How-To: Use English Punctuation

Wikihow.com has an excellent tutorial on how to correctly use punctuation in English language. If you found yourself getting D on every highschool paper you ever wrote, this might be a good time to learn up! Just click here.

Why going back to XP is...painful.

For the past 3 months or so, I've been using Windows Vista. Because I recently acquired a need to edit videos with more versatility than Movie Maker could give, I needed to install Sony Vegas (My video editor of choice). But, as of version 7, it is not only incompatible, but killed my install of Vista. So I went back to XP, and this is when I realized how much XP really sucked.

First, the damn OS looks retarded. No, not ugly or obscene, it just looks strait retarded. The system font looks out-dated, windows waste too much space with their blue...ugliness. Speaking of the XP theme, the sound scheme is bad, too. Thank you so much Microsoft for updating it in Vista!

Next, the OS itself is just not coherent. Vista came along way to matching OS X's usability in that both just made sense. XP makes you ask "Why? Why did you put that there?" at several turns.

No built in applications. I mean, Vista isn't packed with apps either, but XP is definitely bare bones. In XP, as that long installation chugs along, you know you're going to have to find your wireless driver, get all your drivers in your low-res Internet Explorer 6 window and get everything just right- too bad that takes nearly an hour. In Vista, everything at least looks good upon initial boot. Plus IE 7 doesn't suck too bad, and Vista has significantly better hardware support than XP. Thank goodness.

Vista is faster. On the same hardware, Vista is significantly faster in almost every way. Applications load much quicker, the GUI is more responsive, and finding things is much easier. Just a better experience I suppose.

Needless to say, I will be returning to Vista ASAP.

How to write an emergency book report in 3 hours.

Your mission: write a 3 page book report on The Poisonwood Bible in three hours. You're nervous- you haven't read a single page. But worry not, there is a way. The first thing you need to do is assess what your teacher is looking for. Generally, a teacher will look for the following things:

• Evidence that you read the book.
• References to events and plot elements in the book.
• Opinions formed through actually reading the book.

So the problem is, how to accomplish these objectives without actually reading the book. Note, the following may not be ethically correct, but everyone hits the wall every once in a while. This is how to escape!

1. Read the first chapter. This will give you a feel for the book, and the characters.
2. Find the author on wikipedia. Get a feeling for the authors backstory and history, as this will determine what the authors twist on the plot will likely be.
3. Go to sparknotes.com (I know you've used these, so put a cork in it...) and read the plot overview. DO NOT ACTUALLY USE THIS INFORMATION IN YOUR REPORT! This is just so that you know what happened in the book.
4. Read and memorize the character list. Find out if any major changes occurred in a character during the course of the book.
5. Read the analysis of the chapters- this will help you a lot. NOTE: Teachers read these too, so make sure you don't even let them catch the scent of sparknotes on your paper.
6. Now, go to wikipedia again and look up to book. Read the plot and character lists for a solid understanding of both.
7. Finally, to get a really good impression of the book, look up any questions asked on Yahoo Answers about the book. It is likely that your teacher will ask similar questions.

Now, from this information you must draw your own conclusions. Your instructor will likely ask a question about what you think about a certain situation or character, and be sure that you have one, or you're toast.

Good Luck

Turion X2 Overclock follow-up - 2GHZ club!

UPDATED: I have run rigorous stability tests on a 2GHZ overclocked TL-50. It gives a memory error after a while. I bumped it down to 1800mhz, and no memory error after hours of testing. It's obvious that my memory can't take such high FSB speeds. As always, be responsible and happy safe overclocking. By the way, the memory test I use is called (imaginatively enough) MemTest and can be found here for free. If you would like to listen to this update via my podcast, just click here.

As you can see, I grew some balls and decided to overclock my Turion X2 TL-50 1.6GHZ CPU all the way up to 2GHZ (on stock voltage I might add...). It feels good to be matched with the 2GHZ Core Duo, even if the Core 2 Duo still annihilates the Turion. I didn't show it in the graph (due to sheer embarrassment), but the Core 2 Duo 2GHZ scored 18000 or so ALU marks for comparison. anyway, here is the Sandra CPU arithmetic mark:


Oh, and here are some more benches (just of my Turion at different speeds):
1600mhz
3DMark Score 946 3DMarks
CPU Score 589 CPUMarks
1800mhz
3DMark Score 1017 3DMarks
CPU Score 649 CPUMarks
1900mhz
3DMark Score 1136 3DMarks
CPU Score 673 CPUMarks

SUPER PI
1600mhz 512k
25 seconds
1800mhz 512k
22 seconds
1900mhz 512k
21 seconds
2000mhz 512k
19 seconds

How to record HD audio with Conexant HD Audio

You've got a so call HD Audio card from conexant or intel. But what the heck does that mean? Well, it means that internal sound cards don't completely suck anymore. Do you want to record really high quality (well, as high as an integrated card can offer...) audio without spending a fortune on an M-Audio shenanigan? Here's How you do it:

1. Download the excellent free software called Audacity.
2. Make sure you have the latest Conexant or Intel drivers.
3. Go into Control Panel and select sound.
4. Click on the recording tab.
5. Choose Microphone and right click, and choose properties.
6. Go to advanced and choose 2 Channel, 24 bit, 96000hz (Studio Quality).
7. Click apply.
8. Open Audacity
9. Look in the lower left corner where it says 44000hz, click and choose 96000hz.
10. Record!
    

How to overclock the DV6000z notebook.

Ok, so you want to add a little more zip to your laptop without spending a lot (read: anything). Well, heres how you can overclock your AMD (!) DV6000 series laptop without even opening the case. This works best in XP, but can still be done in Vista with some fiddling. Note, overclocking will yield higher performance, but underclocking (below the regular 800mhz) will not yield better battery life. I know its weird but I tested it.

1. Firstly, download a program called nTune. Install it, and if you're running vista, install with administrator rights.
2. Now once that is done, lets get some things strait. I am not responsible if you detonate your laptop by trying to overclock it to 100GHZ. Be careful, and use common sense.
3. Now that that is out of the way, if you are running Vista, you have to find an application called nvcplui on your hard disk. Search for it. When you find it, right click it and check "Run as Administrator".
4. Now nTune should work for Vista users. Now download and install SpeedFan. Run it and monitor your temperature. I have never had my 1.6GHZ Turion X2 go above 72 degrees in speedfan. Your CPU may run a bit hotter or cooler, so later we will write some rules to make sure your laptop doesn't overheat. AMD rates the MAX temp for this CPU as 95 degrees, but you can't account for the other components in the laptop case, so we want to stay cool.
5. Finally, the overclocking part! Go to the nVidia panel in control panel, click your new "Performance" option, agree to the liscense and you're ready to overclock! Click "Adjust Motherboard Settings".
6. Now you're ready to do it. See the slider? Slide that over until you get to 1700mhz. Click "Apply". Breathe. Now, if your computer froze, your CPU probably isn't up to overclocking. But thats unlikely, because laptop CPU's are almost always good overclockers. Now, check your SpeedFan temps. Looking Good? Now, go run a challenging program like a video editor, and while that runs, keep an eye on your temperatures the WHOLE TIME. If the temperature goes over 76 degrees, I would stop.
7. However, I went to 1800mhz on my laptop. My average temperature was 68 degrees during hours of high load computing. I'm sure I could go further, but then battery life would suffer dramatically and I really don't want my components to be pushed over 70 degrees.

TEST. Then do it again. Always watch your temps. After you've made absolutely sure that your laptop is stable and safe at your new speed, here's how to overclock automatically when windows starts.

1. Go back to the Performance tab. Click "Adjust Custom Rules". While your laptop is overclocked, go to the top of the window and click the profile menu. Click save. Choose a name like Overclock or 1800mhz.
2. Now, click "The first time windows starts", then click the arrow, then check "Load this profile" in the top box.
3. Now in the right-lower box, click the blue "profile" link and choose your overclocked profile. A little confusing, no? Now click Accept. This will run your overclocked profile when windows starts.

Now, to put in some automatic fail safes to keep your laptop protected. I know these custom rules are complicated, but you can figure them out with a minute of trying.

1. In the Custom Rules panel, click "When temperature is higher than XX degrees Celsius" then click the arrow. Check "Load Profile" in the top. Choose a profile called sysdflt. Then click on the blue "When" in the right box and choose CPU. Click on the blue XX and type 75 degrees.

Now your laptop will automatically reduce its speed if the CPU temp is too high. Nifty huh? In Vista, I would chose the "Balanced" profile so that your laptop. There you go, your laptop is now faster, for free!! If you decide to do this, please comment with your increased benchmarks or temperatures =).