Wednesday, 1st Dec 2004, 11:49 AM

So, for all those cultured people in the greater Bristol area, me an Liz Graham have started a Rollerdisco night at one of the cities most prominent venues - The Folk House. Every Wednesday night 8 till late. £7 on the door with all the free vodka you want. Disco spandex and big moustaches get in free. Free pair of Rollerboots^TM to the wearer of the most hideous gold medallion. The Folk House is two minutes walk up Park Street from the Centre. Be there of be else-where. Should be bangin' fun for most of the family.

For more info: rollerdisco@banksyw.tk

Ride 'em Cowboy.

Friday, 30th Jul 2004, 6:37 PM

Big News.

This site is now real.

Look at the url if you don't believe me.

Banksyw.tk is now officially registered to me and this site has it's own hosting account.

All is nice.

Good.

Tuesday, 29th Jun 2004, 9:02 PM

Today was a good day.

Today I purchased some nice speakers. Wharfedale Pro 8.2 active monitors to be precise. And a pretty little Yamaha MG10/2 mixer. Also of course, 18 concrete blocks. Concrete blocks are the best speaker stands money can buy when seperated by little squares of carpet. They are so heavy that they are pretty inert sonically, i.e. it takes a lot of energy to move them and because they are seperated from each other, they don't transfer much movement from block to block. The difference is amazing. when I first got the speakers home today I listened with them just perched on top of my other speakers and they were good but lacked bass definition. Several hours of hard work later, the bass is much crisper and well definined.

Concrete blocks are the best speaker stands ever. They are not very much fun to work with though. I had to bring them home from the bulder's yard in two journeys because they were too heavy for my car all at once. I then had to cut my bits of carpet and then move 18 very heavy blocks of concrete from my garage (where I dumped them) up to my bedroom - the furthest two rooms of the house apart (just about). A minor back injury, aching arms and just a few grazes later, my speakers are sounding great.

Now I just need to move my PC. That involves designing and building a new desk on the other side of my room. Good.

Oh and I have to acoustically treat my room. Currently I am thinking of lowering the cieling with heavy fabric draped over poles, and possibly bulding some bass traps along my back wall.

All good things.

Wednesday, 23rd Jun 2004, 6:14 PM

Lomg time no news update.

Just to fill in for those who were actually following the PC silencing saga, My PC is now quiet.

I purchased 2 panaflo fans (80mm and 92mm) and used the 80 mm to replace the noisy one in my PSU and wired it for constant 7v. I also put the case back on my PSU and enlarged the grills in the front so that airflow is directed and better. It now seems to run much cooler and is barely audible. The voltages by the way are fine - it is my motherboard that is incapable of recording them properly. It is a cheap piece of poo any way.

I used the 92mm to replace the CPU fan and made a 6 voltage speed selector fro it with a switch on the front of my PC to select between 12, 9, 7.5, 6.75, 6, or 5.25 V. I keep it on 9 most of the time (where it is only audible in a silent room which mine isn't most of the time) and when I want actual quietness (when I'm sleeping with it on for example) I switch it down to 7.5 where I can't actually hear it at all (the other fans are louder). I mounted the fan onto my old heatsink with knicker elastic and bits of mouse mat backing.

I now have 2 hard disks - I purchased a new 80GB seagate for audio stuff. They are both supended in my 5.25 inch bays by thick elastic and have a speciall cooling unit I made by attaching one of my old 80mm fans to two of the front panel blanking things with foam spacers and wiring it through a selector switch to choose between 5 and 7 volts. At 5 volts it is nearly silent but still the loudest bit of my PC.

My temps are now between 40 and 45 in normal use (probably up to about 48 under full stress) and my hard disks are 36 and 34 degrees for the main and audio disks respectively.

Nice.

The point of the second hard disk was for extra storage, specifically for audio so I can run decent audio software like Logic. I have partitioned my original disk into 50 and 10GB partitions (50 is the original partition) and installed a second copy of XP onto the second partition for audio work. I have a dual boot system so i can do all my work normally on one copy of XP and have any audio apps running on a completely clean copy of xp with nothing but the bear essentials loaded.

Good things.

Friday, 14th May 2004, 2:25 PM

PC update:

My temps have risen contrary to what is written below.
Idle temps are now up to around 43C after being on for a while but still only 46C under load.

PSU voltages are awfull. A new PSU is on the cards...

Right now MBM 5 shows:

5V line varies from 2.41 V to 3.39 V
12V varies from 3.74 V to 8.39 V
3.3V ~2.5V stable

Hmmmm.

I've just been reading through my posts about my PC (mainly for the benefit of a certain DJ) and realised that I didn't actually post about my video card swap. About a month and a bit ago I purchased a Geforece MX440 Dual Head thing to replace the Readeon so that I could have two monitors without having such a rubbish piece of hardware in my pc (the old 2MB card really screwed up the Radeon's software). The new card isn't any better in games (possibly a bit worse) but then I don't play games and in 2D it is much better.

I may or maynot have mentioned that before, at 1280x960 resolution my main monitor picture wouldn't fill the screen even with max magnification in the OSD. There were also interference lines between the two monitors. Both of these problems I thought were problems with the monitors but since getting the new card, they have both been solved completely. Both monitors peform as well as possible, seem to flicker less even at same refresh rate and have no interference at all. Bargain. My Radeon was sold for £25 and it's new owner is very pleased with it.

I also stuck a DVD rom in there for a bit of entertainment.

Sunday, 9th May 2004, 5:46 PM

Further computer mods for any one interested. I have now completely removed the case of my PSU and re wired the fan so that it runs at 7v and added another 7v fan that used to be another exhaust to blow air directly onto the heatsinks in the PSU. It is now barely audible in a virtually silent room - and I consider my hearing rather acute.

In terms of long term relaibility, I'm hoping my PSU will be able to take the heat now. CPU idle temp is still the same at 37-38 C but after 5 mins at 100% load I'm only reaching 43-44 C - even better than before. This could be because the new fan on the bottom of the PSU is pulling more hot air away from the CPU. I'll post some pictures of my modified PSU at some point. You will see that my whole PC is held together with gaffa tape.

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