Northern Passage Resources

moved to wordpress

2008-10-02T14:54:00.000-04:00

http://rokspider.wordpress.com/

I'm sorry I "misspoke"

2008-03-25T09:45:00.003-04:00

"Misspoke" that is the new politically correct term for, I lied and got caught.
A recent story of Hillary Clinton having to duck and run sniper fire at a Bosnian airport, turned out to be a total fabrication from the get go and apart from her entourage of reporters, comedian Sinbad and songstress Sheryl Crow, the only person who backed her up was her daughter.
Hillary did recant by saying she "misspoke".
Now let me think, If I was to refer to my friends wife as "he" now that would classify as misspoke. But if I were to say that my friends wife and I climbed a mountain and had wild sex and she later gave birth to a giraffe, now that would just be a lie.
So please explain to me how using the term "misspoke" makes it somehow ok.
Let a criminal try that in court while testifying on the stand, how far do you think that bird would fly. Ya, I thought you'd agree.
So remember folks, if you work for the government it's ok to "misspeak" as long as you don't lie.

" and thems the facts as I see em "

Ultra ChillTec Thermal Electric CPU Cooler

2008-03-14T15:29:00.005-04:00

Well, yesterday my friends CPU Cooler finally came by Purolator. Now comes the fun part installing this beast.
Installing this cooler was quite easy, it would went smoother if I had taken the instructions a little more seriously. When they suggest removing the motherboard Completely take the advice. It makes it far easier, this cooler is massive so there isn't a whole lot of room for fingers, the weight and size are supported by a metal bracket which supports the dimensions of this cooler from the back of the motherboard,which is why they say remove it (Mobo) completely. Other than that everything went smoothly, all the parts fit, nothing missing and the instructions were very easy to understand.
This cooler fired up with no problem and the results were instantly noticeable.
The Ultra ChillTec Thermal Electric CPU Cooler is so quiet it is hard to tell if its running, thank goodness the fan included is a blue led.
This cooler is certainly worth the money, I recommend this one to anyone with hot machine and a large case.
The original post with description and video link is here,

What is $$$ ?

2008-03-11T21:44:00.000-04:00

Thermal Electric CPU Cooler

2008-03-08T18:05:00.001-05:00

Ultra ChillTec Thermal Electric CPU Cooler

Thermal Electric Cooler A TEC (thermo-electric cooler) also known as a "Peltier Cooler", is a solid-state active heat pump capable of transferring heat from one side of the device to the other. Ultra uses a TEC, sandwiched between two copper plates, each plate with four heat-pipes leading to a large, fan cooled radiator. Because TEC's are capable of cooling below room temperature, often condensation is a concern. But not with the Ultra Chill-TEC. The Chill-TEC's control unit does not apply power to the TEC unless the CPU reaches a certain temperature. Up to this point, the CPU is cooled by the heat-pipes on the "cold" side of the TEC. Once the CPU is hot, power is applied to the TEC and the CPU is chilled. The hot side of the TEC is cooled by the second set of heat-pipes. This perfect balance of thermo-electric cooling and heat-pipe cooling ensures the CPU is kept at the perfect operating temperature. Ideal for hardcore use, even opening up the potential for overclocking that standard air cooling alone can not provide.

"I'm going to be installing one of these on a friends computer in a few days,

I'll keep ya posted. "
Check out the videos

Hard drive size

2008-02-29T21:24:00.001-05:00

I copied this from a very good forum, the question asked was :

I only get 298gb of my new 320gb drive?
Hey all, I was wondering if there is a limitation in XP that cannot see more than 300gb. I know there is the 137gb limit in 98.

Basically I bought a new WD 320gb drive on newegg, hooked it up, and all I get is 298gb. I know drives are always slightly smaller than adversited... but 20gb?

So before inquiring with WD, I thought I would drop a line here.

That actually sounds about right, I have a 160GB SATA drive and I have 153GB available.... that's almost 10GB off, so 20GB off for twice the capacity sounds about right.

1 Gigabyte = 2^30 bytes = 1,073,741,824 bytes. Notice that this is ~7.4 % more than 10^9 bytes, which is what a Gb means in hard drive terms. So yeah, 320 billion bytes will actually turn out to be about 298 Gb.

Got this over at WD's site... per the chart your drive is right on

Decimal vs. Binary:
For simplicity and consistency, hard drive manufacturers define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. This is a decimal (base 10) measurement and is the industry standard. However, certain system BIOSs, FDISK and Windows define a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,073,741,824 bytes. Mac systems also use these values. These are binary (base 2) measurements.

To Determine Decimal Capacity:
A decimal capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,000,000,000 using base 10).

To Determine Binary Capacity:
A binary capacity is determined by dividing the total number of bytes, by the number of bytes per gigabyte (1,073,741,824 using base 2).
This is why different utilities will report different capacities for the same drive. The number of bytes is the same, but a different number of bytes is used to make a megabyte and a gigabyte. This is similar to the difference between 0 degrees Celsius and 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It is the same temperature, but will be reported differently depending on the scale you are using.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Various Drive Sizes and their Binary and Decimal Capacities

Drive Size in GB Approximate Total Bytes Decimal Capacity
(bytes/1,000,000,000)
Approximate Binary Capacity (bytes/1,073,724,841)
10 GB 10,000,000,000 10 GB 9.31 GB
20 GB 20,000,000,000 20 GB 18.63 GB
30 GB 30,000,000,000 30 GB 27.94 GB
36 GB 36,000,000,000 36 GB 33.53 GB
40 GB 40,000,000,000 40 GB 37.25 GB
60 GB 60,000,000,000 60 GB 55.88 GB
74 GB 74,000,000,000 74 GB 68.91 GB
80 GB 80,000,000,000 80 GB 74.51 GB
100 GB 100,000,000,000 100 GB 93.13 GB
120 GB 120,000,000,000 120 GB 111.76 GB
160 GB 160,000,000,000 160 GB 149.01 GB
180 GB 180,000,000,000 180 GB 167.64 GB
200 GB 200,000,000,000 200 GB 186.26 GB
250 GB 250,000,000,000 250 GB 232.83 GB
300 GB 300,000,000,000 300 GB 279.40 GB
320 GB 320,000,000,000 320 GB 298.02 GB

and this is why I asked here first, rather than making a big stink out of it.

-Much appreciated-

Lunar Eclipse

2008-02-20T22:33:00.002-05:00

I've been watching the Lunar eclipse and can only say " what a wonderous sight to behold"
I could not have wished for more perfect weather, there's not a cloud in the sky .
The moon is looks like it's pasted against an Indigo background, the millions of stars seem to fade into the background just enough, as if to say to the moon " hey this is your night, do your thing"
Unfortunately my camera can't take good night pictures.

Winter in North Bay

2006-09-07T10:40:00.000-04:00

I thought with the amount of time I spend on the computer during this cold winter months here in Northern Ontario that I would work on my blog. So It seems that Mother Nature is giving me something to do, besides going out and shoveling snow, which I have to do soon anyway. Although I should not complain because it has been a pretty mild winter on the most part. I'll post some winter pictures so you can see what my winter is like.

Night photos

2006-08-16T09:11:00.000-04:00