(Almost) Passive Cooling an Acer Aspire Revo R3600 Intel Atom 330

After I removed the fan of my Revo R3600 in order to change the hard drive it became incredibly noisy, sounding a bit like a motorbike. Given that it was in the lounge I needed to do something about it. At work one evening I realised there might be a nice big heat sink in a recently deceased Dell Optiplex 380 (I think) desktop. There was, and it was an amazingly good fit, though it's not properly attached (yet). I use fancontrol to switch the fan on at 60C, and it doesn't come on often. The piece of paper is blocking a hole in the fan, forcing all the air to pass through the heat sink.

Ideally I'd get rid of the fan and stand the case up to let the air flow naturally through the heat sink.

The Truth About Film and Airport X-Ray Machines

When I went to Africa recently on honeymoon, I took with me my new bride, and a load of film. I was a bit concerned about the effects of X-ray machines at airports, but apart from keeping it in my had luggage I didn't have much choice but to put them through (I did speak to a photography shop about lead lined bags, but was advised that they didn't work, and may just result in technicians requesting that the film canisters go through again). In total they went through thirteen, yes, thirteen, X-ray machines, at places as big as Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle right down to Inhamebane, one of the smallest airports I have ever used in my life.

The set below is a film which I took with me, but didn't use at the time. I mention this particular film because it is particularly fast, at ISO 1600, and as far as I can see shows no ill effects of all those X-rays.