The personal blog of a regular guy

One thing that I lugged back from home on my journey back to school was a set of new speakers. The model is Corsair’s Gaming Audio Series SP2500 2.1 speakers. From what I’ve read online, these are very nice as far as 2.1 computer speaker sets go, and with a price tag of around $200, they’d better be. Luckily for me, I didn’t pay for the speakers; I won these speakers from a contest, which is of course awesome. My parents had no use for it, so I decided to lug it all the way from Vancouver to my rented apartment… to connect them to the TV and use them as “home theater” speakers instead. I have a laptop and I don’t really play games these days, so the speakers are only probably going to be used for watching movies, and I like to watch movies with the larger screen of the TV. This is not the SP2500′s intended purpose, but you make do with what you have.

Anyways, this is a post just to show some photos of my new speakers and write some initial thoughts. I don’t think I’m qualified to write a actual review for these speakers or any sort of audio equipment. As always, please excuse my crummy photos. I only have a not very new cellphone as my camera.

The SP2500 came in quite a large box.

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First post of 2011! I hope all of you had a happy new year. For this year’s first post, here is another article documenting my attempt to repair electronics, and this time it’s for the video card of the six year old Athlon XP PC that I built myself. Similar to my last repair article about LCD monitors, the video card was also afflicted by the capacitor plague, and thus I had to get out my soldering iron once again and replace some capacitors. I’m no expert at repairing electronics, so this just goes to show what you can do with a little bit of research, some inexpensive equipment, and the courage to try.

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Since I left home to study abroad, I no longer had access to my old Athlon XP desktop and had to buy a new computer. I decided I would get a laptop since it just more sense to have something smaller and portable. In the end, I shelled out for a ThinkPad, which are all-business, rock solid machines with good build quality, and this post is just for showing some photos and thoughts on my new computer.

The T410 opened and ready to work.

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Yesterday I fixed an old broken LCD monitor and I thought I’d share the experience. Specifically, I replaced a bad capacitor on the LCD’s inverter board to fix the problem of the back light not lighting up. Repairing a LCD… sounds impressive right? Yeah, I’m proud of myself right now , but it’s actually a really easy job if you have a soldering iron. I have really shaky hands and if I can do this, then so can most of you. This article is part guide and part personal experience. You’ll have to excuse my blurry photos though. Read on if you are interesting or if your monitor is afflicted with a similar problem.

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I haven’t made a computer hardware post for a while, mostly because I didn’t buy anything significant until this month. As the title indicates, I bought a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 500GB portable hard drive. As with all of my hardware posts, this is not a review. It’s just a chance for me to show off my new gadget and write some thoughts on it. Read on if you are interested.

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Last Christmas I decided to give a little gift to myself, and so I went out and bought a Wacom Bamboo Fun graphics tablet. I’ve been eying a graphics tablet for a while, but I waited until the Boxing Day Sale to pull the trigger. Here is my experience thus far with the product, and a teaser of what I might be capable of producing with my new tablet.

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It’s been almost four years since my family has gotten a new computer. Usually I’m the one who gets the fastest computer in the house, but this time around the new computer is for my dad. The old computer that he was using was getting unbearably slow even for web surfing and word processing, so it was finally time to get him a new computer. After considering all the factors, we decided to get a 17 inch laptop, the Compaq A900 series (model A939CA). This article is not a really a review of the laptop, but just a short document about setting it up and my first impressions of the laptop (and also Windows Vista), plus a couple of pictures of the machine for people to see.

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Here’s another one of my computer upgrade articles. At the time of writing my computer is almost two years old, which means it’s pretty pointless trying to upgrade a major component. However, a situation arose where I need to read files off some Flash memory cards that my digital camera didn’t support, so I waited until a sale came up and picked up a card reader to do the job. This article basically documents how I installed the card reader and it’s also sort of a photo op for the installation and a mini-review for the card reader I chose, the Sony MRW620. Installing an internal card reader is pretty simple, and there are enough photos in this article if you want to learn how to install one of these devices.

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Ever since I built my own computer a while ago, I’ve had my fair share of computer troubles. I’ve had encounters with bad memory (both mine and the computer’s), stuck DVD drives, and also various software problems. And now after 1.5 years of operation, my computer’s power supply decided to quit on me, so I was forced to buy a replacement power supply and install it in order to get my computer working again. Here’s the documentation of this experience, from choosing which power supply to buy to actually installing the power supply.

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It’s been ages since I’ve written a real article for my personal site, and finally I managed to come up with something. This is a computer related article that chronicles my experience trying to find the right monitor. You’ll also be treated to a short review of the winning choice, the AG Neovo F419 19 inch LCD. This is not one of those professional reviews done at hardware review sites but rather just a personal judgment on the LCD panel. Unfortunately, you’ll also have to tolerate my poor photo-taking skills for the pictures in this article.

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