Month: August 2013

There’s a few things that I could get ranty about at the moment …

One is the tendency of people at work to ignore instructions like “Don’t use aerosols!”, which occasionally results in our buildings getting evacuated as the fire alarm goes off. Yep. We had another unscheduled 30 minute fresh air break today.

Yep – I’m a little ranty.

Online trolls ! Why are they there ? We’re hearing about these more and more these days. The phenomenon (yep – I said that out loud to make sure I got the right number of syllables) is getting more widespread. It’s emerging from the gaming world and infesting the various overt and underground social media sites. It used to be on usenet newsgroups (an ancient precursor that’s faded away now), where people gave bad advice or just plain abuse.

Twitter seems especially bad for it, from what I see on the Uksnowmap. The UK news is highlighting another social media site right now because comments put there directly led to the suicide of a young lady.

I have only one piece of advice there – if you’re being bullied online, walk away. It’s not like bullies at school who can chase you down. Trouble is, it can be hard to do that as the bullies not only have access to you, they likely have access to your friends too. In Warcraft, I had a few incidents where I ended up targeted (decisions like kicking idiots out of the guild). I could ignore the player, which meant anything they sent me got a generic “player is ignoring you” response and I didn’t see the hateful thing they sent. But it didn’t stop them blabbing my name all over the game’s capital city saying “Iceangel is leaving WoW and is giving all his money away”. Which leads you to getting spammed by beggars. This actually happened once.

So yeah – be careful who it is that is asking you to accept that friend request. Watch your privacy settings. Be aware that what you put on the net can be broadcast instantly by someone else. If you wouldn’t want that to happen, don’t put it online. I’m always very careful what I put here. I’ve only mentioned exactly what my work has been once and I refer to work people with codenames.

Codenames which the Snow Queen always guesses instantly. I think I need better codenames. Or someone just knows how my head works, which should scare her – lol 🙂

(This was going to be a ranty post wasn’t it ? Time to have a go at Microsoft …)

I’m still shopping for laptops … But. I don’t want a Windows 8 laptop. Microsoft have driven their software into the ground lately. They’ve gone down very strange design routes. The latest Office is an abomination of unusability. It’s an obscenity. And Windows 8 is going a similar route. They tried to inflict similar atrocities on future owners of the Xbox One (a Kinect camera always live, always online ? no thanks no stalking please) but the user base quickly rebelled and the announcements got reversed.

How come business doesn’t behave in a similar fashion ? I guess we can’t. We’re locked into a cycle which we’re scared to break because it would mean being incompatible with the organisations we work with. And if we’re incompatible, we can’t do business.

The perfect thing for business computers would be to have Windows XP, tightened up and made properly secure. Keep it compatible with new hardware. Call it Windows for Business and sell it on an annual licence model. Every time the machine looks for a security update, check the product ID against a database and if the licence isn’t valid, lock out the machine. That business model would work.

It’s all about the business model. The current model is that you’d pay a one time licence fee to use the software forever. Trouble is, if it’s as good as XP originally was, this means you have no reason to buy XP+1. So Microsoft broke XP (noticed how you wait for the hard disc more ?) and refused to make New Shiny Graphics (Directx 10) features introduced in Vista available to XP users. They introduced a hurdle forcing you into buying new software. And new hardware, because the new version has massively higher requirements.

We don’t need the shininess that’s in Vista or Windows 7. We certainly don’t need the hostility which is the Windows 8 interface.

Wait – why don’t we ditch Windows and go back to Linux ? Maybe we should.

Another thing about office PCs – we’re getting upgraded (and the spec is a “you’re missing the point” spec) and one thing we’re getting is widescreen format monitors. Ok, I like the Shiny. But. We work on A4 portrait most of the time, not landscape. We’ll work with what we’re given but it’s a bit daft that the requirement has been messed up again :

Desktops with normal hard discs – pointless because all our data is on servers. Give the machines SSDs instead for the same cost and massively higher productivity.
4:3 format (old type) monitors – work well for business use because they have the extra height.
16:9 format (widescreen) monitors – tellies switched to this because it’s good for entertainment.

What are these machines for ? Work or entertainment ? Honestly – give me a work machine that lets me get the job done without annoying slowdowns every lunchtime (when they run the virus checker on our machines that don’t hold data) and keep the entertainment stuff away – it slows the machines down.

I think that’s enough ranting for today. I’m still tempted by a laptop and I know I’m going to end up being forced into Windows 8 territory (unless I spend more than I need to at PcSpecialist or Novatech) but it’s a Want Upgrade at the moment, not a Need Upgrade.

Neat finish ?

I’ve been invited to an event in a hotel in Birmingham in a couple of months. The person inviting me is a beautiful woman. Why am I hesitating ? I could say that it’s because there’s chance for a trip to Amsterdam with one of the gaming crews. It clashes. But it’s more a comfort zone thing.

I think I will head to that event in Birmingham and see if I can break out of that comfort zone. That’s been one insidious effect of the skin problem, it’s put iron fencing around that comfort zone. Like bars.

But – beautiful lady wants me to go to a hotel to meet up (there will be lots of other people going and her permanent bloke will be joining the throng). How cool is that ? Not had that for a while.

PS If it was the Warcraft gaming crew – I’d be a lot more conflicted. They have the Hot Swedish Girls who sing on the voice comms.

Had a mini surprise after coming back from the Mall on Thursday …

I’m very happy with my current desktop PC in that it stays cooler than the last one. PCs are built around transistors (tiny electronic switches) and every time one of those transistors changes state, it makes a little heat. The processor in my desktop is a Sandy Bridge device, with just under 1 billion of those transistors built into something of only 216mm2 in area.

How big is that ? It’s about the size of what’s after the last joint in your little finger. It’s a lot of heat coming from a very small area.

Why so many ? It’s been a while since I’ve been involved in chip design but a “reliable” source (I googled it – lol) says it takes 64 transistors per byte of cache memory. And there’s a lot of memory built into the processors these days to make them faster. There’s actually more memory in my desktop’s processor than there was in my first PC.

Anyway – heat. My desktop sits at around 63-66 degrees C when it’s been doing work for a while. The graphics card was sitting at about 71 degrees C.

2 things there – I keep my desktop doing sums all the time for Seti, Climateprediction and a few other physical and medical science groups. That gives me an idea of the maximum temperatures the machine will be at when it’s under load and from that, whether or not it’s likely to become toast during a gaming session. The second thing is that I run these temperature monitoring widgets to keep an eye on the machine. They’re free from Addgadget.com.

The heat thing is also why I’m looking to change my laptop and move to an Intel. The current laptop runs an AMD processor which normally runs at 2GHz, except when you push it. When it gets hot, it limits itself to 40% speed. So when I’m watching video on it, it overheats, cuts back to 40% and I get choppy, pixellated playback. That’s not good enough.

Going back to the desktop – when I got in on Thursday, the graphics card was running at 90 degrees C, an increase on the norm by 20. That’s bad news. What’s really bad news is that it crashed in only the 4th World of Tanks battle. When this starts happening, it’s usually a sign of Impending Doom. So off I go yesterday to Novatech to buy another graphics card.

It’ll be an easy job he says … it’ll take 10 minutes he says …

First problem – it’s about 2cm longer than the old one. Space is tight inside most PCs, this time the card clashed on the disc drives. So the drives get moved.

Next problem – fire it up … and it can’t see the right disc drives. Oops. Cable pulled out. Modern cables go in easier … which them easier to accidentally pull out. Grr.

And while fixing that, one of the plugs explodes … It literally breaks in half, leaving one half in one of my disc drives. Cue a hunt for pliers.

It’s all gone together ok, a big World of Tanks session showed that it kicks out a 50% increase in frame rate (it’s probably getting processor limited) and no crashes. After a day of soaking the heat in, it’s at 60 degrees C, 10 degrees cooler than the last one was.

Hopefully this will be the last time I open that desktop up again for a while, although it has put thoughts of changing the laptop on hold for a bit.

PS No blood sacrifice this time around.
PS2 Next time you’re looking for something to close out 5 minutes until you want to shut down, open up Task Manager and check the “System Idle Time”. You’ll be shocked at what it says. This laptop has been on for 2 hours 10 minutes today and the System Idle Time is already at 3 hours 40 minutes today. Waitaminute … Divide that by 2 for the number of processors and you get 1 hour 50, this laptop has only done 20 minutes of genuine work since it’s been on and a lot of that will have been updates.
PS3 For the techies – I’ve gone from a 560Ti card to a 760 card, powered by an Intel i5-2500K.

… Something old, something new, something discovered, something expensive (not that expensive), something the same.

Got a few things on my To Buy list at the moment. If you’ll forgive me, this will be kind of an aide-memoire for me so I don’t forget things I want to get !

Something old – already got this one, after hearing Nouvelle Vague on an advert, I just had to get their best of album. It’s similar with Daft Punk, I heard their new album running in a shop and ended up walking out with one of their other albums. I want more. It’s weird, they’ve been around for quite a while but I’ve only just discovered them.

Something new – this will be the Rachel Sermanni album. I’ve been after this for aaaaages, after hearing Waltz over the iTunes single of the week. Gorgeous. There’s also a new KT Tunstall album that I haven’t bought yet.

Something discovered – while listening to the Eve alliance tournament, two artists came over the airwaves – Waldeck and Parov Stelar. Both of them rather different to the norm, both highly interesting. Could quite happily chill out to these.

Something expensive (pardon me if I digress here !) – I’ll get a new laptop before the end of the month. My current one is suffering due to running out of puff early for video (it overheats) and the keyboard has been a victim of my skin problem with the keys now missing keystrokes. It’s done ok for a laptop, it’s a good few years old now. But … I’m looking for something newer and shinier. I have a few points for the new one which are being … frustrating :

I’d like it to be an Acer but have you tried searching their site for specific laptops ? It’s worse than the search system at work (which got disabled if you can believe that).
It could be a Dell – they have an interesting collection on there …
… But I don’t want to be at the mercy of unknown and unstated delivery lead times.
It may well come from PC World, as they have a £100 cashback offer going.
I’d kinda like to ditch Windows …
… But having iTunes on Linux seems problematic
Not many of the 15″ laptops have the display resolution I want.

I’m sure I could get iTunes working correctly, even if I sync devices on my desktop. But there’s a few things like Homeshare which I find essential for backing up my library. It seems crazy that Apple don’t produce a version of iTunes for Linux, as Linux is much closer to Mac OS X than it is to Windows. By forcing people to use Windows to run iTunes, they keep people locked into their main competitor’s product.

I’d have thought Apple would want to try and wean people off Windows by encouraging them to use the cheap alternative to OS X ? Wait … this is the same company that actively stops people from doing Hackintoshes, despite the typical Hackintosh running off a bought copy of OS X.

Apologies – I’m getting on an old crusade there. The next laptop will be : Intel powered with one of the 3000 chips. It will have over 4GB of memory. I’ll hopefully get an SSD speed booster with it. It will be 15″ or bigger and it may have a touchscreen.

Something the same ?

There’s a lot of music coming very soon from :

Goldfrapp – since hearing It’s Not Over Yet, I’ve been collecting. It’s an outstanding cover and the rest of their material equals or betters it. Hoping that Tales of Us is a classic.
Arctic Monkeys – mixed feelings but I enjoy their albums.
Mindy Gledhill – I get the new album on Monday !
Katie Melua – still wondering who’s Shy Boy I am. (there’s a B-Sides album I want too)
Franz Ferdinand – another of the “curious, not awesome but worth a listen”
Morcheeba have an album coming ? (I’m peekin’ at Amazon !)
(I’m sure there’s even more I’ve forgotten)

And I’ll leave it there – I hear the Dell and PC World websites calling …

Sometimes it's even things like you know what you want to say or talk about but you don't know how to say it. And someone else helps out with the words.

It's always helpful to share especially with people who understand , sometimes we don't even know we have to , sometimes we are frightened to open up or just cant and stay locked away and that's dangerous really we all need the compassion to be there to support others and also the wisdom to know when to let go and get the support we need too and not be so wrapped up in our own lives and problems that we can't take a little time out for ourselves and others I'm glad today was a better day and hopefully tomorrow will be too

I must watch those Star Wars films again, it’s been a while.

Mind you, there’s a bunch of blurays that I’ve bought and not had chance to watch yet (cricket season dominates the telly) so it’ll have to wait.

Today saw an Old Friend (actually two, one not so old) come back to work after far too long away. She’s been struggling, which is highly understandable because a huge chunk of the foundation for her world has been kicked away.

Things happen to people. Really bad things. And quite often, we need a little help to recognise that it’s not the end of the world. As long as we have some of that spark, there’s a bit of help. And if we can’t see that spark, someone we know will have a metaphorical match to help start it off again although it may not be obvious who that someone might be. There’s always hope. Even if it’s difficult to see it.

The closest I’ve come to losing hope is actually quite a few years ago (we won’t talk about that) but it’s been coming close again with the skin thing. It’s tough that it’s going one step forward, one step back, with the backward steps usually being my fault for losing discipline.

Relationships hit hard too, in the breaking of them. When my last major relationship broke up, I couldn’t see it (and didn’t want to show it) but I was utterly numb. I threw myself into the online gaming world and into work. I pursued two utterly doomed attempts at relationships and got incredibly frustrated when they didn’t work out.

I was of course kidding myself that there was any chance – but the certain mindset at the time utterly ignored the impossibilities, both in the recognising that it was wasted effort and in the accepting of the inevitable failure. It just led me into a self destructive path which had me descend further into depression. Not entirely sure how I escaped from that – I can’t remember.

Ok – that’s it for my woes, for now at least.

I wanted to talk about a very special little lady who needs all the reminders she can get right now of how great she is.

I’m talking about the person who was the heart of my last team. She knew her little corner of the project perfectly, we could all trust that everything we sent their way would get done accurately and very timely. (And this is coming from a person who gives few chances and will bypass people when disappointed). It wasn’t just the professional aspects though, it was the empathy, understanding and intelligence that kept people (everyone !) coming back for advice.

Yep. If there’s one person who we could have happily kidnapped and brought with us when we shifted teams, it’s this little lady.

Of course those awesome cakes help too.

So there we have it – we persuaded her to come visit my team today (I bribed her with jars !). She seemed a fragile 3 foot tall when she stepped on to our a floorplate and left an apparent 6 foot tall legend again.

One of the bad things about depression cycles is that it can lock away the ability to recognise the good things about yourself. That’s when we need a little help from outside to recognise the value that we have. I hope we helped our little lady with that today, just like the cricket team helped me with it in the last game. I’ll be back next year because of the lift they give me.

It helped me out as well today – my muscles have been complaining and it helps me to have a bit of mental fortitude to deal with that. Being able to talk through my issues properly is something I can’t do with many people (what I put here is the tip of the iceberg). But being able to share the burden of issues that are actually quite similar help us both deal with them.

I’ll leave it there 🙂

Today was one of the better days.

PS I just checked – I have 8 more of those jars begging for some paint :-).

I keep getting posts brewing in my head, being all distracting like at all the wrong times. But when it comes to when I have chance to tap them in here, are they still there ? Nope. Empty head.

Let’s see if I can remember a few of them …

Saturday saw me venture out of the house (didn’t want too, felt gross) to head off to the Lexus garage. I’d been invited to a sales event … So I went along, mostly to gain a bit of intelligence. We didn’t actually talk numbers in the end. I like Lexus. Not just for their cars (which are special) but you’re buying into exceptional customer service when you pay into the club.

It feels very strange to be actively considering changing the best car I’ve owned, only 2 years into owning it. I’m a big fan of my Lexus CT (I’ll say again why in another post some time) but I always knew that it wasn’t quite quick enough to keep me totally happy. It’s quick up to 20-30mph but then the rather anaemic engine takes over the main duty. I always knew something better was coming “soon”. That’s going to be the new Lexus IS. Bigger engine, bigger motor, more toys.

Toy count matters.

But yeah – at no time at the Lexus garage was I pressured into considering going into another Lexus CT. I’ll be back there in 6 or 12 months and the story might be different. The IS300h costs somewhat more though, which puts a dampener on the enthusiasm.

I’ve got a new signature habit at work 🙂

No – it’s not avoiding writing a signature due to my hands wanting to cramp up on me (that’s a serious issue), it’s the hat. I’m still in the Ashes hat I bought from Lords. I’ll wear the hat when I’m outside. It was essential for bus runs because it keeps the rain off. But at least I acknowledge one sensibility, I don’t wear it when I’m indoors.

Unlike another person at work who walks through the floorplate with a cowboy hat on. I think it’s surgically attached …

Ashes ! Good day today in the cricket. This game’s been one of the better games. The pitch has kept things interesting by allowing help for the bowlers while also giving the batsmen a chance. We’ve seen a couple of centuries by the batsmen and a few 5 wicket hauls by the bowlers. I wouldn’t have bowled well there, it needed a faster, bouncier bowler – I was more of a kiss the pitch swing bowler.

Today summed it up well – we had the Tail End Fun Club come out to play for England. You’ll often see cases in cricket where the proper batsmen struggle to do anything while playing defensively. Then the bowlers (the tail end) will come out and smash the ball to all parts. They don’t last long … but they can get enough runs to make a difference.

That’s how it happened today, England’s Tail End Fun Club pushed a difficult target out into “haha you lose” territory. And then the Aussie batsmen come out and start making it look easy … Was getting pretty nervous at work. It was a different story when I got home with the shopping, wickets started falling and England won with a little bit to spare.

Yippee !

I have the highlights on at the moment. Nope. I’m not being sad. I just left the telly on the same sports channel and I’m listening to music while tapping this out.

Oh – that’s an indication of how gross I was feeling on Saturday. Plan A was to go shopping after Lexus and fill the car up with fuel (400 miles on 34 litres). Plan B was to hide and hope my skin would settle down. I have a critical need to avoid stress right now, as stress leads to me attacking the bad bits. But that said, I’ll not hesitate to help out a friend if they need it.

It’s what I do.

I’ve been collecting the music again … Adverts have a tendency of selling the wrong thing when it comes to me. I’ll ignore the subject of the advert and listen to the music. This time it’s Nouvelle Vague with Dancing With Myself. I dunno what the advert was for but a little Youtube surfing later … Hannah Peel was the same, she’s the one who sung Tainted Love on the Corsodryl advert.

And … the highlights just got to the good bit of the cricket, when England started turning over the Aussies. Post time !

That’s a hell of a dark title isn’t it ?

I’ve been rummaging inside PCs again … A mate from work and the gaming world is having issues with his main desktop. It’s keeping him out of Eve, which is a game he adores. So instead of it going to a PC repair man who’d rip him off, I’m taking a peek.

Symptoms :

Give it power, nothing happens (except for case LEDs coming on). This is after a period where it was rebooting and shutting down. If a PC reboots without warning, there’s 3 main reasons :

It’s a work machine and some offensive scumbag has instigated an update that forces a without-warning reboot, losing you the work you’ve been doing. Or
It’s overheating
The power supply can’t supply enough Smoke

Our gadgets don’t work on electricity. This is a myth propagated by the energy companies to make you buy what they’re selling. No. They run on Smoke. Because as everybody knows, if the Smoke escapes from electronics, it will never work again.

It’s tough to work on unresponsive PCs. You need clues to be able to fix the problem and no clue = no ideas. The biggest idea that I have on Luth’s PC is that a case fan is jammed almost solid, so it will be asking for more from the power supply than it should.

Techie note – when playing with the insides of PCs, remember :

Never, ever take an old telly or monitor apart. The new LCD ones, fine. But not a Cathode Ray Tube display. They work by using massive voltages and have energy storage to help out there. Those two together lead to potentially lethal voltages. Don’t mess with that. It can kill you.

Always have the kit earthed. For me, this means disobeying one common rule by having the kit plugged in. (But switched off). 3 pin plugs come with an Earth and using that lead is the most efficient way of earthing equipment. This lets that stored energy drain away safely.

Don’t open power supplies unless you really know what you’re doing … They also have high capacity energy storage to make the output cleaner. This is why I can’t use the power supply in my 2nd newest machine, as I’ve modified that unit … (fan broke)

It’s ok to try and turn fans but don’t get carried away and spin them hard. The same physics that mean magnets in energised coils become motors also means that turning magnets in coils will generate energy in those coils. Without power, there’s nothing keeping the generated charge in check and things can get damaged.

Ok – enough things to remember (am running out of fingers)

I’ve got something for Luth. Instead of trying to isolate the exact problem (it’s going to need a case transplant and a spare power supply to check it out properly), I’ve put his hard disc in my last PC. It’s close to the same power : slightly less cpu, slightly more graphics. And after the usual issues, it seemed happy when I closed it down last night.

Fingers crossed.

Hey ! Where’s this blood sacrifice thing come from ?

It seems like every time I play with the inside of PCs, blood is spilled. The insides tend to have unfriendly sharp edges which get sharper over time. It’s usually a slice to a finger.

This time ? I’m picking up the box to put in the car this morning and OUCH ! Cut the middle finger on my left hand at the tip. You know – the place that goes on a keyboard. It’s ok, the bleeding stopped by the time I got to work. It pretty much stopped before I started driving. It doesn’t arf sting though.

However – it did satisfy one of the tenets of PC maintenance. It can truly be a Black Art.

PS The Skylon spaceplane is touching the news again … Must try one of those in Kerbal Space Programme. Hopefully it will go better than the XK-Wing / ZK-95 Headhunter prototype … that was truly too horrible to post here.

[lol] No thanks. I have far too much to do in WoW!

Think Battlefield with massive guns and no annoying bunnyhoppers bouncing around.

You get idiots and trollers but exploiters seem to be more under control.

Want that newcomer code ? 🙂