (like Creations, Email) to WordPress.
Goodbye Blogger! Hello WordPress !
All my posts before February are gone. They’re simply no longer there. What the heck ?
Blogger FTP publishing lives it’s last days too.
!!!! !!!! !!!!
It seems I’ve had enough of Blogger.
I will probably move to another platform.
I think WordPress will be the replacement. I will have to pay my host to enable MySQL, but that will probably be better than making another subdomain under my current domain just to use Blogger.
Expect this blog to be re-designed completely soon.
THIS WAS THE LAST POST ON THE OLD BLOG.
This blog will be moved to the OldBlog section when the new blog comes online.
It appears that my “news buffer” is finally full.
So let’s start.
First of all, remember that PC I was repairing which had a bad VGA card ?
The owner decided not to repair the PC (probably found someone who will do it for cheaper) so I did not replace/repair anything.
Fortunately, soon after that, I was requested to build and setup a low-mid end PC for Office and light gaming use. They also gave me a non-working old PC to re-use it’s case.
I was also allowed to keep the components from that old PC.
That PC had a dead motherboard (bad capacitors), Athlon 1Ghz CPU (P3 era probably), 256MB of PC133 RAM, a rebranded Codegen 250W PSU (still working, but crappy).
Ok, now about the build.
This build was nearly the same as my new secondary PC build, but without additional VGA card and with a slightly newer CPU (oh, almost forgot a 320GB instead of 500GB HDD):
Gigabyte microatx MB with built-in Radeon HD3100.
2GB DDR2 (Apacer, 1x2GB)
Athlon II x2 250 3.0Ghz (IIRC)
HDD: 320GB Seagate
PSU: FSP 400W
This new build also had an overheating southbridge problem, but the system was stable. My new secondary PC also has this problem (it was indeed southbridge, not northbridge overheating).
As both PCs are running fine, I will probably leave them as they are.
Also, I’ve got some more (bad) news.
This is probably the last (or one of the last) post published to this Weblog via FTP.
This is because Blogger is cancelling “upload via FTP” service due to… lack of users (less than 5% of users use FTP !). The only thing they offer is moving to “custom domain”, which is not an option for me (don’t want to change host).
I’ve found a workaround though. I will need to create a subdomain of ddscentral.co.cc and use the “custom domain” with that.
If I will use this workaround, I will also need to create a new main page for ddscentral.co.cc, otherwise my host will block my account as having no real site on it. I will probably use one of those free web or PHP templates (I have tons of them) for this purpose and customize it to my needs.
I just don’t understand why almost nobody uses FTP. Maybe because most users are novice or just don’t use a real hosting service.
Whoa! first post for 2010.
Some PC news.
I’ve reinstalled the heatsink properly using thermal grease.
Darn. That northbridge chip gets really hot. About 71C when loaded, 62C idle.
The chipset temperature seemed a bit too high for me, so I’ve sent the system to the shop (the same shop, where I buy most of my PC related stuff) for testing. They did not find any problems and said that it’s normal for the northbridge to be that hot.
Well, I will try loading the system and see if it remains stable. If it is unstable, I will probably RMA the motherboard.
Also, I have another PC that needs fixing. That PC has a bad (and crappy) power supply and a bad video card with blown capacitors (Club3D GF6600LE PCI-E).
I will either send the card for repair (the shop where I buy PC parts offers re-cap services) or replace it (the system owner will decide).