Resurrection of a Laptop's Audio

Spring has not, in recent years, been the kindest season to my electronics.  About a month ago, I had several simultaneous maladies visit my computers.  First, my desktop, barely two years old, decided it no longer needed to turn on for no apparent reason.  A new motherboard ordered and RMA'ed later, whatever was ailing it was still utterly undiagnosable, so I bode my time until I could pounce on a stellar deal at Woot!.

The second problem was that my laptop decided it no longer needed to play audio out of the right channel.  It only refused to work with headphones or external speakers plugged in, of course.  I was reduced to the choice between one channel of audio and three: my laptop's internal speakers feature the conventional "left" and "right" plus the extra added bonus of "static".

Obviously, it was a much less disastrous problem than what befell my desktop, but man, it was irritating.  And if my laptop was to become (at least temporarily) my actual computer, it was a problem that I wanted to get fixed.  (How else was I supposed to enjoy Indie Pop Bonanza during my lunch hour-and-a-half?)  I tried all the usual steps: disable and re-enable the device, uninstall and re-install the device, update the driver, roll back the driver... all to no avail.

Skeptically, I give Sony tech support a call to see if they had any ideas, fixes, or straight-up magic to cure my machine, but I was pretty much resigned to it being a hardware issue.  I speak with "Hugo," and of course I can't get the idea out of my mind that I'm getting tech support from Hurley.  (I console myself by remembering that his name probably is not really Hugo.)  He leads me down the exact same path I've already trodden, and eventually he concludes that it's a hardware issue.  Thanks, Hugo.

Hugo gives me a link to the Sony service site, where I'm sure I can send in my laptop (currently my only computer) and probably pay $89 for the privilege of having someone pop out my old card and put a new one in.  Or, I can take the grad-student approach and fix it myself for $9.  Doing an Amazon search for "sound card," I discover a product I never knew existed: the external sound card.

This is a brilliant inch-and-a-half piece of plastic that plugs into a free USB slot and makes your computer play sound again.  I didn't notice a significant drop in quality, though it's possible that a serious audiophile comparing it with a dedicated sound card would.  If you can stand the slight inconvenience of another part to keep track of and a permanently occupied USB port, this thing really is straight-up magic to cure your machine.


Currently listening: "Tell Your Mama," Vespers

Saga of an overheating graphics card

Late March 2010: I'm playing a video game (Awakening, the expansion to Dragon Age: Origins, which is pretty good; not as good as the original, but I didn't really expect it to be). I've been playing for maybe half an hour when my computer crashes. The screen goes blank, and the audio is stuck looping in the fraction of a second it was on when the crash happened. The computer is still on--the power and wireless indicator lights shine blue, and it still seems open to receiving some sort of input signal--my mouse optical sensor still lights up. But I can't do anything with the screen blank.

It's unexpected for sure. I have literally changed nothing about this computer since December, when I added a second DVD-RW drive. This is the first time the computer has as much as frozen or locked up since I installed Windows 7 back in October, but I don't read too much into it. I instead take my own computer advice: "You can solve nine computer problems out of ten by shutting the computer off and turning it back on. You might never know what went wrong or why, but you probably don't need to." It turns on just fine, and within a few minutes I'm back killing darkspawn. Then it crashes again, same behavior as before, except that it only takes ten minutes this time.

Except this time it doesn't turn back on. Now I start to worry: this has all the marks of a fried graphics card, and that's a hundred dollar hassle I don't need. I leave the computer alone for a while, watch some TV, read a book, and eventually work up the courage to turn it on again. It works! Everything seems to be running fine, except that one of the fans is going a little crazy. Turns out it's the graphics card fan.

Computer operates fine outside gaming (except for an overtaxed fan), gaming makes it crash, and it takes a while for whatever problem happened in the first place to go away? Sounds like a heat issue to me. How do you solve a problem like overheating? Hold your moonbeam can of compressed air in your hand, crack the case, and drive some dust from its nest. The CPU, power supply, and GPU fans are all a little dusty, but not enough to cause major problems, same with the motherboard heat sink. The case fan is squeaky clean. Not feeling I'd solved any problems, I turn the computer on again to find out that I haven't. The graphics card fan still runs hot, and ten minutes of Dragon Age makes it crash. I decide to leave the problem alone for a few days--I have more important things to worry about, like a trip to Texas--and I hope it goes away on its own.


Early April 2010: I do a Google search and find CPUID HW Monitor, a nice little free utility that monitors system health diagnostics, like fan RPM, temperature, and even voltages (if you're such a power user that seeing VIN0 at 1.68 V tells you anything at all, more power to you). I install it to confirm that it is in fact a heat problem, and boy is it. My CPU and hard drives are all running between 25 and 40 C, which is exactly where they should be. The GPU? Idling between 80 and 85 C, and peaking at 110 C while gaming before a crash. Granted, graphics cards are supposed--or at least accepted--to tun hotter than the rest of your machine, but when it's putting out enough heat to boil water, that signals a problem.

Easy ways to alleviate a heat problem? Blow out all the dust (check). Make sure the airflow inside the case isn't obstructed (check). Aim a box fan at it (totally infeasible). "Buy a slot fan and aim it at your GPU" sounds like my next step. I do that.


Middle April 2010: My slot fan arrives from Newegg. I quickly realize a major problem: I don't have a free slot open. I'm not going to sacrifice my wireless internet for gaming, that's for sure, but I decided to (temporarily) take the hit and remove my TV tuner card. The new fan screws into place fine, the computer boots up fine, and I check the temperature to see that it's now idling between 65 and 70 C, about a 15 degree reduction from where it was before. More importantly, when I run Dragon Age for a few minutes, the card only reaches 90 C or so, and the computer doesn't crash.

Another major problem arises pretty quickly: this thing is loud. It was probably assembled in some factory in Guangdong Province by a few dudes who have never seen a computer in their lives. After running for a few minutes, it expels this nasty raspy "rahhhh" that sounds a little like Lady Gaga singing the hook section of "Bad Romance". For the time being, I decide that "loud computer that plays games but doesn't record television" is preferable to "quiet computer that crashes if you try to game"... but just barely. I look for an alternate solution.


Late April 2010: My new toy arrives, a contraption touted as a "0 dB fanless cooling system" that mounts on the graphics card. It's designed to act like a fancy heat sink: a conductive material (here, copper) contacts the hottest part of the card and conduct the heat to a series of intricate fins that can dissipate the heat effectively because of their large surface area. (Quick, someone calculate the Prandtl and Nusselt numbers!) I take out my graphics card to attach this cooling system and quickly realize a major problem (this is becoming a theme here): this thing is never, ever going to fit in my case. In my mind, "mount on" the graphics card suggests it would be, oh, smaller than the graphics card. Not so.

Dejected, I put the GPU back in the case, and serendipitously forget to put Guangdong Fan in. Immediately, I notice that the GPU fan isn't working nearly as hard as it was before. I boot up HW Monitor with cautious optimism and see... 64 C? I start up Dragon Age with optimism even more cautious and see... 86 C? As little sense as it makes, I'm left with a computer that can once again play games and record TV and not crash, a five-dollar paperweight, and a twenty-five dollar paperweight. My only guess is that some long-forgotten piece of dust in the GPU air channels was jarred when I took it out of the case or put it back in.

Morals of the story: first, in an arena with sound ratings and power draws and conductances, sometimes the most important spec of all is good old physical size. Second, computers do whatever they want, and far be it from us to do anything about it.


Currently listening: "Sacrae Symphony No. 12", Giovanni Gabrieli

Information Security and xkcd

I've been saying for years that information security is one of the most over-emphasized and overblown "issues" around today. It's as if the second someone realized "hey, maybe some dishonest person out there might try and steal my information", without any provocation, an entire industry was born out of paranoia.

In playing devil's advocate, even I'm not prepared to say "just because it's out there doesn't mean someone will want to steal it." I think if it's out there, someone eventually will try and steal it. But what I certainly am prepared to say is "just because it's out there doesn't mean it's worth stealing." Apparently today's xkcd agrees with me (read the comic, then look at the alt-text).

The truth is that very few of our secrets are worth stealing. Financial information is probably the one exception for the individual; corporations and governments do of course have secrets that might be worth stealing. A personal email address, though? If you're going to take the time to guess my gmail password, then by all means read my dictionary.com "Word of the Day" emails and Facebook notifications.

The good folks at Google realize this and therefore do not make its users change their passwords if they don't want to. It's a very laissez-faire approach to information security: let the individual apply exactly as much security to his information as he thinks is necessary. It's one that colleges would to well to emulate.

Georgia Tech's policy involves changing your password once every few months, with a mandated arcane combination of different "character classes" (ie, upper-case letters, lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols). But that's where the restrictions end. If I wanted to make my password "abc123!", I certainly could. It's essentially a middle-of-the-road approach, comparable to most corporate systems. And honestly, my password getting hacked could lead to some untoward things going on, including my unwitting withdrawal from school. The one issue I have with the system is that it presumes my password is not good enough the first time around, and I have to keep trying to improve it.

The Georgia Tech School of Mathematics (where I'm currently employed) makes the Institute policy look lax by comparison. In addition to the aforementioned restrictions, the Math password cannot start or end with certain characters, it cannot repeat the same character too many times, and it cannot "resemble a dictionary word" too closely. After a few rounds of my usual passwords getting rejected, I resorted to video game characters, of course augmented with different character classes.

I don't know what dictionary this system is drawing from, but if "Akatosh" really resembles a dictionary word, my vocabulary obviously isn't as strong as I'd like to think it is.

And what would guessing or hacking this password get for you? Emails about Friday bagel breakfasts with Math grad students and access to a handful of computers that I didn't even know existed until I started working for the department.


Currently listening: "A Day in the Life", Mae (covering the Beatles)

Pursuant to Mr. Simmons' Suggestion

The best Firefox addons, or at the least the ones I like the best, are as follows:

Gmail notifier: This handy little addon goes into the bottom status bar. It's very simple: a small notification pane shows up whenever you get a Gmail message. (If you haven't already switched to Gmail from whatever crappy email service you use, do so immediately.) Now some people aren't going to like this because they'll find it invasive, intrusive, or whatever. I personally think it's genius. Email, cell phone, and AIM are the three ways I do most of my nonpersonal communication. Two of those are immediate, as in I get notified every time I get a cell phone call or a AIM message. Now I also get notified with each Gmail.

Adblock: You know how Norton Internet Security comes with a fancyoption that basically lets you drag and drop web ads into it so they'll never show up again? Adblock basically does the same thing. You can click the Adblock button in the bottom status bar (conveniently next to the Gmail notifier) and permanently block a certain image or frame from appearing. Or, you can block an entire domain worth of crap from showing up. Very nice not to be accosted with ads every time I try to go to a website.

ForecastFox: So there are a lot of weather tools out there. Most of them are adware or suchlike crap. ForecastFox is not. It's pretty much self-explanatory: you input a zip code, you get the current weather as well as the next two or three days forecast at the bottom of Firefox. So in the morning, if I want to know how much I'm going to freeze on the way to Biology, I'll be able to.

IE View: As previously stated, Firefox is a superior browser to IE. But some people seem not to have caught on to that yet. Even some web developers haven't caught on to that yet. So a few websites don't work in Firefox as well as they're intended to. IE View adds an option to the right click menu that lest you see a current page in IE, should you ever have to subject youself to that horrific fate.

Additionally, even though it's not an addon per se, the search bar deserves a special mention. It's got Google, of course. But you can expand it to include IMDB, Webster's dictionary, Urban dictionary, Wikipedia, Amazon, and all sorts of wonderful places. In IE, one would have to open a new window, go to IMDB (for example), then use the search box there; in Firefox, you can merely type a search string into the bar, press enter, and have the results show up in a new tab.

So there you have it. 5 reasons that Firefox is the browser you have no excuse not to use.

Computational Irritation, and then some

It really bothers me when people use Firefox without using it to its fullest potential. There are people who use this browser because it's supposed to be a superior browser to Internet Exploder (it is). But they don't customize the search bar, they don't use tabbed browsing, they don't install addons, and they don't keep it up to date. This is comparable to getting the salad bar at Fogo de Chao, or coming to Tech and getting an International Affairs degree. It's of perfectly good quality, and there's nothing wrong with it per se, but it's just not the intended purpose, right?

To me, this seems like people jumping on the Firefox bandwagon, just because it's something they're somehow supposed to do. As in, "I heard Firefox is better than IE" or "It's just a good browser." It is a good browser, but only if you actually use it as intended. Firefox as it comes unmodified is basically the same as IE (but granted, a bit less vulnerable to security exploits).

I guess this just exposes a bigger annoyance of mine: people who espouse an idea without being able to justify or defend why they take that position.

---

In completely unrelated news, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a really stupid song. It's not even that bad until the weird interlude part. If you've ever heard the song, you know what I mean. Something about a silhouette of a man doing the fandango. It doesn't make sense, the voices sound bizarre and not terribly musical, and it has no relation (topically or stylictically or even emotionally) to the rest of the song.

Hearing it the other day reminded me of something I heard on the Jick and Skully show a few months ago. Skully was complaining about his Queen greatest hits CD and how it didn't have Bohemian Rhapsody on it. Jick answered, "Yeah, but I don't think of that as a song that I'd ever actually sit down and listen to." Having not heard it in a while at that point, I couldn't relate, but now I completely see his point.

SATA; Or, an Acronym for How Computing Should Be

Review: SATA hardware

One of the most important and valuable innovations to hit the computing market in the past few years is the SATA interface. That stands for "Serial ATA," yes, that's serial as opposed to parallel, and no, I have no clue what "ATA" means. SATA is a way for the motherboard to interact with your disk drives. That probably doesn't sound terribly exciting or significant. In fact, even if you know a decent bit about computers, you may have no clue what SATA means or why it's such a great idea. I didn't until a few weeks ago when I bought a new hard drive and tried to install it.

The great thing about SATA is the fact that a SATA device has exactly two cables at all times: a power cable, which goes into the power supply, and a data cable, which goes into the motherboard. If you're thinking "Well, isn't that the way drives should work?" then the answer is yes, that's exactly how they should work. That's nominally how non-SATA drives work too, but the amazing part about SATA drives is that they do not have jumpers. If you've got any familiarity with old hard drives, there's a good chance you're preparing a celebratory offering to your god(s) right now. If not, allow me to delve into the horrific nightmare-scape that is IDE.

See, the old standard for hard drive interfacing is (sometimes) called PATA, but much more commonly called IDE. I don't know what IDE means either. Confused yet? It gets worse. SATA devices are built on the basis that one drive goes into one port. You've got SATA 0, SATA 1, etc. and that's it. (If the numbering convention doesn't make any sense, good, I don't understand either why computers insist on counting from 0 instead of 1.) IDE devices allow you to daisy-chain; that is, a single IDE cable has two slots that plug into hard drives and one that goes into the motherboard. So how does a single IDE controller handle two IDE devices? With a ghastly construction called master/slave configuration.

Each IDE controller can only support one master and one slave. So for every pair of drives connected by the same IDE cable, you have to put one drive on "master" and one on "slave" to get either of them to work. This is much easier said than done, however, as to be able to change from master to slave, one has to take a small (we're talking 1/8 of an inch) piece of circuitry off one set of pins from the back of the hard drive and put it onto another set of pins on the back of a drive. Somewhere along the line, it was decided that this was probably not the best way to do things, so new drives began to support the CSEL (Cable Select) paradigm. If you put both drives' jumpers onto CSEL, the drives will function, and the computer assigns master/slave automatically.

This still means jumpers, though.

So for anyone who has ever dealt with new drive installation and configuration, SATA represents a breakthrough in technological convenience. This breakthrough will never be noticed by the average computer user, and it may not even be apparent to a more advanced user. But if you ever get to the point where you need to use it, I guarantee you will appreciate SATA.