Quieting Down Your XBox 360

Everyone who owns a 360 will no doubt know how much noise the thing makes when the fans start turning at full RPM and the DVD just spins and spins and spins around. In some cases it can get so bad that you will hear the 360 over the game you’re playing which is obviously not the idea.

I had this problem myself. Especialy because my console is inside a cabinet it got hot very fast so I would hear the fans goig in less then 10 minutes of gaming. Wanting to silence the damn thing I decided to look for solutions on the internet and quickly found a guide to hacking your 360’s fan. Hacking might not be the right term though, it’s more like replacing.

Anyway after ordering the fan online I got to work on my Xbox using the above guide as reference. I didn’t have the unlock tool they had handy here so I had to use a screwdriver to pry things open here and there. It wasn’t as easy as the guide made it out to be (though the unlock tool might have made things a lot easier, I dunno). To open up certain areas of the Xbox I had to use some force which resulted in some minor damage to the back of the case. It’s not really a problem since you don’t see it anyway, but it’s still anoying that you have to damage your console just to open it up.

But once it was open replacing the fan was easy. Take the old one out, put the new shiny one in and put the entire box back together. To my own surprise the thing actualy still worked when I turned it on again. The quality of the fan was a bit disappointing, as I had hoped it would be even quieter then it is. But it’s absolutely an improvement over the noisy fan that comes standard with the Xbox 360.

You can order the fan, toolkit and unlock kit at this store. And while you’re there also have a quick look at all the fancy cases and mods they have there. I’m considering replacing the case sometime. White is about the worst color for any console.

Robin

Australia. Holy Shit Australia!

So it was Christmas right? Of course it was, we were all there for it, there’s no getting around it. I, personaly, hate Christmas in every form because of the hypocricy. If we need two designated days a year to be friendly to each other then I’d say we hit the very lowest of low. Entire wars are put on HOLD because it’s Christmas!

“Yea don’t mind those Iraqies, it’s Christmas afterall and we can’t bomb them untill it’s over. Christmas is a time in which we need to love each other, afterall,”

It’s a stupid tradition in my eyes which comes with the biggest non-sense ever created. We pretend to love each other, give each other expensive presents, invite each other to Christmas dinners where we eat food so classy we don’t dare touch it. And most of us don’t even like the Christmas dinner but we keep eating and smile nicely to the hostess while in reality, we keep thinking back to that frozen pizza in the back of the freezer. At the end of the night half of the food gets thrown out and ends up on the landfill and at the end of the month December we will have spent millions of dollars extra around the world on presents and food.

Yeah you go Christmas spirit. Be nice to each other, think about others, help each other out! I wonder if they have Christmas trees in Africa.

Anyway, I’m getting a little caried away. I meant to write a simple intro about Christmas and here I go ranting about how it sucks. Oh well. Like I said, I’m not really a Christmassy type, but my girlfriend loves it and so I’m forced to participate. We had it all, lights in the yard, fancy food (frozen, but fancy (and unedible) non the less) and a sort of Christmas tree (we just moved, afterall). So not to be outdone I decided to take the girlfriend out to see a movie on the second day of Christmas. I kept her in the dark about which movie exactly, so I hoped I made a good choice when I reserved the tickets for Australia. I had read a good word about the movie here and there on the internet and since there weren’t a whole lot of other movies that seemed worth my money I decided on that one.

Reserving the tickets was a good idea by the way, because the theater was packed right up to the very last chair and I was sitting somewhere near the front row, which doesn’t make for nice viewing might I add. But despite all that I did have a great time. It’s an absolutely great movie which mixes a bit of everything. If you’re ever in a dispute about wanting to see an action movie or a romantic movie with your girl or boyfriend, then Australia isn’t a bad choice to go with.

I won’t go into the detail of the storyline, since this movie deserves to be seen without any knowledge of what it’s about. That way, you’ll be blown away a couple of times by the constant surprises and adventures. I was kind of sceptical about the movie I had chosen, since I chose it primarily for my girlfriend. But I came out with a smile and a tear on my cheek so for me it was a great experience. One which I can absolutely recommend.

Robin

Setting Up a Computer Office

Since it’s vacation time I’ll be doing a little less posting about school and a little more posting about personal stuff. It so happens that I just moved house and thus have plenty of excisting things to talk about such as the adventure that is setting up my computer office.

The painting is done (by someone else, might I add…) and I got around to putting some stuff in place today. This post, in fact, is the first one in about three weeks which is written on my very own computer. Not some school piece of crap, not some tiny laptop, but my very own powerhorse of a computer that weighs in with at least 15 kilo’s (you should have seen the look on the mover’s faces. They thought it would be ‘just another computer’).

After most of the hardware was in place I wanted to start pulling internet wires through pipes in the walls meant for such occasions. My modem is in the electrics closet (I have NO idea what that’s called in English, so electrics closet will have to do, and it’s got a nice ring to it) and following logic I decided to put my router there as well and use as little wired connections as possible. I did, afterall, buy a new fancy router especially for it’s awsome wireless capabilities (and it works very much as expected, D-Link Xtreme Gaming Router, recommended by yours truly). Anyway, since wireless connections do eat some of your download limit I prefer to have my Mainframe computer (yes, it’s actually called Mainframe) wired to the router.

Everything seemed so easy when I started. This modern house actualy has pipes running from the electrics box to pretty much every room in the house so you can pull your own wires through as you see fit. So I had this awsome idea to just pull the internet cable through the wall, to my office and connect my computer there. However things did not work out so well between me and the wirepuller thing. It either got stuck midpipe, broke, twisted or whatever and after 4 hours of torment I still don’t have my internet coming from the wall!

How does he have internet to post this you ask?

I ran the wire underneath the door, down the stairs and straight into the electrics closet into the router. It looks like shit but tommorow I shall try once again.

Wish me luck!

Robin

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