Back just over a week ago, my pc componenets were delivered. And as expected there was my Intel Core i5, however it was a processor designed for a 1156 socket, and not what I required for my motherboard. I had taken photos and videos of me unboxing it, but then I had noticed the mistake.

Fortunately, eBuyer were great about the whole thing, and I sent off the processor to their returns department where they agreed to exchange it. I also took the opportunity to pay a little more for a 2500 version with 4 cores, instead of the 660 with only 2.

Out with the Old, in with the Old…

I inserted the processor into its socket, and attached the cooling fan to the board, and then began the tedious and messey task of removing the old graphics card and power supply from my existing machine, cleaning the dust from them, and connecting them into the new case, with all the cable management that goes with it.

You can be sure my next machine will use a moduler PSU!!

With everything connected, it was time for the moment of truth… I turned the switch on to power up the machine, and there was nothing!

Check, check, and check again!

A great feeling of dread came over me. “Oh god I must have broken something” I kept muttering to myself. I checked all the connections, everything looked perfect, so I began disconnecting the front panel cables from the board.

I had connected these on the Monday when the components arrived, so maybe I knocked them loose – or maybe… Turns out I had some of the fiddly connector pins the wrong way round. I thought I had done them all correctly, but until you can check, you can’t be sure.

So with everything in its proper place now, came the moment of truth. CLICK and the fans began to spin, the LEDs lit up in the dark void of this monster case, and the almost Star Trek like beeps from the internal speaker rang out and the TV flickered and came to life with the MSI UEFI BIOS image, and some text about there being no boot drive.

Now releived that it was working, what struck me was how quiet this machine was compared to my old jet engine – I mean pc. Having the larger 200mm fans really has made a difference. You can hear it yourself at the end of the video below detailing the final steps in completing this thing.

Finishing touches

As any of you who have built a new PC know, building the machine is only ever half the job.

After the building comes the installation. Installation of Windows (or any other OS you happen to like) and all the files and software you have backed up. This time things were a little different from my past experiences, one of the perks of using an SSD, is how much faster everything is, from boot-up to logins and restarts. In only about 3 hours, I had installed Windows 7, installed all the updates including SP1, and made all the tweaks recommended when running it on an SSD (such as disabling hibernation, moving page files, and ensuring the user data folders are relocated). What took the rest of the night – until about 4am – was copying the over 1TB of media and files from my old computer’s hard drives, to the two new 2TB ones.

It wasn’t until Saturday and Sunday that I got round to installing all my software like Microsoft Office, the Windows Phone and Android development kits and software, Adobe and Autodesk animation software etc.

I was planning to update the site with this blog post on Sunday night, but I just re-installed Minecraft and as I was playing, not once did it crash on me and I ended up playing for about 6 hours straight, so I am posting this on Monday!

It arrived fairly early and so I did what many people do these days, I recorded video of myself unboxing it.  It wasn’t until a few hours later that I leaned that was all I was getting that day, so I ended up re-boxing it and waiting until Monday for the rest of the components to arrive.

The big day finally arrives?

So I wake up after a late night working on a new Windows Phone app (more on that in the future) and I jump into the shower to freshen up. I hear the knock on the door and my brother accepting the package of goodies, and so I finish up and prepare for my day of building.

I open the non-descript brown box and proceed to film myself rummaging through and examining what was inside.

Everything I had ordered was there, but then I notice something a little off with the processor. There was a sticker saying it was a socket 1156 version, where what I needed was socket 1155. Not sure if it was an error on mine or my brother’s part while ordering, or a mix-up on the other end, but as you can imagine this was not what I had hoped for.

So we packaged it up – after having already unboxed, videoed and photographed it – and we arranged with eBuyer to exchange it. So whilst it means an even longer wait, I did take the opportunity to splash a little more of my rapidly depleting cash on getting a better Quad Core processor, as opposed to the Intel Dual Core i5 I had chosen before.

So I continued to open the component boxes, recording as I go, and then I start to think about, how I was going to route cables, and what order I should start installing the bits that I already have, into the case.

Coming tomorrow (14th October 2011) will be the components for what will be my 4th PC Build. I think back to 2005 when I first decided to turn my back on ‘off the shelf’ PCs and decided to build my own.

It was a daunting prospect! The idea of setting jumpers, connecting IDE ribbon cables, fitting a processor etc, was all new to me and the number one thought on my mind was “please don’t let the static blow it up… please don’t let the static blow it up!” So I took my time and after several hours, and slow baby steps I had built my first PC.

The machine seemed to work well, not just for me, but also for my uncle who used it until 2010 before it was really showing its age. AMD Athlon XP 2000 processor, 1 GB DDR2 RAM, ATI Radeon R520 and 750 GB HDD Space. Nowadays you would find these specs in a netbook computer rather than a Tower PC built for 3D Animation and video editing.

Then in 2007 it was time to to replace the ageing machine, so after my successful experience the first time, I decided to build this one myself also. Sadly a mixture of damaged components and my lack of experience, as well as a case with insufficient cooling, and a damaged motherboard. Both of these caused the PC to burn out after only a month.

I got a refund on the damaged components, and salvaged what else I could for my next machine which I made sure had plenty of fans good airflow, as well as beefing up the specs a little with what money I had left.

With an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor, 4 GB DDR 2 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT8800 and 1.5 TB Total HDD Space (with SATA Drives), and later a blu-ray drive and duel monitors – This machine was a big upgrade, and is still a good spec for a machine.

If it weren’t for the fact the PC has been playing up lately I wouldn’t be upgrading it quite so soon…

And now for the 2011 upgrade…

As I have been unable to narrow down the exact problem components, this upgrade will be the core components, while keeping those components still working well.

Here are the specs for what’s on it’s way:

• Intel Core i5 660 Processor
• MSI P67A-G45 (B3) Motherboard
• Corsair 16 GB DDR3 Vengeance Blue RAM
• Coolermaster HAF X Case
• OCZ 120 GB Agility 3 – SATA-III SSD
• 2x WD 2 TB Caviar Green – SATA-III HDDs

I’d love to know what you think of these specs, or if you have any personal experience with any of these components. Leave comments below, or get in touch with me on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.

Anywho… I have decided to detail the build in a series of upcoming blog posts. I will take photos, and maybe a short video or two as I put it all together. I will make a blog entry for the unboxing of the various bits and bobs – an entry for connecting up the components – and finally a post when the whole process is done and the machine is working (or not if things don’t go so well).

UPDATE: So Parcelforcefarce have decided to split the delivery into two. The PC Case itself arrived, but the other components are now coming on Monday!

Here is a photo of it…

I originally posted this when Steve Jobs stood down from Apple August 24th 2011. In the early hours of Thursday 6th October BST, Apple confirmed that Steve Jobs had died. The world has lost someone with a unique vision and highly focused design sense, and it will be more the poorer for it. I would like to offer my condolences to his family, and am grateful that Steve’s suffering has come to and end.

Anyone who has read some of my blog posts, twitter feeds, or anyone who has asked my opinion of Apple, you will know I turned my back on the company and their products almost 6 years ago.

I started seeing how Apple had gained a sort of control over tech journalists, and grew increasingly uneasy with the way they went about business, and their relationship with their iOS developers.

One person has been the figurehead and the leader of Apple, that man was Steve Jobs.

With the news today, that he has resigned as the day to day CEO of Apple, I am filled with both sadness, but also some degree of relief. This on a personal level as a human being, and as someone who sees how Apple can be a force for good if run in the right way.

Steve Jobs did not have the easiest of childhoods… Knowing from an early age that it was his birth parent’s intention to have him adopted. Steve eventually found his place in the world, and probably had to mould the place he now exists in. Whatever you may think of Apple and the products he has brought into the world, it is undeniable that Steve Jobs has had a talent for cultivating a vision of how computing and electronics should be, and developing successful and sometimes revolutionary concepts which have inspired many others to follow.

So I talked about how the resignation is a positive as well as negative event.

Firstly as with many of you who stumble upon this, I will be thinking of those products that might have been were he still in good health and running the company. It feels like the end of an era because it was Steve Jobs and Bill Gates who defined more than a decade of technology innovation and rivalry, in this generation of Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

But then there is also some upside to this event. Steve Jobs has suffered for many years with ill health. Despite treatments and time away from work, it has become increasingly clear he is not recovering.

Finally stepping down from the pressures of having to be on campus day to day, will no doubt help him spend the rest of his days with more time to spend with friends and family. No more keynotes to address, and other public appearences he will feel obliged to carry out. As a caring and sensitive human being, I have not enjoyed seeing him looking so ill in public.

And here is the more controversial point… If Apple is able to find a vision it can adopt and drive forward in the future, it may not be as disasterous as it was the last time Steve Jobs left Apple. And without such a strong willed single individual imposing such a passionate vision on the whole company, Apple may start to embrace those who have helped it become so successful in recent years, rather than them having to take the role of the hypothetical “abused puppy”, taking the knocks but being so vulnerable that they have no where else to turn.

Up until now I have been hosting this website on webspace given to me for free for web design work done in the past. Unfortunatly with money being as tight as it is these days, I am now paying for the web hosting (which is a very good and affordable deal) but I have had to consider including adverts onto the website.

Right now, I have placed them in the usual places, but the site design was not designed with adverts in mind, so they may seem a little out of place. I will be looking at tweaking the design soon, as I explore more HTML 5 goodies, and will design around our new advert overlords in future changes! :P

So if you have any issues, comments, suggestions about the design, or the adverts, do comment below, or get in touch via my page.

Personally I am in favour of keeping the name Windows 8.  It will match up nicely with Windows Phone 8 when it launches in the autumn of 2012, and it is a clean and elegent name as was Windows 7.

The 8 itself could be given many nice graphical treatments, but we need to remember that this is Microsoft.  Their track record of great branding is not that impressive.  As dull as I find Apple these days (apart from the gorgeous but overpriced hardware), and as boring as I find their naming convention of late (iSomething = iBoring), they manage the media and presentation in a way that always seems to impress.

So if not Windows 8, then what?

I have been following the forum threads and MaryJo Foley’s article on her ZDnet blog.

As a fan of the new UI, and even growing to like this multi-coloured approach to the Metro UI (compared to the single accent colour Windows Phone and Xbox 2011 UIs).

So to cut a long story short, here is a quick logo idea for Windows Metro.

The hosting provider has now completed its planned move to new servers, So hopefully the site should load much quicker now. I hope I have made sure the site is working properly and is safe of malware or spam, but if anyone discovers any issues, please let my know via my Email me page.

You can tell my year and a bit working with Windows Phone 7 has given me a bit of inspiration, but if you look at some of the early designs I had for this website, you will see I have not totally being taken over by the Metro design.  In fact it was because Metro (The new Microsoft UI design) was so like my own personal sense of minimalist design, that got me so interested and excited in working with it.

But it is all still new, and there may be bugs or other issues, so if any of you notice any problems, please go to the Email Me page and let me know, and I will try to get them all fixed as soon as I can.  I will be going back over older posts, and updating the layouts and some images slightly to look a little better with the new layout, so please bare with me as I get to those in the next few weeks.

We have made great progress since our initial launch of the free Windows Phone 7 app. Then in February with the launch of our paid app, with many more features and setup for future updates. But along with progress, there have been road bumps and problems along the way, so I would like to detail a few of them so users and those who are just interested in the apps, have some idea why things may seem like they are taking longer to release, and give an insight at what is to come.

What is coming next

I promised we would be releasing an update a week or so ago, which would bring station status, information, and train times for the platforms. Free time has been at a premium recently, with unexpected events cropping up so it will be a few days more before that update will be ready for testing, as well as problems with the Transport for London data services which have proven to be less than reliable.

However the lack of free time for our developers has not been a totally bad thing, because it has given me time to go over every facet of the app’s design and features, and I am able to announce, a totally revamped design will be coming, along side integrated Journey Planning.

Whilst we know there are a few apps out there for Windows Phone which have some of these features, but we believe our application has the best design, and the best future ahead of it with all the features we have planned!

If there has been one project I have been a part of which has gone on longer than any other it has to be The TV Room.

Back in the year 2002, I had well and truly gotten my feet wet with the internet, and the issue wasn’t how to get onto the internet, but how could I be a part of it.  It was around this time my interest in all things design really blossomed, as I realised I wasn’t the only one who noticed fonts, logos, and graphic/information design.

I came across a website which featured a substantial archive of television idents, and graphics from the very early days of television in the United Kingdom and Ireland.  I got nostalgic as I looked through the images of television designs from my childhood, and one of my favourite of all television brands, the BBC One Balloon Idents – The inspired idea of the then king of television branding, Martin Lambie Nairn.

At that point the site had been going since 1999, and was the personal archive of Mike McGonagle.  Each of the 100 or so pages which made up the site was coded by hand and was a bit of a handful to navigate through, but these were the early days of the web, before video and content management systems.

I had started teaching myself web design as well as design principles in general, and I presumptuously contacted Mike offering to work with him on redesigning the site to better show off the historical and modern collection of images and contextual information.  To my surprise he replied and showed some interest in my proposal.

So in the summer of 2002, we worked together and came up with a layout which ditched the ugly frames which has long since passed out of favour with web designers, and began the laborious task of converting all the pages over to the new design.  To top the whole thing off, I re-drew the BBC inspired logo and the new look went live.