Author Archives: J.D. H.

Mini-itx AM1 gaming system w/discrete video card and DC PSU!

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Mike sent me some info and photos of his awesome mini-itx system: I crammed the AM1H-ITX along with a 5350, a Kingston HyperX 4gb DDR3-1600 stick, Slimline DVD-Rom, Microcenter house brand120gb SSD, a couple 40mm fans, and an EVGA GTX 750 2GB (non-ti) into a Travla C158 case. I’m powering it with a DC power brick (part number 316688-001 or spare 317188-001) from either a beefy HP laptop or possibly a docking station. The specs are 18.5v, 6.5a, 120 watts.

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Control joints in concrete basement slab

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We are building a house and I have been learning a bit more about concrete lately. You may know the old saying ‘there is only one sure thing with concrete, it WILL crack’. 😉 Of course the trick is getting it to crack where you want to 🙂 ‘Control joints’ are cuts made in the concrete so that hopefully when the slab cracks it will follow the pre-made cut. This is the control joint layout that I came up with:

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Upgrade Yoga 2 13 to SSD

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BestBuy sells a nice Yoga 2 13 laptop at a significant discount under the traditional Yoga 2 Pro 13 laptop. However, one of the sacrifices on the lowest end Yoga 2 is that it lacks a SSD. Instead it makes due only with a 500GB HDD 🙁 Thankfully, you CAN add a SSD to the Yoga 2 Pro AND keep the HDD installed as well! All you need for the upgrade is some patience and the correct SSD: M.2 2280

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Fix Chrome blurry fonts on Lenovo Yoga 2 13

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One of the first things I do on a new laptop is install Google Chrome. Sadly, Chrome and Windows 8 do not play well on even moderately high-resolution laptop screens 🙁 Case in point, my new Lenovo Yoga 2 13 (not the pro model) has a 1920×1080 13.3″ display which is fairly pedestrian by today’s pixel density standards. Regardless, Chrome fonts look very blurry when compared to IE or most other Win8 applications. Solution: adjust Chrome properties Go to Desktop

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Windows 8 disable left swipe (Yoga 2 Pro etc.)

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In Windows 8 left swipe is fine for touchscreens, but it is majorly annoying with touchpads 🙁 Thankfully, on laptops like the Lenovo Yoga 2 and Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro it is fairly easy to disable the edge swipe recognition on the trackpad: #1 Open the Synaptics Pointing Device Properties Detailed instructions: at the Windows 8 desktop look at the taskbar notification area (bottom of the screen, right-hand side of the taskbar). Find the Synaptics icon which looks like a small

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Dell Inspiron/Vostro wireless driver for Windows 7 (Atheros 1506 802.11b/g/n)

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Recently I setup a new PCIt is a nice Dell 660s small form factor (SFF) PC which came Windows 8. The end users needed Windows 7 and that meant it was time to install one of my spare Windows 7 Professional SP1 licenses. Overall the process went smoothly, however, Windows 7 did not have a driver for the 660s’ wifi adapter. Thankfully, I was able to find a compatabile driver that has been working perfectly. Here is the download link: Dell

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