DD_Brando

I certainly wouldn't laugh or cry at a piece of masonry that looks relatively plumb and level and straight. I might offer some advice about how to form a corner in half-bond but that would be rather pedantic - but there is one issue that screams out to me. Please, please note that when using the male member for the purpose of tooling the mortar joints, it is essential to wear a heavy-duty condom at all times to avoid unnecessary injury and discomfort. I am sure the Sisters would agree with me! cheers B

Yeah, I've seen a few of the Ghostrider flicks. Whilst clearly a certifiable nutjob, he certainly knows just how to ride fast. But only a fool pulls wheelies in traffic - why, because you can't see where you're going, duh, and that's the first criterion of fast riding. I'd be lying if I said I never went over the speed limit and pushed my bike to its limit; out on the highway and on empty country roads - 'cos that's the nature of the game. Going balls-out in crosstown traffic and poppin' totally unnecessary wheelies is another game altogether. B

Not wanting to get banned or anything but I detest these kind of arseholes! I'm obviously biased, having lost my right arm to an equally stupid, arrogant bastard - but there's really no excuse for such blatantly anti-social behaviour on any public road. If I was a cop I'd think nothing of deploying a Stinger* and to hell with the consequences. (* That's the spiked tyre-deflater Stinger, not the missile, though either would do). Did anyone else notice that this gratuitous exhibitionism was going down in Moscow? On a purely selfish note I was thinking how any of the cars could have held Oleg Maddox and his family, and how fine the line between life and death is out on the road. Anyone who pushes that line for purely egotistical reasons like this is just scum in my book. *rant over B P.S. I actually love motorcycling. I rode since age 16 and continued even after the collision that messed me up. I quit about five years ago after 40 years of two and three wheeled enjoyment. If it hadn't been for the unthinking stupidity of another biker like the guy in the film I'd probably still be riding now.

Thanks a lot every one. It's been a good day sitting in the sun and watching the new lawn grow It's another 3 weeks before we can actually walk on it, plus I have to water it every day, but it's worth it to have the best lawn in the street. Valda's sister and her husband Jon came over yesterday and we went out for a double celebration. My birthday and his passing a Masters in psychotherapy. We ate and drank until our eyes bled, the food was so good. I got a hardback copy of Fighter Boys and a large bottle of single malt whisky. The best present really is still to come - a superbly comfortable armchair that I picked out a couple of weeks ago. It's nice to know that all building work is now over for the year. That's a birthday present in its own right! I hope to be getting back to the squad flights soon. cheers B

And the lawn guys arrived yesterday and the project is about done This is the same day that the ceiling in my study got skimmed with plaster - so the building season is done for this year - hooray!!! The grey cat sharpens his claws and commences lifting turf - where's that hosepipe?

Hey Sven, thanks for those links and the sad news that Don has gone. I remember him busking in London back in the Sixties - but I didn't realise he had moved to Sweden in the 70s. I'm glad he found success over there. The coppers in London used to move buskers along quite a bit, and it must've been a pain if your gear included a bass and a high hat. The usual reason they gave was that you were causing an obstruction. Despite that, quite a few guys (and a few girls) managed to stick to their pitches and keep the London streets alive with music. Don was one of the best, bless him. B

There does appear to be a workaround, but it's probably not worth it.... Straight from the horse's mouth

Sid Are you sure you wouldn't just like me to get this running for you? My workbench is clear at the moment. B Ahh, Redditch. I had thought you were closer to me, like in the south-west. I couldn't collect at that distance.

That's a meaty looking system there Kim, congrats. I've never used plexi before either, and that may be the issue that EK need to get to grips with. Basically O-rings need a distinct channel or lip to seat in, and possibly plexi is too fragile to machine a good seat into. I will certainly be feeding back to EK on this. I'm happy that my rig is quiet again though, and now that the VRaptor is replaced replaced with a solid state drive I'm enjoying the merest hum of a couple of slow-moving fans. cheers That's basically why I don't use plexi for that. Too fragile in some areas, while it's very good in others like transparency etc. Waterblocks have lots of temperature swings & tensions and need to withstand a greater pressure than, say, a reservoir so I don't really trust the material for those kinds of applications. Must be because even cutting a sidewindow in plexi is nervewrecking enough IMO. It's also sensitive to any kind of chemical that contains any kind of alcohol whether it be coolants or just spilling isopropanol on the outside surface. BUT plexi looks good and you can see the inside of your block without dismantling it so that's a plus. SSD's is my next upgrade as well. Well, that and W7. SSDs will work in an XP environment: there is a manual software adjustment to enable TRIM support, or you can use CCleaner to clean used memory cells. The important item to remember is that you don't need to defrag an SSD. Whatever speed of drive you are using now, you will be amazed by the speed of an SSD and the lack of noise, plus the saving of space and the non-requirement of active HD cooling. Definitely recommended.

Do you have your eSata port enabled in BIOS? I know that mine is actually disabled currently, on my Asus (AMD) Crosshair 3 board. I think I need to enable AHCI to use it, instead of legacy IDE. B

Lol JP - It's amazing to think that there wasn't a single Irishman involved in that build!

Thanks BA. I've been an enforced southpaw for sixteen years this Christmas and officially retired. That said, I've laid about ten thousand bricks since then, mostly either on our properties or for family members. My best was the garden I built for my wife's parents back around ten years ago: cheers B

As long as I didn't have to lay bricks end to end all the way, Jim. I'm reminded of the old joke...... "how far is Canada, Dad?" "Shut up and keep swimming, son!"

Yeah, thanks Arthur, er, jolly good show, what? In a way it had even more of an impact on me seeing them after the war, at a time when I was as old as they were when the BoB was going on, if that makes sense? I agree Toad, that was a pretty strange work environment, but I don't see their actions re. dead mens' effects as particularly shocking: just a way of dealing with the sudden and constant disappearance of their comrades. Kind of an emotional transference; a way of avoiding or diluting the stark reality of 'here today, gone tomorrow'. The strange truth was that these WW2 pilots went into action with only the very minimum of gunnery training. The average infantryman would know far more about how to shoot his enemy than those pilots. And sixteen seconds of gunfire...end of story. The poet who compared fighters to butterflies was spot on at that time. Here today, gone tomorrow. Bless 'em all.

That's a meaty looking system there Kim, congrats. I've never used plexi before either, and that may be the issue that EK need to get to grips with. Basically O-rings need a distinct channel or lip to seat in, and possibly plexi is too fragile to machine a good seat into. I will certainly be feeding back to EK on this. I'm happy that my rig is quiet again though, and now that the VRaptor is replaced replaced with a solid state drive I'm enjoying the merest hum of a couple of slow-moving fans. cheers

This sounds great. I watched the video on that link and it looks pretty easy, except I would need to remove my MB to install the back plate (dammit). Right now I am using a heatsink and I am getting 43c at idle. That's OC'ed to 3.6ghz. Actually I found the mobo removal part really easy. I used the opportunity to clean out a few month's dust and rearrange certain aspects of the cabling layout. I've found that there is always something that I could have done better after finishing a build, and Murphy's Law dictates that the fix generally involves removal and replacement of the motherboard! So I was glad of the necessity this time around.

Thanks gents, for your compliments. @Dave - Don't put yourself down mate - it's only experience. But since you've decided to get into number-crunching, here's a few noughts to get your head round. I started looking through my workbooks and decided to run a few figures based on my average year's work. Here's an interesting personal career statistic. Over 25 years I must've laid around 5 million bricks and around a million blocks. Laid end to end this would reach nearly a thousand miles! This would be small beer to a Victorian bricklayer's total - whose average day would vary between 800 and 1200 bricks laid, and maybe a lifetime run of over 5,000 miles. @FT - I've been known to build houses too.... @ Toad - Yeah, after the lawn has settled I'll be dotting a few slabs across the lawn. Everything like this has to have some kind of solid foundation - like the bird bath and the circle of stones around it, like the wall (obviously) and the paving, none of it will last without a good dollop of concrete under it. The Hole is all to do with water drainage. A stream cuts across the field behind us and descends into a culvert just where the hole is. Some clever person formed a stone basin where the water starts to fall, and so there's a twenty gallon reserve of fresh water, constantly replenished, for us to draw from to irrigate the garden. Our right to use this resource is actually written into the deeds of the house. I don't suppose my lady would follow me down there, but I'm not sure whether crouching in eighteen inches of very cold water is exactly an escape. If it came to it I'd climb up onto the roof! She wouldn't follow me up there either - and at least I'd have the company of my grey cat who practically lives up there!

Yeah, that certainly would be a choice if I didn't already have the traditional rad, res, pump, block setup. I'm impressed by your 30° reading, which I presume is at idle? Mine is now running 32° idle, and around 39° at full chat - which is a moderate improvement over my previous waterblock. Yes, I am a little jealous of the ease of installation you had, and I'll certainly consider using one of those units in my next build. cheers, B

I laid the final thirty bricks in our new garden wall last Sunday. I can only call it a "whimsical creation" but I enjoyed the freedom of building something entirely for my own consumption rather than just for pay. We didn't decide on the iron-work yet to fence off the hole, so I think a sign saying Beware of the Troll will have to suffice for the winter. Here's our view from the kitchen. We have to dig out a stump and fill the spaces with topsoil yet - and there's a rockery in the making....... We finished behind the shed too, with my labourer laying the concrete blocks in a masterful fashion. We have a contract gang coming in to strip the old 'lawn' (aka the dandelion patch) and lay meadow turf on fresh topsoil, right across from wall to wall at the end of September. In the Spring I will insert stepping stones, suitably bedded, leading from one end to the other... And that's it. Not bad for a one-armed geezer, if I say so myself, and quite enough for one lifetime! B

I should have mentioned this section of the instructions: Pretty crazy when it has to be removed to change mounting plates! So, caveat emptor if you're tempted to use one of these in an AMD rig. The sad thing is, it's a beautiful piece of kit when it works right. Using the silicon mastic has fixed it up well - but there's no way it can ever be dismantled without the use of a hammer & chisel

I decide to swap out my old CPU water-block for something a little more modern - and I chose the EK High flow shown here. As shown in the picture it's a neat piece of work - low profile, very solid attachment, high spec and very nice thank you. Delivery from Overclockers was next day, they're very good that way, and I started in yesterday morning feeling pretty confident. EK have made this kit suitable for most everything from a Skt A to an i7 and the components are well manufactured (well, almost) and I made good progress following the clearly-printed and concise instructions. With my Crosshair 3 mobo out on the bench after a half-hour dismantling session, I was pleased to find that the backplate mounting holes lined up perfectly with those on the Asus mobo. EK use an insulation layer of EPDM(?) rubber which is obviously cut and drilled on the same jig as the backplate, as it fits into the sandwich just right. I inserted the four bolts and then dropped on the fibre washers followed by steel washers and secured it in place with the locknuts. I slipped the AMD mounting plate over the four bolts and it was a perfect fit, so I had a cup of tea in celebration After this it all went sideways! The picture shown in the link, of the unit with the four-eared mounting-plate, is the Intel system of attachment. The AMD AM2 fixing requires the fitting of an oblong plate instead of the one shown, and here's where it all went tits up. Removing the mounting plate requires the perspex cover to be removed from the base of the waterblock because the mounting plate fits between them. Four Allen-headed M20 screws hold the cover on, and Ek include the correct Allen key, so what could possibly go wrong? The answer is a rubber O-ring that seals the outside edge of the assembly. Once dislodged it is impossible to replace accurately, and changing mounting plates means it will inevitably come loose. Now, I've had a heap of experience fitting O-rings into various assemblies in my time. Bike engines, car engines, water pumps, hydraulics, you name it I've fitted it, but the one thing they all have in common is a method of securing the O-ring before the mating surfaces are placed together! A slight smear of silicon grease is usually enough to hold the ring in place if assembly has to be done inverted and it's rare for any problems to occur... but the EK set-up is lacking any securing method at all. There is a lip which the seal is supposed fit around, but it's too slight to hold the ring in place. I tried the grease trick to no avail, so I cleaned up and used a small amount of PVA white glue instead. Neutral to both plastic and rubber the PVA went nicely tacky and I positioned the seal and carefully joined the parts. All seemed to go well, but right after the M20s were tight I realised that a corner had slipped and become trapped sometime during the process. D'oh! Now I really had a problem because the O-ring was severed. I wasn't about to attempt an RMA on something I'd screwed up myself, so I jumped in the car and headed off to see if I could find a replacement. I tried plumbers, motor factors and my local plant hire company. They were all happy to help - but no one could match up the article. To cut the story short, I decided to use a bodge, and headed back to the plumbers for a tube of clear mastic. With the tiniest aperture in the nozzle I squeezed out a slim bead of the goop right around the seal position and then embedded the o-ring into it. Using a soapy finger I smoothed the mastic and removed any excess, and then I joined the components again.. Success! I smoothed the squeezed out silicon with a soapy Q-tip and set it to cure. An hour later after a final inspection I removed the backing paper from the contact surface, spread the Arctic Cooling MX2 TIM onto the heat spreader, and proceeded to bolt the cooler to the board using the thumbscrews and springs. That works particularly well. Then I re-piped, refilled and fired up the pump, using the wire from the green to the black in the power connector. EK recommend 24 hours, but I settled for 4. The only weak point that could occur was the cooling block, and nothing was showing, so I connected everything up and booted the rig. Everything works like a charm, and it's knocked about 5 degrees C off the CPU temps. So what am I saying re "heads up"? Well EK also make an all-metal version of this block with just the same potential problems. The one awkward thing is - you won't be able to see the possible snafu with the O-ring until you switch on your pump. EK would do well to think of having the AMD variant available already built up as the Intel setup is.

The 10.8 drivers seem to work fine Kimo. I think I detected a slight improvement in colour, but it's rather subjective and hard to quantify. I haven't run any tracks to collect fps no's, but I know te game runs very smoothly now. Definitely reinstate the Vertex Array settings - that problem has gone. Obviously most of us are waiting (more or less) patiently for SoW:BoB to be released. A lot of people are rattling on about the machines we're going to need in order to run it - multicores, multi-gpu's and so on - and getting in a sweat about it. I feel quietly confident that Oleg & Co will be able to make good use of the potential that is locked up in rigs like mine. I'm considering grabbing another 5870 to use in Crossfire when the time comes. It isn't necessary for FB - but who knows what the 4.10 patch will bring?

Could you tell us a bit more Brando? In what way is it better? I'm using a 3 Pro, and perfectly happy with it. (Only need to center once when starting the game) (Oh wait, I think I get it, I'm only using the 2DOF.... not the 6DOF that it's capable of, as I have the Vector expansion) (Sorry for the hijack!) Ditto on the hijack, Kimo, but it may be of interest to the thread I hope. FT. <S> Basically I had always found that the 3Pro would find a way to disconnect itself on the way into a game. Not every time, but at least once every session and often more. I'd checked out the start options and everything, but I couldn't find a way to stop it from happening. Of course, there's nothing more annoying than finding your TIR isn't functioning as a coop starts - except perhaps when you're hosting and it happens. Anyway, I think there are two ways in which TIR 5 is better. One is the software (the version 5) which seems totally unfazed by Windows 7 and/or IL-2 Mods, and the hardware which has been improved in many ways. From a much easier form of attachment to the monitor, right onto the improved field of reception and the complete eradication of the problem I mentioned above, this is a definitely improved piece of kit. Back at the ranch, I still feel called to defend ATi's rep. I've fielded a series of ATI cards right along since I flew in Warbirds and then IL2 Sturmovik up to now. It's true to say that Ati have always taken a while to refine their drivers after the release of new hardware, and one may feel forced into the position of a beta tester sometimes. Fiascos like the blocky text issue and the purple flashes and similar artifacts have put quite a few people off - but the company have always come through with the appropriate adjustments eventually. With a monthly issue of drivers it's important to follow developments and send feedback to the writers if there is a problem. This feedback does get acted upon. Anyway - with the latest drivers installed the 5870 certainly displays IL2 better than I've ever seen it. Better than the 4890 I switched from, and I didn't think it would be like that. B

Respectfully, I have to say that my ATi HD5870 and 28" monitor show Forgotten Battles just beautifully and make "full switch" really viable. I got so excited that I went out and grabbed myself a TrackIR 5 to complement the visuals. That's a distinct improvement over the 3 Pro I've used for years too. B

No offence BA, you're a nice bloke, but wtf are you talking about? Never mind that Communism and socialism are two very separate political philosophies, just where in the wide world is this supposed agenda being peddled? One answer might be, in the heads of a group of press and pundits whose main intention is to incite fear in their gullible audience. We saw that when certain "experts" reported that Britain's National Health Service used "death lists" to highlight patients who (reportedly) weren't worth saving; and again when it was stated that "Professor Stephen Hawking would be dead if he had needed to rely on the NHS". Embarrassingly, it was pointed out that the good prof IS, and always has been, an NHS patient. The truth falls by the wayside in the face of good politicking however, and came too late to prevent the fear from taking hold. Try to hold onto the idea that a social health system does not equate to socialism or Communism just because the word social is being used. Excuse my sarcasm. B No offense to you Either Brando but WTF are you talking about? I never mentioned anything about health care, and it's not relevant to anything I said. I'm quite familiar with the differences between Socialism and Communism, but since I have not read Marx, I'll not argue them. I personally see the difference as pure semantics, but I can see how you might see things otherwise. Please stop assuming I'm stupid, Brando and come with a relevant argument and we might have something to talk about. Excuse the sarcasm . I don't assume you are stupid BA, and I'm sorry if I come over that way. I was using the health examples to highlight my thoughts about pundits really, and to criticise the spin that is put on anything different. And, I'll admit it, to pull you over regarding "The current Communist/Socialist agenda that is being propagated worldwide." I still don't understand what that means. When I look around Britain and the rest of the European states I can't find any trace of what I think you mean. All I see is consumerism and a desire to kickstart our economies so that we can carry on consuming.