Category: Life

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Hijinksinc – Nothing to See Here: Starcraft 2 is NOT killing graphics cards

I recently started to blog for Hijinks Inc a local technology & gadget blog. I am excited to start doing this and have several ideas of stuff to write on focusing on photograph & computer security. I hope this gives me a good reason to produce new content as well. I will be reposting articles with the permission of Hijinks Inc. Be sure to follow them on Twitter at @HijinksInc

Originially published on August 4, 2010 at Hijinks Inc

With the launch of Starcraft 2 on July 27th, 2010 people were excited to get their hands on this long awaited game. Development of the game started in 2003 and had been delayed or postponed several times due to other games Blizzard was producing at the time.
Since the launch minor issues have been growing, and today Blizzard Confirms an overheating issue. However, this story has been spun by the technology community even to the point where Slashdot picked up on it. It has been given menacing sounding titles such as “Is Starcraft II bad for your graphics card?” by ZDnet and “Is Starcraft II Killing Graphics Cards” by Slashdot. A much more appropriate title to the actual problem is one given by OverClockersClub “Starcraft 2 causing some GPU’s to Overheat”

The problem is that during some of the in-between mission screens, cut screens and menu screens are not frame capped like the actual game play is. This causes the GPU to render these screens as fast as possible. Since these screens are simple and, for the most part, static, the computer has an easy time and is able to render these very quickly causing the GPU to heat up. This increased heat and power consumption exposes flaws in Starcraft II players’ computers, causing crashes, reboots, and even some claimed GPU failures.

Now, is this Blizzard’s fault? No, it’s really not. Gamers should expect games to tax their computers; this means heat. Blizzard and other game/program publishers should expect their customers’ computers are free of dust and have adequate cooling. This supposed bug in Starcraft II only exposes existing issues with the hardware of gamers computers. The same overheating issues would be exposed with any other game or program that stresses the system, and especially the GPU. A GPU with proper cooling should be able to handle 100% load for extended periods of time with no problems. Blizzard’s fix (below) is a setting users add to a configuration file to limit the frame rate in the areas of the game where there currently isn’t one. Since Starcraft II development period was so long and the public beta was so large, I would have expected this issue to have been found and fixed in the beta. This setting should have been enabled as a global setting in the game by default. For this I hold Blizzard accountable. There is no good reason that a gamer would disable vsync unless they are running benchmarks.

Blizzard support team has issued instructions for a temporary fix and says a more permanent fix is in the works.

A temporary workaround is to go to your Documents\StarCraft II Beta\variables.txt file and add these lines:
frameratecapglue=30
frameratecap=60
You may replace these numbers if you want to.

Other good practices to fix this problem and to avoid this issue in the future are the following:

Update your graphics drivers. Graphics manufactures are constantly improving their drivers, fixing issues with new games and improving performance. ATI for example has issued a beta version of drivers 10.7 that fixes a few specific issues with StarCraft II.
Make sure your computer’s insides are clean and have adequate airflow. For a desktop PC I recommend opening up the side of the case and using compressed air to blow out all the dust. Do this at least twice a year, if not more often. Take the computer outside to do this because it creates a mess and it gets rid of the dust so the computer does not suck it up again. Doing this can easily make your computer run several degrees cooler.
If you are overclocking or are running a very high end graphics card make sure you have more than adequate cooling. During these hot summer months the ambient temperature of many homes is at its highest, causing more stress to be placed on your computer hardware. Run temperature monitoring software if you continue to have problems or want to monitor your hardware before damage occurs.
I have seen no mention of a fix on the mac platform so right now we can assume this is a PC related problem.

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Lincoln, NE 4th of July Fireworks 2010

Better late than never right? The city of Lincoln’s annual firework display was postponed one day due to the large amount of rain on the morning of the 4th of July. The evening of the 5th was perfect weather wise. I met up with some of the #LNK tweeps out at Oak Lake Park to watch the display. It was a nice time and I got a few good photos that I will post here. This was my first time watching the fireworks at Oak Lake Park and it had its pros and cons. The space is better for the amount of people that come, parking was fairly easy and emptied pretty quickly. However the background they shoot the fireworks against has too many lights, and is pretty industrial. In that regard Homes Lake was better, and much closer to my home. Hopefully someday they will decide to move it back to Homes Lake.


For more photos see the gallery http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/LNKFireworks2010/

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Nebraska Furniture Mart replaces fridge because of leaky ice maker

Since becoming a new homeowner I have experienced a few joys of home ownership such as a faulty toilet valve and now a leaky ice maker. At the beginning of May I purchased a new GE fridge with an optional ice maker. This was a dealer installed option. I received my fridge on May 26th and it has been working great. This weekend June 12-13 I noticed that I was getting some ice under the ice maker/bin. I found this odd and removed it to monitor the progress. 24 hours later the ice is back. Time for a warranty call.

I called Nebraska Furniture Mart customer service and told the nice lady about my problem. After verifying my account she said that there were no technicians that could come service my ice maker so the only option they had was to replace the entire fridge. I was shocked that they would do this, it seems overly expensive and inefficient but its great, who can argue about an entirely new refrigerator? Ya its an inconvenience but the replacement will be an entirely new unit with a new ice maker. This also seems overly complicated for a unit that is not even a year old. Since they have to order me a fridge I have to wait a week for delivery. I will update the blog when I get the new unit after a few weeks of use. Overall I am impressed with the customer service of NFM and will buy again from them.

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Lincoln’s breath taking sunset 5/30/2010

I have a soft spot for sunsets of all types. I am not sure what it is, maybe the intense colors or cool clouds that often occur. Lincoln has a great sunset every once and a while, especially when storms are rolling in. Sunday May 30 2010 this exact thing was happening and I just happened to catch it out the corner of my eye. I grabbed the camera and went out on the deck and snapped a couple of photos. I then decided to drive to Holmes Lake. Unfortunately the lovely pink had disappeared from the sky and the clouds had rolled in more. I still got a couple of nice photos though.

More photos of the trip will be posted over the coming weeks. I am going to make a real effort to keep this blog updated. We will see how that goes.

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Toledo Part II

Here is a quick update with a few more photos from Toledo. We summed it up pretty good in the previous post about what we did, but here are a few photos from the ride around the city. The train station in town is very impressive. All of its windows are stained glass and much of the inside is decorated with detailed colorful tiles and woodwork. We are currently in Granada and the last photo of this post is from the train ride from Madrid to Granada. Time provided I will be posting a blog update about Granada in the next day or two.

An update on the health of the family. Steve and Jon are both getting better with antibiotics. The girls in the family think that they might be catching it too but only time will tell. Right now we are all trying to get lots of sleep in between sights.

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San Isidro festival and Toledo

On Saturday we went to the San Isidro festival in Madrid. San Isidro is the city’s patron saint so they have special activities and most of the city shuts down for the day. We went to the park and walked around with thousands of other people, taking in the sights of the vendors and people in traditional costumes. It was similar to a fair. There were many different stalls with traditional foods as well. It reminded us of Czech days in Wilbur, NE, but much bigger.

Then that night we walked up to the Gran Via (a large street with lots of retail shopping and businesses, kind of like Michigan Avenue). That night it was a celebration of its 100 years. We lucked in to being in exactly the right place to watch a ten minute long light show that was projected on the large Telefonica building. It detailed the history of the Gran Via and the Telefonica building. Jon got video of the entire thing and will post it here when we get back home.

Toledo
Jon came to Toledo in high school as part of a short foreign exchange program during spring break in 2006. He stayed with the Canto family while he was in the city and we had plans to meet them once again for a night of Tapas. However, Steve has been sick most of the trip and had been getting worse. It is not possible to find a clinic here and you must go to the hospital if you want medical care on the weekends. Julia and her family met Steve and Jon at the hospital. Julia acted as translator for the doctors, who did not speak any English. He has a massive infection, and they even called in an ear specialist. Julia says they called him “pobrecito” and said he must have been in quite a lot of pain. They gave him a prescription for pain killers and antibiotics. The night with the Cantos was able to continue as planned, and we hope they are able to come to Nebraska some day. They were invaluable at the hospital and treated us to wonderful local tapas, wine, and great company.

This morning Jon woke up feeling sick as well. However, when we went to the pharmacy they were willing to give us as many antibiotics as we wanted. The price for them was also extremely low; the pharmacist said that many people from the United States come and ask for 15, 20 boxes so they can stock up.
We went to the Cathedral and Toledo and also took a little tourist train ride around the city to get better views of the surrounding countryside. It has all been very beautiful.

Photo & Video update 31.5 GB 1200 Files

This post was ghost written by Christine

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Madrid – Atlético de Madrid Championship Celebration!

Today we traveled from Barcelona to Madrid via high speed train, it was a nice ride. Speeds reached 300kmh and it was very quiet and smooth the entire way. It’s a nice way to travel.

When we reached Madrid we happened to get a very talkative taxi driver who told us all about the celebration that was happening near our hotel this evening. The Atlético de Madrid futbol team was celebrating its championship in a large parade through town. Our hotel is right on the puerta de sol which happened to be the ending point for the parade. The players got off the bus and went up into a government building to show off the trophies to the crowd. It was really a cool experience. Everyone was singing the team song, cheering, etc. It reminded me of a Husker football game day back home.

The weather here is cold right now. Today it was about 50F with short bursts of rain and even a little hail. Hopefully tomorrow will be warmer with more sun. We also found our favorite European ice cream bars the “Magnum Bars”, they bring back great memories. I wish that you could get them in the USA.

Today I took a lot of video with the new camera which increased the file count and spaced used for today only to 185 files at 9.26GB for a total of 518 files at 14.9GB. WOW!

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Spain 2010 – Barcelona

W made it to Barcelona, Spain after only 7-8 hours of various delays in both Chicago and Zurich, Switzerland. The delays were mostly due with the volcanic ash clouds that are continuing to hamper air traffic across Europe. We got in to Barcelona at about 8pm on Tuesday and after being up for nearly 24 hours everyone was tired so we got a quick sandwich and called it a night.

Today we went and visited Sagrada Familia a very famous church that has been under construction for over 128 years and is not expected to be complete till 2026 if ever. It as was amazing even in its unfinished state. We also visited a very active open air food market and the Olympic site which held the summer games in 1992.

Expect more lightly processed photos along with blog updates as the trip continues as we are able to find time and an internet connection.