Back to normal??

After 19 days of consecutive World Cup matches, life goes back to normal (at least till the quarter-finals starts again =p). From the Straits Times, I saw a report stating that places showing World Cup matches live were empty as compared to the full house of the past 19 nights. To be frank, life without any matches is quite a bore. What is there to do in the middle of the night! Perhaps its time for a good rest but heck I have been going to bed at 5+ in the morning everyday and now you want me to tuck in at 10pm?? I would say its more or less impossible, at least for now. In fact I played Winning Eleven the whole night lolx.

Ok enough of this, please BRING BACK the world cup ;)

Les Bleus marches on

I only watched the first-half of this match so i'm not in much of a position to comment. The much criticised french team put up a superb display to beat Spain 3-1 and set up a mouth-watering quarter-finals clash with Brazil. Spain took the lead when David Villa converted from the spot. French replied with a neatly worked team goal scored by Ribery. From reports that I have read, the match was apparently heading for extra-time when Viera heads France into the lead before midfield maestro Zidane puts the icing on the cake.

Easy does it for Brazil!!

Brazil literally strolled into the quarter finals of the World Cup. Their attacking force was very potent during the match. From Kaka , Ronaldinho, Adriano Ronaldo, it oozes quality. Brazil took the lead with Ronaldo scoring and the game is barely 5 mins old! Ghana did fight back much to their credit, but were often let down by inaccurate crosses and terrible shooting. Brazil killed the game with Adriano scoring during first half injury time. The goal stood although Adriano was obviously off-side.

Luck was obviously not on their side when Ghana was reduced to 10 man. Gyan was the culprit as he received a second yellow card for diving inside the penalty box. IMO, the referee should use more common sense.He wasn't even appealing for a spot kick. Nevertheless, Brazil scored a third goal to effectively end the game. Punters would be celebrating with Brazil clearing the handicap and TG over =)

Portugal, Italy, Ukraine makes my Day!

Round of 16 of the World Cup is getting interesting.

Just look at the Portugal match. The referee gave cards with free flow. The yellow and red cards coming out with amazing ease. Some of them were really ridiculous. Give an example, the second yellow card for Deco was really avoidable. Come on he just hold on to the ball for a few more seconds and the referee gave him a 2nd yellow card. Sometimes these referee should use more common sense and not affected by the occasion.

For Italy, what can I say. Lady luck was obviously smiling at them. They controlled the match in the first half and was on the verge of scoring several times. Everything went wrong when Materrazi was sent off. To be fair, his tackle did not warrant a red card, yellow card at most. Again the referee is in the spotlight. Now to the penalty, it was pure luck. I dun think the Australian defender could have done much to get out of Grosso's way when he dribbled past. However, credit must be given to Totti for slotting in the penalty so calmly.

The match between Switzerland and Ukraine is a boring one with a few glimsp of scoring opportunities here and there. During the 90 min Switzerland played well while Ukraine was very conservative. Shevchenko obviously thinks he is king on the field, asking for every ball to be passed to him and holding on to possession himself. Someone please remind him that football is a team game. On to the penalty, obviously the Swiss has not been training on their spot kicks. Frankly, put any keeper in goal and all their penalties can be easily saved.

Worlds Cup 2006

Just a little deviation from my computer. Its the Worlds Cup again!! Yesterday was the first 2 matches of the round of 16 and boy was there ups and downs. For casual punters like myself, it adds a little excitement into the matches with a bit money on the teams.

First up, the host Germany vs Sweden. The germans basically settled the game in 12 mins with 2 goals. WooHoo, money into the pocket=)

Next up, 3am, hot favourites Argentina vs Mexico. The mexicans scored first from Barcelona man Marquez (issit spelt this way lolx). Argentina hit back with Crespo scoring (I seriously doubt it is his goal cos the mexican defender definitely got his head on the ball). After that it stays like this till extra time when Maxi Rodriguez scored the winner.

To sum it up, Germany is terific while Argentina is terrible. Where is the Argentina side that thrashed Serbia 6-0. And yes, it caused me to lose my bet =(

Advise to all: Bet legally and bet within your means. DO NOT bet what you cannot afford to lose.

The Internal Organs (con't)

Snazzi TvPVR

I bought this PVR during one of the many quarterly IT show. It cost me s$89. Actually, I wasn't looking for any TV cards prior to the IT show. Only when I was there, then I remembered that I have an empty tv slot in my room waiting to be used. So, why not =)
To be frank, the quality is not that fantastic but for casual users like me, its more than enough.







2x80GB Western Digital Hard-Disk

I installed 2 80GB HDD in my CPU. Initially, I had only one hard disk, but as time went by, I realised that I needed more space, so I went shopping for another HDD. I was looking for a 160GB HDD. However, after combing SLS (Sim Lim Square), I could not find a suitable one. The ones I was looking for were out of stock at practically all the shops. Hence, I could only settle for a 80GB one.

Up till now, I am still very satisfied by the performance and stability of both ny WD HDDs. Of course, regular maintenance is very important to prevent bad sectors and keep it in tip-top condition.


TDK DVD Writer

Currently installed in my CPU is a 16x DVD writer from TDK> TDK has since withdrew from the optical drive market. This TDK drive is actually an OEM from Lite-on. The performance is perhaps average. It burnt a few 'coasters' before but other than that, with an updated firmware, it is still running very well

The Internal Organs:

2x512mb Kingston PC3200 DDR400 RAMs

I bought 2 sticks of 512mb RAMs so that I can run it on dual channel. Currrently the RAMs are running at 200Mhz @ 3-3-3-8. The RAMs are CL3 with Hynix chips. Hynix chips are known for their overclocking abilitites, however, I have not ried overclocking my RAMs yet.









ATI Radeon 9800Pro Graphics Card (MSI)

This graphic card was bought when the Radeon 9xxx series was coming to the end of its production. Previously, I was using the Radeon 9600 card by G-cube. However, when the games starts to be more graphic intensive, I realised that I need to upgrade my graphics card.


Back to the card, it actually uses the 9800xt chip as the 9800Pro chip is no longer in production. Hence, the 9800xt chip is downclocked and branded as 9800Pro. For overclockers, this mean that it would be very easy to push the clock speed up, perhaps with a change of heatsink. My card runs at 378Mhz/338x2Mhz. It has 128mb of onboard DDR RAMs and its 256 bits.


Creative Soundblaster Audigy Platinium eX

This soundcard is actually a refurbished one that I bought from the Creative Warehouse Sales. I must admit that the sound quality of the card is indeed very good for its price range. The only complain I have is that Creative should really spend more resources in doing up their software and update the driver frequently.

The Brain: Intel 2.8C


The brain in my current cpu is powered by Intel's 2.8C processor. This processor uses a Northwood core for socket 478 mainboard. It has an L2 cache of 512kb. The processor speed is 2.8Mhz (FSB 200 multiply by 14). I have kept the processor at the stock speed even though Northwood chips are thought to be very overclockable.



The Body: Asus P4P800SE

The body refers to the mainboard. I chose the Asus P4P800 SE because of its speed and reliability. Personally I feel that the P4P800 SE is one of the most stable board for Socket 478 on the Intel's 865PE chipset. Furthermore, it uses the ICH5R southbridge chipset, which is one of the latest one during that time. The ICH5R chip supports SATA (Serial ATA) and integrated RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). The P4P800 SE also supports Dual Channel DDR400 RAMs and has an interesting Wi-Fi slot which I do not have any use for it until today =p

My Rig

OK....let's start off this blog with a description of of my beloved RIG!!

I started to learn about building a cpu from scratch towards the end of my 2003. At that time I was preparing for my 'A' Levels when i stumbled upon www.hardwarezone.com. From then on, as people likes to put it, the rest is history =)