Month: September 2013

Just spotted on the Facebook feed :

Firefly was always an incredible series, well worth watching if you missed out. It’s very sad that it only got 14 episodes plus a movie.

Very shiny.

I’m getting my attention drawn to new shinies. I think I’ll forget about changing the car, although the new IS300h is Very Shiny. It’s just not something I need. My Lexus CT already does everything very well with a sense of style there too. The IS is faster but that’s probably the only major advantage that would see me change. It’s bigger (not necessarily a good thing) and costs more.

So I think I’ll be resisting the temptation to change what is the best car I’ve owned and aim for a few years of payment holiday.

What shinies am I looking at then ? I’m seriously considering buying a Macbook.

I’m getting much closer to requiring a laptop change. The keyboard on this one is the major bugbear. It’s suffered greatly due to my skin condition. But at least it’s still chugging along, the HP I had before ate something which killed the fan and the design of the HP means that it would have needed a full strip and rebuild to change a £10 part.

The current laptop is an Acer and they are pretty solid on the build and design. That’s despite what one reviewer I spotted said, he described Acer as “cheap”. Yes, you can combine “cheap” with “solid” if you’re smart about the design. I’d have another Acer laptop if they supplied them with an adequate resolution. (720p doesn’t cut it for me – I want closer to HD)

The laptop target has steadily gone up and up in terms of the price I’d need to look at. Originally, I’d thought that £500 was too much, seems like inflation (and perhaps fashion) has affected the cheap value laptop market. Anyway, the prices have shifted that much that it puts the likely price in Macbook range … And I’m tempted. I could get a refurb Macbook Air 13.3inch with a 256GB SSD for just under £1000.

That’s still a lot of cash but – Oooooo shiny. And it’s not Windows 8.

We shall see on the laptop. But – closing out with more Shininess :

First day back at work today and it was a hectic one. I had barely enough time to catch my breath and check for super urgent emails before disappearing into a meeting from 10am to almost 2pm. But. I did get the chance to check in with someone very special before that.

And I got cake. And a grin as I was walking back to my desk. And, even though I had to neglect my cake to disappear off to that meeting, a little taste of awesome when I escaped for lunch.

And I now have that memory of the taste coming back – absolutely lush. The cakes were made for a birthday – I passed a message over on Facebook but those cakes earn another : “HAPPY BIRTHDAY !” for someone who turned 21 again last Monday.

Good day today. I think it was productive, hopefully we’ll get a chance to buy what we were talking about. Combined with a chance to have a little catch up with someone special and polish it off with truly awesome cake.

Yep – good day, if only all the leaky bits of me would stop being leaky !

Back home again now after a sojourn away in Cornwall.

Decent week 🙂 Lots of chilling out with a couple of special friends. To be honest, I’m still not back to what I should be but it’s either getting closer or I’m getting a false picture because of the antibiotics. I was still leaking for the first few days, had trouble sleeping for all of it (I don’t sleep well in unfamiliar conditions) but on the whole, I’m a hell of a lot better than I was a fortnight ago.

So what did we get up to ? Firstly :

Yep. There was an escapee who came back with me. He’ll be my avatar for the next little while, although he’ll be escaping again to be a raffle prize in a couple of weeks.

Here’s the town where we stayed :

It’s a place called Looe. Our cottage was on the hill up above. Good place – clean air, lots of quiet. Having sporadic internet access was a downer, although to be honest I probably spend too much time on the interwebs anyway. Oh – the Tom Sawyer pub was in easily walking distance and I think all 3 of us would happily recommend it, although the bright and breezy Kianna from the hotel next door wins the waitress of the week prize.

Sunday saw chill out and a walk into Looe, Monday was supposed to be a bit of an indulgence for me seeing a ship but I wasn’t feeling too great. I joined the others for a walk around Polperro instead. I was soooo close to buying a few trinkets to bring back with me but that not feeling great caught up with me. Meh.

Crash time … I can go into a kind of survival mode, where my energy ends up at its lowest level. I guess the lack of sleep catches up. I’m still capable of doing stuff in survival mode but I clamp down and shuffle my resources into keeping going. I go quiet and desensitize. But I’m still able to concentrate on what I’m doing, even if the ability to make decisions like “Shiny !!! Buy now” is fuzzy.

Ok – Polperro Monday, chillout at Looe on Tuesday. We had a look at more of the town on Tuesday and came away with more loot.

Wednesday, Wednesday, what was Wednesday … (Quick peek on Facebook !) Ah ha ! Plymouth.

We got away with it on the weather fronts for most of the week but Wednesday in Plymouth was a tad different. Very wet. We hid in the National Aquarium for a while before paying a visit to the Hoe Memorial. While we were there, HMS Somerset swept by while doing a boat transfer :

(Ship name brought to you by the magic of the AIS device!)

Thursday was more chill out. I’m not the only one of us who’s suffering at the moment. I appreciate the chill out days. Friday saw us heading to the tip of Falmouth for a look at Pendennis Castle. When you go to see castles in the UK, it’s rare to see them in as good condition as Pendennis. It started as a fort in the 1600s to protect the coastal approaches from foes like the Spanish Armada and saw life in World War 2 as a coastal battery.

It’s well worth a look if you find yourself nearby.

So – that’s my week. I’m sure I’m leaving lots out. Like the books I read through and how the car handled the roads (lots of hills).

I’m in a lot better condition now than I was, a lot of the damage has repaired and some of my skin is now ridiculously smooth, despite me not using the recommended moisturiser. I’m still needing to be very careful though because I have a bad habit of damaging it myself. I urgently need to ditch that habit. I’m also hoping that it’s not yet another false dawn, where the antibiotics hold the infection at bay until they run out.

Back to work tomorrow – which means banter with the canteen staff over teacakes and cookies. Catch up with the work people. And hopefully a chance to catch up with some very special friends.

You know how the rest of that one goes don’t you ?

It’s just for a week and it’s in a place that’s far more hospital than the place where that famous (infamous?) saying was coined.

I’ve got a good little support group down in Bristol and the core people in it like to get away from things every so often. That time’s come again, with 3 of us heading down to Devon for a week. No work*, no laptops, just getting away from the stress of modern life (us and our First World problems ? lol) and chilling out for a bit.

*I say no work but I’m highly likely (95%) to make the hop across to one of our offices on Monday. It’s one I’ve never visited before and they have Very Shiny Kit there. And people I’ve been needing to talk to. I’m not seeing that as work though, I really enjoy the visits where we get to see kit and that’s coming from a “what’s there now, who’s new, what do we need next ?” point of view. They’re really useful visits from a learning and connecting point of view.

I’m hoping I can recharge the batteries. They’re sorely depleted at the moment from :

a) Skin problem
b) Breathing problem

The skin problem is one that readers here will know far too much about. I’m pleased to say that since the doctor visit, I’m back to mostly Pasty White Petey Goodness again. The condition under the surface has improved immeasurably. I just need to give my arms a chance to catch up.

However – I’ve seen this kind of improvement before, it comes with the antibiotics. I’m just hoping that it stays cleared up after the antibiotics run out.

Breathing problem is something new – I find it very hard to sleep with even the slightest wheeziness. And I appear to have run out of Benedryl antihistamines (oops). I think it’s from a cold, which I always seem to run into at the start of a leave period. Plus someone at work had bugs … It’ll come right.

The breathing is ok for me to be singing along to Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside album coming from the laptop.

Yep. I’ve already packed up enough that the LittleWhiteBox that links laptop to hifi is already in a bag somewhere.

Aye – you read that right. I actually did some packing last night instead of leaving it all to this morning. I must be feeling ill ;-). There’s still a little to do but that’s the stuff that has to go in bags at the last minute (medicines) that you always forget.

What’s the plan other than an immense amount of chilling out ? Cos being cooped up for too long gives you cabin fever :

Hunt for music
Hunt for books
Hunt for more t-shirts

Basically wanders around the local tourist trap areas and hunt for shinies.

I’ll put in a few updates through the week because we have a couple of methods of getting mobile access open to us. But I’ll close up with two things :

Happy Birthday to a very dear friend ! This message is for Monday …
And a hearty see you next week. Or in about an hour if you’re coming too (2 of my regular readers are coming)

Lol – the rest of the laptop market sadly appears to be catching up to Macbooks.

The cheapest 17" laptop in PC World is £600 (it's a Lenovo which I don't have any quality info on) and the 15" laptops have inadequate screens.

Don't buy a Mac… Don't give into the overpriced hype!!!!!

I went to the doc’s again yesterday.

I know, I know, it was much overdue. But I am terrible at doing things that benefit my own health.

The result (and without going into too many details !) was :
More diet* pills
More goop
Even more goop
Less messiness on my legs
And more pasty-white goodness coming back

Yep. As is usual for going on the diet* pills, I’ve seen instant improvement in my condition. Trouble is though, every other time I’ve been on them, the condition worsens again after I run out. We shall see this time around, I’m looking more into tracking the allergies this time around. I have a blood test coming there too, will be curious to see what the result is.

It’s just in time too, the weather here has turned colder …

* They’re not actually diet pills. They’re antibiotics. However … with a 4 times a day, 3 hours no food each time pattern, they may as well be diet pills. Hey, it’s a good discipline to have, it works out to 3 meals a day (with the 4th being while you’re asleep) and a cutting down on the all hours grazing on junk.

So that’s me improving, hopefully it’ll stick this time.

Next up – work. Oh dear. We’ve been “tech refreshed”. Note they don’t say “upgrade”. The base units seem ok at the moment but when they change our systems to Windows 7, as is threatened, they will struggle for memory. This laptop has 3GB of memory and is sitting at 930MB free with Firefox, Outlook, Skype, iTunes and Steam running. If that hits 500MB, Windows complains bitterly and I have to close applications. That shouldn’t happen, there’s a technique called “Virtual memory”, where the memory available to Windows is expanded virtually with applications getting put on the hard disc instead of in actual memory. The new machines have just 2GB.

The big awful though is the screen. We’ve been inflicted with HP Elitemonitor 201s, which have a multitude of flaws :

Widescreen – this is an entertainment setup, not a business setup. Widescreen means less height to work with. For business, a 17″ 4:3 is more useful than a 20″ widescreen, it has more useful area.
Resolution – if it’s a 20″ screen, it should be able to do 1080p. That’s 1080 vertical lines. These can only do 900.
Pixel bleed – this is the really crippling thing. It’s where coloured, lit pixels bleed into the ones next door. We’re usually working with black text on white, so those white pixels bleed onto the black and make the text unreadable.
Update rate – this is where you move things around on the screen and have disorienting effects from the after images.

I’ll see how it goes before seeing if I need a replacement screen. My eyes were misbehaving today, probably due to it being hayfever season still.

I ended up at the Mall yesterday after a day working at home (around the doctor visit). Firstly, if you liked the first 2 Riddick films, the third is worth watching. It starts slow but accelerates into something very, very good. Almost as if they needed to dump baggage from Chronicles (good film, bad endgame). I’d already arranged to see Riddick and wanted to put a couple of fingers up to my condition by getting out of the house (I wasn’t great yesterday, much improved today).

I am sooo close to getting a Macbook. It’ll be a Macbook Air, 13″ refurbished last generation Macbook Air. It just ticks all the boxes :
Enough resolution on the screen
iTunes compatibility
SSD hard disc as a massive bonus
Avoidance of the abomination that is Windows 8

Just one problem – £869. I’d prefer not to spend half that on a laptop.

But … with laptop prices going up in general, it may happen. Especially as the keyboard on this one is getting so much worse.

Haha – it can be great fun sometimes trying to predict what they're going to do.

Always doomed but usually amusing.

Oh, I gave up trying to understand women a *long* time ago. It's just not worth the effort or the heartache.

But not even acknowledging your existence kinda stinks…

I often write about getting Big Grins from people.

Even random people. They’ll spot my weird grin, possibly see me catching their eye and they can’t help themselves but grin back. I like my grin. It cheers people up.

But not everyone …

My last ex, Ravenwolf, works in the same set of buildings as me. She actually works in a similar line of business looking after similar kit, although there’s a world of difference between what I do and what she does. (I’m there to contribute brainpower).

Ravenwolf never smiles back, she barely acknowledges my presence now. That gets me wondering : “What did I do that was so bad that she hates me that much ?”

I dunno.

I believe the break up was fairly clean, although it took longer than both of us wanted to settle accounts (naughtiness from a solicitor who wanted to take business to his new practice). There was a small matter of house equity to split up. I think she wanted me out of the house. But I didn’t want to move, so I bought her out. Yes, I’ve never mentioned it here before, not mentioned it to many people but Ravenwolf walked out of that relationship with a lot of cash. A serious amount of cash. The house had gained enough equity that it was a 5 figure sum.

That was all she cared about, apparently. Getting the settlement. She also walked straight into another relationship which I suspect started a few months before the actual break up. I could never prove that so I never made an issue of it. But I still had my suspicions.

I was similarly angry for such a long time, before dismissing that anger to the place it belongs – not my head. Grudges are a cancer on the soul. They do nasty things to you. They twist you up and eat you from the inside. I have to admit that I’m no angel there but I’ve managed to put this particular hate/grudge to rest.

It really confuses me when people react the negative way. Perhaps the hate has become so much of a habit that she can’t see the good. I like to think I helped her out over the years we were together, although I do know she was sinking deeper into a depression that I didn’t know how to fix.

I have a strange type of empathy, I pick up on what other people are feeling. Sometimes it hits me like an actual blow. Like when someone I care about is hurting that bad, I pick up on it and feel sick to my stomach and I nearly get the tears too.

Other times I’ve had too much coffee and am bouncing off the walls so much I can’t detect any glimmer of it. Then I say completely the wrong thing and upset people. Sorry !

But it did upset me a bit when Ravenwolf and I were waiting in the sandwich queue. I know she could see me but there was no glimmer of a wave or anything resembling friendship or even basic recognition. Come on – she got a clean break with the settlement she wanted and I left her alone after. What’s to be upset about after 8 years.

Life is too short to keep enemies that don’t need to be in that hostile group. That’s the philosophy I applied to her new bloke, who plays for the cricket team I’m avoiding next year (they don’t look after players). I think it shocked him when I took up our cricket based friendship without skipping a beat. Admittedly, I’d had 3 years out of the team to cool down ;-).

I do think my own reasons for agreeing to the split were correct. I was shocked but I too was looking for a graceful way out. I couldn’t see a future in the relationship. I was needing to use my diplomatic skills rather too much to cover up for the partner. And I was running out of ideas for how to keep her out of her depression.

And most important – you have no right to force someone to stay with you against their will. That’s ultimate cruelty.

I’ll leave it there with me knowing that my own conscience is clear and it’s not the reason I’m losing sleep at the moment … (attempt at doctor visit coming again tomorrow)

PS There was compensation for not getting the grin from Ravenwolf. The Judge visited our place today and I got a Huge Smile from her. She was jealous of my hat (it was raining). I suspect a hug may have been coming if she hadn’t been rushing for the train …

Ok,

Been toying with this idea for a while and someone at work prompted me into it by telling me how much one of their contacts pays for his laptops (£7000 each …). How much could you actually spend on a desktop PC ? I’ll take it back to the real world at the end.

I’m setting three rules for this one :
Everything has to go into just the one box
It has to be air cooled*
Bits that don’t really contribute anything get left out

*Water cooling is a genuine option for PCs these days (and I’d like to see it come back for the kit we buy at work too!) but for domestic PCs, I think it’s more trouble than it’s worth. It still needs fans, it needs a pump. Expensive air cooling can still do a similar job.

All these prices come from Novatech UK. I trust these guys, they’re cheap, have a good range and most important, they’re just down the road from where I live.

Before going into the gubbinsy bits, every PC is built on a foundation. The box has to be big enough to fit everything with lots of room for cooling air to get around it. The power supply has to be meaty enough to do the job.

Foundation –
Case : Zalman Z11 Plus : £53
Cooling : Zalman CNPS12X Ultimate Performance : £66
(honestly, a cooler that costs more than the box is Silly – £40-£45 is a target price for a cooler, just make sure it has a BIG fan. Big fan = slow fan = peace & quiet)
Optical drive : Pioneer blu ray writer : £62
Power supply : Corsair Professional AX1200i : £269
Total – £335

I like Zalman bits. I’ve used them for a long series of desktop PCs. Never used one of their cases though. The power supply is incredibly silly but the most important rule in PC building is : “Never, ever skimp on the power supply”. The power supply has to be strong enough to support what you put in the box, plus it has to be resilient enough to not break anything else if it goes bang. This is critical again, one of my older boxes had a power supply expire, which took the cd drive and sound card with it and damaged the hard disc.

I’ve chosen Corsair because of more brand loyalty, my current desktop has a 600W Corsair psu which hasn’t missed a beat. However, I’d be very wary about putting a second graphics card in the machine, I’m not sure if 600W is beefy enough for that. It would cost a more reasonable £60 today, rather than the £270 which is more expensive than a cheap laptop.

Engine –
Motherboard : Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87 board : £360
(target price for a motherboard is £100 – £150 but … this is a Silly PC!)
Memory : G.Skill 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3-PC19200 : £256
Processor : Intel i7-4770k : £270
Graphics : 2x EVGA GeForce GTX780 : 2x £570

Total : £2026

The “engine” is where the most component selection mistakes happen. The motherboard is the core of the “engine”, with everything slotting into it. So a Socket 1150 board will take an Intel “Haswell” i3/5/7-4000 series chip but will not take the older Socket 1155 “Sandy Bridge” chip I have in my desktop. They’re based around a “chipset”, which is code for the glue that connects everything together. I couldn’t go brand loyalty again here (no Asrock in the Novatech list), so it’s a Gigabyte board.

And they take specific types of memory. I couldn’t put the memory from my current desktop into my old desktop, it wouldn’t fit in the socket. Here it’s “DDR3”, with that PC19200 saying how fast it can go. This is silly time again, as you only use that kind of speed if you’re burning out the machine trying to run it far past the design specs. 32GB of PC12800 DDR3 costs £204. Curious … memory has got more expensive …

Storage :
SSD : 2x Crucial M500 : 960GB : 2x £470
Yes. You can get solid state device drives with almost 1TB. That’s Nuts.
Bulk storage : 2x Hitachi Deskstar 4TB : 2x 165
Chose the Hitachi because it has the highest rpm. This means a faster data rate and less time to find what you want on it.

Total : £1270

The drives are in pairs to take advantage of something called RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Discs). The setup I’d use is RAID 1 for the SSDs and a separate RAID 1 again for the bulk storage. What RAID 1 does is have both drives containing exactly the same thing. So if one drive breaks, you lose nothing.

And … other bits :
Sound card : Creative labs Sound Blaster ZxR – £190
Cos you want those blu-rays sounding crisp and the only extra noise you want to hear from the gaming is the fans inside the case. Normally, I wouldn’t consider adding a sound card to what’s in the motherboard but – Silly PC rules.
Centre Monitor : Iiyama 27″ touch screen : £613
Left & Right Monitors : Iiyama 27″ 4k screens : £516

Total : £1835

There’s a 65″ Iiyama monitor in Novatech too but … 65″ is kinda intimidating. I’d have serious feelings of inadequacy if I got something that massive. Plus I’d get a terrible neck ache from looking left and right at it. Seriously though, I tried playing WoW on my 32″ telly and gave up quickly because I couldn’t read the small text at the viewing distance necessary to see the screen properly. 65″ would be incredible for the blurays though.

Extra silliness would come from what people would want to spend on keyboard, mouse, steering wheel, joystick. Those have gone into truly Silly territory these days, to the point where I refuse to replace my aging keyboard and mouse because I know that what’s for sale was 1/10th the price 10 years ago. It’s just been inflated to Fashion Victim price levels.

What’s the total ?

A cool £5466 plus £120 for Windows 8 Pro (Win8 to take advantage of the touchscreen). Hurrah ! I can still break £5000 :-). That’s a very silly price though and a rather silly spec. For a domestic gaming machine, the following wouldn’t break the bank :
i5-4670K, one GeForce 760, 8GB Ram, 128GB SSD + 1TB drives, 23″ monitor. Target price £900

I could have hit £10k+ easily (the 65″ screen costs £3800) but there’s a point where Stupidity overtakes Silly. Like getting entertainment format widescreen monitors for the office. WHY ?

Back to reality …

I’m seriously considering a Macbook for my next laptop. They pretty much meet the important bits of the spec (at least 900 lines and iTunes compatibility) and would let me break from Windows. The one problem is cost. There’s a refurbished Macbook Air with a 256GB hard disc for £870. That would fly … and have enough room for my iTunes library. But it’s double what I wanted to spend.

We shall see. Decisions … decisions …

PS This extended post has happily let me avoid England steadily grinding to a loss (it’s not over yet but … 9 an over to win) in the cricket. And it’s got nothing about my health in it ! I’ve talked too much about that lately.