If you’re looking for an easy way to resize a bunch of photos google yields all kinds of results that are OBVIOUSLY adware and spyware. It’s really hard to sift through all the garbage and find a good utility.

Picture Resizer is an aptly named little utility that is on version 3.0 as of writing this blog post. It allows you to take any group of images and resize them (in either low or high quality) by simply dragging the images onto the Picture Resizer EXE file.

By renaming the EXE you can select quality options and the output resolution. It renames the files for you according to the original file size and the resolution you’ve selected for output.

It’s brain-dead easy and I’ve been using it for over a year now with no complaints. It’s XP and Vista compatible and best of all it’s COMPLETELY FREE!

Developer website here.

These things are just hot. Bling in PC water cooling has finally arrived in a way that if people could do it they would probably put a water cooled computer on a chain and hang it around their neck.

The price is a little steep (these should be showing up on the site in the next day or so), but if you’re having trouble justifying it to yourself, remember that silver has anti-microbial properties, so you can run pure distilled water in an all copper/silver loop without worrying about any junk growing in it. Water performs better by itself than it does with any aftermarket additives, so this is a huge plus.

The gold ones just look awesome and you know you want them :p

Well as I mentioned on the NCIX forum a week or so ago I’ve been using a Pentium 4 3.0GHz CPU and a 9700pro in my work system since I started at the company. I did get a RAM upgrade about 8 months ago and that was kewl, but it’s time for an overhaul. Here are the before shots:

So I requested some hardware for my upgrade, and let’s just say it came through. Here are some of the highlights:

I had to promise I wouldn’t spend too much time gaming on this machine though :p

The initial plan was to use an Intel box heatsink and my old Enermax power supply, but as you can see in my before picture, the PSU I had in my system before isn’t enough to handle a quad core (Q6600) and crossfire system. The PSU had to go. I ended up changing a couple other things along the way such as the CPU heatsink (grabbed one from a Core 2 Extreme Q9650) and hard drive (now using SATA! W00t), but here’s the final result in boy light and dark.

Now that it’s done I’m going to get it up and running for the NCIX Folding Team as soon as possible. I fold under the name Closet Gamer.

Intel’s first 45nm “Pentium” chip showed up quietly in the last week or two and there doesn’t seem to be much buzz about it, but I decided to take it for a spin to see what kind of overclocking results I could get out of it. I don’t know if the one that I have is exceptional or not, and bear in mind this IS a suicide run, but I think what you’re about to see may shock you.

Will update later with pics of the water cooled test bench as well.

Okay here’s my update with pictures of the test bench. I’m using a Maximus Formula X38 motherboard with OCZ Reaper PC2-8500 C5 RAM modules, a Corsair 750W power supply and a GTX 280 video card.

I’ve also included a photo of the box from the CPU I used. This is a regular retail sample. No cherry picking going on here. this is one cool chip

It’s about the size of a Nintendo DS and (quoted from their website) “It was designed based on the input of thousands of forum users with one goal in mind – to make the ultimate open source handheld device.” The Open Pandora was designed to emulate everything from MAME arcade classics to older consoles like the SNES, and even other handhelds such as the Gameboy and Gameboy Color.

The spec list is impressive and the Open Pandora team claims that it is by far the most powerful handheld available.

• ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
• 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
• PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
• 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
• Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
• Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
• Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• Around 10+ Hours battery life

They do use the term “available” quite loosely though as right now they haven’t done their first large scale production run. Pricing seems to be set at around $330USD, so if you’re interested in a device like this, the price is definitely right. You can check out more details at www.openpandora.org.

The AeroRacer Pro case is the first in the world to feature…. A 400mm side panel fan!! TA DA!

I actually laughed out loud when I saw this. Not only the first time, but also the second time. The worst thing about it is that other than the side panel, it’s a case I would actually consider an attractive gaming case.

The case name may actually be a typo. I think they meant “AeroRicer Pro”

The following new items are in stock and ready to ship:

GTX 280/260 nickel plated GPU blocks

Radeon 4870 X2 nickel plated GPU blocks (VERY limited numbers)

Plexi EK VGA Supreme GPU blocks

Multi-option res 100

Some other small thing

I am impressed. As many readers will know, I manage water cooling products at NCIX, which includes CoolIT systems. I’ve been following the performance of their past coolers with what I would call “distracted interest” because the technology is really cool, but I felt it wasn’t really there performance-wise.

The Boreas turns that all around. I’m very impressed with the performance of this unit. It can keep a stock Q6600 below ambient at idle, and it can hold a 3.4GHz Q6600 at 40 degrees under full load. I’d be interested to see how it performs with a chipset and a couple graphics cards in the loop, but there’s no doubt in my mind that for a CPU-only loop, the performance is there.

I guess my only concerns are the cost of the unit and the noise level of the unit. The cost is close to a phase change solution, but as long as the noise level is okay (not really covered in depth in the HWC review), then I think that the Boreas would be a better solution for someone like me than a phase change cooler.

Check out the HWC review here.

Well I was having a heck of a time getting either the automatic port forwarding working in Windows Home Server for my web access to my files, and weirdly enough I couldn’t get it working externally even by manually forwarding all the appropriate ports to the home server through my DIR-655 router.

Turns out the problem was caused by having two routers connected on the same network. It was making it impossible for the Home Server to automatically configure the network, and somehow seemed to be breaking it even when I manually forwarded the ports. By unplugging the wireless G router, setting the Home Server to auto-config, then plugging the wireless G router back in, I was able to get my remote access working again. Horay!

Well my team of six people (including one fellow NCIX staff member) manage to win 6/6 games for an overall win at the Warpigs Invitational Paintball Tournament this weekend. We had a blast and beat the 7 other teams pretty cleanly. Fun was had all around. Here’s a shot of me with our tropy at the end and the dog tags that were given to the first place team.

I’d love to post everyone else’s goofy poses with the trophy, but there are privacy concerns, and I don’t want to step over anyone’s boundaries.

If you’d like some more information about Warpigs Paintball, check out the forum at www.warpigspaintball.com