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You are here: Home / Archives for 2012

Archives for 2012

Mac Pro 1,1 CPU Upgrade

2012/07/25 By staze

My work machine is a Mac Pro 1,1, and it’s obviously getting a bit long in the tooth. I upgraded the video card from an X1900 to a Radeon HD 5770 (which works fine) last year, and just yesterday, I undertook the process of installing two Xeon X5355‘s rather than the stock 5150 processors. The process is pretty simple (I’d call it a medium difficulty), but is easy enough to follow instructions online ((I’ve actually found this to be the best written instructions on getting MOST of the way there)) (the hardest part was removing the cowl from the processors). You’ll need a 3mm 9″ hex key (I happened to have one), and some thermal compound (I used Arctic Silver 5).

The processors I used were purchased off ebay for all of $54/each with free shipping. BTW, make sure to buy the SLAEG revision, as this version halves the idle power usage down to about what the stock CPUs use ((The stock 5150’s use 24W idle, and about 65W full power. The X5355 SLAEG use 25W idle, and 120W at full power. Decreased power usage seems to be from the SLAEG supporting Demand Based Switching.)). Install time was about an hour with pulling everything apart, and doing the thermal compound correctly (clean the CPU/heatsink, prime/tint both surfaces, etc).

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Apple Tagged With: CPU Upgrade, Mac Pro, Xeon

Fun with PHP and GD

2012/06/23 By staze

Before I created the gas log on my site, I was using Green Hybrid to log gas usage/mileage. And since that time, they’ve had a graphic that you could add to your site, or in my case, forum signature that shows your mileage.

But, since I created my own log, I stopped updating Green Hybrid, so the data was out of date. I’ve long wanted to do something like this myself, so I went about creating a basic one last week.

Mileage Image

It doesn’t look the best, but it works, and it updates based on the info in my DB. The image code is pretty simple, using the PHP GD functions, and it’s pretty quickly generated. If I ever got a LOT of traffic, I’d probably have the code write the image out to disk and regenerate it every so often, but for now, it’s generated on the fly.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Coding Tagged With: hybrid, MPG

EveryDay Carry (EDC)

2012/06/22 By staze

I’ve been a big fan of “murse’s” for a long time. I carry way too much crap to fit in pockets, and I used to use belt holsters, but it was just too much. It seems like rather than being called murse’s anymore, they’re referred to by EDC, or Everyday Carry. Often this refers to a firearm as well, but in my case, it’s usually gear like a computer, multitool, firstaid kit, business cards, iPhone, and various other items.

When I got an iPad, I moved from my rather large Timbuk2 Messenger (for a 15″ laptop), to a more reasonable bag by Caselogic that was cheap at BestBuy ($10). It’s served me well, but I’ve been looking at other bags.

Right now, I’m largely looking at the Hazard4 Kato Mini-Messenger here. But $100 is a lot to part with for this type of thing. The advantage, though, is it’ll hold an 11″ Macbook Air (which is on my shortlist), and with all the Molle loops, you can pretty much add on about any other pouch to hold what it won’t “stock”.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Miscellany Tagged With: EDC, Hazard 4, Kato Mini-Messenger, ThinkGeek

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