Tonight I was encoding two movies simultaneously, as you do, and my CPU managed to get to 47 degrees celcius. So I tried turning up the chassis fan and opening a window to let cool air in, and then ran another 2-core load test using Kdenlive (well, actually, I encoded the last Doc Martin episode!). The graphics card, being passive cooled, ran cooler with the fan turned up and the window opened. The CPU took longer to get to the high-forties, but it did get there.
Judging by how yesterday was such a warm day, and I also ran into sweltering CPU temperatures, I decided to turn off my CPU’s overclock and put it back to the 3GHz stock speed. It gets pretty hot in this room during summer.
There are still people posting to the Ubuntu forums complaining that their videos look green/purple; all are using Nvidia graphics cards with the proprietary drivers. I don’t believe Nvidia has actually ever fixed this problem, they just seem to push the problem away from a particular card onto someone else’s card.
No wonder Linux users are starting to buy ATI cards. I’m still getting glitches and crashes that I believe are associated with the Nvidia proprietary driver. Also, I’ve noticed that my webcam doesn’t work since upgrading to Hardy. It didn’t work very well before, but now it’s just completely garbled output. I should try it without the Nvidia driver.
My problem with sound in World Of Padman is, apparantly, not easily explained by overclocking. Probably a PulseAudio problem.
I fixed that remaining problem with Blacklight3 and I’m going to package it up as a seperate package to Blacklight3Gui.
I’m sure there was something else to do with the overclock that I wanted to mention, but I can’t think of it now. At idle, at stock frequency, my CPU is running six degrees celcius cooler than it was when overclocked. I’ll have to measure it under load some time and see how things compare.
Tomorrow, I ring suppliers and ask if there are any repping jobs going. The reason I didn’t ring today is because my father and I went to Fremantle as a sort of day trip. We had a look in some shops, had an early lunch, then walked a roundabout-way to the Maritime Museum and looked for our family’s name on the Welcome Wall. We didn’t find it, which makes me think that my Grandad forgot to post the form into the Museum people.
Tomorrow after I’ve rung around for repping work I’ll go to K-Mart and pick up the 5th series of Quantum Leap on DVD; they’ve got it for $25. On my scale of entertainment cost/time, it represents very good value. I’m afraid that Surf The Channel might be closing down tomorrow; they’ve posted a worrying message on the front page about “all good things come to an end”. At least Quantum Leap will keep me occupied at night in between dinner and jazzing.
I’m also going to distribute some leaflets tomorrow about my AV installations. All I need is one person to hire me for $50 (my minimum fee) and I’ve made back the entire investment in dollar terms, as well as paid for the Quantum Leap DVD. Let’s hope I get a few people interested. Often, customers tell me that $50 is cheap for what I do, so I reckon I’m in with a chance. Anything to keep the money flowing in.
Remind me tomorrow to tell you about my father explaining the dumbness of e-book DRM. You certainly won’t hear an explanation like this one on DefectiveByDesign.com 
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