The problem doesn’t lie with the MicroServer of Windows 8 (or even your monitor), it is the Gigabit Radeon HD 6450 at fault here. Luckily, there is a relatively easy fix, a BIOS update.

1. Download Easy Boost (about half way down the page)
2. Download the Easy Boost manual
3. Install Easy Boost
4. Follow the “VBIOS backup” procedure, you will also find your BIOS type either F1# or F2#, mine was F21
5. Download the correct BIOS (F11 if you have F1# or F22 if you have F2#), you can also see the BIOS offers “Fixed screen flicker problem”
6. Follow the “Flash VBIOS” procedure.
7. Reboot

Thanks to this RedFlagDeals post for the procedure.

The post HP MicroServer N40L and Gigabit HD 6450 horizontal flickering line appeared first on Blog of Travis Hydzik.

This is useful for with finance calculations and wanting to know a bank’s last banking day in a month.

=WORKDAY(EOMONTH(A2,0)+1,-1,holidays!A:A)

Where;

• Cell A2 is the reference month cell
• Range holidays!A:A is a list of holidays

The post Calculate last business day in month with Excel appeared first on Blog of Travis Hydzik.

Find it on eBay for a few dollars (including shipping).

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I thought I would take it a step further and determine from past history if the 3-year fixed or variable rate would have been a better choice at a given time. I always believe that choosing a 3-year fixed interest rate was like gambling, it could either work in your favour or not, I am curious to see if I am right.

Given monthly data for the variable interest rate, to calculate which would have been the better choice I average thirty-six months of future variable rates. Because it is constantly looking three-years into the future, it can be observed that the data finishes in February 2010.

What can be observed is that the fixed rate is sometimes a better option (when under the three-years future average) and sometimes it is worse. Pre 2000, the fixed was mostly a poor choice, post 2000 the fixed rate is lower most of the time.

Finally, a difference of the two and it can be seen that it really jumps back and forth between good and bad. If we take the average of the difference we get 0.41%, which means the 3-year fixed rate is generally an interest rate of 0.41% worse.

Out of 233 months, 121 months (or 52% of the time) the fixed had a worse off interest rate and 112 months (or 48% of the time) the fixed had a better interest rate.

However, if we look at the 121 months from 2000 onwards, the variable interest rate is better off by an average interest rate of 0.23% which occurs about two-thirds of the time.

In conclusion, 3-year fixed rates these days do seem to have a good chance of having a lower interest rate for the locked-in period. That combined with the advantage of having a non fluctuating interest rate makes it a good choice.
I still would avoid them though, fixed rates make it difficult to switch lenders due to the extra fees payable.

The post Home loans – Fixed vs. Variable interest rates appeared first on Blog of Travis Hydzik.

I propose the following solution;

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I purchased a slot load DVDRW drive from eBay for $50 and a USB slim laptop drive SATA adaptor for around $10.

First I glued some wooden pieces to the inside of the base, and this provided me with mounting points.

I created some brackets for the DVD drive from some quarter channel aluminium and a hacked older CD drive.

With the position of the DVDRW drive now know, I cut a slot into the plastic square base with a Dremel.

Once the slot was large enough it was cleaned up with a file.

The DVD burner mounted inside the Videosphere’s base.

The work in progress.

Next post I will look at fixing up the USB cable at adding some obligatory lighting to the base.

The post ComputerSphere – modding the original base to include a DVD burner appeared first on Blog of Travis Hydzik.

After a bit of searching I found a fork by Lee Powers named Lazy Load, the update was for an older version of Nivo Slider which didn’t support responsive images.

After a bit of copy and pasting I managed to port Lazy Load to the updated Nivo Slider version.

Find the fork on Github.

For an example of Lazy Load v2 with 100 images in a Nivo Slider head over to SonyaandTravis.com.

The post Lazy Load v2 – delay image loading Nivo Slider v3 appeared first on Blog of Travis Hydzik.

Well this can be done with PHP eval.

I file is included as follows;

include myfile.php

Using eval, we can achieve the same as above as follows;

$inc = file_get_contents('myfile.php');
eval("?>".$inc);

The post PHP eval equivalent to include appeared first on Blog of Travis Hydzik.

The MSI X7-GD65 (8D) was purchased from PC Case Gear for $299, the Intel i7 3820 for the same price.

Once it was all hooked up I got the following symptoms on power-up;

• No video
• CPU phase LED showing constant 3 bars
• CPU fan spinning
• No digits on the debug LCD
• Unable the switch the computer without a hard shutdown on the PSU

After Googling it turns out that old BIOS’ that were shipped with the early boards are not compatible with the late model Intel i7 3820. This is not uncommon, as how can manufactures be expected to design for hardware that isn’t even released yet.

What annoyed me was the lack of options going forward to resolve this situation;

• MSI have no means of claiming Warranty Internationally, they cop-out and chime to take it back to the store. What kind of company does that?
• The BIOS chips are soldered on to the board, yes, you read that right, this saves them money. It now it isn’t a straight forward procedure to replace the chips, I will show you have you can do it further on.
• The firmware updater requires a working CPU, even ASUS realise the need to be able to flash your BIOS with minimal hardware.
• MSI recommend to purchase an Intel i7 3930k and then flash the BIOS, if I could afford a $550+ chip in the first place I wouldn’t have purchased the 3820.
• Borrow a 3930, the problem is the Sandy Bridge hardware isn’t cost effective; it is rare for people to own these system.

So where did this leave me, with a $300 paper weight, I wasn’t going to give up so soon.

I spotted updated MSI X79-GD65 (8D) BIOS chips on eBay for $20 including shipping so decided to give it ago.

Have a look on YouTube for SOIC (the surface mount chip packaging) desoldering or SOIC removal with a hot-air gun.

I tried the first attempt desoldering, by running a piece of wire under the legs pulling on it once heated to lift it off the pad, unfortunately I removed one of the solder pads.

Fortunately, this board has two BIOS chips.

The second attempted was the hot-air gun approach, this was a lot easier, sprayed with hot air the chip can simply be removed.

The board now booted up which was a relief except only sometimes and I could never work out what was the reason. Searching the forums and there are others with the same problem, a Clear CMOS basically sometimes allows the board to boot.

I ended up getting rid of the board on eBay for $40, yes, I lost money, but I was happy to have it out of my life. And purchased an ASRock Extreme 4.

While I’m ranting, why do MSI place that giant Military Class III sticker on the socket protector, have you ever tried replacing the protector, you are bound to damage some pins in the process.

The post MSI X79-GD65 (8D) and Intel i7 3820 Nightmare and SOIC BIOS replacement appeared first on Blog of Travis Hydzik.

After reading forums and researching, I thought it would be useful sharing this information.

I thought I would investigate two products, two that I have bought previously

• a generic Nintendo DS stylus, and
• a generic iPhone USB data cable

The cost of the product

Everyone one knows that phrase “Made in China’, China’s products are inexpensive do to lower labour costs and mass production of products which get exported all around the globe. But how cheap are these items, to give you an idea head to Alibaba.com, self described as source of “Manufacturers, Suppliers, Exporters, Importers, Buyers, Wholesalers, Products and Trade Leads”.

A Nintendo DS stylus made from ABS plastic the bulk price can range from around 5 cents per piece to as low as 3 cents for quantities over a thousand purchased.

Similarly, an iPhone USB data cable can range from 10 cents to 30 cents, again depending on quantity purchased.

So the actual product’s cost can vary from 1 percent to 30 percent.

Small padded envelopes can also be purchased in bulk for a few cents.

Postage

Let’s assume items are posted from Hong Kong, Hong Kong Post offers a bulk postage rate of $2.30 (Hong Kong Dollars) for a 20 gram item or $95 (Hong Kong Dollars) for unlimited items to the same destination (Country and City) not exceeding 1 kilogram.

The current (26^th October 2012) exchange rate of 1 United States Dollar is 7.75035 Hong Kong Dollars. So to put the above postage costs into perspective, you can post 1 kilogram of items for $12.24 United States. If you were sending 20 gram packets, it would cost 25 cents each. The envelope to post the item weighs around 8 cents and the actual item from 2 grams to 30 grams.

But why does an international letter from Hong Kong cost less than it costs us to send a domestic letter? There a number of contributing theories,

• High degree of automation, have you ever seen a hand written envelope arriving from Hong Kong? Probably not. The seller has already entered all the details online, the postal service just needs to scan the barcode, there is minimal human involvement.
• Reciprocating postage agreements, countries have agreements with other countries on the basis of ‘you deliver our mail and we will deliver yours’. Now when was the last time you sent a package to Hong Kong, and now when was the last time you received a package from Hong Kong. There a significantly more received parcels, who pays to deliver these parcels, your local post office, how do they afford to deliver these parcels to your letter box, by increasing the costs to send parcels. Now you know why our postage rates are so much more expensive?
• Bulk postage, Hong Kong is an aviation hub, owning the record for world’s busiest airport by cargo traffic. That small envelope you received was probably sharing the same plane with thousands of others destined to your city.

eBay and PayPal Fees

Now we get to the costs for using eBay and PayPal, we know these cost are high for the average sellers, eBay itself have stated they want a return of around 10% on every item sold. How do these particular sellers minimise costs?

PayPal Micropayments

PayPal offers a Micropayments account with a different fee system.

Instead of the normal 2.9% plus 30 cents for each transaction on a Business account, a Micropayments account offers 5% plus 5 cents for each transaction. What this means is that for transactions less than $12, it is more economical to use the Micropayments account.

Assume a 99 cent item, with a normal PayPal business account the fee would be 33 cents, but with the PayPal Micropayments account the fee would only be 10 cents, a 23 cent difference.

Here is an interesting fact, anything sold for less than 30 cents and received with PayPal Business account or 5 cents and received with PayPal Micropayments account and the seller hasn’t already made no profit.

eBay fees

To list an item costs 50 cents, but on that single listing there can be any quantity, for each item sold 7% of the sale price is applicable. Sellers are allowed to make changes to this listing, so the same listing can be used for a number of different items.

To put the eBay cost in perspective, on a 99 cent item it is roughly 7 cents on eBay fees alone.

Final Profit

So now we know all the costs associated with selling the item, what is the profit?

Adding all the selling costs, not including the cost of the actual product, we get 7 cents from eBay, 10 cents from PayPal, 3 cents for the envelope and 25 cents for postage at a total cost of 45 cents. Assuming the product can cost anywhere from 2 to 30 cents, the profit on a 99 cent item can range from 25 to 50 cents, or 25% to 50% net profit. No bad for a single item.

Let’s assume the seller is selling 10,000 items a year. That’s an income of $2,500 to $5,000 per year.  Increase the number of items offered, and that is quite a significant income.

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