Daily Archives: June 30, 2011

Building Your Own PC, part 1 – Introduction

Computers, DIY, Hardware, Linux, ,

Building Your Own PC, part 1
Introduction

by Richard White

2011-06-30

After many years of hearing about how much fun it was, I finally jumped into the pool this April and built my own desktop PC. It was, in a word, AWESOME, and I heartily recommend that you do the same.

I have a rep as being something of an Apple fan, never mind the fact that I’ve also got Dell and Lenovo laptops dual booting Windows and Ubuntu. The unfortunate truth, however, is that Apple is so picky about making sure their hardware is built to specification, they don’t allow anyone to do it but themselves. I’m not complaining–the results of this policy speak for themselves. But if you’re going to build your own desktop, it’s going to be a PC running Windows or Linux.

And before we get too far into it, let’s be clear: we’re not talking about soldering integrated circuits or transistors onto a circuit board, and testing your electrical engineering skills with an test oscilloscope, or anything ridiculous like that. What we’re talking about is you taking some time to:

  1. Decide what you want to use your new computer for
  2. Settle on components that you’ll be using to assemble your new coputer (even if you’re not really sure what those components might be at the beginning)
  3. Poking around on the Internet looking for advice and good combinations of components that will make the machine you want
  4. Ordering those components online (most likely from newegg.com and amazon.com)
  5. Patiently waiting for those components to arrive
  6. Finding a few hours when you can settle in and try to assemble everything
  7. See that you’ve made a mistake in one or two items that you ordered, and send the ones you received back in to be replaced with what you really wanted
  8. Get new components, and assemble them into your dream machine
  9. Boot into the BIOS, and fix things that may not be working
  10. Install the operating system of your choice, as well as updates and drivers as necessary
  11. Install additional software as desired
  12. Admire your awesome machine!

As you can tell from some of the steps on the list up there, things don’t always work the way you’d thought they would the first time. While this is almost certainly going to be a source of frustration when it happens, you should also look at it as an opportunity to come to a better understanding of the hardware, and a chance to appreciate just how much work goes into getting these things to work the way they’re supposed to.

I’ll tell you how I began the process of building my own machine next post. In the meantime, you have three homework assignments.

First, start thinking about what kind of machine you’d like to build. Is it going to run Windows, Linux, or both? Is it going to be a lightning fast gaming machine, or medium-fast machine that you’ll use for surfing the internet and reading email, or a slower machine that you’ll use for backups, or serving media to other computers at your house? The uses you envision for your machine will determine the design and components you select.

Second, see if you can’t scrounge up a spare mouse, keyboard, and LCD monitor that you can use. You can use borrowed gear for these items at first, at least until you get your machine up and running. If you want to get fancier custom keyboard, mouse, or monitor, you can certainly buy them when you get the components for your computer, but they’re not strictly necessary. (In my case, I pulled an old keyboard and mouse out of the dumpster, and asked the tech people at my school if they were throwing away the old 15″ LCD monitors I saw sitting out in the rain.)

Third, do a little background reading on the Internet to help you figure out what you might want to include in the design of your new machine. Each article / website here comes highly recommended:

Next time? “What’s in all those boxes??!”

We Do All Of It… Or Sometimes Not.

Uncategorized, Workflow, ,

We Do All Of It… Or Sometimes Not.

by Richard White

2011-06-30

Well, well, well… look who’s posting something on the HybridClassroom.com blog. It’s little old me!

I hope you’ll excuse my absence for these last 3.5 months. It turns out that that whole teaching thing requires a fair amount of time—who knew?!—and spring semester this year was a doozy. I hope to make up for lost time by slamming with you a series of posts that will leave you breathless, entertained, and elucidated.

I like to set my sights high.

We’ll start off with this one, which is actually a two-for-one deal. Here’s the first post-within-a-post:

IT’S WHAT WE DO–ALL OF IT

by Richard White

2011-03-12

On some days–often the more painful professional development days, it seems–I get a little frustrated. Either the subject matter, or the process, or the guest speaker, or sometimes even something my colleagues do will cause me to metaphorically throw up my hands and say, “Why can’t they just le me do my job? I’m here to teach the children!!!”

On some other days–often at the end of a few hours banging my head against the wall with my students in the classroom–I’ll say, “You know, I could get SO much more work done if I didn’t have all these darn kids.”

I suppose it’s a “greener grass” question, but the reality is, it’s ALL part of our job. One of the challenging and exciting things about teaching is the wide variety things that are expected of us: lesson planning, teaching children, communicating with parents, participating in ongoing professional development, representing our school in the community, chaperoning dances, attending school sporting events… You can’t do it all, of course, and no one expects you to (although if you want to give it a try, ask your local administrator to swap places for a day)… but you are reasonably expected to do what you can, and not squawk too much about it in the process.

Rockclimbers have to be able to handle a wide range of different vertical terrain: smooth sloping faces, steeper faces with small holds, finger cracks, hand cracks, fist cracks, off-widths, chimneys. The really good climbers–those able to handle the widest variety of terrain–don’t practice what they’re already good at; they address their weakest areas of expertise, in order to improve in those areas in which they are most deficient. Although this ironically has the effect of making training more annoying, it’s toward the greater end of becoming a more capable climber overall.

In the same way, consider working on those areas of your profession at which you feel slightly deficient. Are you a lousy communicator? Resolve to get better at it, make a plan (any plan), start small, and start communicating today–NOW. Do you tend to get stuck in your own classroom? Get out, walk around, and visit a few other teachers, a few other classrooms. It’s a refreshing change of pace, and may have unforeseen benefits down the road.

And above all else, do you work late at night grading, at the expense of your family and friends? Burnt out and bitter is no way to survive teaching (although I’m amazed at how many people do just that). Stay balanced, and try to keep it all in perspective.

You get the irony, right? Those are my notes on an idea for a blog post from March, which was apparently just about the time that I completely dropped the ball on this blog, as well as a more personal blog that I maintain for my friends and family (although “maintain” might be a little optimistic).

Or perhaps (he said, sidling sideways), the bigger truth is that we can’t do it all, even as we struggle to maintain balance in our lives. The rockclimbing I spoke of above is almost non-existent in my life at this moment (although my training for a half-marathon is going quite nicely, thanks for asking), and my classroom teaching is on hiatus for the summer, but I have some online education projects that I’m working on.

I’m perfectly okay with making decisions like that—making mid-course corrections to one’s priorities—particularly when there are some cool things that happen as a result of that realignment.

And it’s those same “cool things” that I’ll be sharing with you over the next few posts.

Come on back and read all about it!