My Windows 7 / Core i3 computer build.

Just finished building my third computer.   Came in at a reasonable price with parts rebates and special sales.  This should fend off obsolescence for quite a few years by allowing me to upgrade to higher end Intel processors, faster graphics cards and RAM as prices drop.  Windows 7 should prove to be a significant step up from the aging Windows XP operating system.  Here are the specs:


Case - NZXT Tempest ATX mid-tower w/ six 120mm blue LED cooling fans.

Motherboard - Biostar T-Series TH55 XE LGA socket 1156 Micro ATX.

CPU - Core i3 540 Clarkdale 3.06GHz LGA 1156 73W Dual Core. 

Memory - Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) x 4 (Total 8 Gigabytes).

PSU - OCZ StealthXStream OCZ600SXS 600W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready Active PFC Power Supply. 

GPU - XFX GT240XZNFC GeForce GT 240 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card. 

Hard Drives -  Two Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive x 2 plus one 500GB 7200 RPM IDE cable drive for a total of three hard drives.  Plenty of file backup storage.

Optical drive - Liteon 24X half-height internal DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD+R9/DVD-R9 /DVD-RAM/DVD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW/CD-ROM combination drive. 

Monitor - ASUS VH236H Black 23" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen Full HD 1080P LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 20000 :1 (ASCR) Built-in Speakers.

GUI - Windows 7 Professional 64-bit version.



The only thing left to upgrade will be the CPU heatsink and cooling fan since the CPU is running at 52 C. while idle - way too hot but we are talking intel's stock heatsink and fan here.  I'm leaning towards getting this liquid cooler instead of a conventional heatsink and fan, provided it fits in my case.  Tigerdirect.com is selling it for $79.99: 

Corsair CWCH50-1 Hydro H50 CPU Liquid Cooler - 120mm Fan, Copper Cold Plate, Aluminum Radiator, LGA775, LGA1366, LGA1156, AM2/AM3

All told, this system rocks!  Much better than my old setup, especially when running the Adobe Web Design CS3 suite of applications.  Should also dramatically improve render times in Blender 2.5 Alpha and Vue Esprit 6.  Already tested Visual Pinball and Future Pinball emulators and very satisfied with the performance, especially with the new LCD 23" widescreen 1080p monitor.   Can't wait to download MAME on this monster.  The color and clarity of the display, along with the XFX graphics card, are light years beyond  my old setup.  Internet download and upload performance also received a boost.  Next I will have to test Windows 7's XP mode once I download Virtual PC.  All said, this project was money and time well spent, despite having to return one defective motherboard and shelling out money for a new compatible power supply.  RMAs,  re-stocking fees and UPS shipping charges suck, but when you're dealing with online resellers, you can only go by customer reviews, which tend to run the full spectrum of pros and cons on most products.   With the exception of the optical drive, which I bought on Amazon.com, all other components were purchased from Newegg.com.     

Tribute to Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

A moving tribute to Silvio Berlusconi, who's party slogan is, "Love always conquers envy and hate".  A master politician with a media mogul's talent for getting the message out.  Italian politics are a wonder to behold.

Bible Logic 101 - A Blundering Deity & A Sick Story

First Mistake - God creates Lucifer who ends up leading 1/3 of the angelic host into rebellion against him.  Instead of dealing with these sinners from the start, he gives them dominion over his Earthly creation.  Lucifer-Satan was even able to offer Jesus a bribe in the desert.

Second Mistake - God creates Adam and Eve, who end up getting tricked by Lucifer (his first mistake), into disobeying him regarding a fruit tree full of nutritious knowledge, planted by God for no good purpose if you couldn't eat the God-damned fruit to begin with.  Who's the real tempter here, God or Lucifer? 


Third Mistake - Not too long after kicking the naughty, naked newlyweds out of Eden, God decides to wipe out humanity in a global flood, except for eight very special people, who end up sinning as soon as they hit dry land - amazing insight on the part of the Creator.


Fourth Mistake - Alas, God is not happy with Noah's descendants getting into the construction business, building the world's tallest skyscraper, so he gets them speaking different languages and disperses them - along with their sinning ways - throughout the world. The Lord's machinations at Babel didn't stop humanity from building sky scrapers but it did allow them to curse God in a variety of foreign languages.

Fifth Mistake - God sends his only son as a human sacrifice so humanity can reconcile with him by the shedding of his son's BLOOD?!  Sounds like he's blaming himself over that God-damned fruit tree thing - or is it that Lucifer thing?  Of course humanity is still as rotten as ever but now even the worst rotten bastard can settle with God as long as he BELIEVES that Jesus bled to give him a get-out-of-jail-free card.  Yikes!

Epilogue: And now for something that gives gloomy Nordic mythology a run for it's money.  Jesus must return to Earth a second time in order to initiate another global blood bath and finally destroy God's first mistake - LUCIFER!  Forget for one moment that the sciences, factual history and critical reading skills refute a literal interpretation of the Bible.  Does the contrived, Pauline Christian narrative of original sin, redemption and salvation make any sense,  even metaphorically?  In terms of morality and ethics, the storyline lacks both.

Faces of Mahmoud - Photoshop series pt.2

Sodom and Gomorrah and a Sumerian Asteroid Account

 For a fascinating explanation of yet another bible fable, click below. 

Sodom and Gomorrah and a Sumerian Asteroid Account

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Faces of Mahmoud - Photoshop series pt.1

The Origin of Life - Abiogenesis - Dr. Jack Szostak

The Hajj Limerick

The Hajj (Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca) is notorious for the number of
dead it leaves in it's wake due to the zealous nature of the participants.
In 2006, nearly four-hundred pilgrims were killed in the stoning of the
devil ritual at the al-Jamarat site. The cause of the tragedy? Spilled

luggage on the roadside causing a stampede, which inspired

The Hajj Limerick.

There once was a pilgrim named Al-hassan,
who journeyed to Mecca from Pakistan,
he picked up a pebble to aim at the devil,
and tripped on his Louis Vuitton.

Call me insensitive, but I take inspiration from wherever I find it.

A Nietzsche moment

Below is Nietzsche's definition of truth. I think he influenced me somewhere along the way. Absolutely brilliant!

What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.  We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors - in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all...

'On truth and lie in an extra-moral sense,' The Viking Portable Nietzsche, p.46-7, Walter Kaufmann transl.