I’ve decided today that I’m not very good at regular blogging, well I am consistent at forgetting I suppose, so here is a quick update. The majority of my projects for my final year of university have now been completed and submitted. The thermal sited project was available online for a short time, but I will soon have to take it off line as the server rental is nearly up and as it is really demanding on the server, it requires its own virtual server. I will make offline versions of the flash simulations available under the project blog.

This term see the completion of my main project, which comprises 1 3rd of my degree. Recent thoughts on the project have led me in a new direction. As development gets underway I will be posting more regarding its progress, but the key concept now is to focus on how the portfolio/ project system can be adjusted to suit the current trends of social networking. I will also be looking at what features current systems off and how I can include the best of these.

Uni work aside I’ve spent quite a bit of time the past couple of weeks making changes to this website, mostly just minor tweeks. I have also been working on some more video content which I hope to post this week.

The last month has been the busiest so far, and March is going to be even worse with 4 deadlines still to come. I hope to have the time to keep posting to this blog but I have a feeling my next entry may not be until April. I will however be keeping the project blogs updated, especially for the 4D project and the 3D game, so remember to check them out.

After a month and a half of trouble I’m pleased to say I finally have a working PC and touch wood have had no more problems since. In the end it was found to be a compatibility issue between the motherboard and the processor even though they were supposed to be compatible! According to Plymstock computers, where I took my pc to be fixed, it seems to be a common problem with the new 45nm processors and Asus board. I now have an XFX motherboard, which is a very similar spec to the ASUS board and only cost a little bit extra.

Works has been going well the past month. The Elec group presentation seemed to go ok and I hopefully will get the mark back for that soon. I spent the last 2 weeks concentrating on my 4D project; you can check it out at http://www.thermalsited.com. Registration is free. I still need to add a lot more content to it but the basic functionality is there now. I have just started work on my 3D and will be posting more about that to the 3D Game blog soon. As the 4D deadline is less than a week away I will be focusing most of my attention on that.

Even with my new processor I am still getting problems with my PC. There is some progress in that I can now access windows and use some applications, but after about 10 minutes of running I get the Blue Screen of Death and the error "Hardware Malfunction". Even stranger, the first time after the computer restarts following the Blue Screen, I get a green screen with the same error.

I have tried all I can think of to fix the problem, including stripping it down to basic components and trying different RAM and graphics cards. As I really am starting to need my PC to carry out my 3D work I have decided to take my computer to a PC shop to get them to have a look at it. I am hoping to know more by the end of the week.

A few weeks ago I mention my processor had been returned to the manufacture for replacement and that the process could take up to 28 days. From past experience I know that returns can be a lengthy process, so naturally I was delighted when I received a call on Friday saying my processor was replaced and would be sent to me by Tuesday. It is 4am Tuesday morning so in a few hours (or more as it can come any when up to 5:30pm) I should have my processor back.

I have been able to test the rest of my system is working thanks to a loan processor from Novatech, which I have since return, so touch wood everything should go smoothly. As I’m busy with a lot of work for a presentation on Wednesday I have decided it best to leave installing the processor until after the presentation. My Mac has been very useful the past few weeks and I will not need to use anything which requires my pc anytime soon.

I’ve been working a lot on my 4D project the past few days and will be updating the blog for that very soon, so be sure to check it out. I’m also going to be working on my Main project, which is currently involving a lot of configuration of Drupal, a system I am using as the framework to the site. I hope to post updates on my Main Project later in the week.

Novatech have tested the processor and the board together and have concluded that the motherboard is not faulty after all, but there is defiantly a problem with the processor. The processor has been sent back to the manufacturer for repair/replacement, but can take up to 28 days. In the meantime Novatech have loaned me a processor so I can check the rest of my pc is working and get on with my University work.

Last term I spent a lot of time working on my 3D project. This year I am going to concentrate on my main project and my 4D to get them back on track. Also this term I will be starting a business module, which is replacing one of my electronics modules from last term. The deadlines start at the end of February and go on right through to the middle of May.

After having a chat with Novatech tech support it was decided that the faulty component was most likely to be either the processor or the power supply. Last time I hand a problem with the motherboard I was convinced that it had also damaged the processor.

I am going to return the processor to have it tested as it is still under warranty. If it turns out that the processor is ok I will have to buy a new power supply, as it is a few years old. I will be sending the processor back at the start of next week so should know soon.

I’m heading back to Uni tomorrow, so am going to be using my Mac book a lot more until my PC is fixed. For the majority of my work this will be fine, but for my 3D I will need my PC as the software only runs on windows.

I have returned my striker board under warranty and am waiting to here from the shop about replacement. In the mean time I have purchased a new motherboard. The main reason is having had so much trouble with the striker board I am concerned about relying on it surviving for my final year. The new board is a P5N-T Deluxe, which is a much higher spec than the previous board.

I set the new board up straight away and am still stuck without a working machine. I have even tried the system with just the minimum components and still nothing, no beep, no bios. I am going to get in contact with tech support from Novatech for suggestions on any other faulty components.

My new RAM has arrived and this has lead to some additional problems. Firstly with all the RAM installed Windows fails to load, not long after the loading bar appears the computer restarts. I tried one RAM stick at a time and everything seems to work fine. Having looked online it was suggested that the voltage for the ram might be too low.

I reinstalled the entire 8 gigs of RAM and started the machine to try and tweak the voltage. Everything appeared to start; however the usual beep was missing. When I checked the onboard LCD display the message ‘CPU INIT’ was displayed. I know this error all too well, last April the same thing happened and I had to return the board for replacement. Timing couldn’t be worse as I am right in the middle of my final year.

Since the board is over a year old it falls under manufacture warranty, which makes the replacement time between 3 and 4 weeks. As this is far too long I am going to have to buy a new board!!!

The New Year is well underway and it’s been a few weeks since my last post, so I think it’s time for a bit of an update. Towards the end of last term I was very busy working on my 3D project that I didn’t really have time to do much else. Over Christmas I decided that I would spend a bit of time doing some work on my website.

The main thing I have added is a comment form on each blog post; this will allow viewers to add feedback on my work. Although on paper the development looked quite simple, in practice it was much more complicated than intended. The main reasons for this were because much of the original blog system had to be rewritten to add in the linking to the comment form. The most time consuming task was writing all the validation for the form fields. This had to be done with both JavaScript (to help make it more user friendly) and PHP (for security and when JavaScript is disabled).

Everything seems to be working correctly and has now been made live. A link is available below each post that allows comments to be viewed and a new ones added.

Whilst working on my 3D last term I seemed to be getting problems with my computer memory, so I have decided to order some new ram, I will be moving from 667mhz to 800mhz and increasing from 4 gigs to the max 8 gigs. Hopefully this will solve the problems I have been having.

I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks how to fix the flash video player issue I encountered when I converted the links on my site. Now my 3D project is out the way and I have some more time on my hands I’ve had a chance to fix it. For a few hours I played around with the file that includes the flash, changing bits of the code, but getting nowhere. Then I suddenly thought that most of the work is done by ‘AC_RunActiveContent.js’ so maybe I need to change something it that. Still no hope! I was just about to give up for the night when it occurred to me that I never changed the links that included the JS file. One quick change and suddenly everything works. I’m glad it’s fixed, but what a lot of time wasted by a silly mistake.

The second problem I wanted to address was to try and store the video files on a remote server, as the server my site is on isn’t very big. One of the first things the code does is check to see if the file exists, unfortunately this only works on a local server. To get round this I am using an ‘if’ to try and open the file, and if it can’t then to display an error. All tested and working in IE and Firefox on Windows, will test on Mac tomorrow.