The Last Bath

I’ve been really busy the past couple of days. Good thing almost everything is done, except for my final year project though. That will take another 5 months to complete. 5 hellish months. But no complaining, I just have to get it done one way or the other. I hope I did well enough this semester, each and every credit point this year would be taken into account for my degree award. This year is no time to be slacking. But I still am >.<

Anyway, this was my motherboard, and still is albeit a not working one.

A few days ago, I did something to it most people wouldn’t.

Yup. I bathed it. It has served for quite some time. 4 years and 1+ month to be exact. I thought it’d be kind of sad if I let it die in such a dusty state. So I gave it its last bath. Oh, and the first too. I must admit it looks sparkly like brand new after the bath. Except it’s not a very conventional way of cleaning motherboards. Not for any electronic devices, for that matter. But I’ll actually try to start it up again later. It might miraculously work ^.^

Last night I went out with a few friends to watch Next. The movie itself didn’t get many good reviews from critics. But I kind of liked it. Don’t worry - no spoilers here. I like the story’s concept and how things unfolded in the movie. The storyline doesn’t unfold as chronologically linear as most movie, but hey, you can expect no less from a guy who can see the future! I must admit that the ending felt a bit rushed, and rather unsatisfying, but overall it’s a unique action movie that departs from run-of-the-mill action movie concept of entertaining audience with the standard stuff like mega-explosions and karate-chops. Go watch it

 

Part 3?

I seem to be getting a lot of all these recently. I wonder if it’s a sign or anything.

When You’re Down… Part 2

Remember this post?

Here’s another one:

 Unlike the previous one, I got this firsthand.
Enlightening… to say the least.

P/S: This post isn’t meant to promote the game.

Photomerging with Photoshop CS3

I read an article that mentioned Photoshop CS3’s panorama stitching tool has been significantly improved. I’ve been a fan of this tool ever since Photoshop CS. Though I must admit, the photomerge in CS still has room for improvements. It does not always produce accurate results. Well I think the main problem is the cameraman (yours truly), but if there’s a good reason to buy such an expensive photo editing suite – it’d be for compensating the total lack of photography skills of the user So when I heard CS3’s photomerging has been improved, I was eager to give it a shot.

And I must say, I was thoroughly impressed by what the new CS3 managed came up with compared to the previous CS. CS3 managed to merge almost all pictures with excellent accuracy and effectively aligned and tweaked the angles of the pictures to suit the overall picture without my help. With the same sets of pictures, CS didn’t manage to do it by itself and even when I tried I couldn’t blend the pictures well.

Here are some samples I came up with:

CS

CS3

CS

CS3

CS

CS3

Even when the pictures are so small, the distortions are obvious especially in the third sample. It is without a doubt that CS3’s photomerging has been significantly improved. I’ve been doubtful of whether or not to change to CS3 for my day-to-day use. I didn’t change to CS2 because I felt that the improvements were not significant enough and at the same time it wouldn’t work with almost all of my plugins.

But in this case, it looks like I have a good reason to keep CS3 running. If I get the chance, I’d like to try out another new feature of CS3 – Smart Objects. Maybe it’d convince me even further that it’s time to change.

Orangified

Warning: Geek Alert!

To those who have been following my posts, I not too long ago got myself a new PC which was very blue. Not anymore. Taa daa~!

Orangified!!

Of course, I didn’t get a new fan just because I wanted something orange. The fan that came with the casing was spinning too slowly, only about 1000RPM with pretty weak airflow. With this one, my CPU idle temperature has dropped about 2-3C, not too shabby for an indirect cooling approach. I also got myself an Evercool Fox-1 system blower because my graphic card was generating a massive amount of heat in the lower section of the case. Thanks to that, the idle temperature for my graphic card has also dropped 2-3C.

All in all, I’ve pretty much settled down with this new machine. Reached a good compromise between speed and heat, suitable for 24/7 usage. Can’t ask for more, or can I?