Entries from February 2007 ↓

All right, that’s it. I’m getting rid of “Mootools”:http://mootools.net in favor of “jQuery”:http://jquery.com.

Why? Well, if it’s not Mootools’ horrible documentation, it’s the fact their entire API seems to change with *every single version they release*.

What ever happened to backwards compatibility? What are they, Microsoft?

Well, my weekend is gone, but at least I have something to show for it. I finally fixed my Blue Mustang, which had been sitting around for about two months.

What was wrong with it, you ask? Well, look for yourself:

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/171/389741729_9e9a158e17_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/171/389741729_9e9a158e17.jpg
The thing on the left is a fucked up harmonic balancer. The thing on the right is a brand new, shiny (figuratively speaking) harmonic balancer from “Ford Racing”:http://fordracing.com. (Try to ignore the NASCAR stuff — I couldn’t care less.)

*What happens to your car when this part goes wrong?*

Well, when your engine is running, your entire car is shaking around like it’s about to fly apart. It’s kinda scary.

*How do you fix it?*

Well, wait for a weekend where you don’t have to do anything important. You’re going to need it. Then you have to take this thing off of your engine’s crankshaft.

*How is it on there?*

It’s bolted on there.

*Is it hard to remove the bolt?*

It’s hard to remove the lugnuts from your tires if you have to take them off.

This bolt — the one holding the harmonic balancer to the crankshaft — is _impossible_ to remove. (I still can’t remember how I got mine off.) I swear to G-d, whoever designed this thing was the most evil sadist to ever live.

Did I mention that when you try and turn the bolt to loosen it, the entire engine tries to crank? Yeah. Try and figure that one out.

*Why don’t you get someone else to do it?*

Because I’d rather not pay hundreds of dollars to someone for a job that I can probably do myself.

And to tell you the truth… I _like_ doing this stuff. It’s dirty, it’s hot, your hands get banged up and bruised, you get frustrated as hell after spending hours trying to remove _one_ freakin’ bolt… but I like it.

*What’s the end result?*

You get to drive a cool car!

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/343618568_40f357ad31_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/343618568_40f357ad31.jpg
Oh, well — you can’t drive that, now can you.

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/343618570_58a4f885c0_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/343618570_58a4f885c0.jpg
There, that’s better. Vroom vroom!

Just posting this real quick to help out anyone out there who’s having the same problem…

Having trouble importing entries from another type of blogging software into TextPattern? Nina and I sure were. We looked everywhere for documentation — third-party sites, the official TextPattern website, the TextPattern Wiki — couldn’t find a goddamn thing.

Shit, TextPattern’s own importing page doesn’t even give any help — it’s just a page with a couple of options and an import button. You can select all the options you want, click on the button ’till you’re blue in the face — it won’t do crap all. It’ll just give you an error message on the return page and that’s it.

Eh? WTF, you know? I finally came up with the idea that it was looking for a type of import file somewhere in a folder (most scripts like this that don’t ask you to specify the file on the web page do), but there is _absolutely no documentation anywhere that says this_.

So, what did I have to do?

Go into the goddamn PHP code and examine it, line by line.

And there, I found it:

*//checks the existence of a file called import.txt on the import dir.*
*// Used when importing from a file*
*function check_import_file()*

Can somebody please tell me why it would’ve been so farking hard to put a little line saying “Oh, by the way, you need to rename your data you want to upload as ‘import.txt’ and ftp it to this directory?” Someone, anyone? TextPattern people?

Well, either way, we found the solution. Now to try it.

On Saturday, I wanted to experiment with sanding down a heatsink to a mirror finish, so I decided to try it on the heatsink that was on my old 9200se video card.

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/378826091_02f67b8c73_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/378826091_02f67b8c73.jpg
After taking it off and wet sanding it for a bit, it immediately became apparent that the heatsink wasn’t real copper (I really should’ve guessed) and was just coated in some kind of copper-colored metal. It really doesn’t matter what kind of metal the heatsink is made of, though, so I just continued with the sanding.

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/184/378826181_55a92dc982_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/184/378826181_55a92dc982.jpg
Here is a picture taken after I was finished sanding with 400-grade sanding paper — as you can see, it’s just barely starting to get reflective.

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/159/378826358_a4db801f47_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/159/378826358_a4db801f47.jpg
Here it was after I was done sanding with 800-grade sanding paper — at this point, it wasn’t really any more reflective, and I was starting to wonder if it was working… at least I was starting to sand off more of that copper-colored metal coating.

It’s a very tiring process, lapping a heatsink. You have to constantly “cross-hatch” your sanding — basically, you have to make sure that you’re always, always sanding _against_ the grain in order to get an overall smooth appearance. What this means is that you have to remember to turn the heatsink a 1/4 turn every minute or two so that you’ll always be sanding against the direction that you just were. Got it? Good.
Well, I really didn’t know what to expect at this point, until…

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/184/378826943_bc097df255_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/184/378826943_bc097df255.jpg
Wow. There’s quite a difference now, isn’t there? Turns out that nothing really changes all that much until you get to 1000-grade sandpaper and get to sanding with _it_.

The jump in reflective quality at this point was amazing.

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/159/378826778_547e5bc070_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/159/378826778_547e5bc070.jpg
Here’s another view, taken from a slightly different angle.

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/378827554_0050784b38_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/378827554_0050784b38.jpg
…and here’s my trusty old ATI 9200se. While it was never a powerhouse, it gets the job done. (And it’s far better than any laptop graphics. ) I’ve put a couple of big-ol’-honking heatsinks on the RAM chips, because I’m planning on overclocking the hell out of it — don’t worry, it can take it. I’m almost certain the card was severely _underclocked_ when I got it (166mhz core and 166 memory).

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/152/378827863_79dc418c54_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/152/378827863_79dc418c54.jpg
Here it is with the heatsink attached. What’s that bread-tie wrapping around it for, you ask? Well…

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/135/378827974_8f4ff4303e_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/135/378827974_8f4ff4303e.jpg
Okay, okay, okay — I know, it looks like shit. However, this was the only solution for now. (le sigh…) The heatsinks were too close to the motherboard’s RAM, and I had to “bend” one of the GPU’s heatsinks down a little bit to get it to fix. Of course, by this point, the thermal adhesive that it came with had already lost its adhesiveness, and I didn’t have any of my own, so… hey, it works, okay? It’s better than not having one on that chip at all.
All in all, it took about an hour and a half, but that’s just because I took my time with it. I’m thinking about doing it to the heatsink on the Titan’s CPU, just for the hell of it.

Why did I do this? I must admit, it makes absolutely no noticeable difference in anything performance-wise, and I can’t even tell if it’s lowering the temperature any (since the 9200se didn’t have an internal temperature monitor).

Doesn’t matter — it’s the _thought_ that counts, people!