29/07/2007 - Sunday

Fan

Last Saturday (the 21st) I bought a new fan for the processor in my computer. I had to buy a new one as the existing one was playing up, slowing to half speed most of the time and sometimes going slow enough that I could read the label as it spun round. It was also running slower than usual when it was being "normal" resulting in more noise (it got real noisy the slower it spun) and a higher processor temperature.

Before the fan started playing up I was seeing typical idle temperatures of 40-43c for the processor and 38-40c for the motherboard, and full load temperatures of 55-60c for the processor and 42c for the motherboard. Once the fan started playing up the idle processor temperature went up to 45c minimum, with the temperature rising the slower the fan spun, and a full load temperature of 60-65c.

With the new fan the temperatures are much lower. Idle temperatures give 35-38c for the processor and 30-32c for the motherboard, and full load temperatures of 50-53c for the processor and 30-32c for the motherboard (I sometimes forget to check the motherboard as I've been monitoring the processor more as that's where the fan is).

The new fan is also slightly louder than the old fan, with a rating of 28dB (decibels). I'm not entirely sure what the rating of the old fan is as I haven't been able to find specs for the exact model I had (I could only find slightly similar), but I would guess that it was around 20dB (as that's what the similar one is). It also has a much higher airflow with 21 CFM (cubic feet per minute) compared to 5 CFM for the old one (similar model again). I think it's also spinning around 600 RPM faster (4600 RPM), although I can't remember what the old one was spinning at, especially as during its last few weeks it had stopped reporting the speed it was going at correctly (sometimes it would show a speed, othertimes it would just be 0). It's also a thicker fan, just less than double the old fans depth.

All in all I'm very happy with the new fan as it's making my computer run quite a bit cooler, plus I've got used to the slightly louder noise.

Healtheriser

In other news, I'm still working on the Healtheriser. I had the idea to change the way that logins are handled before I get stuck in with the rest of the code, considering that I'm currently the only person using the website. The change is to allow multiple OpenID logins to use the same user account. When you login for the very first time you'll be given the option of creating a new user account or linking your OpenID login to an existing OpenID login. If you create a new user account then you'll be able to login like normal and use the website. If you decide to link to another OpenID login then you will be able to login to that user account without actually using that OpenID login that was used to create it (if that makes sense). It's useful if you have multiple OpenID logins and don't want to always remember which one you used when creating your user account (I know that OpenID is all about a single login, but you can get OpenID logins from using AIM or having a livejournal blog, plus you can aggregate your OpenID login from a different website).

It has taken a few days to get most of it done as I changed the main login code to handle linked accounts but I forgot to change my mocked (faked) login code in the tests, so I was expecting the results from the real login code, but the mocked login code was giving different results as it hadn't been changed. It took me a little while to realise that that was the problem and I was able to fix it pretty soon afterwards. I've also been doing it using TDD (Test Driven Development) for the first time, where I write a failing test with the results that I expect, make sure that it fails, then write the real code to produce the correct results. Doing it this way has actually made me write a few bits better than I would have done if I was just writing the main code straight away.

I highly doubt that I'm doing the TDD the correct way though, but it's working fine for me at the moment. I've been doing it all from the integration tests (test stories) so that I know all the things work from the users point of view. I haven't done many other tests though, like testing the model and testing that each action works correctly. Once I finish the changes to the login I'll read up on the other testing again as I can't remember the flow of it now (tut tut, but I'll get there eventually), and hopefully I'll have some solid tests in place. My current code to test ratio is 1:0.9, so I do have a lot more testing to do!