I started this web log 5 years ago as a way to force myself to see something new when I lived in Marin County.
1st Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By the 2nd years web log birthday, I moved to another state, became a professor at a college teaching music and made some new friends.
2nd Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By the 3rd years web log I met Jennifer and she became my girlfriend.
3rd Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By the 4th years weblog, I began composing compositions again. I had written a string orchestra piece, reorchestrating my older compositions and composing new pieces for the steel band.
4th Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By the 5th years web log, I had build the music program the largest that is as probably ever been and it was the largest the steel drum had ever been.
5th Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By the 6th years web log, everything started falling apart. I still had who I thought was my perfect girl, was still a college professor, music department chair and choir director. I had a piece being performed by a professional music ensemble at a new music festival. It was also the 1st time I have ever experienced a hurricane and the after effects of a city after it hit.
6th Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
The 7th year everything had gone to hell. I lost my college gig because of budget cuts, the hurricane and a really stupid president. Stupid because a lot of the students left and went to neighbouring college which had record enrollment. You know why? Because students were pissed and left the college. No vision.
To add to last years hell year, Mom's Mom, Nana, the one I could call me 2nd Mom passed away. So I was almost in the same position I was when I started this Weblog. No gig and few friends in the area (many left after the hurricane). The only difference is that San Francisco was really pretty and I could pick any direction to go and see something new. This time I am in Texas and you can drive anywhere and still not see nothing new.
Last Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
I thought which became the 2 years of hell (which began with Hurricane Ike) was over but to make it officially the exact same place I was the year when I created this weblog, I would have to have no girlfriend. So much for having at least one positive thing come from that hell. I guess I seem to enjoy having things I love taken away from me. I should have stopped believing in someone who could not believe in herself or even know her own feelings.
The 2 years off hell officially ended when I received an offer to be a professor at a college on Louisiana. The classes at this college have more students than they ever did at my last college. There is also lots of culture and new kinds of food here. And I am in Mardi Gras central. I think it is time to explore this new area and to really explore myself. Last year birthday entry I wrote "I am hoping that this year a new and exciting adventure awaits." The new adventure has begun.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WEB LOG!!!!!!
This is really cool.
Animator vs Animation II.
If you have not seen the 1st one. Click on this 1st.
Animator vs Animation.
I upgraded my Movable Type Blog to 4.3. A way better interface. Still working on the kinks.
Yesterday I tried installing Ubuntu Studio which is a version of Linux. It installed fine. The problem is that when I put my computer so sleep and then woke it up, the OS bombed and could not get it to load again.
So I decided to use a version of Linux that Jennifer likes. That is Linux Mint. An awesome operating system that is not Microsuck. Looks great, has lots of free programs and it uses Compiz as an awesome window manager that uses 3D effects.
The Compiz-Fusion website.
I then installed VMware and put Window XP as a virtual machine. That way I Microsuck stays in a box and I only use it if I am using a program that can only works in Windows like Finale.
Mercury is alive.
Everything works on my computer. The fans work, the hard drive works, the DVD writer works, the CPU and memory are really fast. One thing does not. The ethernet. After spending yesterday and today on it, I figured it was a bad ethernet chip on the motherboard. So I have 2 choices: one to take everything out, replace the board and then put everything back in hoping that everything works; or two get a network card and put it in a PCI slot. So on the way up to taking Jennifer home, we went to Fry's to get a network card. There was a network card for $10 and another for $30. I got the $10 one. Dropped Jennifer off, went home and put in the new card.
Now the internet is really fast.
Mercury Happy.
Today was time to build my new fast cool looking computer Mercury. Jennifer came down to help with the building and George came down since he is thinking of getting a new computer that I will build for him.
How you build a computer.
First you open the case.
Then take the motherboard (I look happy with my cool looking motherboard.)
and screw it in the case.
Then seat and connect (pushing the lever down) the CPU to the motherboard.
Then put the fan and heat sink (with thermal grease on the bottom) on top of the CPU.
The fan looks like this.
The CPU gets quite warm. About 98 degrees Fahrenheit. And that is with all that cooling stuff.
The memory is then seated into the motherboard.
Then you take the hard drives (Look how small hard drives are. The small drive can store 640 gigs of stuff. Pretty cool.)
and put then into the case.
Then take the DVD writers
and put them in the case.
Then the power supply
gets put in and connected to the motherboard and the drives.
Then seat the big video card
onto the motherboard.
What is looks like inside when building is competed.
Everyone meet Mercury Melodic Canvas.
He is happy and glowing.
And so am I.
My video card, RAM and DVD writers got delivered today.
My Video Card
The card was released on November 25, 2007. It was one of the best reviewed on New Egg. It is probably more power that I really need but I wanted enough headroom for sound waves and video editing without hitting the edge.
The specs
Model: MSI Geforce 8800GT 512M
Interface: PCI Express 2.0 x16
(1st there were PCI slots, then PCI 1.0 slots. Now there are PCI Express 2.0 slots which are quite fast.)
Chipset Manufacturer: NVIDIA
GPU: GeForce 8800 GT
Core clock: 660MHz
Stream Processors: 112
(A technique used to accelerate the processing of many types of video and image computations.)
Memory Clock: 1900MHz
Memory Size: 512MB
Memory Interface: 256-bit
Memory Type: GDDR3
(Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology)
Video cards are so powerful these days that they come with a heat sink and a fan on them.
The RAM
I wanted fast RAM. These were released in February 2008 and I got 4 gigs of them. They are dual channel so they come with two 2 gig chips. Dual channel enables the CPU to use both RAM more effectively reducing the bottlenecks one RAM would create.
The specs
Model: Corsair Dominator
Type: 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
Capacity: 4GB (2 x 2GB)
Speed DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
(That is 1066Mhz which is the fastest the DDR2 chips are today.)
Cas Latency: 5
(The time it takes between a command having been sent to the memory and when it begins to reply to it. It is the time it takes between the processor asking for some data from the memory and it returning it.)
Timing 5-5-5-15
(Each number represents a type of RAM timing.)
(The 1st number is the time it takes between a command having been sent to the memory and when it begins to reply to it. It is the time it takes between the processor asking for some data from the memory and it returning it.)
(The 2nd number is the number of clock cycles performed between activating the Row Access Strobe and the Column Access Strobe. This parameter relates to the time it takes to access stored data.)
(The 3rd number is the amount of time between the 'precharge' command and the 'active' command. The 'precharge' command closes memory that was accessed and the 'active' command signifies that a new read/write cycle can begin.)
(The 4th number is the total time that will elapse between an active state and precharge state. This is the sum of the previous timings.)
Voltage: 2.1V
Heat Spreader: Yes
(It has really cool head spreaders that dissipate the head generated by the RAM.)
The DVD Writer
The DVD writer came OEM. OEM hardware is hardware packaged for computer administrator and builder use. These products are normally plain boxed and often don't come with any instructions or references provided in retail packages. Which is fine since for now I am a builder.
This DVD writer was released in October 2007.
It is one of the fastest writers out there. I ordered 2 of them.
The specs
Model: SAMSUNG DVD Burner
Performance
DVD-ROM Access Time: 130ms
CD-ROM Access Time: 110ms
Cache: 2MB
Write Speed
DVD+R: 20X
DVD+RW: 8X
DVD-R: 20X
DVD-RW: 6X
CD-R: 48X
CD-RW: 32X
DVD+R DL: 16X
DVD-R DL: 12X
DVD-RAM: 12X
Read Speed
DVD-ROM: 16X
CD-ROM: 48X
LightScribe Support: Yes
(The laser burns an image on the top of the CD or DVD instead of using labels.)
Building begins Saturday.
My CPU chip, hard drives and power supply got delivered today.
The Chip
My CPU is an AMD Phenom 9950 Black Edition 2.6Ghz Quad-Core Processor.
The chip was just released on July 1, 2008 so I have the newest AMD chip out there.
The specs
Operating Frequency: 2.6GHz
Hyper Transports: 4000MHz
L1 Cache: 4 x 128KB
L2 Cache: 4 x 512KB
L3 Cache: 2MB
This is going to be a fast chip.
The Power Supply
The power supply was released in October 2007. I needed a powerful and stable power supply and Antec power supplies have a great reputation.
The specs
The Antec TPQ-850
Maximum Power: 850W
(When I did the power calculations I figured out that I needed at least 650 Watts. So with 850W I have room to expand.)
Fans: 80mm low noise cooling fan
Main Connector 20+4Pin
(This is what connects the power supply to the motherboard.)
+12V Rails: 4
PCI-E Connectors: 2 x 6Pin, 2 x 8Pin
(This connects to your Video Card)
Modular Cabling Support: Yes
Efficiency: Up to 85% efficient
(This is actually quite good. There are power supplies that are only 80% efficient. No power supply is 100% efficient. Some power is waited by turning into heat.)
Energy-Efficient: 80 PLUS Bronze Certified
(80 PLUS is an initiative to promote more electrical energy efficient computer power supply units. It certifies products that have more than 80% energy efficiency at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated load. That is, PSUs that waste 20% or less electric energy as heat at the specified load levels, thus reducing electricity use and bills compared to less efficient PSUs.)
Over Voltage Protection: Yes
Overload Protection: Yes
MTBF >100,000 Hours
(It is how many hours it is expected to last before it dies. 100,000 hours is 11.4 years.)
The Hard Drive
The Hard Drive came OEM. OEM hardware is hardware packaged for computer administrator and builder use. These products are normally plain boxed and often don't come with any instructions or references provided in retail packages. Which is fine since for now I am a builder.
This hard drive was released in March 2008.
Western Digital is known for their stable and reliable hard drives. Now you are probably asking why 640 GB. Why not 500 GB or a terabyte. The lowest 500 GB is about $70. The lowest terabyte is about $170. I got my 650 GB for only $95. That is cheap. So I got 2.
The specs
Brand: Western Digital
Series: Caviar SE16
Performance
Interface: SATA 3.0Gb/s
(This is how fast information travels from the hard drive to the rest of the computer. 3 gigabits per second.)
Capacity: 640GB
RPM: 7200 RPM
Cache: 16MB
Now waiting for the rest of my stuff.
I ordered the video card, DVD writers and the RAM today from New Egg. This weekend with be the big building day for the computer.
Jennifer and I went to Fry's to get my cool looking case and motherboard. The MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard is a new model. It was released on October 8, 2007.
The specs
Front Side Bus: 2600MHz Hyper Transport
(A data transfer bus that carries information between the CPU and the north bridge of the motherboard.)
North Bridge :AMD 790FX
(Handles communications among the CPU, RAM and PCI Express slots)
A picture of the motherboard chips.
South Bridge: ATI SB600
(is a chip that implements the "slower" capabilities of the motherboard like power management, hard drives, ethernet, mouse, keyboard and audio)
Memory: 4x240pin slots with dual channel.
Expansion Slots: 4 PCI Express 2.0 slots, 1 PCI Express x1 slot and 2 PCI slots .
Storage devices: 1 ATA, 3 SATA 3Gb/s ports
Onboard Audio: Realtek ALC888
Rear Panel Ports: 2 PS/2 (keyboard and mouse port), 4 USB 2.0 and 1 fire wire.
Onboard (extra to attach to the front of case) 6 USB 2.0 and 1 fire wire.
Link of it on New Egg.
Fry's had a special on the case I wanted while I was in California and it looked like they sold out. Jennifer happened to fine one buried with other cases. Thanks Jennifer.
The case so nice looking. It is an Antec 900 ATX Mid Tower that is black. There is a side panel window so you can see all my cool looking gear inside the computer.
The Specs
Expansion: 3 external 5.25" drive bays (DVD-CD) and 6 internal 3.5" drive bays (hard drives).
Front Ports: Power and reset button with blue LED activity indicator, 2 USB 2.0 and 1 firewire port.
Cooling System: 1 120 mm rear fan, 2 blue LED front fans and a top mounted 200mm exhaust fan.
Link of it on New Egg.
This is going to be a cool computer.
For the last few years I have been wanting to get a new computer. So I have 2 choices, mac or pc. For the Mac computer I want would be $3,000 instead of $1,200 to $1,400 for a PC computer. The problem with the PC world is Microsuck. Now with Vista really sucking and people reverting back to XP do I really want to go though that. But wait. There is another choice. Linux. It has the same type of programs as mac and Microsuck. It has Open Office (like Microsuck Office), the great web browser Firefox and other similar programs.
I was also going to get an HP computer since my current one still works. Slower but still works. The problem is that I really did not like the cases. When I watched a friend of Jennifer's build his computer I realized that there are cases that are really good. So I decided that I was going to build my own computer.
I did a couple month of research on the new computer gear. I wanted new stuff that was no more than a year old but was cheaper without sacrificing quality or speed.
To build a computer you need the following components. A processor (CPU), a motherboard (Mobo), memory (RAM), hard drives (HDD), a video card (VGA) (if the motherboard does not come with one), a power supply (PSU), optical drives (DVD writers) and a case to put it all in.
I decided I would call my computer Mercury Melodic Canvas named after one of my cool chamber pieces I composed a few years ago. Also because the computer is going to be really fast like the winged Roman God Mercury which the planet is named after.
So in computer builder speak my build is:
Case: Antec 900
CPU: AMD Phenom 9950 2.6GHz Quad Core
Mobo: MSI K9A2 Platnum
RAM: Corsair Dominator 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR2 1066Mhz
HDD: Western Digital Caviar SE16 640GB 7200rpm SATA 3.0gb/s
VGA: MSI Geforce 8800GT 512 MB DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x 16
PSU: Antec 850W
DVD: Samsung 20x DVD Burner
I ordered the CPU, 2 HDD and the PSU today from Newegg.
This is going to be so cool.
I started this web log 4 years ago as a way to force myself to see something new when I lived in Marin County.
1st Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By the 2nd years web log birthday, I moved to another state, became a professor at a college teaching music and made some new friends.
2nd Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By the 3rd years web log I met Jennifer. A sweet, caring, cool, intelligent, calming and very pretty girlfriend who really compliments my personality and makes dating easy and so much fun.
3rd Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
Last year I began composing compositions again. I had written a string orchestra piece, reorchestrating my older compositions and composing new pieces for the steel band.
Last Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
This year I am still with my very pretty perfect girl, still a college professor and music department chair (I have been consistently building the music department with more classes, more students and more ensembles).
Off to compose more music.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WEB LOG!!!!!!
I started this web log 3 years ago as a way to force myself to see something new when I lived in Marin County.
1st Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By the 2nd years web log birthday, I moved to another state, became a professor at a college teaching music and made some new friends.
2nd Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By last years web log I met Jennifer. A sweet, caring, cool, intelligent, calming and very pretty girlfriend who really compliments my personality and makes dating easy and so much fun.
Last Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
This year I am still with my perfect girl, still a college professor and I am beginning to compose compositions again. When I 1st started at the college, being in charge of the music department, I had to resurrect the department from almost nothing to something. This took a couple of years and a lot of 12 hour days. So this year I am starting to focus on what I like to do the most which is to compose. Off to compose.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WEB LOG!!!!!!
I have added a new category to my web log. The days I spend in Houston with Jennifer I had put in the category of 'Exciting Adventures' or 'Just for Fun'. 'Exciting Adventures' category are more for vacations and day trips. 'Just for Fun' category are for fun adventures around the town I am currently living in. So the new category is 'A Houston Urban Retreat' with the description "Fun Adventures in Houston with My Girlfriend Jennifer".
Do not forget to see my archives. You can access them by month and see them in a calendar format or by category. Also feel free to leave comments.
I started this web log 2 years ago as a way to force myself to see something new when I lived in Marin County since I was quite alone while I was living there.
Last Years Web Log's Birthday Entry
By last years web log birthday, I moved to another state, became a professor at a college teaching music and made some new friends.
A major change from last year to this year is that I have a girlfriend. Not just any girlfriend, but a sweet, caring, cool, intelligent and very pretty girlfriend that really compliments my personality. It is the kind a relationship that I always wanted but began to think I might not ever have. Dating Jennifer is easy and so much fun. People have told me that having a romantic relationship is supposed to be easy. I never really believed it until Jennifer. Thank you Jennifer for being in my life.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WEB LOG!!!!!!
I have added 2 more categories now that my life is in a new chapter. The categories are "Teaching Adventures" and "The Quest for Free Food." The "Teaching Adventures" are my adventures of teaching at Galveston College. "The Quest for Free Food" is my search of free food at the college and around Galveston.
I have just added The Daily Changing Page. This is a page with stuff that changes every day. For now it includes: Weird Fact of the Day, the comic "The Joke's On You" and the current weather where I live. You can click on the image to take you to a page so you can check the weather in your area. The link will always be in the left column under "Let's Talk About Me for a Minute."
Enjoy!
The links within the column "Let's Talk About Me For a Minute" now work. They are:
"My Professional Web Site" - which is a link to my composition and conducting site which includes my cv, my works list and soon audio and score examples.
"All About Me" - which includes my favorite musical compositions, other favorite things and Ericisms.
"Dabbing into a Little Poetry" - which includes some of my poetry I have written that I would like to share.
"My Photo Gallery" - which are pictures I have taken around Northern California.
Enjoy!
Hi everyone. Welcome to my mind. This is my 1st official entry of my web log. I shall be posting entries regularly once I tweak this log to my liking. New stuff coming soon. Enjoy.