Journals

I need some advice on buying a new HDD. I'm very careful when buying a new product and I study reviews before throwing the money, because it's little.
Often I read not only reviews, but lots of comments from other users to analyse the situation a little bit better.
However, I almost convince myself numerous times that I should not buy the product after all, just because the fear of low reliability or because the product may be damaged from the start.

And HDDs are really sensitive equipment. Reviews might promote the transfer speeds of some hdds, or different functionalities, but I hardly find reliability feedback, other than miscellaneous comments, left by non-experienced users that do not reflect the real quality of the product.

I have decided to choose from 2 HDDs, because of their priceperformance(notice that I didn't write "quality", because I do not know how reliable they are).

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB

or

Western Digital Caviar Blue(WD10EALX) 1TB

Now here's why it's hard to decide:

-The spinpoint F3 is said to be the fastest hdd from its class, even faster than caviar black. It's also SATA2 (not that it could saturate that bandwidth anyway), perfectly compatible with my motherboard(I have Sata2). Plug n' Play!

-The Caviar Blue is not as fast, but the company has some tradition and, well it "feels" more reliable. The problem is that it's SATA3(useless for HDDs), although it has 2 pins on which to place a jumper to set it to SATA2. It also requires some special formatting with WD software or what. I just fear of compatibility problems.

At first I had only the Caviar Blue as an option, but as soon as I spotted the spin point and reading this review which praises it, I lost my power of decision. I am really more inclined towards the Caviar Blue, but the Spinpoint F3 is such a solid option that I need some advice from someone.

So, what do you say guys?

My son was the first to notice and point it out to me.

"Why does the heater have the Aperture Science mark?"

I resumed recording Mandarin lessons on YouTube.

Recieved a new PC from Dell or more precisely an Alienware Aurora R3. It set me back roughly £2100.

Some specs:
CPU ------- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz
Motherboard - Alienware 046MHW
RAM ------- 2GB Kingston 1333Mhz/667Mhz x4
GPU ------- Nvidia GeForce GTX 580
HDD ------- 500GB RAID x2 (1TB)
OS -------- Windows 7 Home Premium
+ 23" HD monitor.

Now for the crushing blow, it freezes randomly. I'm not a huge computer wiz (only slightly) but I realise this isn't correct; everything just seems to freeze like the mouse, keyboard, screen and sound (loops) which causes me to manually shut it down. Any suggestions apart from getting intouch with Dell who has been emailed?

I got into Uni! The physics course. This is a dream come true to me. I've been studying a lot of physics and it's really something that I love.

It's a 5 year long course, divided into 2 parts. 3 years of basics and then a two year master course after which you can attempt to doctorate if you wish. Perhaps I'll someday become a lecturer as I've always wanted.
Wish me luck.

I was putting Scott to bed the other day for his afternoon nap.

He asked, "Dad, can you make more Portal 2 maps when I'm sleeping so I can play with it when I wake up?"

"Of course," I replied. And that's exactly what I did.

That's my boy!

That's it. I'm moving to Brazil. How could anybody refuse to live in a city named like this?

Sorry for the journal spam but this is my 1000th login and I want to take the time to thank the TWHL community for helping me get into mapping. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't found TWHL I would have never gotten into mapping in the first place as before I found it I tried and failed at mapping several times.

Lappytop computer is dead.

A moment of silence please...

Thank you.

Now today I traveled 9 miles looking for the parts necessary to restore the data by adapting the HDD to an external enclosure. Turns out all I bought was some mud soap, which was $35 but I talked him down to $10, then had lunch and went home without my parts. I need a car, its too hot for this.

I just read about three girls who won a Google science fair. Holy shit, they're projects are seriously impressive, especially the one who figured out a work around for those chemotherapy drugs. And the prizes? A trip to the Galápagos islands and an internship at CERN? Dang.

Nintendo 64 shopping spree! If you notice a 0.1 spam decrease it's because I'm playing
Star Wars Shadows of the Empire
Star Wars Rogue Squadron
Quake
007 The World Is Not Enough
Lylat Wars (Star Fox 64)
1080 Snowboarding
Extreme G
Body Harvest
Wipeout 64
Hybrid Heaven
Perfect Dark

This with a Rumble Pak, Expansion Pak (hooray, better graphics!), Controller Pak (about time I got one, can't save progress without one in several of the games I have) and a new controller (yellow).

I used to play Extreme-G 2 as a kid, the multi-player modes were great, I owned my brother at tank mode. Star Wars Shadows of the Empire is worth getting just for the first level (Hoth). The flying is really fun. The rest is pretty boring.

Can barely wait for it to arrive.

The clan I co-founded for Half-life with a friend is shutting down today. This probably doesn't affect you in any way but it makes kinda sad. I, along with my friend, had a sort of sentimental attachment to it but we figured it was for the best, after our best 2 members left the clan, leaving only 3 members (myself and my friend included) who actually were actively playing HL.

Edit: What cheek, he tried to scam me again only this time my mother answered. I told her the day before about him and so she messed with him for a bit before telling him to piss off and never call again. He replied with "Well your PC is freezing and we wont be held responsible if it goes wrong." and then hung up.

Hey hey.

Haven't journal'd in a while. Mainly cause I don't have that many interesting things to say.

So lately I've been making some new levels for my company while they concentrate on their main product. That's going well. I'm also working on a TF2 Pyro pack which is taking a lot longer than I expected. I started with the flamethrower and UV'd it but texturing showed I should have planned it a little better as the resolution of my brush strokes are blurry so I'm re-uving it right now.

Finally I got a scam call a moment ago. I could tell it was fake as soon as he said my PC sent a message to them that I had a virus...as if I'd have a virus in this day and age.

Here's the scam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMakMtyAK_Q

P.S. Moocow used cheats to beat Braid.

Back from holiday! yaaay!
Going to go meet Daubster tomorrow in Glasgow. He's down for a casting event we're both going to for an upcoming Brad Pitt film being filmed in Scotland.
In the meantime, check out some of the things I did on holiday (vacation, for the Americans)

Went into shop, acquired nice shirt with £24.99 price tag. Till was broken & cashier entered £4.99 by accident. Poker face. Saved £20.

It's my 19th birthday tomorrow, but I won't be around to celebrate as I will be going to Florida for holidays tomorrow.

Also, yesterday I met an old friend who I hadn't seen in about two years, at a party. Apparently in the intervening time he had come out as gay. Then another friend who I hadn't seen for a year since he moved to Australia showed up. We had a pretty good time.