October 06, 2005
I set up a new dynamic web page
I tell ya, programming for the web is a kick! I know Sherri enjoys just manipulating the html code for web pages... she can do some amazing stuff with that. But I like the ability to dynamically generate the web page, using scripts on the server or on the browser to create the web page "just in time" for the reader to view it, based on the reader's preferences and the "latest information".
I got an opportunity to combine my interest in web programming along with my interest in alternative energy when I recently came in contact with Steve Bash, who is a local fellow that is working hard to spread the word about alternative fuels in the Sacramento area. His primary focus is biodiesel, which is a fuel which can be made from new or used vegetable oil or animal fat. Though he has a ton of energy and a great deal of knowledge of alternative fuels, he doesn't really know how to funnel that knowledge and energy out to the internet. His current web site is basically using Blogger with the domain name sacbiofuels.org.
I didn't think that looked very professional, so I asked Steve if I could put together a web site on volunteer time that encompassed everything that I thought should be available and everything that he needed. Things like a Blog, News, News Feeds from other web sites, a Forum, a Newsletter, Classifieds, on-line Shopping, etc, etc. He thought that wasn't a bad idea, so I went to work...
I definitely needed something that was powerful, easy to manage, easy to modify, and well supported. If it had an open source license, even better. I found quite a few options, but what looked best of all was a Content Management System called Joomla!. The installation process was pretty easy, and after going through a fairly steep learning curve, I've got something that works fairly well... check out sacbiofuels.com, which I expect will become the new home for sacbiofuels.org.
Getting the site up and adding different plug-in modules has been pretty cool... The software seems very flexible and adding new features seems to be quite easy. There are a few things that it can't do, which I haven't found any plug-in solutions for, which probably means I'll have to program the feature myself... but that should be pretty easy to do. Sherri is providing the visual imagery (something I'm not so good at, but she's great at). I'm excited to be working on a web site that is going to be viewed and used by a lot of different people... hopefully we get some good reviews... 8^)
By the way, just for the record... I want to let you know that it was my cousin (of whom I spoke in detail in More about a great couple) who got me "fueled" about alternative fuels... so if you wonder why I'm spending my time chasing zany ideas like vegetable oil as fuel, go talk to him first... 8^)
Posted by Michael at 05:59 PM | Comments (1) | Technical
September 22, 2005
Playing with MovableType
Learning about this web log software, Movabletype by SixApart, is pretty interesting. The source code for the blog software is provided in its entirety, and it is designed very nicely for configurability and expandability. It's awesome for a tinkerer like me, plus there are hundreds of other tinkerers like me that have created useful plugins for Movabletype already. Changing the layout and the basic look & feel was pretty straightforward; now I'm taking the next step to modifying the behavior of the blog.
I've already installed MTAmazon, which allows me to place search results from Amazon.com into my blog, and I've installed and modified BookQueue with which I can track the books I plan to read, am reading, or have read, and which uses the MTAmazon plugin to retrieve data about the books. See it in action on Sherri's blog page as well as her "Books I have Read" page.
I've also installed Feeds.App from Appnel Internet Solutions which allows me to add RSS feeds on my blog pages; you can see it in action on my blog in the right hand column, where it says Sherri's Recent Entries.
I've also added some not so visible enhancements which help protect me from getting spammed, like an e-mail address obfuscator which makes e-mail addresses impossible to "harvest" from the web page source, but still usable by you, the readers.
There are several more little utilities I plan on adding, as time permits... check back once in a while to see what's new and different...!
Posted by Michael at 10:06 PM | Comments (0) | Technical
September 20, 2005
Fruits of Labor
After working on this project for a while, it's nice to see it publicly announced:
New Dell Axim Handhelds.
Some reviews:
Posted by Michael at 02:41 PM | Comments (0) | Technical
September 15, 2005
Very cool desktop tool!
I was trying to find an RSS reader that I could use on my desktop so that I wouldn't have to open a web browser and log in to My Yahoo! just to see updates to my favorite syndicated sites. I was hoping to find something that sits in my tool tray or is a little application that checks the feeds at preset intervals and shows me the summaries. However, I wanted to avoid a bloated application that sucks up system resources and slows everything down.
What I found exceeded my wildest expectations! The free utility KlipFolio from Serence is a very small, lightweight, yet powerful utility that sits on my desktop where I can get to it easily. I can make it as unobtrusive as I want by shrinking down the "klip" windows and making them transparent then when I want to see more details, I just mouse over the title bar of the klip, which expands. If I want even more details, then I can mouse over an item within the klip window, which then pops open another window. Once I move the mouse off the klips, everything closes up again. Extremely nice, very clean, very simple!!
It's even nicer than a plain RSS reader as the klips are not limited to just RSS feeds. The one I showed was a local weather klip; there are a large number of klips that can be downloaded from the KlipFarm. And they provide a nice developer kit, which ensures that more and more klips are going to be available.
I am very impressed, and very glad I found this little utility.
Posted by Michael at 04:30 PM | Comments (1) | Technical
August 28, 2005
Quieter, but still very warm!
About a year and a half ago, as part of an incentive deal through the company for which Sherri & I work, we purchased a (near) top of the line Dell XPS computer to replace our very aged Pentium Pro-based IBM computer. It's a very awesome machine, with gobs more storage and processing power than we know what to do with. The unfortunate side effect of all this storage and power is a lot of heat. And, because the heat has to be removed from the computer case by fans, another side effect is a lot of noise. With our Dell system, it was so loud that it sometimes sounded like an idling jet airplane, and since the system sits in our living room, it sometimes interfered with the music we were listening to, or the movies we were watching. I finally decided to do something about it...
The design of the Dell computer case is interesting... there is a single fan in the front of the case, sucking cool air in. Then there is some fancy duct work over the CPU heat sink (which is fairly gigantic) leading to another 2 fans at the back of the case, which blow the hot air out of the case. When the temperature within the case goes up, thermal sensors tell the motherboard firmware to increase the speed of the fans in order to prevent the CPU from overheating. Of course, if the outside air is relatively warm already, it is more difficult to cool the CPU and the inside of the case, and then the fans will run at top speed all the time.
It wouldn't be quite so bad if the air temperature in our living room stayed fairly cool, but in the summer (especially the past month and a half!!), the heat doesn't just seep into the house, it gushes in. As the house A/C struggles to keep the house temperature down, the computer case fans struggle to keep the CPU temperature down.
The exhaust heat from the computer doesn't help the living room air temperature situation much either; sitting at the desk working on the computer, it feels like there is a small space heater under the desk... this would be great when the house temperature is 30 or 40 degrees F, but when it's more like 85 F, the last thing I want is a space heater roasting my legs!
Of course one way to get around both the noise and the heat is to shut down the system when I'm not using it, which I've been doing lately, but since we run a few services off that system, such as the Orb service and our "common" printer, I prefer to leave it on. So I started looking at other possible solutions.
One thing that I thought would be interesting is liquid cooling since liquid is so much more effective at removing heat than air. When I first thought about it, I discarded the thought immediately; with my luck, I would get a flakey part that would break inside the computer after I had it all together, and water would squirt all over the insides of my running system... Water and electronics generally do not go together well; adding live electricity to that mix will typically make things a lot worse. Besides, all the liquid cooling components were sold seperately, and so getting all the separate pieces together would have been a pain in the butt.
Then I ran across some reviews of liquid cooling kits. Finally some folks had the brilliant idea of putting all the liquid cooling components together into a single kit so that "average" folks like me could buy one thing and install it with a minimum of fuss.
I decided to buy the Cooler Master AquaGate system (see review at AusPCWorld.com) through TigerDirect.com. I received it several weeks later (there was a bit of a shipping snafu, but to their credit, TigerDirect took care of the issue fairly quickly), and waited until yesterday to tackle the installation.
Opening up the package, I found what looked like a rather frightening collection of hoses, wires, screws, and miscellaneous parts. Fortunately, the instructions were fairly clear; it was the disassembly of the Dell system that consumed the most time. Removal of the plastics (front panel, side panel, internal ducting) was really tricky because I didn't want to break them and it was very difficult to tell how they are attached to the case. The installation of the cooling system also required the removal of the motherboard, which also meant that everything had to be removed from the motherboard (video card, audio card, hard drive cables, floppy drive cables, power cables, etc, etc) in order to get it out.
Once everything was disassembled, the reassembly went fairly smoothly. All the parts in the kit where there and all fit together properly, which was a relief. I chose to have the cooling unit external to the case and to put the control panel inside the case; that added a little bit of work to the reassembly process but it all worked out fairly nice. Despite the frightening collection of parts, the install was pretty easy:
- install the cooling block on the CPU
- connect the liquid hoses
- install the small PCI card
- install the LCD panel in a spare 5.25" drive slot
- route and connect the cables to the PCI card and the LCD panel
- route the liquid hoses out of the case
- connect the liquid hoses to the cooling unit
- connect PCI card cable and power cable to cooling unit
- fill cooling unit with coolant
- start PC & keep reservoir full as the pump filled the lines with coolant
The picture shows the final installation, with the cooler sitting underneath the computer shelf and the control panel in one of the drive bays. This gives me the flexibility to move the cooling unit somewhere else, such as (possibly) to the other side of the desk.
I've had the system running with the new coolant unit for over 24 hours now, and so far I'm very impressed. I have no idea how hot the CPU got prior to the installation of this system, so I have to be a bit subjective about the results. Since I left the original fans inside the case, and I did not do anything with the sensors on the motherboard, I figured one way to determine the effectiveness of the cooling system was to listen to the speed of the fans within the case. If they went to full speed (and sounded like an idling jet airplane), then I would know the cooler was allowing the CPU to get just as hot as with the air cooled heat sink. If not, then I would know the cooler is more effective at removing the heat than the stock cooling system. I tried to work it extra hard today, by running the CPU constantly using a Grid project (which crunches out calculations whenever the CPU has nothing else to do) and keeping it running during the hot part of the day. I was amazed that the case fans never got switched to their top speed; the CPU temperature obviously never got high enough to trigger the maximum speed setting for the fans.
I'm fairly pleased with how well the cooling system works; I seem to have solved the noise problem handily. Unfortunately, the heat that is generated under the desk is still a problem for which I need to work out a solution... for a future project, I will have to figure out an elegant way to extract the heat out from under the desk...
Posted by Michael at 09:32 PM | Comments (0) | Technical
