James Rohal

Some sites like Myspace allow for the use of vanity URLs. For example, my page is located at http://www.myspace.com/jamesrohal. Although not all sites allow for the use of vanity URLs (like Facebook), you can make up your own using 301 redirects in the .htaccess file. For example, I can now link to my Myspace profile using the vanity URL: http://www.jamesrohal.com/myspace. Typically 301 redirects are more efficient than meta, CNAME, and Javascript redirects because the server checks the .htaccess file first before fetching any pages.

To create a vanity URL http://www.yoursite.com/vanityurl that links to http://www.somesite.com add the following to your .htaccess file.

Redirect 301 /vanityurl http://www.somesite.com

For example, I have the following in my .htaccess file.

Redirect 301 /facebook http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Rohal/43202602
Redirect 301 /myspace http://www.myspace.com/jamesrohal
Redirect 301 /diigo http://www.diigo.com/user/jjrohal
Redirect 301 /googlereader http://www.google.com/reader/shared/14670748227574963949
Redirect 301 /citeulike http://www.citeulike.org/user/jjrohal
Redirect 301 /lastfm http://www.last.fm/user/jjrohal
Redirect 301 /flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjrohal
Redirect 301 /linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/jjrohal
Redirect 301 /thesixtyone http://www.thesixtyone.com/jjrohal/
Redirect 301 /youtube http://www.youtube.com/jjrohal
Redirect 301 /twitter http://twitter.com/jamesrohal

After months of research I have given up on a $2500 computer. The value is not worth it. Here is an updated list of parts with some research that I have done.

ASUS P6T Deluxe V2: Ideal for overclocking. Does not support true 3-way SLI. Placement of the PCI Express slots allows for optimal airflow in a SLI setup. The V2 refers to the missing SAS controller (thus making it cheaper). An SLI setup with two dualslot graphics cards would leave a PCI and PCI Express x4 slot open. Supposedly this board works well for a Hackintosh system as well.

Intel Core i7 920: Can easily be overclocked to 3.6-3.8GHz stable with a nice heatsink fan.

OCZ Platinum 6GB (3 x 2GB) 1600: Good timings for the price with decent overclocks. A better choice would be Mushkin 6GB (3 x 2GB) 1600

Coolermaster HAF 932: Great airflow and cable management. Tons of room for expansion. No air filters included but they can be made cheaply using vent filters from Home Depot (True Blue) or even a cheap pair of stockings.

EVGA GTX 285 SC: Not really the best value, but this is the top performing single GPU graphics card. The SC cards are better suited for overclocking and can easily be overclocked to SSC speeds. EVGA also has a lifetime warranty on overclock products!

Cosair 850TX: Allows the possibility for a GTX 285 SLI in the future. Pretty solid with >80% efficiency.

Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB: One of the fastest drives out there (besides SSD). The larger platter size makes this a great drive for the OS.

Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB: Extremely fast, silent drive used for storage. I read somewhere that this slightly outperforms the Caviar Black in reading and writing large files.

LG 22X DVD±R DL DVD Burner: Great reviews on Newegg. Works flawlessly in Vista x64 and Windows 7.

HT Omega Striker 7.1: Highly rated, works well in Vista x64 and Windows 7 and has no bloatware. High quality audio and digital out via S/PDIF.

Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme or Prolimatech Megahalems: The TRUE is one of the best heatsinks for the past 2 years. This is best paired with a high static pressure fan. Due to the machining marks on the base, it is useful to lap this. I am going to purchase the Delta AFB1212HHE 120x38mm fan if I get the TRUE. The Megahalems are made by those who originally made the TRUE but with an improved design and with an excellent mounting plate. I would pair a Yate Loon D12SH-12 with this.

Tuniq TX-2: This thermal compound (TIM) has no curing time and spreads nicely since it isn’t too runny. Supposedly one of the best. A good pairing is with the thermal compound remover.

BenQ 24″ G2400WD: One of the best gaming monitors with a 1920×1200, 1:1 pixel mapping, and a 2ms response time. Some other good choices are the Samsung T240 or T240HD (with TV tuner), or ASUS VH242H.

Logitech X-540: Good entry level 5.1 speakers. The next step up is the Logitech Z-5500 which have been known to go on sale as refurbished items.

A gripe that I have with Blackboard is its lack of RSS feeds. Minimally I would like to subscribe to my Announcements, but that appears to be impossible. The only type of feed I could even find in BB is in the podcast section.

BlB also makes it difficult to include RSS feeds into course modules. I am not sure whether the RSS module with descriptions is the solution to my problem or would even work on Miami’s BB server. The only reason I would want to implement something like that is so I could aggregate the course’s announcements and posts from the course’s brand spankin’ new blog. Currently I use Google’s AJAX Feed API to grab the WordPress feed and put it in a permanent announcement.

I was going through some old documents and ran across this little gem. I’m not sure when I wrote it but I was definitely young.

When I was little, I always thought that dust bunnies were little bunnies made out of dust and they were gray. Everyone use to laugh at me because only I could see the bunnies that hopped under my bed and they couldn’t. I would look under the bed and say, “Hey bunnies, how are you doing?” Even I thought that my mom and dad thought that I was a little cuckoo, but I wish that they would use their imagination and think what I thought.

Once my friend played a trick on me and hid under my bed. When I asked how they were doing, they answered back, but it was really my friend. When he came out, I was surprised and mad that he didn’t imagine.

When I am really bored, I crawl under the bed and talk and play games with the dust bunnies. The dust bunnies and I played a story telling game, and we raced from one end of the bed to the other. I met the mother of all the bunnies and I asked how she could manage all of them, and what they ate.

Sometimes the dust bunnies crawl into my bed and make me sneeze, they follow me to school and back home. Wherever I go, they go. When I go on vacation, the bunnies can’t follow me, but when I arrive at my destination, I meet new dust bunnies and make new friends. Whenever the dust bunnies are sleeping or away, I make up new ones, and they don’t make me sneeze! My new friends are different from the other dust bunnies because they have an imagination of their own. They help me imagine new places, like flying in space or turning a snowy day into a journey across the North Pole. The dust bunnies are from MY imagination and I can control, but it is really fun hen they follow me outside into the snow. I bury them all with snow, but they come back and knock me into the snow.

I can make up other friends but the dust bunnies are my best friends. They help me through the dull days and without an imagination they would never exist. If everyone would use their imagination all the time, everyone would understand what everyone is thinking.

PSU: Cosair CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V

More than enough power to drive an SLI rig.

Case: Cooler Master HAF 932

Provides great airflow. Full tower will fit anything I need. Push button drive bays make for a painless setup. Supposedly the EVGA motherboard sits quite nicely in here.

Motherboard and Graphics Cards: EVGA X58 ATX and two (2x) EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 (Overclocked)

Sweet deal over at Newegg. I decided to go with nVidia because I wanted CUDA support.

Processor: Intel Core i7 920

Allows for amazing overclocking using the EVGA board.

Soundcard: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional

RAM: Cosair Dominator 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Triple Channel

If you are going with a Core i7 processor, be sure to go with triple channel ram.

Hard Drives: One Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB for my operating system and one Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB for my data.

Cooling: Thermaltake V1 Max-Performance CPU Cooler and Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound

Monitor: 24″ BenQ G2400WD

If you only plan to run a 1920×1200 resolution, then this is a sweet monitor. Recommended by AnandTech.

DVD Drive: Samsung 22X DVD+/-RW SATA Burner

Miscellaneous: Four (4x) SATA cables and Cable Ties

Buying multiple SATA cables saves you money. The cable ties allow for cable management even though the HAF 932 helps you out

I did not purchase speakers, a mouse, or keyboard. With mail-in rebates ($40) the total comes to (with shipping): $2509.21.

Update: I created a post over at Tom’s Hardware where I updated the specs.