My Next PC Will Be Home Built

My 3 year-old HP m9600t is now starting to be flakey. 3 years is about the usual amount of time it takes for a desktop to die, but the nice thing about owning a PC (versus a Mac), is that you can usually reuse components over time, provided you didnt buy a proprietary machine and build your own. Since the machine is still mostly working, I can leisurely pick over components, etc., and buy stuff as they come on sale. However, Im happy to use my blog as a platform to shop for components. My suspicion is that Ill be able to keep my existing HDDs, and video card (Radeon 4850), though it would be nice if the machine gave me an upgrade path. Here are my priorities:

1. Fast enough to handle lightroom and video editing.
2. Quiet. This means large fans running at low speed.
3. Power efficient. No more desktop PC behaving like a space heater.

Requirements:

• Must have hot-swappable hard drive bays. I would like to have 4 hard drive bays, though I could live with just 2 if necessary.
• Must be easy to work on. No more pinching my fingers to install memory or hard drives.
• Plenty of USB slots (USB 3?).
• Room for upgradability
• Must drive my 27" monitor together with my 24" monitor.
• Reliable. Im not willing to put up with flakey BIOS and such.

Nice to haves:

• Built in memory card readers for SD cards and CF.
• High quality sound.
• Blu-ray

Non goals: small. Im ok with a big monster. Gaming is a lower priority than absolutely raw power needed to make Lightroom, Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere Elements fly. I guess mostly what Im looking for is motherboard, case, fans, power supply recommendations. Its easy for me to shop for CPUs, memories, and HDDs myself. I look forward to recommendations from my social network. (No recommendations for Apple products need apply)

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Home Designer Suite 2012

If our rankings were based on eye candy alone, Home Designer Suite would outrank its competitors by a long shot. All of the objects and images are in such exquisite detail that it enables you to get a very realistic view of your designs. It has multiple easy-to-use features that make this product ideal for novice home designers who need a simple way to design a home, or get an estimate on how their remodeling desires could come into play, making it our hands-down TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award winner. However, this home design software will also help the seasoned professional home designer as well.

Home Designer Suite was created by Chief Architect. This version of the software is an all-in-one product that is perfect for those who want to design homes, decks and landscapes. Your designs will be validated against standard building principles. It will help you to create a new home, remodel and existing home or add exquisite landscaping. This application also includes sections on interior design and a section on kitchens and baths that will help make your dream house become a reality.

Aesthetic Appeal

Prepare to be dazzled by Home Designer Suite as you navigate through the interface to create your projects. The graphics are so detailed that you feel as if you have entered another world when you access the 3D and doll house views. The interface is simple and easy with all of the most common tools right at your fingertips. The editable home plans are beautiful, as well as the furniture, appliances, and fixtures in the object library. The library contains over 6,000 items for you to use. However, if you do not find the objects that appeal to you, you may download new object libraries from the web, from game room set-ups to the finest kitchen furnishings, Home Designer Suite won’t let you down.

Features & Tools

Home Designer Suite has many helpful tools that get the job done just the way you want. They range from curved wall tools to vaulted ceilings as well as viewing your project in 2D or 3D. One of the more helpful features that we enjoyed was the view options. You can view your home with a framing, glass, or dollhouse view, while simultaneously looking at your floor plan. The detail in these views is excellent and allows you to get an almost hands-on experience merely from looking at it.

Most home design software has walkthrough and aerial views, but Home Designer Suite provides the ability to record both views onto a video file (AVI format), which will spice up any possible demonstrations.

As you begin your project, a screen pops up allowing you to choose from a list of home design wizard styles. This allows you to design your home in a pre-defined décor style. If you find yourself struggling to come up with an overall theme for your room designs, you may attain inspiration from their Design Planning Center that has numerous articles and hundreds of pictures of professionally designed and decorated rooms, kitchens and house styles.

Some new features that caught our eye include tools to make ADA compliant ramps, pass-thru tools that allow for the creation of an opening in a wall between rooms and deck and framing buy lists that are great for creating a shopping list and lumber budget. There are several new productivity tools, including options for creating a variety of different doors, gable and hip roof toggle tool, tape measure and 3D centering.

We also appreciate the remodeling section of Home Designer Suite, as it will allow you to move a wall in order to add some additional space to an existing room. It will also allow you to change a color in just a click of a button. For even more details of the project you are doing, they have included cross-sections, which we found to be very helpful.

Support & Documentation

Home Designer Suite is all about support. Through the help option, you can access many online training videos that will help you tackle your project. Their collection of videos seems to grow exponentially with each new version of their software. There is also contact information on the site if you need more help. Printed manuals are also available and can be quite helpful for beginners or experienced designers to refer to.

Ease of Use

Ease of Use is Home Designer Suite’s middle name. The buttons and layout of the software is so efficient, that you can have a home designed in minutes. A unique feature that we noticed is in the 3D view; you can choose an object and move it without having to go to the 2D floor plan. We also like that you can use the 2D and 3D views simultaneously through out the project.

Summary

Home Designer Suite is an excellent choice for anyone needing to design or remodel a home. The interface takes a little getting used to, but when you get the hang of it, you will feel like a professional. Some of the design tools and view options can be a little tricky to work with, however, this is an exceptional choice when it comes to home design software. If youre patient with this software, its going to pay off for you in a big way in the long run. This is an excellent choice for anyone who is looking to redesign or remodel their home.

Download 3D Home Architect Design Suite Deluxe v8.0 Full CD

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Review Modernist Cuisine at Home

Modernist Cuisine at Home is a cookbook. As such, it shouldnt be read end-to-end, but should be reviewed for the recipes it contains. However, its more than a cookbook, since its also an advocate for a different approach towards cooking, which is ideally suited for engineers and other folks (mostly men) who have little patience for acquiring skills associated with traditional cooking. I am just such a person, so the Modernist approach does have great appeal to me.

As far as I can see, modernist cooking has a few principles:

• Use of modern technology. This includes pressure cookers, sous vide machines, and blow torches
• Accurate temperature control. This could mean water baths, or simply an oven safe probe stuck into the thickest part of the meat.
• An emphasis on time efficiency. Minimum prep time, and "fire and forget" formulas.

I, on the other hand, was looking for the following:

• Minimum skill required, as well as prep effort. I can barely flip an egg over to make eggs over-easy. Anything more is just too much.
• Precise prescriptions. "A dash of baking soda" means nothing to me. Id rather hear, "10g of baking soda."

To my mind, Modernist Cuisine at Home meets a lot of this criteria. Much has been made about sous vide, but I didnt have a sous vide set up, so I first tried the other recipes that were easy:

• Slow Baked Chicken with Onions (page 242). The first time I did this the results were amazing. The prep work is weird, using brine injectors and slicing onions thinly, but my wife (who usually hates chicken) liked it a lot so I tried again. The second time was a disaster. I had to throw it away. The inconsistency of the oven made me willing to buy a Sous Vide setup.
• Pressure Cooked Lamb Shank (page 234). The first time I did it the results were good, but marred by my pressure cooker being not up to spec. I splurged, upgrading to a $30 Presto pressure cooker, and the second time I made it it was nothing short of incredible. The meat just peeled off the bone when I lifted the bone up, and the resulting lamb curry tasted great. In fact, the store-bought sauce did not do the meat justice.
• Carrot Soup (page 178). Since my visits to Rosenlaui began, Ive admired their soups. Since I had a pressure cooker now, I could use their recipe to see if I could emulate the creamy soups that Rosenlaui did. The resulting texture is nothing short of amazing. Its quite a bit of work, since you have to pressure cook the carrots, then blend them, and then add carrot juice. This is eliminating the final step. But the soup is incredibly smooth and generally good stuff. I liked it a lot, but Xiaoqin is in general not a fan of Western style soups, so I guess I wont be making this again.

All this convinced me that I should experiment with sous vide for a more consistent experience. It took a bit to figure out what to buy, so Ill list it here, in case you want to try it yourself:

• Sous Vide Supreme Demi. You dont need anything bigger, so dont waste your time with the other stuff. I didnt opt for a circulating bath heater, because the resulting decor would not please my wife. If youre single and cheap, try a manual rice cooker or crockpot and the DorkFood temperature controller.
• Iwatani Torch Burner. It burns butane cartridges you can easily get at Ranch 99. Easy on, easy off, and it doesnt look like industrial equipment.
• Seal-a-Meal Vacuum Sealer. If all you do is short recipes you can use zip-loc bags. You can also buy a package including the Sous Vide Supreme sealer, but the difference between reviews of this unit and reviews of the Sous Vide Supreme unit is huge, so I recommend buying this one.

With this, I experimented with the following receipes:

• Sous Vide Salmon (page 276). OMG. This is melt-in-your-mouth type salmon. I couldnt believe how good this was. Xiaoqin doesnt like cooked Salmon, but she found this acceptable. Im going to have to try cod one of these days.
• Sous Vide Chicken (page 244). You know how baked chicken always tastes dry? The reason the Slow Baked chicken receipe works is because you inject the chicken with enough brine so it doesnt dry out. Well, by cooking sous vide, you dont have to do that and the results are amazing. Xiaoqin doesnt usually like chicken, but she liked this one so much she complained I didnt eat enough. Bowen doesnt usually eat meat, and he ate a third of a piece of chicken thigh by himself. This blew my mind.
• Sous Vide Prime Rib (page 194). This was relatively disappointing. Not because the result was bad, but because wed had high hopes after the last two sous vide dishes. I didnt follow the instructions enough, and left the meat in the machine for 3+ hours instead of the recommended 50 minutes, because I read some other instructions on the internet. On the one hand, it was my loss, but on the other hand, it demonstrates the value of the book: the books recipes so far out perform the internet, which is unusual.
• Sous Vide Duck Confit (pages 245-246). This was the most ambitious recipe that I tried from the book. It took about 18 hours of brining the duck legs in the refrigerator, and then about 27 hours in the Sous Vide machine. But it was excellent and better than some duck confit Ive had in France! If youd told me a year ago that Id be able to make duck confit this good, I wouldnt have believed you.

Im not much of a foodie, and have eaten at Michelin 2-star restaurants that I considered terrible compared to say, Kabab & Currys. Ive also eaten at Googles cafetaria during the good years (2005-2007), and could taste the difference when I returned to Mountain View in 2008 after a stint in Europe. I would say that this book has revolutionized my approach and expectations for home cooking, and I cannot imagine not using the sous vide approach for meats cooked home if I can help it. I justified my purchase of my above set up based on the idea that I could easily return it to Amazon if I didnt like it. Well, Im not going to return those machines. Furthermore, when I first heard about the 72 hour short-rib sous vide recipes, I thought, "3 days to cook dinner? Thats ridiculous." I will now admit that my thoughts about the matter now are: "how could I do without my sous vide machine for 3 days?!!"

I will now pay this book the greatest compliment I can: before I return this book to the library, I will either buy my own copy of Modernist Cuisine at Home, or the entire $530 6-volume set of Modernist Cuisine. Highly recommended. If you havent tried it out, try it. If youre local and want to try it, talk to me and well work something out. And if youre an engineer who hates cooking and cant do anything right in the kitchen, you need this book.

Update: My 4-month retrospective.

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