Category: Me Myself&I

Twittersearch on fan noise.

I believe i will have to bring back my Macbook Air. the fan is making constant noise and runs at 6/7ks rpm…not good.

The fan on my Newertech MiniStack 2.5 is failing for the third time. I really can’t say enough lousy things about it.

Solved one problem with iMac now have loud fan noise which is driving me crazy – !!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhh can’t stand it!!!

The noise of my fat PS3’s fan drove me so mad that I got a slim.

XBOX360turn down the fan noise please.#xbox360

New northbridge fan ready to install. The old one was driving me nuts with noise.

I HATE MACBOOKS!!!!!!!!!!! Why does the fan freak out and make loads of noise every time I try to film something?!!!!!!!!!

I hope my laptop fan thingie isn’t dying….I hate when it makes the odd noise….

Hm. My mactop fan shouldn’t be making that rattling noise, should it?

My laptop fan is making a buzzing noise. I shook it, and it just got louder. Just like a baby.

Checking on obscenely loud computer fan noise I’m tired of listening to. Time to crack the case.

etc. Needless to say my Dell laptop is doing the same too. All computers and piece of hardware start being silent and after some use they all are getting damn noisy, thanks to this weak design that is a cheap fan blowing hot air on an expensive silicium chip to make the temperature drop. Isn’t it stupid?

I know, we can’t really get rid of them for now, and the smaller fans are, the more they make noise and are unreliable. Hence the problem with laptops.

On the other side by making less powerful chip we can be fanless, like smartphones and netbooks are showing it. But of course we lose a lot of comfort (forget about the 24” screen and forget about the fast as “immediately” when loading a heavy web page).

Good old silent days, please come back thank you.

TDP

To understand how much we are close –and yet far away- to solve this problem and have both silent and powerful computer there’s a measure unit: TDP Thermal Design Power (in Watt). It represents the maximum amount of power the cooling system in a computer is require to dissipate. The number is usually 20 to 30% lower than what the chip is able to output when really stressed out (video encoding, games). So you always need to have more than what your processor can dissipate. Of course the faster the cpu is, the bigger is the TDP.

Full List of CPU power dissipation (long loading is long). Wikipedia, I love you.

First there’s a huge dynamic: from the single core Atom running at 1.6 GHz you can find in netbooks at less than 3W to the quad core Core 2 Extreme QX9775 at 3.2 GHz rated at 150W.

To dissipate a cpu passively with a simple chip-sized radiator it needs a TDP inferior to 10W. In a really compact environment like a phone it needs less than 3W.

If you want to passively without any need of fans to dissipate a typical 2010 desktop computer at around 65W/90W with a midrange graphic card, you need like 25 Kg of steel attached to a radiator on the CPU. Temperatures at full charge are as high as 90°C (194°F) or more on a finger nail-sized surface. Don’t forget that we need to dissipate three literally burning chips in a computer: the CPU, the GPU and the Chipset which is responsible of all the interaction with components.

25 Kg of thick black anodized aluminum does the job. But man! 

Yeah it’s kind of insane.

For the rest of a configuration though, the problem is already solved even for the high end market: sound card? No need of fans. HDDs? Not really. SSDs? Not at all.

Because progress of making cooler chip is always matched by the progress of making them more powerful, we always end up on the last trend because manufacturers (basically five companies: AMD Intel Nvidia Motorola IBM) would say that “the market decides and people want more”. Hopefully they now know. They stopped pushing the thermal envelope and the clock rate to focus on resource management, adding more core for the same energy output after facing some problems of..

Reliability

A really important parameter in being satisfied with a computer or any digital device is to have the less maintenance possible to do on it. With the extreme temperature of today’s chips and the fact that they need fans, these weak points getting clogged and making noises or simply killing machines by dying, reliability is not better but worse than 10 years ago (is the fan 3 not working well or is my watercooling pump dying?). And it requires more management than ever before.

Before the Pentium and the 100 Mhz barrier, computers were not requiring any special care. Since circa 1997, fans are obligatory and IT help desks became Dissipation Garage.

In a fanless world, machines are maintenance free. They are virtually more stable than a rock in a field. They can be covered of dust like your media center under the couch, no problem. All year long, you don’t hear anything and you don’t have to bother at all. You know there is not going to have any problem unless something heavy fall on it or if there’s some water damage. Otherwise you can forget about it and that’s the beauty of the fanless design. You know it. Your TV. Your fridge (almost). Your Hi-Fi. I want that in the computer world. All around me. But there’s more reasons for going this way.

Sustainable development and human rights

First, we need to make these hundreds of millions of machines to be useful as long as possible to avoid stupid waste. Having fanless design all around would make it easy because computers usually come out useless because of the weak fan design. If they could work without any problem and any noise I still would have my old machines, computing for a cause 24/7.

Too much electronic waste. Way too much. Discarded electronics represented 5 to 6 times as much weight as recycled electronics, polluting entire region of the world.

Think about it next time you use your phone or your gamepad.

Second, we all know and don’t want to admit it that all the digital devices and computers are made by hands by 16-18 years old Chinese women working 90 hours a week (more at Kotaku). It’s called slavery and it makes me sick just to think about it. Especially whe
n as you gadget lovers, my eyes sparkle when they see a nice and new piece of hardware.

It has an awful human cost. And I want that to slow down and even stop some day. I want these girls to use what they actually make. I want them to connect and learn as much as I did and do, thanks to the magic world of computers.

So to resume in two lines it’s either:

more power=>more power consumption=>more heat=>more noise=>less reliability=>more waste=>more slavery

or

more efficiency=>less power consumption=>less heat=>less noise=>more reliability=>less waste=>less slavery

After decades of the first, I want the second for a while. Please?

So when I’m said that as a music producer I’m legitimately anal about the noise that machines make, it’s not just that. Really.

U.S. mom’s rejection of 7-year-old outrages Russia. Me too.

Like I said in a direct French-to-english-translation on Twitter, I was adopted at 6 in France and it was already hard. It still is, in some weird ways. So I’m not surprised. I just can’t believe that the US mom did that this way, fucking up the kid some more. She may not be a mother at all and that may be totally a good thing.

I read a take on a similar adoption working out well. Yeah, with people around for years, paying extra attention to a child growing up, it works. It’s just a gigantic energy investment and this mother was obviously not prepared.

Matching Lacoste shirts 10 years before they were hype in the Paris suburbs, sense of unity bla bla.

I said horrible things to my parents too. Like yelling I don’t love you and I want to go home (foster family) or secretly wanting really bad things happening to them. But things like that happen all the time with children, adopted or not. You’re just more eager to really express it when you don’t have any connection with your parents but a legal piece of paper.

And then you grow up. You feel that as adoptive parents they do a lot. Just by looking at how friends parents behaved could tell me that my parents with all the differences we had, were taking care of me and being attentive. Even if I didn’t like it. I was looking at it as a boring process before hitting 18 years old, the age where I could do whatever I want.

But it takes time. Patience. For both children and parents.

So in this respect, I think international adoption should only exists when there’s no more kids ready for adoption in the country. In the US each year there’s around 100 000 children available for adoption. Almost every year, half of them are not adopted. Searching for the poor kid at the opposite of the world always seemed weird for me. Weird in the way “you are just thinking that you are somewhat a god spreading happiness and it’s more about how you feel than actually helping a child” way. It’s even worse in France: 4 000 children adopted each year, 3 000 coming from foreign countries says Wikipedia.

Anyway, I guess the good thing is that adoption is happening less and less even if we’re talking much more about it now (adoption was huge in the 70s but taboo).

So you may ask: would you adopt a child? I wanted to when I was in my 20s. Now I’m 30 and man, I don’t feel I ever could. I don’t feel I could ever have a child actually. Trying to think about it is like googling google at Google HQs, a wormhole appears in my head and makes me feel like antimatter. Or something like that.

There’s not a day without thinking about building a passive house. The number of benefits from having a passive house (PH) is just the key and the answer to a shitload of problems, like global warming. It’s available right now.

The principle is simple: best insulation possible so that you don’t need classic heating system because machines and humans are enough to heat a superinsulated room. Also, trying to get the maximum out of the sun with big and wide exposure to the south.

Get the point?

Numbers? Well Wikipedia says it all:

• This is between 75 and 95% less energy for space heating and cooling than current new buildings that meet today’s US energy efficiency codes. The Passivhaus in the German-language camp of Waldsee, Minnesota uses 85% less energy than a house built to Minnesota building codes.^[25]
• In the United Kingdom, an average new house built to the Passive House standard would use 77% less energy for space heating, compared to the Building Regulations.^[26]
• In Ireland, it is calculated that a typical house built to the Passive House standard instead of the 2002 Building Regulations would consume 85% less energy for space heating and cut space-heating related carbon emissions by 94%.

When you think that the majority of carbon emissions come from housing more than anything else, you understand how much this PH is important to the world.

We just need to be effing efficient and Planet Earth will be fine.

More at ArchDaily. (photos by Paul Ott)

Anyway, the important thing in PH is insulation. Insulation is complex and you must think “wait, it costs a lot and it’s full of chemical stuff so PH being 100% clean, my ass”

You are wrong. Introducing to you the best insulation product ever. It’s 100% natural. It grows anywhere with no need of pesticides or fertilizers. After a natural treatment (mixed with lime), it doesn’t burn, nor can be eat by animals or bugs. Oh, and it’s water-resistant of course. Did I say that it was also an excellent acoustic protection?

It’s call HEMP. Which is illegal in the US of course, it would destroy so many businesses. Also, Monsanto doesn’t have the patent on that shit and never will so they’d rather ban it. US people, time to wake up.

That being said, what are the benefits of the PH in terms of Quality of Life? They are numerous:

• Inside temperature is homogeneous; it is impossible to have single rooms (e.g. the sleeping rooms) at a different temperature from the rest of the house.
• Since there are no radiators, there is more space on the rooms’ walls.
• The air is fresh, and very clean.
• A 100€/year of heating bill, even with bad ass winter is totally achievable.
• You need a third of the time you need to build a classic house. It’s 66% faster to live in the house you are building if you want: a PH for 4 people can be build in 4 months.
• Construction cost used to be around 14% more expensive upfront than conventional buildings but in Germany the cost is already equivalent. And if you’re aiming for a lot of wood instead of cement and choose hemp insulation over the conventional polyurethane and chemical ones, it gets dirt cheap (Paris price is around 7 000€/m² when you can build a PH for less than 2 000/m²).

The bad things:

• It doesn’t work well in a tropical climate.
• The house becomes a system. Therefore you need to tweak it from time to time (having plants so the air doesn’t get too dry, verifying ventilation systems and make them efficient all along the year, etc).
• Because you need to minimize the number of surface exposed to the outside, PH are by design meant to be as square and tight as possible. The more the house is spread out, the harder it gets to regulate heat/cool.

Do. Want.

I didn’t know what to aim for if I was thinking building a home. Now I do.

26°c. ‘Nuff said.

Time to get ready to drive to San Francisco and have a wedding weekend before getting back to LA all the way along the coast, looking at the ocean.

Sounds good to me!

I found something interesting on my SoundCloud statistics with this track:

Replay  by  Harold

Last month it was played more than 200 times when the average on my few tracks is more around 30 plays.

I designed and composed this track for a game, Soul Bubbles. It was at first less sophisticated and the sound was really –on a Nintendo DS- reminding me good tracks on the Sega Genesis. The track didn’t make it in the game but I thought it was a good one so that I should rework it and ship it as a normal track (meaning getting rid of low quality samples and enhance the composition).

I did, pretty fast like in two days. Conclusion? Well iterating and shipping fast is good. If I look at the numbers, it’s the track where I spend the less time that is played the most!

I find that it’s cool because it pushes me to iterate faster, minimizing the edit stage. Keeping the feeling. Not over working it. It’s hard sometimes because you don’t want to mess your work, you want it perfect.

And you know that Perfect is the worst enemy of Getting Things Done, especially in creative tasks.

I love to see something that you can apply anywhere in your life. The Cult of Done is a big one of them.

WORD.

And so that’s why I’m kind of obsessed about “getting better” in the way that of course procrastination and laziness are not going to disappear in a world full of micro-entertainment. Getting better is just a way to stay afloat on the done part more than anything else..

Also I find it funny because the Manifesto seems obvious and yet we all struggle with it in some way, whatever the lifestyle we have, whatever the values we believe in. I love to see we share that, it should make us more able to work together, making things easier.

Because man, I’m lazy.

There’s a lot of discussion about privacy these days: Facebook/Google takes on that subject, Foursquare geo-loc, Buzz, PleaseRobMe…

I believe it’s better to control your own digital life and share or not share what you want than trying not to be on the internet and end up on it anyway, thanks to a friend’s picture of you on FB or worse. I prefer to post a picture of my ass and let’s say that someone wants to put one to embarass me, well it’s going to be hard. I’m in control.

There is no such thing as too much transparency I guess. The world is going toward open, not close. If we open things, transparency has to be here. It’s embedded in the openness.

That’s where the two data giants of the internet are not fair and somehow scaring people: they know an awful lot about us (just think about it every time you use this search box, brr) but we don’t about them. Well if we want to know more about Google’s CEO private life, we can but I heard his house is not on Google Earth. Oh, and his lawyers put his mistress’ blog down last week-end.

When Microsoft is providing Hotmail to 270 million users, it’s not as big as a problem. MS business is selling software, operating systems and development tools. Google and Facebook business is to know you better to sell more ads to sell you more stuff. I know, we can’t really say to them to stop it. Actually they know that selling ads is a really poor income model in the digital age: Google is heading to become a network provider while starting selling electricity and Facebook is all about being a ubiquitous dev platform (for games of course).

We shouldn’t forget about what’s great about being connected: you meet people, crazy interesting people. You filter so much faster than in real life. Like was saying someone, for stuff posted on Facebook that got some people fired, how many of them have found work, friends, relationship with social networks? The balance is in favor of the positive I guess.

True.

Also it’s worth to point out that we benefit this amazing and exhaustive source of knowledge everyday. When we find on an obscure personal web page some really interesting information, or the exact answer we were searching for, we’re generally not really concerned about privacy in these moments.

Of course it’s a bit scary. But you don’t have to be active on the internet to have serious problems with people. Remember the cartoons making fun of Islam published in a local newspaper in Denmark in 2005? Well after years of death treats, assassination plots, one of the author faced someone wanting to kill him January 1st, 2010 with an axe and a knife in his own house. I’m pretty sure the cartoonist is not on Facebook doing RSVPs. He was under police protection since two years though. And he’s only a cartoonist using Freedom of Speech, you know. In a national newspaper, not on a blog.

The world is wild, online or offline doesn’t matter: privacy is pretty much dead since internet, GPS and mobile phones exist (you can know where the cartoonist lives just in a few seconds on Wikipedia). What you do, think does matter. And I’d rather know what you do, think than knowing nothing about your intentions. Online or offline.

That’s the cool part about staying closed: you don’t have to argue with anybody. It’s easier and as humanity, that’s what we did for now. It brought us WWI and WWII amongst other awful things like slavery. It’s harder to actively spread the positive mental attitude and keep an eye on everyone at the same time. The benefit of real freedom should overcome fear and laziness.

This is where the world collides. I know which way to go to avoid disasters in the future. Openness. Right now.

That being said, if someone wants to provide an email service as good as Google (keyword: spam filter) or a rss service providing privacy and sync with as many clients as I want, please go ahead. I would probably sign up immediately and even pay for it. (ala Flickr, no monthly fees kthxbye)

It’s not because I have nothing to hide that I want everybody to know it all almost by default.

Well I just deployed an e-learning solution, setting up the server, database, lms, creating and transferring content for the platform, creating accounts and being ready for clients.

I released a short video too:

I’m finishing another beat and audio fxs for a client and some classic music for composing training. I’m working on a funny flash game audio design and a prototype of my own for multitouch devices (which audio-wise is working perfectly, I can’t wait to put some input in it!).

I said I would update more my blog this year, I guess I was lying. Well it’s more like I’m under heavy stress and pressure right now but later you’ll have some palm trees pictures in your face and then you will hate me.

ffffffuuuuu 

I missed the Global Game Jam and still feel mad about it. I wrote a rant about the why, how France bla bla and all but who cares.

Things are moving.

 
Via The Daily What via Fark of course

On the keyboard

It’s the first thing I thought about: the angle for your wrist reading your iPad on your thighs is the worst ever to type something. The only way to type easily on a flat surface is to have it laying.. Flat on a desk. In this situation, having the screen on a flat position is awful for reading. I don’t see a lot of that comment on the web (actually beside Lâm I didn’t see this comment often).

On the multitasking, relation with the processor

Yeah I don’t think it’s a big deal either. I prefer being able to multitask for sure but in a casual setting, when I’m not working I don’t use three or four applications, I usually use only one: media player, game, etc. I don’t close everything because I can on a laptop but in all fairness, I’m monotasking in these cases.

What I find crazy is reading an article on Engadget saying

“There’s no multitasking at all. It’s a real disappointment. All this power and very little you can do with it at once.”

If it’s blazing fast with just one application, be sure that it’s not the same experience on multitask. It’s linked that it’s fast and not flexible. Android does more vs the iphone therefore is not providing the exact same seemingless UI flowing because with widgets and 7 screens refreshing together while downloading an app and tweeting yeah, it’s not perfect on the old smartphones based on it (though the 2.1 update makes it much better).

I mean a tech blog this size not understanding how Apple thinks, how they always put the user experience joy bells and whistles first, doing the teenager geek who wants everything is not what I expect from a professional article on a new device hands-on.

If you want to multitask, buy another tablet computer. It exists since 2001.

Same

On the noiseless experience

People focus on the mobility of this “new” device but I like to point out that it’s also about the noise: smartphones, tablets are totally noiseless computer. If they were doing a little spinning annoying noise while on use, I’m pretty sure everybody would rather be on a desk with a big screen to read emails. With noise too but at least your sight thanks you.

It’s awesome to be in the silence of a bedroom and reading without being disturbed by the “computer noise”. It’s not just about the portability (because of course, you lose a lot going from 24/17/15” to 4,5 or 9,7” for reading). It’s also about ears freedom.

On games

The iPad seems to be a perfect game machine we were I think, a lot dreaming about. And yet Apple doesn’t care more than just bringing a fucking car race and a fps on stage. They have the same pattern all the time: do a device focused on experience delivery, contact publishers. Of course they go for EA and Gameloft, making so much money on iPhone.

But the iPhone is pretty popular in the game industry and in the geek/tech culture not because it’s cool to develop for (it’s not), but because the device is awesome and made super weird and unique games some major hits. The day these indie devs quit for another platform providing more support and more openness, the Apple touch device serie is going to be much less trendy.

I still can’t believe how Apple reacts about games. Steve must have a problem with them. Computer games made Microsoft in the 90s (DirectX). Computer games made Apple since 2007 (iPhone). Computer games made Commodore in the 80s (Amiga). Computers get popular in the mass market with games since always. They don’t with iWorks or Excel.

Pushing about how it’s cool to read books on a multitouch device in 2010 is more than meh. It’s kind of dumb.

On Apple politics

No camera, closed system.. I have no problem with people getting crazy and wanting to buy it like they want to pee so bad even if they know the 2G is going to have a camera. It’s business. But I’d rather have Apple be sure that I would not buy a 1G without camera because I know that every fucking netbook has one since day one. I’d rather have Apple be sure that I have some brain you know. The same with accessories sold at insane prices.

For Flash, I don’t care as a user. I hate Flash as a user. On the other as a developer I know how Adobe’s product is pretty neat, allowing fast prototyping and stuff like that. And I know that HTML5 is totally not ready yet, so the web without proprietary plug-ins is still a dream.

Some people think that it’s sad that the iPad is a closed platform (I guess they beefed up the protection against jailbreaking?) and that if they were starting their career today, they may not because they could not code and hack their computer like they want.

Well, I guess a teenager today who wants to code would buy two netbooks for the price of the iPad, install Linux/7/OS X and would play with them and learn to code. I’m not worried about how future generations are going to produce software because the world is full of computers.

It’s amazing how in a week like this you almost end up thinking that no, there’s only one computer company in the world.

And they are launching a product with which “you can browse the web with it”.

Saying that without laughing out loud in 2010, only Steve Jobs can.

I was wondering why there’s not a lot of people living in-between countries but now I have my painful answer.

It freezes your brain like a cold axe slaughtering your head.

It fucks my mind so hard. It was the worst week of the year they said. Well I concur.

It’s not really about the shitty weather or Christmas aftershock or more importantly because I miss her so hard. It’s about being stuck between two cultures that are really close and yet fundamentally different.

This in-between is the weirdest psychological thing I have ever experienced. It’s like living in two separate timeline where I have this one where I’m living in the US and this one I live for now here in France. This one I know so bad. This one that makes me think about last year when I started my company and really felt at war and hitting a dead end with France in general.

I was already moving away since a while. 7 years without TV, so less and less french discussion about what’s happening here. Ten years I’m reading most of the time in english, watching shows in english and now it’s been a year I’m writing in english. All my computers, OSes, apps are all in the language of Shakespeare.

So it’s really, really awkward to live in France interacting with my inside world –social medias, music, movies- all in english  and communicate with the outside world in french. Now that I lived in the US it’s even worse. I feel like totally spaced out, stranger in both countries.

And because I’m connected with my Verdell everyday with a 8 hours delay, having a clock widget set on Pacific Time to look at, I’m totally out of time too. In the evening I always have a rush of energy knowing that LA is waking up and getting ready. It makes me want to do things when it’s dinner time and that well, Paris is getting sleepy. And then I feel it too.

Depression. I call that a rollercoaster-you-can’t-get-out-from. It’s funnier this way.

I can’t wait for it to stop though.

Hee

Because it actually started on Twitter, for real. I remember, it was one of those Browse Evening, the kind I have everyday. I clicked on her picture. I guess the green attracted me. I like the green.

It could have not happen. Hell I could have not been tweeting (0,98% of  Twitter users are french in 2010, I started at SXSW 2007) at all and miss that!

And Better Off Dead. C’mon!!! That is crazy.

So if you want the rest which is pretty awesome, stay tuned on har0ld and missRFTC. Or follow the hastag #itstartedontwitter.

You heard about it here first. Or on Twitter.