CPU: Athlon II 240 (Dual-core) RMB 449
Motherboard: AsRock 785G RMB 489
RAM: 2GB DDR3 RMB 309
Case: Antec NSK 3480 RMB 799
MSI Nvidia 8400GS RMB 199
HD: Hitachi 1TB HDT721010SLA360 RMB 559

TOTAL COST: RMB 2804

I bought all components online at 360buy.com, they deliver in 1 working day and can accept cash or cards. Perfect, so I don’t have to worry about online payment.

The motherboard has an integrated graphics card, with HDMI/VGA/DVI out, but I needed a S-Video out for my CRT TV, so I had to get another card. The case is a mini-tower, compact but big enough for 3 HDs and an optical drive. For the moment I put my old DVD drive and the 1TB Hitachi HD.

After transferring all data from the old desktop (and various external HDs), I have 250GB free. I’ll get another HD soon.

The CPU is obviously faster than the previous one, and it’s fast enough to play HD files (mkv, mp4 etc…). But the main “feature” my wife and I are happiest about: it’s very quiet. The previous PC was way too loud, it had 3 fans running (due to having 3 HDs and 2 DVD drives). Right now we can barely hear the new PC, which is good because it’s turned on 24/7.

I put it next to the old PC, which I’m going to reconfigure as a linux box. I’ll just use it as a backup storage. Linux is easier to control remotely. Then I will have a Mac Mini, a Windows PC, and a Linux PC. Perfect!!

Anyway, look for a full review soon on Reviewsarama.com

In the meantime here are some photos:

Of course junk took a whole new dimension when talking about e-mails. I’ve always used webmail, because I moved a lot especially during my uni years. My first e-mail was hotmail, and I would use that to sign up to lots of stupid online sites/services, so I would get hundreds of junk mail everyday. I still check this e-mail to this day, but only to remove spam mail. Gmail is much better at it, even though that is a public e-mail (the one I use for this site).

Another spam is comments on this website. This is a blog that allows people to comment on my posts. Unfortunately there are programs called bots that crawl around the web and automatically leave spam comments with links to their own website. The more links a website get, the higher its rank in search engines is, the higher hits it gets, the higher ads revenue it gets. Luckily Wordpress is pretty good at fighting this kind of spam.

Ever since I moved to Shanghai, I get a new kind of spam: text messages on cellphones. I never used to get them in Italy or UK, but now I keep getting stupid text messages telling me about the weather, or some new phone services or other things that I don’t know about. The irony is that they’re obviously all in chinese, and I can’t even read them!! So this spam is really wasted on me. Do you get this kind of spam in your country?

Personally I don’t see China allowing Google’s free blog platform to be freely available here for long. They’d have a hard time controlling so many free blogs, plus they’d rather allow Chinese created blog platforms, rather than american ones. This really puzzles me. I stopped using Blogger.com last year, but I will try out the new features, now that I can have access to them…

Update: I created a new blog with Blogger.com, and you can check out my review of the new features here.

This is where we live now, in Shanghai. Click on the image to check out many previous places I’ve lived in, and make sure to read my descriptions. Unfortunately not all places are available on Google, most notably the following are missing:

- My family’s current home in Cernusco, Milano.
- Taiwan, where my mom lives.

If you want to have fun in looking at your past, download Google Earth.

Click on image for a larger version

This one was created in a slightly different way. I cut out each Logan, and then merged all the shapes with the background. Thanks to Tommy for the link to the tutorial.

You can see the blur around the cut out shapes this time. I am still trying it out, so I haven’t refined the edges yet. I need time to work on this. Time that I don’t have. For the moment this will do.

Oh, and I also added captions, just for fun. I used a website called Captioner. It is a very simple captioner tool, you can add up to 5 captions (just right for this photo), all the same type. However it does not allow for the captioned image to be saved, so I had to do a screen capture. If you know of a better site let me know.

I am having waaay too much fun!

This was just a test to try it for the first time. I did not put any thought on the composition, I just took two shots last night and hoped to be able to create a clone.

For the record, I used the open source image editor Gimp. It took me a while to get it, but now that I’ve found the way, it’s actually very easy to do.

I was inspired by Stephanie’s photos, in particular this one. Study this photo for a while, and be blown away. Hint: there is no mirror.

I really like this kind of photo. I plan to get a tripod and start making these. Expect many of them in the future.

No, it’s not a Mac, this is Windows XP made look like it is OS X. And it was damn easy. Just go here, download the package and install it. Reboot and voila’.

The look is almost perfect, the sounds are mimicked as well, there is even an Expose’ for Windows, but obviously it’s not as fast and smooth as the Mac version. For the moment I will use this, unless it crashes my system. Right now I love it!!

This month I almost went over that limit, which means that I received more visits than ever. Let’s talk some numbers.

My monthly limit is 2GB. Here is the history of my monthly bandwidth:

Jul 2006 thetais.net 1.72 Gig (so far)
Jun 2006 thetais.net 1.37 Gig
May 2006 thetais.net 1.35 Gig
Apr 2006 thetais.net 709.07 Meg
Mar 2006 thetais.net 468.47 Meg
Feb 2006 thetais.net 295.44 Meg
Jan 2006 thetais.net 114.05 Meg
Dec 2005 thetais.net 128.85 Meg
Nov 2005 thetais.net 120.76 Meg
Oct 2005 thetais.net 132.08 Meg
Sep 2005 thetais.net 222.91 Meg
Aug 2005 thetais.net 79.48 Meg
Jul 2005 thetais.net 15.82 Meg
Jun 2005 thetais.net 1.64 Meg

As you can see, it has been increasing steadily since March, when I started blogging regularly, and almost doubled in May, which is when Logan was born. And even though I haven’t blogged as much in June and July, those had the highest numbers, which is obviously due to Logan’s photos.

So that’s why I haven’t blogged since Friday. I didn’t want to go over my limit, or I would have to pay for it, at least not now that we are at the end of the month. On the 1st the limit will be reset, so I will have more air to breath. Of course if the bandwidth keeps increasing I will gladly pay. Success is not free…

I want to thank everyone for visiting this site and making it more popular. And please keep coming. I’ll always have new content (did you check the new photos in July Mix?).

But the toughest time is when the system crashes. Many of the 200 users will come up to our desk, or call our phone to ask: “What is going on? I can’t do this…”. Then you tell them there is a system crash, at which point they ask: “when will it be over?”. If you didn’t call me it’d be over a lot faster!!

When the system is down it feels like the whole world in on my shoulders, everybody is waiting for you to restore it, because in the meantime they cannot work. So the more they’re idle, the most time is wasted, the more potential money is lost. Lots of pressure! Luckily it doesn’t happen that often.

All this to say that today is SysAdmin Appreciation Day (see here for explanation), If you can, say some nice words to your SysAdimin, maybe buy a gift. Congratulations to all SysAdmins for surviving another year!

PS: another thing, maintenance has to be done when users are not working, which means weekends or nights. Tomorrow afternoon I will be doing just that.

Click on the image for the full article and to download the video. I don’t think I’ll try this, but I am curious to know who has.

Click on image for larger view.

CPU: 2.66Ghz Pentium D (dual core)
RAM: 2GB
HD: 250GB x 2
DVD-RW 18x
Samsung LCD 17″

Plus I already had a DVD-RW 8x and a 120GB HD, which I installed in the desktop as well. Needless to say this is a jet compared to my old laptop. And I really enjoy the LCD.

The only bad thing is that it is very noisy. Because there are so many HD and DVD drives, they added 2 extra fans, which make it really noisy.

Other than that I am very happy about it. Believe it or not, it is the first computer I ever bought by myself. Previously it was always someone else buying it for me.

Now it is on 24/7, and permanently hooked up with my TV in the living room. And I have enough space to download and keep anything I want. Sweet!!

Now it is possible for everyone to keep track of all these places, thanks to ClaimID.com.

You will find all sites I have anything to do with. Go visit my ClaimID page and let me know what you think.

This website was written in only a few months by a 17 year old, who is obviously a programming genius. It is very similar to Flickr, but it has some very neat features including geotagging photos, audio comments, trackbacks etc…

This image is host on my Zooomr account:

John – MementoHosted on Zooomr

And if you’ve seen the movie Memento, than you know what this picture is about. If not, you are missing out on a great movie. Rent it or buy it.

Back to Zooomr, you can sign-up for a free account now and try it, but more importantly you can get a pro account for free if you host at least one of your images from Zooomr at your blog. That is what this post is all about So what are you waiting for, go here to get the details and get a free pro account!!

But apart from x2, I don’t think I’ve ever paid for anything else. Sometimes I would copy a CD from a friend, sometimes I would get an illegal copy, but the best is when the program is just free!! Some of the freeware utilities are better than the commercial ones, so I am always looking for good freewares.

And I want to share my favorite free programs:

- Irfanview: best image viewer, simple and light. Has basic editing features.

- Opera: you already know about this. The fastest internet browser.

- Picasa: the best photo organizer. Very intuitive interface.

- uTorrent: best bittorrent client for Windows.

- FoxitPDF: best PDF viewer, much better than the bloated Adobe Reader. Fast and light.

- KeyNote: excellent note taker / outliner. I can just write down any thought or piece of information, and easily organize them in a satisfying way.

- PowerPro: how to customize windows in your own way, and make your work much more efficient. Contains loads of features, but still light.

- PureText: small utility that strips all formatting from the clipboard contents. Useful for pasting from word documents.

- VLC: best video player, contains all codecs needed to play any kind of video.

These are some of the free programs that I use almost daily. Take a look at them, give them a try, you might like them. If you want a very extensive list of freeware programs, visit this site.

If you have your own favorite freewares, share them with us by leaving a comment.

Here is a book that tells us how to have fun with Google:

“… an excellent book for anyone who has an interest in Google or just wants to know what else you can do with the most popular search engine in the world. This isn’t a complicated reference guide on how to use Google as a tool – it’s an entertaining book on how to use Google as a toy!”

You can buy the printed copy, or download the PDF version for free!! Go take a look and have fun!

About 37 percent of people living in the European Union have no computer skills, with Scandinavians being the most computer-literate and Greeks the least, a survey showed on Tuesday.

This is not surprising, there are many countries in the EU. But this data did shock me:

The study by the EU statistics agency Eurostat showed 65 percent of Greeks, 59 percent of Italians and 57 percent of Hungarians had no basic computer skills, compared with 10 percent in Denmark and 11 percent in Sweden.

I always knew the northern countries where rich/advanced, but I am shocked that almost 60% of Italians cannot use the computer!! I would guess most under 25 should have computer skills, which makes everyone else older than that. Do the majority of Italians work outside an office (which would require some computer skill)? I am curious.

I wrote a review of the beta version of Opera 9 here.