Easily Override Java Platform Standard Classes and Interfaces

I was working on a Java assignment, where the professor supplies a starting interface to work from, called Comparable. Other files in the assignment implement this interface, but when I tried to compile, the compiler thought I meant the Java Platform Standard interface Comparable.

I asked a friend for help on an easy way to tell the compiler which Comparable I am talking about. Apparently it was as easy as adding one line to the top of every class in my assignment:

package assignment3;

This method of organizing Java code has proven to be a very useful and simple way of overriding standard Java classes.

DOS/cmd.exe Window Input Redirect

While completing an assignment today requiring assembly programming, I discovered a useful trick called input redirect when using DOS and/or cmd.exe windows. When executing your executable, if you need to constantly enter the same input every time for testing purposes, you can simply place the input in a text file, then redirect the program's input to that file instead of the keyboard.

The command is of the form:

C:\> myprog.exe <>

Your program can then use all its regular input methods as if reading from the keyboard, and it saves lots of time not having to enter everything yourself. For example, in my assembly program:

GetCh AX

This instruction does not wait for user input, it instead reads a character from the given text file.

I have not tried this trick in other languages (i.e. C, C++), but I assume it works in a similar manner.

Blurry Blue Screen of Death and ntfs.sys Missing

I've had to reformat an HP dv6000 laptop using its recovery partition, because it was infected with kind of virus. Everything was fine after the reformat, just had to remove all the bloatware and install updates and security software.

The operating system is Windows XP MCE, and SP3 installed fine, but after I installed the remaining updates not included in SP3, the system would boot, then a few seconds later would BSOD, only it was very blurry and hard to read, then the system would reboot and do the same thing over again. I could vaguely make out "ntfs.sys", which can sometimes be corrupt or missing, according to Microsoft (see link below).

I found this Microsoft Knowledge Base article and followed its instructions to no avail. After further searching, I found this forum thread. It sounded like a very similar problem, so I decided to run chkdsk /r to see if that helped. Perhaps the hard drive is damaged somehow, as it was making strange clicking noises earlier during the reformat. The chkdsk revealed nothing, which leads me to believe nothing can be done save reformatting yet again.

Before the problems started appearing, I had installed COMODO Firewall Pro and DriveSentry for firewall and anti-virus. Perhaps these programs had something to do with ntfs.sys being missing or corrupt. COMODO includes a "Defender" portion of its program that is very similar to DriveSentry's function of monitoring writes to the hard disk. After a short while I disabled Defender, as it was redundant in this case, but maybe two write-to-disk monitors running at the same time is not good for the file system.

This laptop does not belong to me, but the owner has had repeated issues with all of its hardware, so I get the feeling that it is just a lemon.

UPDATE: The laptop was sent away to the manufacturer to be examined, and they ended up replacing the hard drive, which solved the problem.

Justifying the Purchase of New Hardware

Since I will most likely be receiving an income again soon, I've been thinking about buying a new desktop computer. I'm currently running off my old family computer that I was allowed to have, and it's at least 5 years old, however I upgraded the memory and video card a few months ago to make it tolerable. That wasn't hard to justify, as the thing was slow as a turtle otherwise, and I intended on using it for school. I also use my HP laptop that I bought last year for school, and it hasn't given me anything to gripe about as far as performance.

Neither of my computers are worthy of gaming performance, but I've been letting gaming fall by the wayside lately anyway. My interest in video games is waning, and I have a blog post in me somewhere to let out on that topic. So aside from video games, what might I need a high-performance new desktop for? I thought maybe since I'll eventually be taking a course on parallel computing, that a new quad-core processor might come in handy. However, that's a bit of a stretch to justify spending around $2000 on a new desktop, when I won't even need it for that purpose for a few more years.

I've always wanted to build my own desktop from the ground up, piece by piece, and order each piece seperately, but have never had the money or reason to do it. Does anyone else have justifications to share that they've used in the past? Post a comment.

GeForce 8400M GS GPU Memory Speeds Not As Advertised

Since I've been playing around with GPU-Z lately, I gave it a go on my laptop, which is running a GeForce 8400M GS. I know, it's a crappy card. Know how I know? Because the M stands for "suck". Anyway, I fired up GPU-Z and found that my card was running at 169 MHz core speed and 100 MHz memory speed. Strange, there must be some kind of throttling software at work that I'm unaware of. I open up Control Panel, then Nvidia Control Panel, then Change PowerMizer Settings, to find that PowerMizer is enabled. According to the product webpage, My core speed should be at 400 MHz and my memory speed should be at 600 MHz. I disabled PowerMizer and took a look at the GPU-Z readings. Apparently with PowerMizer disabled, my core clock is 400 MHz as it should be, but the memory speed is also 400 MHz.

I re-enabled PowerMizer and fired up Portal to see if the speeds would scale up again when they are needed. Apparently with PowerMizer enabled, and while running a video card-intensive program, the two speeds still only went up to 400 MHz each. Apparently my card's maximum memory clock speed is only 400 MHz out of a supposed 600 MHz. The fact that the memory could be DDR makes no sense, because in that case I should see GPU-Z reading 300 MHz, not 400 MHz. After Googling around, apparently incorrect numbers could be anything from 2D clock speeds to faulty data frm GPU-Z. Oh well. I don't PC game much anyway.

Gaming on a Two-Monitor Single Videocard Setup

Once upon a time my friend had an old Radeon 9500 I think it was, and he was running two monitors from the single card, just as I am on my current GeForce 6200 setup. I don't know specifics, but he liked to game on one monitor, while using the other to monitor IM conversations and the like. Eventually, his card gave up on life and fried itself.

Ever since then, I have been wary of gaming on my dual monitor setup. To be on the safe side, I would disable the second monitor while I game, just to keep the GPU temperature at a reasonable level. I downloaded GPU-Z, and decided to start logging the GPU temperature values of my setup. Currently, I have Windows XP on my system, running two 1440x900 flatscreens from a single XFX GeForce 6200, 350 MHz core clock, 532 MHz memory clock. While idling at the desktop and performing menial web-browsing tasks, the GPU temperature hovers around 61 degrees Celsius. I disabled the secondary monitor and waited about 10 minutes to let the GPU cool to its new idling temperature. With only a single monitor, the temperature hovers around 57 degrees Celsius, 4 degrees lower.

To begin gaming testing, I disabled the secondary monitor. While playing a game at a resolution of 1440x900 @ 70Hz with highest settings (Neverwinter Nights if you must ask), the GPU temperature climbed as high as 84 degrees Celsius. With the secondary monitor enabled, GPU temperature went as high as 89 degrees Celsius.

There is no real definitive answer for how high is too high, as far as GPU temperatures go. The general consensus is that you shouldn't stray over 90 degrees Celsius. My simple tests are in no way completely accurate, as the temperature depends on many other things, such as airflow inside the case, ambient temperature, fan speed, and so on. Generally I would assume that it's safe to game with a second monitor attached that isn't really doing anything intensive, as the temperature seems to only differ by about +5 degrees Celsius.

One other thing I discovered in this experiment was that if the game you are playing relies on the mouse pointer being at the edge of the screen to rotate the view in the game, dual monitors are not very accomodating on the left or right side, depending which monitor you are playing on.

Why It's Worth Your Time To Pick Up A Penny

Ok how many people out there are working a part-time minimum wage or slightly-above-minimum-wage job? Would you like to earn a little extra cash for the amount of time you spend doing work? Would you like to feel better about yourself knowing that when you put effort into something, you're getting back a value that you deserve? I have the perfect solution to both of those things and it just takes seconds. Pick up pennies.

If you're walking along a sidewalk, and you see a penny, it takes probably around 2 seconds to stop, pick up the penny, and keep walking. That works out to about 30 pennies per minute. Extend that to an hour and you make about 18 dollars. Who wouldn't want to make $18 an hour? It's a pretty decent wage, probably around $36,000 a year, which sits you just nicely under the first tax bracket in Canada. Now according to The Independent, there are about 300 billion pennies in existence in the United States alone. That's 300,000,000,000 for those of you that aren't math majors. You're only looking for a mere 3,600,000 pennies to make your yearly wage. That's only 0.0012% of all the pennies in existence! The average penny is about 3 grams, so you'd be carting around 10,800,000 grams, or 23,810 pounds of pennies. Imagine the biceps! Ladies all over you! I honestly don't see a bad side to this lifestyle. On the other hand, if you sit at your nice job that pays more than $18 an hour, don't bother. I'm sure you're living the high life and then some.

Ok, I realize this has nothing to do with technology, but where is it written that I have to stick to what my blog title says? I used Windows Calculator to calculate numbers and Google for finding random quick facts. Both were excellent tools in this case. Good thing floating point numbers weren't involved, or I'd have to go on a rant about the inaccuracies of binary representation of floating point values. Sheesh.

Google AdSense

Ok, I've given in to putting a couple ads on my blog. I was going to avoid doing this until I had a little more traffic, but I've had my blog since May, so I've been working on it a few months, however slowly. It's not every day I mess around with hardware and decide to tell people about it (which is currently the central theme of my blog), and my budget is limited for buying new hardware to mess around with.

I don't expect to make any money by having ads on my blog, because honestly, I have anywhere between 5 and 25 unique hits a day, and even if every one of those people clicked on an ad, I'd still be making beans and peanuts. It's rather ironic now that I think about it, because the only reason someone might stumble upon my blog is that they've already bought a piece of hardware and are searching for more information regarding it. The last thing someone is looking for is an ad for a KVM after they've just bought one. Unless it's a D-Link KVM-121. Haha. But seriously.

So regarding the ads that now live on my site and ever-so-unintrusively brainwash you into clicking on them, don't bother clicking on them. I think the only reason they're there is in case I get Dugg or Slashdotted some day. Unless I write a brilliantly insightful post that gets 15 minutes of fame, or I discover a security vulnerability at the fundamental level of technology that runs the internet, I don't think that is going to happen. So stop clicking on my ads.