swordBeatsPaper

My post-university life–new flat, new job, new friends–has started to take shape (though I won’t officially “graduate” until the end of June). I moved out of university accommodation yesterday, and have spent today finishing unpacking and taking full advantage of my very own kitchen. I bought sesame bagels yesterday on a whim, and for lunch today had one toasted with cheese, pepperoni, and salami. I also went shopping for baking tools like measuring spoons and mixing bowls, and finally made a batch of my favorite chocolate chip cookies, for the first time in at least a year. I’ve mentioned these same cookies before in my blog. The recipe is from a spiral-bound book given to me when I was little called Cookie Capers. I make the “Chocolate Chip Valentine” recipe, but instead of using a heart-shaped pan, I make individual cookies. I should probably branch out and try some other recipes in the book, but this one is so tasty and I bake so infrequently, it’s the only one I bother with. Maybe that will change, now that I have all this time to myself in the evenings and on weekends. And of course a lovely kitchen!

One more leisurely day tomorrow, and then I start work on Monday. I’m more excited than nervous! I have a friend who has the same commute as me and started work last week. He says the commute is fine so far, a good way to wake up in the morning and wind down in the evening. Other than that, I don’t know how similar our work situations will be, since my job is only an internship. My hope is that it will be enjoyable enough that I wake up in the morning and look forward to working, and that I’ll meet many new potential friends, and start creating more of a social circle for myself in the area. Only time will tell!

Also, my classmates and I have finally received our degree classifications. In the British system, this is essentially a GPA. Mine is a 2:1, or an upper second class degree. This is what most companies ask for from computing science graduates, and anything more is essentially bragging rights. It could be considered a B average, but honestly, it is much more difficult to get a B in Britain than it is in America. I’m very relieved at how well I did, since I was only on the edge of this average at the end of last year. Only the few people at the very top of the class get the degree classification higher than a 2:1, which is a 1:1, or a “first.” Now I just have to wait for my grades for the individual classes to be released, which have only been delayed because of a technical problem that’s lasted for days. My classmates and I are all quite annoyed. But at least I know I did well overall–I can start my new job with confidence that I’m qualified!

Summer has come to Glasgow. Surprisingly, it’s not just a day, but a week of blazing sun. I’ve been out to the park frequently, and so has everyone else. The place is packed like a beach, with people tanning, reading, kicking around footballs (soccer balls), getting ice cream from a van that must be making a fortune, and playing music whether the people around them enjoy it or not. I’ve enjoyed it, but since I got a bit of a burn a couple of days ago I’ve been avoiding direct sunlight. Today it’s finally cloudy, but it’s still quite warm. I wonder if we’ll get much more heat like this over the next few months.

Now that I don’t feel compelled to go outside and hang out with friends, I’ve started to think about what projects I might take on. I have a book that needs editing, several books that need reading, and Project Euler problems to continue. After two years of hard work at university, it seems I can’t be satisfied playing video games and watching TV for very long. I’ve only been finished with exams for a week now, and I’m wanting to work on something.

I move flats in two weeks, and start work a few days later. I’m looking forward to it, but it’s a bit scary thinking that from then on, I won’t ever be off work except for one month a year, and if I’m ever unemployed. At least I’ll have weekends and evenings to myself, guilt-free.

A lot has been happening. I’m taking my final exams, I’ve had 6 and have 3 left. Two this Friday, and the last one the following Thursday. I had 9 exams in the spring last year as well, but somehow this year it feels even more dragged out. When I was about halfway through them, I never wanted to see an exam again… but I’ve been dealing with that feeling by doing equal amounts of studying and playing Skyrim. It’s only a few more, and then, I’ll never take a university exam again. I’m graduating in June.

Sometimes, I think about the idea that I’m coming to an end of a full university education. Yes, I don’t have anything beyond a Bachelor’s degree, but in my subject, what I’ve gathered is that you only go further if you’re interested in academia. A Bachelor’s degree is a full education. I’ve been taught everything that my university believes is important for me to know, to be able to work proficiently in the field of Computing Science.

This struck me particularly when I was browsing free online classes with video lectures on Coursera–really worth checking out, tons to choose from and run by Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, and more. All of their Computing Science classes I’ve either already taken the equivalent of, or I was given the option to take it and I decided I wasn’t interested. (Apart from a class on compilers, which I attempted to start a couple weeks ago and realized exam time was a bad time, if I wanted any time to goof off when I wasn’t studying.) There is actually very little more that a university can teach me about my degree, apart from cutting-edge research. It’s a thought I can’t quite grasp yet.

And the future is looking even brighter than just graduation. I’ve got a promising internship lined up for the summer in Edinburgh. I’m very much looking forward to my first foray into adult working life: an interesting job, having my evenings and weekends all to myself without guilt, and of course, a paycheck.

Now, if I could just get through these last three exams a bit more quickly…

As some of you may know, I’ve already put the computer together that I mentioned in Part 1 and it’s running smoothly. I’m finally getting around to telling you how. I didn’t take quite as many pictures as would be ideal if I want non-techie people to understand, but I will try to make up for this with explanations.

After unwrapping it all (which, I admit, felt like Christmas), the first step was to put the processor and its fan on the motherboard, as you can see pictured (click the pictures to see them larger!). Make sure to place the motherboard on the anti-static bag it came in, and to ground yourself by touching metal somewhere. Don’t be afraid of being shocked, it is a very small possibility, but it pays to be safe. The fan on the left in the picture is secured on top of the processor, which is in turn set into the motherboard by many, many small delicate pins. Explanation of how this all works should be in your processor manual. It’s important to be careful at this stage, including with the fan. If the fan is not secured properly, the processor can easily overheat, which can lead to all kinds of nasty things–though thankfully, computers are built to shut down immediately if this ever happens.

As you can see in the first picture as well, the RAM is connected. The black sticks above the fan are snapped into matching-colored slots (this is important if you want both sticks to be recognized). If I want to add more RAM in the future, I could add it to the other two slots. The only thing left to plug into the motherboard other than wires is my graphics card, which will be installed after the motherboard is put into the case.

Now, let’s turn to the case. It’s a really nice one in my opinion, with holes to help organize cables so they don’t get too messy, and slide-lock compartments for the optical drives (DVD drive and such). The cables you see in this picture come this way. The ones on the far left and right are for the front and back fans, and the ones in the middle are for the power button, reset button, front USB slots, and everything else on the front of the case. These in particular will all be plugged into the motherboard.

First, however, the power supply must be attached to the case. It slides into the space in the bottom left corner of the case, with all the cables pointing inside, as shown in the picture to the right. Since this case allows you to nicely arrange cables, all of these can be pushed through a hole in the back (from this perpsective) of the case, and pulled back through to the front where needed. At first I didn’t do this, and realized later it would be much neater, and so rearranged it all. Don’t tase me, I’m a bit of a perfectionist.

All of these cables may be daunting, but trust me, with just a few observations, it’s easy to find the right slot for them. Now, the back panel for the motherboard is set in place, and the motherboard itself is screwed into the case. It can only fit one way. My motherboard has six screws. At this point it’s a good idea to take a look at your motherboard manual, because it will explain how to attach the screws, and where all of the cables must be attached. On the picture to the left, you can see I haven’t put the power cables through the back yet, but all the better to see them I suppose.

The following steps can really be done in any order, whatever is easiest. I have attached only one cable in the above picture, the power cable for the motherboard. Following this, I attached the graphics card, which I put into a PCIe slot (I chose the dark blue one, the second slot from the top in the above picture). It slots in there, and then is screwed onto the back panel on the left, after unscrewing two of the pre-attached panels there. Following this, the puzzle of attaching cables commences.

On the right is a picture of all of the cables connected (after I rearranged the wires neatly–yes, this is neat), but I will list the steps I went through. As you can see, the huge graphics card is attached in the middle. After this, I plugged in all of the power cables. These cables are very difficult to break, and some you have to be forceful with to plug in! Don’t be afraid to do so. Not all of them will be used, depending on your choice of components, but most of them will be. Any plugs that are the same shape are put on the same cable, which makes it easier. There are connectors for the two fans on my case, two other plugs that connect to the motherboard (one is for the USB slots in the back), and the DVD drive and the hard drive (which I will explain separately). The ones that connect to the motherboard will be explained in its manual, and they have different shapes, so don’t fear that you’ll get them mixed up.

The hard drive is attached, in my case in any of the bottom left slots, and it gets its own power cable and also a cable called a SATA connector. Your motherboard should come with these cables. They are what the data flows through, from the motherboard to the hard drive, so in turn, that is where the cable connects. On my motherboard the SATA plugs are on the bottom right. My motherboard comes with two different types of SATA ports–3Gb/s and 6Gb/s. I plugged the hard drive into the 6Gb/s port. The DVD drive is inserted into one of the slots at the top right, and my case is very nice in that I can simply slide it in and lock it in place (as you can see I did on the very top slot). It also gets a power cable, the same type of plug as the hard drive, and a SATA cable. I plugged it into a 3Gb/s port.

Finally, the cables for connecting the case’s front panel should be attached. The skinny multicolored cables can be the trickiest, but they should be explained in the motherboard manual. Make sure to plug them in the right direction. Apart from those, there is a SATA connector for the front panel (which I plugged into a 6Gb/s port) and a USB connector for the front panel.

Assuming everything is plugged in securely, you should now be ready to plug in the power! After putting the case cover on, the monitor, keyboard, speakers, and main power plug should be plugged into the back of the case. You can also plug in your Ethernet (internet) cable if you plan to use one. These should be straightforward, since again, they have very distinct shapes and colors for each plug. After positioning everything as you want it, now for the moment of truth… turn it on!

At first, nothing showed on my monitor, and there was a brief scare that something was faulty, but I turned it off, re-checked all my cables were secure inside the case, turned it on again, and it worked. After making sure the screen shows something about installing an operating system (your computer was pieced together successfully!), you want to either put the CD/DVD or USB stick containing your preferred operating system into the computer and restart it. From there, it’s all software installation, which is another beast of its own, and I won’t cover it here. Make sure you understand partitioning your hard drive, but don’t worry, it’s a simple thing easily looked up online.

And, the finished product! There’s usually a mess of cables at the back, and some people tidy these up with cable ties, but I didn’t bother. The box at the bottom is my speaker subwoofer (I forgot how fun they are…). My mouse is USB-powered and wireless, and my keyboard is also USB-powered, but wired. My motherboard did come with a connector for old-style keyboards and mice, which is a nice thing to have, in case your keyboard breaks or you have to (or want to?) use an old one.

This wonderful machine can smoothly play any game out there at full graphics (or at least any one that I’ve installed, including Skyrim on “Ultra” graphics), but is also a very nice, comfortable space to work. I’ve installed dual-boot Windows 7 and ArchLinux (if you want to know why I chose ArchLinux, that is a discussion for another time), but the system allows me to separate work and play pretty effectively, since I haven’t really installed games on ArchLinux (apart from Sauerbraten…). All in all, I am very happy with my choice of components, and will hopefully enjoy this beast of a machine for years to come.

I have recently decided to build a new computer. I have reasons for why I’m doing it before my exams are over, as well as reasons for why I’m building it myself, but I’d rather talk about the latter. I am aiming to write these posts about my new computer not only for tech-savvy readers, but for anyone who is interested. So I apologize if you know some of this already. This blog was partly inspired by Coding Horror’s popular series of posts. Take a look at them if you want more pictures of pretty PC parts.

Building has many benefits over pre-built, if you’re up to the task. If you learn about parts, you can choose exactly what you want–and then modify them when you change your mind, or when the technology for a particular part gets better. This way you don’t have to buy a whole new computer when you want a new part, and you know exactly where it goes and whether it plays nice with your other parts. It can also be cheaper, but only if you’re careful.

I did my best to be careful. I wanted a gaming PC that could play today’s games at the highest graphics settings, as well as being a bit future-proof so that I won’t have to rebuild for at least a few years. Problem was, I had to buy everything from the keyboard to the motherboard. All that I had already was a gaming laptop, which I couldn’t take parts from.

To find parts, I had to do research. This is essential, and probably the most difficult part of building a computer. I was lucky, since I have lots of friends in computing science to bounce ideas off of, but most of my decisions were based on reading reviews, benchmarks (performance tests), and searching sites for the best prices. I wanted to make good choices, so I spent some time doing this. I ended up buying my parts online from Dabs and eBuyer, two major electronics retailers in the UK.

Here are my final specs, which I know many of you will skip the rest of this post to see:

The total was just under £850. Note that the motherboard, processor, and memory came in a £300 bundle; I estimated what each separate part cost within the bundle. The same goes for the case and power supply, they came in a roughly £100 bundle.

On Friday, my class and I turned in our dissertations. It was such a relief. Since exams don’t start for about a month, it’s as if I went from having no time for anything but work to having no idea what to do with myself. I have a few small projects in mind though, including writing a bunch of blog posts that I’ve been beind on. I have another book review and at least one post I want to make about the new computer I put together. Look for them soon!

I might also buy A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin, finally, for kindle… now that I have some time to get absorbed in books.