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?

I’ve Gone Blue

I finally got the time to write something here. The past few days have been hectic. I had a rather important document which was due on Wednesday, but my computer decided to die on me on Sunday. It wasn’t a minor problem, it died for good. Attempts at reviving it yielded no results; in fact it sped up the process of it dying. Me, not having a computer, is like me missing an arm. Luckily enough, I always have my little backup PC with me so I still could surf the net and type my document, though very slowly. Very slowly. However, my productivity rate seems to be inversely proportional to my computer’s speed… if you get what I mean, but never mind.

So after 2 days of suffering waiting, I went to the geek’s mall and got myself a new friend. Hauling it back was tough, especially when I had badminton in the afternoon after months of growing moss at home. But thanks to Ivan, Edward and Voon Siew I managed to make it back alive. I was aching everywhere the next day, but it was all worth it

I’d like to introduce you to my new friend. His name is Poseidon but it’s a little cheesy so I’ll refrain from calling him that.

Its name is fancily projected on the floor. It has no purpose. It’s COOL!

Everything inside is glowing in blue. It doesn’t look that blue in the picture but that’s only because I switched off even more blue LEDs on my motherboard, and the power supply’s LEDs are not that visible. But talk about coincidence, I had no idea that the parts that I bought would glow at all, and it turned out that all of them glows blue. The biggest clutter you could see is the power supply’s cables, as they were arranged by a totally unskilled assembler with no sense of art whatsoever. Me.

The biggest blue-glow contributor would be the casing fan. It’s bright enough to light up my hall when I switch all the lights off. Since we’re talking so much about the colour blue, I should also point out that this PC is using what I call blue power. After 6 whole years of pledging my loyalty to the green power, I’ve finally switched back. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you should congratulate yourself because you’re not a hardcore geek who would understand something as obscure as that. If you do, well… I do too!

I would show other parts but I figured they’d bore many people. I could also start mumbling about the specifications but they would be an array of random meaningless characters to most people. So I’m going to describe my computer in the simplest way possible.

It glows blue!

War With Arrows

Okay. This is going to be a ridiculous post, but due to my insane obsession true love for nga ku chips, I have to make certain things clear. I was wandering the net searching for more stories on nga ku (yes, i’m that crazy) and very soon realised that there was a confusion going on. Some people call it arrowroot. Some people call it arrowhead. I used to call it arrowhead. Then I started calling it arrowroot. Now I’m in doubt myself. So what is nga ku’s real name??? Preliminary research (wahseh, sounds pro) has returned only contradicting results. Looks like there’s no easy way to find out. I’ll have to do it the hard way.

Well, to start things off, we have to start using proper, scientific names for our candidates. I’ve narrowed down the potential names to Sagittaria trifolia and Sagittaria graminea. See, I’m even colour-coding them for readibility purpose

Let’s start off with Sagittaria trifolia. A quick search on Google with this name will most likely point you to a rather professional site with quite a large and believable database on plants - Plants for A Future. This site lists information on plants very concisely, and it clearly shows that Sagittaria trifolia’s common name is Chinese Arrowroot.

 
_{Says its highly edible. Sounds correct.}

_{Sounds yummy. Like nga ku}

BUT, I start to find contradicting information regarding the common name of Sagittaria trifolia. The Global Compendium of Weeds states that Sagittaria trifolia is called arrowhead instead.

The Multilingual Multiscript Plant Name Database also calls it arrowhead.

Another rather convincing info I found is from persimmon’s blog. It’s quite obvious that nga ku’s are called Arrowheads. Unless the packaging is wrong, which is something still possible.

 
_{Almost irrefutable proof. Almost. (Pic taken from persimmon’s blog)}

Okay. What we have established here is that Sagittaria trifolia  is more likely called Arrowhead than Arrowroot. Then again, we cannot confirm that nga ku is called Arrowheads from this picture alone. So we shall move on the the other candidate in question - Sagittaria graminea. The confusing here is started by the Plants for A Future (mentioned above) site. It states that Sagittaria graminea is called Arrowhead instead.

_{Confusing, hor? But doesn’t sound very yummy lar.}

 An easier way to find out what Sagittaria graminea  really is, is by looking for its pictures. So I took the liberty to go hunting for some .

Wet Web Media says that it looks like this:

   
_{Doesn’t look yummy}

Natural Resource Conservation Service says it looks like this:

_{Not at all.}

 The Burke Museum of National History and Culture:

_{Definitely not. No no.}

Now we’re pretty sure that Sagittaria graminea looks nothing like nga ku. Can we now safely assume that nga ku is indeed called Arrowhead?

I really hope so.

Fire From Water

Yup. Fire from water.

That’s what this new gizmo here is supposed to do.

Quoted from the company’s website:

The Aqueon operates by using regular tap water or preferably de-ionized water, which is supplied to the fireplace either through a pipe of from a storage tank within the unit. Using a 220 volt electrical service and a process called electrolysis, the Aqueon passes an electrical current through the water to separate the hydrogen and oxygen. Upon separation, the Aqueon instantly ignites the hydrogen to create the flame. The Aqueon introduces the oxegen as a secondary source to add flame color and brightness, and releases the remainder of the oxygen into the room.

So… basically it means Water + Electric = FIRE! Very interesting. Unfortunately we will never need such a device here in Malaysia. The heat from the Sun alone is pretty much enough to fry keep us all warm and cozy.

But it is interesting to see such a concept being put to use. As hydrogen is ignited, the only byproduct created is water vapor. This supposedly makes it very safe to be used in indoors, even without proper ventilation. And the design looks very sleek. Who’d guess that it’s a fireplace?

Now… if only they could make water out of fire…

Nero the Arsonist

_{WARNING: The following contents may be inappropriate for people who have better things to do with their time. You have been warned.}

If any of you have a CD/DVD Rewritable Drive, you would have most likely heard of the application called Nero Burning ROM. If you don’t, it is a popular CD/DVD-Authoring application created by Ahead Software AG, a German company which later adopted the name Nero AG due to the vast popularity of the Nero Burning ROM.

I didn’t thought much of the name Nero Burning ROM until I saw the name Nero in the book Angels & Demons by Dan Brown which I just finished a while ago. His name only appeared once in the entire book, and it was vaguely related to the Fire element. It crossed my mind that the name Nero Burning ROM might not be a random name after all. I did a little research and found out that Nero was the fifth and last Roman Emperor as of Julio-Claudian dynasty. Whatever that is.

Apparently, he is believed to be the arsonist involved in the Great Fire of Rome. I suppose the fire which broke out was really big, otherwise it wouldn’t have earned its name.

I also always wondered why the Nero Burning ROM’s icon looked odd. And suddenly I realised something.

The icon is actually the Roman Colosseum burning. It might seem a bit too cartoonish to believe that, but the About page of the latest Nero Burning ROM version 7 confirms the assumption.

The name made sense. It was a play on words.

It was Nero, who burned down Rome.

_{P/S: This post was supposed to be out a couple of days ago. I didn’t realised I set it as a private post. Silly me :p}