Yesterday i noticed my twitter timeline was flooded with ‘RIP bebo’ tweets and lots of people throwing in their 2 cents on how & why Bebo died. I did some searches and a quick scan of all major tech sites – nothing. Within minutes, Bebo’s wikipedia page was edited stating this ‘fact’: “The website closed on 30th January 2012″…

I Immediately took a screenshot because i knew this wasn’t happening and it was a great example of how rumours turn in to facts online. The problem was, up until the wikipedia page was edited, nobody had any sources. That didn’t stop the rumour spreading. Then, once the wikipedia page had been edited, it became a ‘source’ which added further credibility to the rumour. It was the only source.

Michael Birch, co-founder of the site pretty much confirmed it was all a big evil publicity stunt by tweeting “Am super sad that Bebo has actually gone. Some very fun times with very cool people.” He followed that up a few minutes later with ” Hold the press (too late for that), Bebo should be coming back in a matter of hours”.

It would appear to me, this was a deliberate act by Bebo to generate hype. I don’t buy in to the fact that a social network of bebo’s size could go down and stay down for such a long period of time without even a simple ‘sorry, we’re offline temporarily’ message. Yes it may be a ‘technical clusterfuck‘ but Bebo have twitter accounts, Birch is still involved and the first message that came from any of them was Birch’s ‘confirmation’ that the site was closed. It doesn’t add up, unless of course it was all a publicity stunt in which case it has worked.

My guess is bebo will see a massive spike in activity when it comes back online, not because people warm to it’s old charm, but because they’re grabbing all their old photos and messages before it shuts down for good.

Eerie Prediction

Back in February 2008, i posted this blog post about bebo. Pretty critical, gloomy and pessimistic about bebo’s future…

“No doubt revenue is up and traffic is flying, but it’s short term gain for long term sacrafice. They are driving people like me away from bebo.”

A month later, the site sold to AOL for $850m. From then on it continued to free-fall to it’s current status as a former giant of social networking gone bad. A lesson in how not to monetise a social network and how big bucks mean nothing if you don’t understand what users want…

How important is a mouse? Would any mouse do? Would any keyboard do? Chance are if i were to replace either on you, you wouldn’t be happy because the replacements would feel different and that would mess up the way you operate…

Change

For the past 6 months or so my old logitech mouse was acting up. It wasn’t tracking properly on wood / glass / plastic / anything. Eventually i discovered that it would track perfectly on a purple plastic A4 folder for some reason so that became my temporary mouse-mat. Over the past couple of weeks though i noticed it was becoming a bit unstable on that so i decided to get a new mouse… the reason why i didn’t get a new mouse as soon as the old one started playing up was simple – i had gotten so used to the old mouse, that a change in size / feel / button combinations would really mess up my work flow.

With dual monitors, a programmable mouse is very important. I flick windows from one monitor to the next with my mouse and also do all my copy / pasting with my mouse. It also controls the volume of my speakers. So replacing my old mouse with something that *didn’t* have those features wasn’t something i was willing to do. There’s a trend these days for mice to be small… mini mice. The problem for me is that i have a mini mouse, in fact it works perfectly and it has programmable buttons. But the position of those buttons isn’t ‘natural’ to me so it slows down my workflow when using it. Plus i prefer bigger mice when working with a desktop, i find that my hand is less ‘arced’ when using a full size mouse, so there’s less stress on my wrist as i can relax it a bit more.

New kid in town

After much investigation i found that the Logitech m510 was the closest replacement to my old mouse (which was bought as part of a keyboard package).

Similar size, similar location of buttons, same Logitech software i’m used to. Everything i back to the way it should be… smooth movement, smooth scrolling, no frustration. However, it’s amazing how we’ll do anything to avoid change, simply to save ourselves the hassle and time of learning something new. It even took me a while get used to the idea of a new mouse. Thankfully my ‘new’ mouse isn’t all that different from my last one so the change is minimal.

Plastic packaging shoutout

I hate plastic packaging.. the kind that is welded together and can only be opened with a knife. Not only is it frustrating to open, it’s bloody sharp & dangerous too. It should be banned as it’s a lazy way for manufacturers to package stuff and benefits nobody only manufacturers. I was expecting to have to cut open my new mouse package with a knife when i flicked it over and discovered they had a perforated edges at the back of the package along with a convenient ‘open here’ slot. No knives, no slitting your fingers open on sharp plastic. The very fact this surprised me and is worthy of mentioning is sad – this is the way all packaging should be… it’s stuff we should be able to take for granted but far too often the packaging isn’t thought about and it’s not seen as important by manufacturers. Will it make or break my decision to buy something? No. But Logitech have earned themselves a bit more respect from me because of it…

The first thing i do every morning is roll over to my left hand side, switch off the alarm on my iPhone with the top button (without opening my eyes) and then go back to sleep. I do this about 10 times within 20 minutes until it gets to the stage where i’m awake and waiting for the next alarm to go off. At that stage i know i’m 100% alert and ready to go. Up until that point, i live in hope that i’ve accidentally set my alarm to go off early. That could happen once, unlikely to happen 10 times…

However, once i’m fully awake i disconnect my iPhone from charging and see if i’ve any notifcations or emails. Usually there’s a dozen or more. It was getting to the stage before Christmas where i’d wake up to 20 emails alone. Most of them newsletters or stuff i didn’t want to see.

Unsubscribe from all the things

Over the past several weeks, i’ve literally unsubscribed from all newsletters i’ve ever signed up to. Yesterday (about 3 weeks after i first started mass unsubscribing) i woke up to no new emails. That meant that for the first time in what was probably years, i hadn’t received an email in about an 8 hour period. FINALLY.

I’m still getting newsletters and still unsubscribing but my inbox looks a whole lot more useful these days. I’d absolutely recommend everyone does the same. Unsubscribe from everything. Set up a new address if you can (but you probably can’t because it’s too much hassle). The idea of a ‘priority’ inbox is a nice one but i don’t like the thought that some algorithm decides what’s important and what’s not. Smart asses will say that that’s how spam is taken care of but spam can be spotted a mile off… bad IPs, known spammy domains, keyword searches for ‘prize’ + ‘winner’ etc…

Letting an algorithm decide whether a boarding pass is more important than a newsletter is something i don’t want to surrender control of. Sometimes the obvious answer may not be the correct one. If i’m booking a flights for someone and cc myself in on the email it’s not all that important to me, i just do it to have as a backup. If it’s my own boarding pass then it’s more important… all this stuff is hugely complex and to a computer, there’s no reason or logic to it. That’s why i don’t use gmail’s priority inbox even though i applaud the concept.

Rather than find ways of getting through my email faster, i want to reduce the amount of email i get and go through it all one at a time without having to filter it. Facebook & Twitter will go the same way… too much crap linking to and from my accounts which leads to ‘notifications’ which aren’t important. I don’t want to be alerted if somebody invites me to spamville or whatever game is leeching it’s way to success through Facebook notifications… but in order to stop that stuff happening, i have to cut contact with the friend who sent it, or most likely didn’t realise they sent it because they just wanted to start using the damn game and just kept clicking ‘next’.

Time saving algorithm

It’s a never ending problem… trying to keep all channels of communication open whilst ensuring you only receive ‘quality’ information. That said, it would appear i’ve managed to improve my email situation. Less email & fewer notifications = more time saved.

I spent New Year’s Eve 2011 and the following couple of days in London soaking up the pyrotechnics, fireworks & rain…

Lights, Camera, Action

I’d always wanted to be in London for a New Year’s Eve. It’s the home of ‘time’ and the home of the most famous clock in the world. Each year, they put on a show that betters the last. Bigger, louder, more colourful, longer… well this year (or should i say last year) i got to go and see it up close for the first time.

I’m not sure how many people were there but there was a lot, 250,000 according to the daily mail. I’d say there was more because everywhere you looked in and around central london there were streets crowded with people, all trying to catch a glimpse of the London Eye / Big Ben.

I’d looked a few photos & reviews online from previous years and learned that the area around Westminster (with the best views) is closed off by police early in the evening around 7pm or 8pm as it gets crowded. To get a decent view, you’d need to be there earlier. But of course that means staying out in the elements longer and the elements in London on 31st December 2011 were unpredictable. Not heavy rain but the odd light shower. Strangely, it was quite mild. Milder than Spain, Morocco & Iraq (still jumper and coat weather though at about 14 degrees).

I didn’t fancy hanging around all day in the one spot, wondering whether one step backwards or to the side would cost me a position i’d spent hours queuing for so we headed down to Buckingham Palace at about 9pm where there were already people standing & waiting. Buckingham palace is about 1 mile from the London Eye (focal point of fireworks). From there (a certain angle) you can see the top half of the London Eye, but it’s quite a distance back…

St James Park is right beside Buckingham Palace and the end of that park is less than half a mile from the London Eye, so that’s where we ended up watching the show from. We *could* have gotten a better view had we moved closer up but only at the sacrifice of being able to move around 360 degrees without bashing in to someone. It’s not as spectacular as on TV, but here’s some of the show, from where i was standing.

We couldn’t see the countdown or hear the music, nor could we see Big Ben but then again not many could, even if you were right beside either (best place to be was right in the middle of the Thames river) or on a private rooftop. We could certainly hear the fireworks though as could the birds and wildlife in the park who didn’t know what hit them and started freaking out.

Tube, y u no open 24/7?

Despite the fact i’ve been to London about a dozen times now (lost count), i never bought / used an oyster card up until this trip. Reason being that despite what people will tell you, it’s not cheaper, nor is it any more convenient if you’re just using the tube all the time. A one day travelcard does the same thing and there’s no £5 deposit (that’s what on oyster card costs, then you gotta top it up). That said, it is a nuisance having to buy travelcards day after day (if you’re staying more than a few days). I don’t think i’ve ever seen a bank of empty ticket machines in any tube station… there always seems to be someone at them. Same with the ticket / info desks particularly in the train stations.

But i decided to get an Oyster card this time around because i seem to end up in London once a year or more and this saves me a bit of time plus it’s easier to carry & not bin a plastic card -v- a paper card.

“Why take the tube?” you say… well on our last night we went to the cinema in the O2 (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). It lasts 2 hours and 40 minutes and started at 8.45pm. I knew the last tube left at roughly around midnight but i figured we’d make it / have plenty of time. WRONG. Thanks to about 15 minutes of cineworld trailers & ads and *constant* promotions for their £14.99 unlimited movies that left us literally about a minute late catching the last tube. So we missed that but needed to get back over to canary wharf where we were staying. It’s almost a stones throw away but across the river thames. To walk to it however would take about an hour and a half as there’s no pedestrian bridge close by. It’s about a 10 minute drive.

As it was new years day / night, taxis were entitled to charge £4 extra. So total cost was £20.80 but driver accepted £20. To put that in perspective the same journey on the tube would have been quicker and cost about £2.00. So the lesson to be learned is never take taxis, unless you’re desperate. I also find it strange the tube closes in central London relatively early (between 12am-1am) given the fact there’s always so much on and so much tourism. I’d like to see it run 24/7 or at least stay open until about 2am.

Photos

Taking a swiss army knife through airport security

When in London, i decided to put my car keys in the hotel safe and noticed that i’d left my swiss army knife on the key ring. Not only that but i have a swiss utility key too (a key that opens up in to a knife / bottle opener). Both of them are strictly prohibited and should / would have been confiscated had i had them in my hand or brought them to someones attention. They went through the scanner though and nobody said anything.

When i realised, i wasn’t thinking to myself “how am i gonna get these home?”, i was just surprised they made it through. Of course i should have been thinking security is a lot tighter in Stansted but i did the exact same thing again coming back – completely forgot they were in my bag (i’m so used to carrying them around on my key-ring at home). Again though, same thing happened – nothing. Bag went through the scanner although my body didn’t make it without bleeping (i’m convinced they manually set the scanner off randomly because i make a point of emptying out everything of my pockets and wearing no belts, glasses, watches etc… i didn’t bleep in Dublin and i’d pretty much the same clothes on coming back apart from a tshirt & jumper change).

Maybe i got lucky or maybe they’ve just eased up a bit. I still find it strange they ban stuff like that yet you could in theory buy a glass bottle of something in duty free, smash it and use it as a weapon.

Tomorrow i’m heading off to London for a few days, mainly to see the New Year’s Eve fireworks up close…

List of things to do

Every year i’m usually watching the New Year’s Eve celebrations on TV / with a TV in the background and Big Ben / London Eye is always the center of attention. There’s always a stupid amount of fireworks let off in a bid to compete with other cities who put on a similar show. This year it’ll be the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee plus London is hosting the 2012 Olympics so it’s a big year for London. So this year, i’ll be there with my girlfriend, along with 250,000 others.

Crowds

Apparently the viewing areas fill up by about 7pm which means you have a 5 hour wait in the cold and possibly rain. In order to avoid the crowds & prevent getting ‘stuck’ in the one spot (police close off sections when they fill up & you can’t get back in), we’ll probably go elsewhere to see the display which will mean we’ll be further away and probably won’t get a full unobstructed view, but at least we’ll have some breathing space.

I’ll worry about 2012 when i get home

I’ve got plenty to do when i get back and i’m eager to set lots of challenges for myself in 2012 but not until i get back home. As usual, i’ll have hundreds of photos & videos from my trip up on this blog on January 3rd / 4th…

Christmas is the one time of year where every company in the world is guaranteed to send out their messages of festive cheer along with a fantastic 5% discount coupon for use in their sale which start at 6am on boxing day (terms & conditions apply)…

No to automatic emails

It annoys me that so many companies who i rarely hear from throughout the year use it as way to squeeze in some promotion by camouflaging it as a “We love you, have a great Christmas” message. It’s as if anyone with your email address comes crawling out of the woodwork at this time of year. Some, because they genuinely want to thank you for your custom throughout the year, others because it represents another opportunity. It’s easy to tell the difference.

I’m taking advantage of it all though by unsubscribing from literally every newsletter i’m getting. I don’t want any. My goal for the start of the new year is to have a subscription & notification-free inbox. I’ve even removed all twitter, LinkedIn & facebook notifications (email notifications) which probably means i’ll be slower to respond to people because i won’t have a red envelope or pop up alerts nagging at me every minute to open up an unread message.

What email needs..

How do you know who has your email address? You don’t. Do you have a record of everyone that has sent you an email? Yes. Is that list nicely formatted and searchable? No. Why isn’t it? Beats me. I think gmail & all email providers should provide a list of people who have your email address or who have sent you an email. It needs to happen otherwise the value of email will be diluted to the extent it becomes as useful as a letter in a pile of junk mail & ads. It becomes ‘work’ to sift through emails which we don’t really want to find the emails we do want.

At the start of 2011 i set 10 goals. I’ll do the same for 2012 but now it’s time to review 2011′s…

1. Develop an iPhone app – fail

I started the year learning about iPhone development and did in fact build my first app but it involved clicking a button and displaying a popup message. I never got around to building a proper app & getting one in to the app store though.

2. Build another theleavingcert.com – fail

I’m harsh on myself here because this is something i’m in the process of doing.

3. increase traffic to theleavingcert.com – pass

This was done in the summer where traffic officially eclipsed 2010′s yearly traffic.

4. increase traffic to smemon.com – fail

Traffic has fallen just below last year’s level but it’s not surprising as i’ve been blogging less. 2011 has been one of my worst years ever in terms of blog post numbers.

5. Edit & upload more videos to youtube – pass

Done. As an added bonus one of my videos went viral and got over half a million views.

6. Upload even more photos to flickr – pass

I now have over 7,000 images uploaded to flickr. Over 4,000 were uploaded in 2011.

7. Get at least a 2.1 degree in IT Management – pass

Probably the biggest achievement of 2011 on paper… a 2.1 honours degree in IT Management.

8. Visit more Irish landmarks & attractions – pass

Glendalough, Dublin / Wicklow Mountains, Blarney Castle, Rock of Cashel… not a great ‘haul’ of Irish landmarks but certainly better than in previous years.

9. More networking – pass

I can’t remember going to any events in 2011, but early in the year i started working on 25/7 sports and that kind of ‘took over’. I’d expect 2012 to be packed with new faces, new opportunities & new friends but that’ll all be down to the initial work done 2011.

10. Masters / Job / Business – fail

A fail in a technical sense but in terms of ‘figuring out what i want to do’ (which is what i had in mind when creating the goal), a pass. 25/7 Sports will be a my job in 2012.

RIP, formal education.

Every year of my life thus far has been mapped out. The big milestones have always been ‘education’. Moving up a year, junior cert, leaving cert, college, degree. 2012 will be different because for the first time ever, education won’t be the goal. I won’t have to sacrifice everything else for education. So i’ll have much more freedom in 2012, my first full year without having the pleasure of sitting exams.

I’ve never considered myself a designer… i can design in the sense i can visualise things, pull them together in photoshop and ‘hack’ stuff to make it fit. I also have a great appreciation for design but i don’t think it’s enough to call myself a designer. The problem is, people with no appreciation for design, are only too eager call themselves designers..

Worthy of a title?

Because i can run, does that make me a sprinter? A long distance athlete? Of course it doesn’t. But the same reasoning isn’t applied by some people or towards certain professions. If you can play a game, you’re a gamer… fix a light-switch, an electrician… if you can drive, you *could* be a taxi driver… if you can play an instrument you *could* be in a band… know about football? you *could* be a footballer… if you wanted to.

The problem with all of the above, is that if you truly believe any of them, you’re over-confident and under estimating the job. Almost writing it off as something which could easily be done, if you were to apply yourself. Therein lies the big fat problem. The lack of application. You can’t be sure you can do anything until you actually do it. You certainly can’t be sure you’ll be good at it, or better than somebody else. Disagree? Prove it. It’s the only way.

Politician Time

Politics is a great example of how people’s dreams & promises get crushed. Those dreams & promises were once upon a time real, legitimate, do-able targets someone set. I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna do that. Jobs. Lower taxes. Bla. More Bla. More often than not, that confidence & belief is extinguished and the world moves on, spitting out another person who claimed they could do something, but didn’t or couldn’t do it. There’s nothing wrong with failing of course, but failing without expecting to fail means you’re not as smart as you think you are. All bases weren’t covered, something went wrong. Maybe there wasn’t enough fear.

photo credit: europeanpeoplesparty

The idiots are at the top, the smart guys are always in opposition or on the street. That’s the way it works… until somebody changes it. Most of the time people can’t change it despite thinking they can and convincing everyone they can.

Get to the point!

After that long introduction, i want to talk about my design work and how i’m learning the most difficult task in the world is to ‘just do stuff’. A while back i stumbled upon the phrase ‘done is better than perfect’ and it hasn’t left my mind since. Doing stuff isn’t easy, but it is rewarding. Certainly more rewarding then ‘not doing stuff’.

Whilst my PC was out of action, i had more ‘offline’ time than i normally have but i was still jotting down thoughts & ideas, or emailing them to myself. Some were just stupid but for a split second, they sounded good. That’s all normal… on this blog alone i have over 200 draft blog posts which at the time of creating each one, had my full concentration but after a while i thought ‘no, now is not the right time to post this’ or ‘this might be a little too controversial’. When creating this post, i almost backed out of it. That’s just how i roll. Nothing is final until it’s published.

This week, i’ve created a few designs, some of which i can’t show here, others i can…

That image above is a Liverpool crest. Crafted with love. Looks a bit weird at first and upon closer inspection you’ll see it’s made out of about 20,000 mini Man Utd & Everton crests. I don’t have others online at the minute, but i created about half a dozen of these ‘twisted’ crests during the week.

The second image we have is a simple chart of Europe’s best supported clubs on Facebook & Twitter.

Thirdly, we have an ‘if social networks were football players’ design. Pretty simple, but it’s my favourite, mainly because i deliberately invested a lot of time in to it. It was originally fairly plain without any fancy effects or much colour, but i decided to spent a few hours improving it until it looked ‘professional’.

Why?

They’re all sports related designs and the reason for that is because i’m working on a sports related website… 257sports.com (blog here). Up until now i don’t think i’ve even mentioned it here, but it’s been a work in progress since early this year… way back in February in fact. I could have done without getting involved at that time due to the fact i was smack bang in the middle of dissertation pressure / deadlines, but i liked the concept and felt i could add to & improve it.

About a million conversations & meetings later and things are finally falling in to place for us. ’25/7 Sports’ is a sports social network. I could go in to detail about our goals & objectives but allow me to present something i made a little earlier to help explains things…

So this is what i’m working on these days… this is what i *have* been working on since February. I’ve deflected all questions on it up until now mainly because i want to let the site & our content do the talking. I didn’t want to hype something that had zero online presence, but now you have a better idea of what the site is about.

The idea of a sports social network is nothing new… it’s generally agreed that it’s something that’s waiting to happen and you only have to look at clubs and athletes to see the social media shift happening. The only problem is that sports fans are being outnumbered and outshouted on Facebook & Twitter so the fuse is always being lit on sport but it’s extinguished just as fast… much like an 80,000 seater stadium with small pockets of noise. The atmosphere never gets going.

It’s been 3 or 4 days now since i last had a blue screen of death. It looks like it was all down to that one stick of dodgy RAM i got but today i got & installed a new power supply unit, just to make sure my PC wasn’t being fed ‘dirty’ power by an old, possibly underpowered PSU…

Out with the old

My old PSU was a 375w Dell brand. It powered all the original components but over the last year or so i’ve added an extra hard drive, a more powerful graphics card and some more RAM too. It should have been able to handle all of that, and right up until this morning it did appear to handle all of that but unfortunately it became victim to my paranoia.

The PSU is a pretty boring part of a computer. Getting a bigger, better PSU doesn’t improve performance whatsoever so it tends to be bottom on the list of ‘upgrades’. That said, a dying PSU or a PSU under-powering a system can and will cause trouble. Trouble in the form of random blue screens or worse case scenario, a fried motherboard / components.

Needless to say i don’t want to be the guy who is equipped with all of this knowledge and then does nothing about it after having seen some potential symptoms. It’d be a like a doctor that suspects someone has a bad heart but waits until they have a heart attack before doing anything about it.

In with the new

I ordered this OCZ 600W ModXStream Pro Power Supply last week and it arrived this morning.

It’s slightly smaller than my old PSU but still fits snuggly in the case however because the new cables are so rigid, the case is in fact a little bit messier but i can live with that… the only time i open up the case is if something’s broke. Hopefully that won’t be any time soon

Upgrade complete

I’ve returned a 2gb stick of faulty RAM but once i get a replacement for that, i’ll have upgraded RAM, PSU & Graphics Card which will be enough to keep my desktop PC in good shape for another year at least. Because i’ve a dual monitor set up with my PC and prefer it to my Mac mini, whenever it’s out of action i always feel helpless or that i’m running on empty. It’s very rare i have any kind of problem be it with hardware or software but it’s comforting knowing that i can pinpoint problems & fix them without getting to the stage where i want to throw everything out the window. I’m looking forward to making up for the past couple of weeks of relative inactivity online & particularly with offline photoshop stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, i got a new graphics card and some RAM. The new graphics card replaced what i correctly guessed was a dead graphics card. I installed the RAM and that was that, or so i thought. Since then, i’ve been having some fairly random problems…

PC doesn’t like mornings

Initially, there were no problems. The graphics card was running fine, the RAM was running fine and in fact just to make sure everything was working properly, i ran extensive tests & kept a close eye on temperatures on day 1. The tests revealed no errors & the temperatures of everything remained stable.

However, the next morning, i got an avalanche of BSODs (blue screens of deaths). The errors they were reporting weren’t consistent and i rebooted about a dozen times to try and change BIOS settings. MEMORY MANAGEMENT, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and BAD POOL HEADER. Eventually, after multiple reboots, i got in to windows and the PC ran as normal. I put it down to improper shutdown or corrupt windows files (due to the old failed graphics card). But this wasn’t a one off.

It made no sense whatsoever and this happened daily for the past week or more. Even once i’d be logged in, i’d deliberately shut down, restart & disconnect the power to try and replicate the problems i’d faced earlier. No joy. The first couple of days i attributed it to incorrect shutdowns or corrupt files and i reinstalled windows which i thought worked, but it didn’t. That ruled out a driver / software problem.

I then began to think some of the RAM modules were faulty (despite the fact they’d all been tested extensively on day 1). Other culprits that entered my head were the power supply & the possibility of a ‘new’ bad graphics card. The power supply was something i thought carefully about when getting my new graphics card. The new graphics card consumed less power than the old one so i figured it would be ok…

Testing one thing at a time

Yesterday morning, the same thing happened. Blue screens of death, no sign of booting and infinite restart loops no matter what i tried. “ENOUGH” i said to myself. I was prepared to spend all day taking the machine apart and test every component individually and collectively until i could pinpoint the problem. I was convinced it was now a hardware problem.

I decided to test each stick of RAM, one by one, in each slot, one by one. In total, 16 different combinations & 32 boots (i restarted windows twice with each stick just to make sure they were working properly and i hand’t ‘fluked’ a restart with a bad stick). I was determined to ‘prove’ that *if* i’d got a bad batch of RAM, i could send it back having diagnosed it properly & with bullet proof evidence but i knew that without testing each stick individually, i couldn’t be 100% sure it was the RAM.

Here was my very scientific testing plan… RAM modules numbered 1-4 and DIMM slots (place where the RAM goes) on the motherboard labelled 1-4.

I then booted windows (or tried to) with each ram module in each DIMM slot twice (just to make sure nothing was fluked). Eventually, a pattern began to emerge as you can see from the x’s above… Whilst i was annoyed, i was in many ways relieved because i’d found a major problem, most likely the cause of all my previous two weeks of hassle.

Ruling out the Power Supply

The other *potential* cause of blue screens or the problems i’d been getting is with the power supply. The power supply in my dell is 375w but as i’d found out when researching graphics cards, that doesn’t mean it’s weaker than, let’s say, a 425w PSU (from here on PSU = power supply unit). In fact Dell don’t measure their wattage in the same way as others. The 375w for example isn’t ‘peak’ consumption, that’s a level it can maintain consistently, whereas a regular 425W PSU can reach a max 425W – it can’t maintain that level. Whilst i can’t ‘prove’ this, my current PSU that came with my Dell was (if we go by wattage) about 125w below the recommended wattage for my old graphics card. Not only should that spell danger, it would mean that i’d have very little room to expand the system / add more hard drives etc… and that was the set up Dell built for me and gave me. Would they put an underpowered PSU in a PC? Doubt it as it’d be a recipe for disaster with mass recalls if the PC wouldn’t boot or burned out quickly. It was probably pushing it, but they knew it would cope.

However, the fact i knew my PSU has a label of 375w when my graphics card recommended 500w always left me uncomfortable but because i’d heard others ran the same set up as me with no problems, i felt i’d be ok. However, with these errors popping up and an unstable system on my hands, i can’t afford to not get to the bottom of whatever the problem is. Stuff has to be ruled out and because i can’t rule out the PSU as the cause of some of these problems, i’m getting a new one… even though the chances are there’s nothing wrong with the existing one.

Another bit of research showed it wasn’t uncommon for my Dell PSU to get a bit flakey after a few years. With hindsight, i was thinking it could also accelerated the death of my old graphics card but for that reason, i can’t take any chances now that i’ve a new graphics card. I’ve ordered a 600w OCZ PSU which has a pretty good reputation and 3 year warranty, plus it doesn’t look like an octopus (all sorts of cables dangling out of it). It’s a ‘modular’ PSU so instead of having multiple wires and crap coming out of it which will never be used and which clutters up the inside of the case, you can just connect the cables you need. It makes for a tidier PC inside the case.

Yesterday, along with testing the RAM, i basically ripped my entire PC apart and took out the power supply, left it sitting for a few hours then i powered it up just by itself, out of the PC, using the paperclip trick (i’m learning a lot). It turned on ok, but then again it wasn’t under any load… today, it’s been running perfectly in the PC so i’ve no reason to think there’s anything wrong with the power supply however if stuff goes wrong again, i’d be kicking myself for not replacing it sooner.

Morning after the night before

This morning, for the first time since i installed my RAM & graphics card, the PC booted up straight away without any blue screens. Interestingly, i’d left out the ‘bad’ RAM module that i’d found yesterday and just ran the PC with 6GB RAM. So this would indicate the problem is indeed down to that faulty RAM module and not the PSU, not the new graphics card, not anything else.

I decided to try the bad RAM module again in the PC today, ‘for the craic’…. assuming it wouldn’t boot. It didn’t boot so i can say with 100% certainty, that RAM module is corrupt and i’ve got sufficient evidence to prove it. It’ll now be going back to where it came from and i’ll be getting a replacement. Interestingly, if i’d have wanted a refund, i’d have been charged a 15% restocking fee. Not sure if that’s legal but all i want is a replacement & i’m getting that at no cost so i can’t complain about anything other than the fact the original module they sent out (1/4 of the RAM i got) was bad.

New PC

At this rate of going i’m almost building myself a new PC without realising it. What i am realising is that it makes much more sense to build a PC yourself because generally you get 3 year+ warranty on things. In some cases it’s a lifetime warranty. With a brand name PC, you get 1 year and pay for more. Provided you can figure out what part breaks & are able to take it out / put it back in, you’ve basically got a computer with a lifetime warranty (the computer’s lifetime / until you upgrade which will probably be 4/5 years at most).

I could easily fallen in to the ‘get a new computer’ mentality but that would in effect be saying “there’s something wrong with my computer and i don’t know what it is or how to fix it”. That’s a criminal offence in my view if you’ve got a couple of degrees in IT. I see it as my responsibility to get to the bottom of problems, particularly if it’s my own stuff where i have all the time in the world to work on figuring out what the problem is.

I’ve been pretty unlucky though to have a graphics card fail on me, then order new RAM and get a faulty module. The technology gods are not smiling on me of late but on the plus side, my PC is error-free, clean on the inside & will have had the RAM, graphics card & PSU all upgraded by the end of next week.