A chilling story about pond pumps
Posted in : Babble, Pond Pumps
Note : I don't sell pond pumps! If you're looking for a pond pump then visit the Pond Pumps section of my mates online aquatics shop ;).
The guilty party.
In the beginning
A tad ago I got a brand new computer system from a place called Chillblast, which is based just over the wall in Glasgow. It's a hell of a system, a nice little pentium dual core 3.0 with a pair of matched corsair 1 gig sticks, 1/2 terrabyte of western digital sata drives ...... ohhhh, and it was water cooled! ........ which was a great gimmic to brag to my mates about. So, for the best part of a year I've been toddling along on my chilled beast, with it's cpu ticking over between 35°C and 45°C, with the motherboard about the same temperature and all was happy in the world ......... until 3 days ago.
The calamity!
The water pump died on my cooling system, which I caught on to real fast ...... mainly because the temperature meandered through the 80°C mark ( at which point all sorts of alarms and bells went off ) ... skipped through the 90°C's ....... and the system promptly turned off at 100°C!!!!! ..... Now, whilst this is an exceptionally fast way to shut a system down, I don't recommend it. As you can imagine, this was a tad of an upset for me, I had to wait 15 hours before the shop was open and I could attempt to get this resolved ....... 15 hours of no pc!!!!! No worries, I'm mummys brave lil soldier, I can survive that long :D
The impending doom
After sleeping in as long as I could, and then sitting by the phone watching the second hand meander round the clock face with as much patience as I could muster I eventually decided that anybody who said they worked for a living should damn well be at work .......... The good news was, they had an answering machine which politely informed me that most people don't consider dawn to be an appropriate start time, and would I mind phoning back in a few hours when the dew had evaporated? ....... The second hand gets really boring after the first few hundred revolutions ...... Anyway, eventually they answered ( "they" is a guy called Martin ..... anyone who puts up with a blonde like me deserves naming ;) ).
We can rebuild it.
The death knell
Martin is an incredibly helpful guy, and very patient. He'll even explain things in monosyllabic words so that I can understand. He very helpfully explained to me that the company that makes the water cooling system that I have had gone bankrupt, and that he was unable to replace the pump!!!! WHAT!!!!! ...... So, now I'm facing sending my pc away to Glasgow for the best part of a week .... so I've text'd Nick, and he's off on one trying to buy a backup pc so that I don't turn into a gibbering wreck ..... and then I remember that Martin's still on the phone, and, unlike most companies, he doesn't invalidate your warranty if you undo the side of your pc ...... in fact he encourages it!
A fair wind blows?
So, I asked Martin what could be done about things, only to find that the solution was simple. I could be reverted back to the stock cooling system with no problems at all ( and he'd happily refund me the cost of the cooling system ...... which I'd forgotten to ask about :P ) "it'd need to be a real intel heatsink and fan though" ...... how cool! I got sent all the extraneous bits when my system was first delivered, so I had those ..... remember how I said Martin encourages you to take the side off yourself?
So ..... now I've got the side off and Martin's talked me through everything that I need to do to remove the old pump and *snap* in the "real Intel inside" heatsink and fan ( btw Martin, when you said "you have to apply a tad of pressure", you weren't fuckin' kidding! ) and I've hung up, got my screw driver and toilet paper ( to clean the paste off the chip huh? :| ) and I'm ready to rock and roll.
Bacon butties at a time like this?
After a fair amount of pushing, I decided I had the clips the wrong way round, so I pushed my graphics card back in ( which had popped out cos I bent the board that much :p ), turned the clips around, tried again and everything went like a dream! Not only had I managed to convert my chilled beast back into a beast, I'd also gained two inches on my biceps from fitting the heatsink .... with a smug look on my face, I hit the on button and watched windows meander round it's merry path trying to work out what a silicon implant was.
During one of my more "control freak" moments of the windows start up, I clicked "ok" in an aggressive manner on an alarm window that was politely informing me that my cpu would prefer that it wasn't associated with temperatures in excess of 80°C ....... 80°C!!!! .... damn ..... so I went to find some bacon and eggs ... as you can imagine, I wasn't a happy bunny. My system now ran at about 65°C to 75°C instead of the 35°C to 45°C that it used to run at
Ready to test drive
So, where do pond pumps come into it?
Well, technically they don't, but I haven't posted about pond pumps for ages, so I was just reminding google that I should be on page one ;) ....... anyway, it does involve a fish tank pump, which is close enough ...... so, I'm a smidge of an unhappy bunny, when I remember that I know somebody who owns an aquatics shop .... and apart from many other things, like dahlias and stuff, they happen to have pumps .... and I need a pump ..... and not all blonde ideas are screwed, just most of them ..... so, I packed my disconnected cooling system into my bag, and wandered off to the field.
Barry, if yer reading this, turn away now ....... cos I got Gary infected with my plan and we spent the whole of his brew break playing with buckets and pumps and shit .... oh yeah, I owe you for a pump :| ...... ok, now that Barry's gone, my reasoning was simple. It was the pump that was gone on my system, so I needed a new pump, and I had a mate that stocks pumps from 100 litres an hour to "urm, we appear to have emptied the ocean", and I needed a new pump .... I may be blonde, but 2 + 2 is only a slightly rigorous but achievable challenge. So, after fannying about in the warehouse for a tad, playing with various sized pumps, we decided on a 400 litre an hour thing .... all we needed now was some tubing and a bucket.
Plenty of room for beer
Who needs a pond pump?
Not us, but we did need to crack open a tube of silicon ( another £1.20 I owe yah, if yer reading :| ). From a scraps bin, we found some couplings that would allow us to pass a hose through the side of the tub we settled on using, so that was the inflow taken care off. A few cups of hot water and some biceps enhancing and we managed to stretch the original tube onto the pump outlet .... of course, boys and their toys and all, we had to test it ..... then, being anal, we had to test it without the cooling system in the loop.
Being the technical guys we are, we decided that we couldn't see much of a difference in the pumps outflow, once it was connected into the loop with the radiator and the knackered pump, so we decided that we were on to a winner ..... God loves a trier and all that ...... apparently .... so, then we ran round half the town trying to get some paste stuff that you're meant to put on a heatsink before slapping it on a chip and firing up ..... we wanted to look professional :|
The big switch on
Ok, it doesn't look pretty .... and it's certainly not as "self contained" as the original system ..... but I'll make allowances ...... *hits the on button* ..... now, like most people, I have a load of temperature and fan sensors and shit scattered around my system ... some of them even work ... and I have some software that sparks up with those readings ( the same software that gives the polite "excuse me, your chip asked me if I could possibly interrupt you and mention that it's feeling a smidge on the warm side" notices ) ..... and I was watching it like a hawk, not that I've seen many 6 foot hawks, but I'd imagine I looked like one if one existed
23 degrees!!!!! WOW!!!! Now that's almost cold enough to throw your beer in, and I made sure I got a big enough bucket to fit in a 4 pack huh. To give you a comparison, the previous watercooling ( which, admittedly, didn't have 50 litres of reservoir on it ) used to hit about 40°C on start up, drop to about 36°C and then eventually wander to 42°C ish for a running temp ..... Our "Bodge it Sons & Co" system started at 23°C degress and has finally ( after several hours ) managed to find 32°C as a running temperature. The air cooled version on the other hand made some great bacon :D
Chilled to perfection.
Any wise words?
Having studied the events and outcomes of the last few days, with the same dedication that I give to other complex stuff like breathing and things, I've come to the following conclusions ( you can come back now Barry ;) )
- If you live in the UK and want to buy a system, you can do far worse than buy one from Chillblast, they give great after care service.
- It *really* helps if you know somebody that owns an aquatics shop.
- It really makes a HUGE difference when yer chip's 40°C+ below stock cooling ;)
- It really does help when you don't invalidate yer warranty by taking the side off.
Those of you that know me know that I'm not a "get yer shit from here" commission whore ( hey scott, notice the total lack of amazon links? :roll: ), but I've been really impressed with Chillblast from day one, and that's never been dented when I've had problems. ..... Martin, thanks for putting up with a blonde and I hope this post generates some sales for you ;)
And Scott ( from the pastel palace ) thinks he makes long posts ;)
¥
Ps. Martin, my chilled beast lost it's overclocking when the pump died ..... so, you gonna send me a cool chillblast case badge for my bucket, or do I need to send it to you for the install? ;)
Free £5 notes
Posted in : Babble
Yes its here by public demand ! - the great Innervisions £1 Million pound giveaway :)
Innervisions M.D (Yabba) would like to give everyone who comments a free £5 note as Innervisons celebrates its 5th, 6th or 7th ? Anniversary online.
Please leave your details in a comment below, and a free £5 note will be sent to you as way of thanking you for your continued support.
My Space users need not apply :lalala:
Fiver-fantastic-mate !
You can do it ;)
Posted in : Silly O'clock quotes
tuxnus: yer only half a help
yabba_hh: yeah, but I always hope that the half I provide is enough to make the recipient realise that they can work it out themselves :D
OMG we almost have a new plugin!
Posted in : Plugins & Widgets
Hi %name%, yer gonna be really impressed with me, I just wrote a new post called "%title%"
This post won't come as much of a revelation for those of you who have the AstonishMe Bopit plugin installed, because you'll have seen it in the list of plugins on the admin tooltab, but it's worth reading anyway ..... honest ;)
What is the plugin?
Although most people who actually use blogs know about that wonderful little thing called RSS which allows you to follow a blogs post or comment feeds without having to actually visit the "Pastel Palace" in question, some of them still use InterDebt Exploiter ( or *shudder* AOL ) and wouldn't know a feed if you hit them over the head with a meal voucher. So, this plugin allows them to subscribe to your wondrous examples of literary excellence via email.
Great, I just love AOL users, so how do I get it?
Well, in a totally Pimp-A-Plugin fashion, the only place to currently get it is by installing the AstonishMe Bopit plugin and clicking on the download link .... Install is the normal shit : unzip, upload, click install ... you're probably gonna want to wander over to the settings and amend stuff, there's a full list of what they are and what they do in the readme ..... and, erm, well, that's it really .... don't forget that it's still under development though, if it melts your servers cpu or harasses people then don't blame me huh?
As always, let me know if it screws up
¥
Customise your posts
Posted in : Plugins & Widgets
We've had this plugin lying around for so long that we've already updated it twice and still haven't managed to do a public release ...... oooops :p Anyway welcome to the AstonishMe Custom Plugin, this plugin allows you to add all sorts of custom stuff directly from your posts giving you far more control over your blog than ever.
Wanna play with SEO?
Whilst b2evolution is a great little blogging platform, it does have a few drawbacks, one of which is the static keywords and descriptions for each blog. As you probably know, the evil google bot prefers to see keywords and description that are relevant to the content on the page at any given moment. Now you can have custom keywords and description on a per post basis, you can also control the title and even add more meta tags if you want. The title & description of the post are used when you're in single post mode ( it defaults to the stock ones if you don't have one for a post ). The keywords are used whenever the post is being viewed archives/categories/front page etc, only the unique ones are shown so you shouldn't get any duplicates.
Gimme some style
Apparently some people like to make their posts look like a tarts boudoir which, up until now, has meant that you either needed a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge stylesheet or *shudder* you had to restrict yourself to just a few boring styles!! Now you have the ability to add post specific baubles to your blog with no fear of excessive bloat. To make things easier you can target each post specifically simply by using %post% in your class/id names. This will be replaced by am_custom_post_##_ so you can avoid conflicting classnames.
Need a script?
If you had javascript enabled, you wouldn't be reading this ;)If you happen to be one of those people who are forever adding all sorts of javascript gimmicks so that you can amaze your visitor with some stunning new effect, assuming they have javascript enabled of course, then you're probably going to want to meander through the plugins code and change a 0 to a 1 ;). This will then allow you to either add your script in <head> or directly inside the post at the spot you type it. Fair warning though, enabling this option will allow any user with posting rights to post javascript, so be think before you enable it huh?
Enough already
I suppose it's time to tell you how to use all these new found powers huh? First off all you need to do all the usual stuff like, download the plugin, unzip it, upload it, wander into admin and install it. Unlike most of our plugins, this one also involves you ripping a couple of bits out of your skins _main.php. Don't worry though, it's fairly painless and the worst you could do is melt down your server if you delete the wrong bit huh? So, now that you're reassured, crack open your skins _main.php and delete the red bits ;)
[color=red]<title><?php [/color]
[color=red]$Blog->disp('name', 'htmlhead'); [/color]
[color=red]request_title( ' - ', '', ' - ', 'htmlhead' ); [/color]
[color=red]?></title> [/color]
<base href="<?php skinbase(); /* Base URL for this skin. You need this to fix relative links! */ ?>" />
[color=red] <meta name="description" content="<?php $Blog->disp( 'shortdesc', 'htmlattr' );?>" /> [/color]
[color=red]<meta name="keywords" content="<?php $Blog->disp( 'keywords', 'htmlattr' );?>" /> [/color]Now what?
From now on, whenever you make a post you have the ability to customise it in all the ways mentioned above by using the following tags. For css and javascript %post% will be replaced with [b].am_custom_post_##_[/b]. For those of you who have been using this plugin for a bit, don't worry, all old style tags still work as well ;)
[b]<![/b][b]--title[/b] [i]title to use[/i] -->
The [b]title to use[/b] will be used as the pages html title in single post mode.
[b]<![/b][b]--description[/b] [i]post description[/i] -->
The [b]post description[/b] will be used as the pages description in single post mode
[b]<![/b][b]--keywords[/b] [i]keywords to add[/i] -->
The [b]keywords to add[/b] will be appended to the pages keywords. The plugin also ensures that there are no duplicate keywords
[b]<![/b][b]--meta[/b] [i]meta tag data[/i] -->
This will add a meta tag <meta [b]meta tag data[/b] />
[b]<![/b][b]--css[/b] [i]custom css for post[/i] -->
The [b]custom css for post[/b] will be output between <style> tags
[b]<![/b][b]--script[/b] [i]javascript to add[/i] -->
The [b]javascript to add[/b] will be output inside <head> between <script> tags
[b]<![/b][b]--js[/b] [i]javascript to add[/i] -->
The [b]javascript to add[/b] will be output inside your post between <script> tags
[color=red]WARNING : This will allow any user with posting rights to post javascript, it's disabled by default. To enable javascript you need to manually change the setting in the plugin code.[/color]So, now you can decorate your posts to your hearts content, let me know if you have any problems huh?
¥
Goodbye mum :'(
Posted in : Babble
Mary Jones
20th June 1944 - 1st July 2007
Love you always
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