So, down under, here in the Southern hemisphere, it’s the first day of Spring, although looking outside the office windows at the dark and gloomy day and remembering the drive into work this morning through rain, one wonders if the powers that be are playing a cruel joke on us.

Anyway, I digress, but sometimes on days just like this one things go wrong, with either your own or a family member’s computer and since you’re probably (like me) one of those in the family or circle of friends that knows more about computers than the rest, you’re the one they come to.

I’ve been working with computers for about 24 years now and yet you still find times where you’re completely stumped as to what the problem could be and either give up, throw it out, or find an even smarter tech-savvy person to help you out.

As long as the computer boots into the operating system and has an Internet connection (or you have another Internet enabled and working machine to use) you can probably find helpful answers by Googling the problem, as demonstrated by the following XKCD comic.

But sometimes you don’t have a separate machine or Internet connectivity or Google just doesn’t come up with the right answer. Or maybe you’re fed up at reinstalling the OS over and over again, to no avail.

Well, today on Boing Boing they posted a diagnostic flowchart (well, a set of 8 of them) to help you fault-find computer hardware/software related problems. For most of us who’ve been working with computers for so long a lot of these are part of our own fault-finding processes but it’s still a handy guide to keep and refer to.

Foner Books has a set of interactive flowcharts that can be found here which allow you to click on the various steps to take you to the correct next step/flowchart to help guide you through the process of troubleshooting. There’s even a 30″ x 30″ printable poster you can download here. Or a handy PDF e-Book for you to download and keep here.

I’m sure you’ve seen modded computer cases before – all the hardcore gamers have them, tricked up with silent cooling mechanisms, flashing lights and digital displays constantly giving temperature and fan readings. But you may not have seen modded computer cases that are immersed in liquid for ultra-cooling. 

Puget Systems showed us how they built a fish-tank PC – now Hardcore Computers takes it to the next level with a stylish design and the most powerful desktop components out there. Take a look for yourself.

[UPDATE: 26 October 2008]
I found a review with some great photos on Maximum PC.

I’m not the biggest game enthusiast but when a colleague of mine showed this to me, I was instantly hooked. If you’ve got a PS3/XBox you’ve probably played/seen/heard of Guitar Hero, well this is a free version for your PC (Windows/Mac/Linux compatible).

You can download the version of your choice from the official website.

 It turns your keyboard into a guitar and you can play various levels of the 3 tracks they’ve included with the game. There’s even a song editor built in so that you can make your own songs if you like.

It also supports importing of downloaded songs, and even importing Guitar Hero songs. If you do a quick search on YouTube you’ll even find videos of people that have created a guitar by modifying a keyboard completely.

It takes a little getting used to in the beginning (and the tutorial is very funny) but if you’ve played guitar before you’ll pick it up pretty quickly. You use the five function keys (F1-F5) for pressing down the strings and the Enter key as the pick. I played it for the first time last night and was hooked that I played (without realising) for about 2 hours after everyone had gone to bed!

Go ahead, try it out and shred some frets!