Wednesday 20 December 2006

Pic of the day: Nobody, however, wants to be scorched by a burning computer.

Peace, quiet and stink

After a couple weeks of loud noise from the defective video card, I enjoy the silence from my computer. Or rather I would, if the room did not stink of cooking electronics. You know the smell you get when you run new computer components hard and they get really hot. I assume at this time that the video card has simply never been in a really hot machine before. So I am naïve, but it made sense at the time.

As I mentioned when I brought up the topic of dual-core processors, the problem with modern computers is overheating. As the speed increases, so does the heat production, and more rapidly. This was what made dual-core processors the logical solution at this time, though it may not be the permanent solution, if such a thing exists. But for as long as I have had this monster machine with a 3.40GHz Intel Pentium 4, it has sure made a lot of heat. Of course, only part of the heat came from the processor, which had its own little electric fan. The video card also made some heat (which is why it had its own fan too, the one that made all that noise) and finally there is a big strong power supply to take alternate current from the grid and feed all the components with direct current. This too makes a lot of heat and came with its own fan.

So it made perfect sense to me that the internal temperature of the machine was hotter than the video card had ever experienced before, and would make it sweat out some of its flame retardant bromides. Unhealthy stuff, so once again I came to spend time in the cold living room and the not quite as cold kitchen rather than my warm, cozy home office (former parents' bedroom), the closest thing in the house to my old chaos node.

***

I won't claim that the chemicals from the computer got to me, but I was kidna queasy yesterday afternoon, evening and early night. More likely it was the snacks from the day before. I had eaten more fatty snacks than I have done in a long way. We are not talking about gorging on fat here, but I guess I was more adventurous than usual. There is a tendency to fall back to old (and possibly instinctive) patterns when not reminded by acute pain or discomfort to live a new and better life. Luckily it wore off after an early night of sleep. I was queasy and kinda cold when I went to bed, but it never developed into a full Darkening, so I am satisfied with the warning shot.

***

I have begun to take an interest in an online RPG called Guild Wars, despite its name. I have read up on it and found that it is not entirely about guilds fighting guilds, as you might assume. It also has a fairly strong PvE side (Player vs Environment, as opposed to PvP, Player vs Player). More about this shortly, I'm afraid.