pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/features/" rel="tag"Features/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/xbox360/" rel="tag"Microsoft Xbox 360/a/pdiv align="center"img width="490" vspace="4" hspace="4" height="367" border="1" align="middle" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/11/richardmitch-weekly-recap-490.jpg" alt="" /br //div Believe it or not, the New Xbox Experience isn't the only thing that happened in the land of 360 this week. Oh no, we also have ... other things like ... um ... you know, stuff. Ooh, like emA Kingdom for Keflings/em came out. It's a really cool XBLA game because ... it lets you use your Avatar as a playable character. Okay fine, it's all about the NXE this week.br /br /uCommunity/ubr / ul lia href="http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/11/17/xbox-360-fancast-092-total-immersion/"Xbox 360 Fancast 092 -- Total Immersion/abr /emLike radio ... on the internet!/em/li lia href="http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/11/19/x3f-tv-xbla-in-brief-a-kingdom-for-keflings/"X3F TV -- XBLA in Brief: A Kingdom for Keflings/abr /emReally addictive ... but why?/em/li lia href="http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/11/18/ask-x3f-splitting-screens-edition/"Ask X3F: Splitting screens edition/abr /emBring a guest!/em/li lia href="http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/11/19/the-new-xbox-experience-what-do-you-think/"The New Xbox Experience: What do you think?/abr /emIt's out. You've got it. How is it?/em/li /ul uNews/ubr / ul lia href="http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/11/14/video-winning-a-chainsaw-duel-in-gears-2/"Video: Winning a chainsaw duel in Gears 2/abr /emHit that B button/em/li lia href="http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/11/17/halo-mmo-received-green-light-approval-before-managment-canceled/"Halo MMO received green light approval before managment canceled/abr /emSo, would Recon have been an epic armor set?/em/li lia href="http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/11/17/new-360-bundles-hit-europe-november-21/"New 360 bundles hit Europe November 21/abr /emNow for only slightly less than retail!/em/li lia href="http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/11/18/kim-360s-lifespan-1-day-longer-than-ps3/"Kim: 360's lifespan 1 day longer than PS3/abr /emApart from the whole Red Ring of Death thing, anyway/em/li lia href="http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2008/11/20/the-xbox-live-marketplace-on-xbox-com-is-alive/"The Xbox Live Marketplace on Xbox.com is alive!/abr /emNow you can spend real money on fake money at work!/em/li /ulp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/20/x3f-week-in-review-november-14-2008-november-20-2008/"X3F Week in Review: November 14, 2008 - November 20, 2008/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:00:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/20/x3f-week-in-review-november-14-2008-november-20-2008/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1378740/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/20/x3f-week-in-review-november-14-2008-november-20-2008/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/X666tnM7qh7slNCAfXMTQt2ymLo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/X666tnM7qh7slNCAfXMTQt2ymLo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=0nJWah4l"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=0nJWah4l" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=TuN78qo2"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=TuN78qo2" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/I8_Eyq5LPsM" height="1" width="1"/

I'm now on my second one since 2005. The first one self destructed after a couple of years of unspectacular, bog-standard media centre use (no over-clocking or 3D gaming).

Just recently my Intel Mac Mini (purchased in July 2007) started squeaking intermittantly so I did my research and concluded that the hard drive was on its last legs.

I replaced that tonight with an SSD OCZ 64gb Core series SATAII drive, booted OS X from the DVD install disk and the damn thing won't let me format the drive. It can see it, but says I don't have permission to do anything with it and then says it's too small to create any partitions (it thinks it has a capacity of 0kb). Every option which might be useful is greyed out to complicate things further.

To top it all off my Mini is still squeaking as it did before which suggests that the problem wasn't the hard drive at all, but the fan seeing as there are no other moving components in these systems.

Any idea where I go from here? I'd really like to get this drive installed now that I've taken the plunge and paid four times more than an ordinary drive twice its capacity would cost.

I'm really annoyed at Apple in general at the moment considering what a lousy job they do of regulating the temperature in these systems. You know, they're not quiet because they run cool, they're quiet because the fan doesn't spin up as you perform more intensive tasks as it's supposed to, all the while shortening the Mini's lifespan without you realising. This doesn't hit home until you run a fan speed regulating utility that does this job properly.

Edit: oh how could I forget - my Superdrive isn't quite so super any more now that it can only read disks. It's barely had any use and now that seems to be defunct too.

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/keypad_pressing_test.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="800" height="533" style="display:block;float:none;" /I've long suspected that the best job ever would be to work in product stress testingmdash;because you basically get paid to break shit all day. a href="http://www.gizmodo.com/tag/nokia"Nokia/a sent over a bunch of info detailing how their test centers operate, leaving me fully convinced this would indeed be my dream gig. Not only do they run over 200 mechanical tests on these things, but where else could you play with a bunch of machines that bend, bake, humidify, spray, poke and drop phones? (And yeah, that phone in the picture above just got poked a million times...literally.)br script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8" galleryPost('nokiatestlabs3', 4, ''); /script/p pHere's a look at a handful of different tests and what each one tries to accomplish./p pstrongLiquids/strong/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/dripping_water_test2.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="800" height="533" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pNokia places a phone under a bunch of needle-sized water dispensers and then lets it drip all over the phone, which tests for resistance in situations like rain, or splashing from a pool./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/humidity_resistance-test.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="800" height="533" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pThe humidity simulation, which tests the durability of phones in up to 95% humidity, is helpful in determining if a phone will hold up in particularly damp areas like South and Central America, where gadgets don't have the longest lifespan./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/liquid_test.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="800" height="533" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pNokia also tests how the phone reacts to various liquids, creams and gels (lotions, hand sanitizers, etc...), since stuff like that tends to accidentally spill while sitting in a purse or backpack with the phone./p pstrongSturdiness/strongbr img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/bending_test.jpg" width="350" height="525" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/twisting_test.jpg" width="350" height="525" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2"br clear="all" br Tests for bending and twisting are pretty straight forward and self explanatory. Still, you can't help but cringe to see a phone placed in such an unnatural position. Nokia says when you have your phone in your back pocket and you sit on it, it's susceptible to bending./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/dropping_machine.jpg" width="350" height="525"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/dropping_test.jpg" width="350" height="525" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2"br clear="all" br One of the cooler stress tests that exists is the Drop testmdash;not only because it uses a giant friggin' machine, but also because they record the drops using a camera that can record 100,000 frames per second, which is 3,000 times faster than the normal video camera. The videos are then analyzed frame by frame, determining the degree to which a device becomes distorted upon impact. Check it out./p pscript type="text/javascript" newVideoPlayer("/nokia_test_vid.flv", 506, 423,""); /scriptimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/stills/nokia_test_vid.flv.jpg" style="display:block;display: none;" //p pWhen Nokia drops a phone, they drop it from about the height of a shirt pocket onto concrete, since that's a likely scenario for dropped phones. They also attatch a phone under a steel device that pushes down 100 newtons of force./p pstrongWear and Tear/strong/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/dust_boxt_test.jpg" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2" width="800" height="533" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pNokia has a series of wear and tear stress tests, when gauge the phone's ability to take bumps, scratches from daily use. Dust testing involves throwing a handful of phones in a dust filled box and letting everything co-mingle. How much dust gets inside? And do buttons stop working when foreign substances get under the surface? This is where you find out./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/wearing_test.jpg" width="350" height="525" align="left" hspace="4" vspace="2"They also let phones roll around in a bunch of pieces of hard, pointy plastic to see where it might scratch, scuff or crack under duress. These pieces are like plastic chocolate chips and bite-sized pyramids, and they're pretty sharp. This phone met an unfortunate demise in the name of quality control.br clear="all"/p p***/p pOther weird tests include rubbing a piece of denim up against a phone to test the effect of friction when the phone rubs up against your clothes and subjection the phone to temperatures ranging between -40 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit; this determines whether or not the phone can survive in the most extreme conditions on earth./p pWhen testing is finished, they have a battery of analytic procedures to determine how well or how poorly a phone held up. This includes analyzing a phone under electron microscopes, 3D X-rays and X-ray Spectroscopes to check for any related damage; possible micron-sized soldering cracks, component failure or any breakdowns in the materials./p pAs you can see, these tests aren't lightweight by any means, and most of my Nokia phones over the years have been pretty durable. What about yours? [a href="http://gizmodo.com/tag/nokia"Nokia on Giz/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=776d94bb696c87fa4438dbde3790bb93p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=776d94bb696c87fa4438dbde3790bb93p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=776d94bb696c87fa4438dbde3790bb93" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=ZkQiCeUC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=2q5JnvBA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=G6Zz84TJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=G6Zz84TJ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=AQJ5XGNn"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=AQJ5XGNn" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/oQO7YrghBiM" height="1" width="1"/

centerimg id="image1625" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2117/voldemars.jpg" alt="voldemars.jpg" //centerbr / centerimg id="image1626" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2117/voldemars03m.jpg" alt="voldemars03m.jpg" //centerbr / pDoes anyone know how many biennials there are in the world, now? There is a whole sub-field of biennial studies that looks at such issues as the economic impacts of the shows on their host cities and the artists' market values, or the relationship between Eastern biennials and Westernization. Of course, the latter question hinges on whether the show is called a "biennial" or a "biennale"... The truth is, there are now so many of these that it's easy to overlook them. Even the fledging field of electronic art has a few! But Sweden's a href="http://www.electrohype.org/"Electrohype/a is a unique one, bringing ambitious installations to the beautiful a href="http://www.konsthall.malmo.se/"Malmouml; Konsthall/a. Now in its fifth incarnation, the show draws large audiences but avoids the temptation to be a mega-show, instead opting to give serious space and consideration to good work by often more emerging artists. a href="http://www.electrohype.org/2008/index.html"Electrohype 08/a features ten international a href="http://www.electrohype.org/2008/artists/index.html"artists/a whose projects focus on "ongoing processes and time." These are Doug Back (CA), Ralf Baecker (DE), Serina Erfjord (NO), Kerstin Ergenzinger (DE), Jessica Field (CA), Voldemars Johansons (LV), Diane Morin (CA), Kristoffer Myskja (NO), Erik Olofsen (NL), and Bill Vorn (CA). While time and endurance are age-old themes in the modern art world, there's not a usual suspect in the bunch! Nonetheless, there is due notice paid to the histories and influences traced by the show. For instance, Doug Back's iSticks/i (1979) is showing aside Ralf Baecker's iRechnender Raum (Calculating Space)/i (2007). Despite a large difference in scale and nearly thirty years between them, both are kinetic sculptures fleshing out what it means to compute and how mechanics might be used to reflect upon human movement. Ironically, the big piece looks at micro-motions within the body and the smaller one looks at social interaction! Other interesting works include Serina Erfjord's iBlack Stain/i and iCold Stain/i (both 2008), which are small stains on the wall that respectively trap magnetic fluid and humidity, so that the respectively light and dark spots bring growth and lifespan into the proverbial room. Voldemars Johansons' iAero Torrents/i (2007) draws on the old science trick of displaying sound vibrations on the surface of a liquid. In this case, a small pool of water (not altogether dissimilar-looking from an AeroBed) echoes the sonic iteration of meteorological data from recent major storms in Europe. The piece embodies a sort of poetic form of translation, carrying on both bigger water-related weather patterns that have obviously long-predated our field, and reciting a once-novel and now almost vernacular form of representation within electronic art. The presentation of works like these trace enduring practices in the field, while spotlighting new experiments and practitioners. - Marisa Olson /p piImage: Voldemars Johansons, Aero Torrents, 2007/i/p p class="more"a href="http://www.electrohype.org/"Link raquo;/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rhizome-fp/~4/459979144" height="1" width="1"/