Year: 2013

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 ? 🙂

Sounds like far too much fun!

I’ve discovered a new game …

I should really finish off one of these games sometime shouldn’t I ? Maybe. Some games I play to death, some games I’ll get to a certain point and stop playing because I hit some kind of wall. Sometimes that wall is a step in the story, a natural break point where you stop and take a breath but don’t go back.

I should finish off the Shadowrun game some time, it was well worth picking up and I enjoyed it up to the point where that natural break happened.

The new one is World of Tanks and it’s one of those dangerous grind-reward games … You know, the type where if you just have One More Turn, you’ll get closer to unlocking the next shiny. World of Tanks is one of those.

It’s an online tank simulator. Think first person shooter like Call of Duty or the other famous name games (which I avoid) but instead of being in an unrealistic body with unrealistic ability to run, jump, twist and otherwise perform spine defying movements, you’re in a tank with a very definite rule set for what it can do :

The gun turret can only turn at a certain rate
It takes a while to focus in the aim
There’s only so much power in the engine so you may not be able to go up the hill you just came down
You only have limited view

And all sorts of other rules like that. It’s 15 a side, with battles lasting a maximum of 15 minutes. Many of the maps offer lots of cover to lurk in and you’ll need to hide there to survive to shoot. It’s compelling gameplay and I’ve been enjoying it a lot, even though it can turn into a bit of a grind to get the First Victory Of the Day for all your tanks.

In fact, I’ve enjoyed it enough to pay a bit of cash on it … It’s a free to play game but you can give real cash for gold which can give you in game advantages or a bigger garage that holds more tanks.

But don’t just take my word for it, here’s the video that sold me on the game. It’s by Duncan of the Yogscast. He’s not the best game commentator but it showed how much he enjoyed this one and I wanted to check it out.

If you want to check it out too, I have a newcomers invite code I’m willing to pass on … (if you’re reading this in a month, that code will have surely gone!)

Now … I need to grind a bit more to get closer to the Panzer IV and legendary T-34.

First day back on the job today.

I’m not healed yet (not by a long way to be honest) but I’m in better condition than I was early last week. I’m managing to leave some of the really bad bits alone (but still harassing others) and they’re responding by being a little bit tougher. It’s still really easy to break the discipline and set the healing back, although the bad bits are recovering better too when I do attack them.

But work’s not all about me wondering whether or not I need to hide bits of me away.

I was hoping I’d get a chance to give a Big Grin ™ to someone special today but she’s still not feeling well. Not back yet. Grinning at the canteen girls just isn’t the same as the challenge of trying to invent something suitably daft to make someone smart smile.

Today was actually pretty good, the first day back is always a catch up day and I think I’ve caught up fairly quick. Tomorrow’s job will be to start to analyse one of our key documents to see how we need to update and refine it. But today was more pain free than I’ve had for a while. I still have pain issues but the hip seemed ok.

Happy days.

I was feeling good enough to do a Mall run as well tonight, although I did have ulterior motives :

Replacing worn out trousers,
Grabbing more cash

And I happened to walk out of there with 5 more blu-ray movies (Willow, ET, John Carter, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter and Real Steel) and puzzlement about one of the Russians who work at the KFC asking how I was.

Oh – games … There’s a youtuber out there called Totalbiscuit. He’s dangerous. I blame him for me buying the new Shadowrun Returns game. It’s actually pretty good, it’s an isometric* role playing game that concentrates on story over complication. I’ve been impressed with it so far, although it’s starting to outlive the boredom factor.

*(isometric – flat 2d world but projected on screen as fake 3d. Like if you put a picture on a coffee table and then looked at the picture from the side and above)

The look of the game works pretty well and harkens back to the old days of computer role playing games. Modern games make the mistake of making everything 3d and rendered on the fly. That’s good from a feature point of view but doesn’t work so well from a game point of view.

Baldur’s Gate – was an isometric 2d like Shadowrun Returns. Sold like hot cakes. Predrawn backgrounds made it look sharp.
Neverwinter Nights – was fully 3d but in the isometric style. Just didn’t look as good as Baldur’s Gate, it wasn’t as popular.
Neverwinter Nights 2 – fully 3d set up like a shooter. Ugh. Nasty. I didn’t like this one at all.

Compare that opinion of 3d to the telly and movie world and … They’re moving away from 3d as well. Audiences see it as a gimmick which just doesn’t add anything of value. And when we look at Shadowrun Returns, it’s gone back to old style 2d on predrawn backgrounds and … it looks good plus you can concentrate on enjoying the story instead of fighting the game.

What else have I been playing ?

I discovered World of Tanks over the weekend … I’ve known about this one for a while but hadn’t tried it. Opinion ? I’m really impressed. I’m hooked already. But I want to save talking about this one for another post.

And as a close :

That was the latest Kerbal Space Programme attempt. Yes. It’s an abomination. And the first attempt at a launch saw it blow over in the wind and snap in the middle … Oops.

Been trying to chill out and generally get into better condition than I have been …

I’ve not been out the house since leaving work last Friday. There’s been a couple of reasons for that, the biggest being England winning in the Ashes again 🙂 2-0 up with 3 games to play. Hopefully at Old Trafford in Manchester, they’ll get the third win to secure the series victory.

To be honest, that was the plan, to chill out and repair – I think I’ll need to head out tomorrow though because I ran out of cornettos tonight.

Yep. There’s a new critical thingy that determines when I go shopping … The recent heatwave has a lot to do with that though. It’s made me rediscover a taste for minty cornettos. Popcorn is actually going away from that list of critical thingys because I can’t find the best kind any more (Tesco have stopped selling it in favour of stuff that’s just not as good).

Thinking about a centre of Bristol run soon though, one thing I watched last weekend was the early stage of the Eve Alliance Tournament (online spaceships game) and the incidental music being played in the breaks included two tracks that attracted the attention : Addicted by Waldeck and Booty Swing by Parov Stelar. They’re both similar to Caro Emerald and I think I could quite happily listen to them. They’re cost prohibitive on Amazon though (above £10 for a cd) so I’ve not bought them yet. There’s more places to hunt them in Bristol.

When I do head out though, I want to be reasonably sure I won’t leak too much. The heat hasn’t helped there (spectacular thunderstorm out the window a couple of nights ago). It seems like when one leak closes down, another leak will start up again. But I think it’s slowly repairing. I need to try and get to the doctor’s though tomorrow or Friday because I think I’ve adjusted to what I have been using and it’s now hindering.

But I don’t want to talk about the skin condition. It helps to distract away from it so :

Gaming – I collected a few more games over the sale period :
Dishounored – a steampunk stealth game where if you go killcrazy, bad things happen. Should be good.
Blood Bowl Chaos League – American Football with bloodthirsty orcs, elves and demons
Football Manager 2013 – don’t ask 😉
Europa Universalis III – black hole depth war sim (I found a code and will probably not actually play it)

The latest Steam sale was actually a bit disappointing. I only ran for 11 days and the scope seemed a bit limited compared to what we’ve seen before.

I was hoping to have a look at World of Tanks too but the invite code I have for that expired long ago. Meh. I’ve enjoyed Blood Bowl, although it has a habit of doing things like have your guys fail to pick up the ball on every turn of an 8 turn half, only for the enemies to pick it up on the first attempt.

Kerbal Space Program is due another look too because it just got updated.

There’s one field of rocketry which we’ve never attempted, the Single Stage To Orbit. This is where you have a true spaceplane which can achieve a true orbit without dropping anything off. The retired space shuttle doesn’t count there because it has separate boosters and a separate fuel tank which need to come off before it can come back. We’ve looked at it, with lifting body prototypes like the X-33. But we’ve never been able to combine fuel, airframe and engine to make it viable. The Skylon concept is very promising there.

It’s something I’d like to try in Kerbal Space Program, especially as I haven’t built any planes in that yet. I’d also like to try flying without that cheaty autopilot mod and I’d like to take a rocket to one of the other planets.

I’m also getting closer to acquiring another laptop … I’m not buying yet because there doesn’t seem anything out there that meets the requirements at a suitable price. But one of the Dell Inspiron 15 R SE laptops looks very curious :

Good – it’s about the right size, has enough memory and has a 1080p screen.
Bad – £530 is above what I want to pay.

And I don’t know enough about Dell consumer laptops to say whether it would still work after 6 months or if I’d have another HP piece of awfulness on my hands. (And I do believe work is changing from reliable Dell machines to HP – uhoh). HP used to be very good, my first printer and first laptop were rock solid. But then a politician got in charge and … my next printer broke early and my second laptop was dying inside 6 months. On the other hand, Acer have been very reliable. We’ve had two failures : a terminal software breakage on my dad’s (which we could have repaired by taking it back to factory restore) and a power socket failure on my mum’s netbook.

That’s something else I’ll look at in Bristol, laptop selling people. But I think the laptop is on hold for  another few months until the next generation comes through. I suspect the time to buy was a month or so ago.

I’ll close out there.

I’m a bit better than I was last week. I’ve had some sleep (although not much over the last couple of days) and the leaks are closing up quicker. The week seems to be flashing by actually. Oh – I’ve been listening to lots of music too.

PS Also been avoiding wall to wall news coverage. Yep. It’s good news and watching the Changing of the Guard yesterday had me fascinated but. Wall to wall fixation on a single story is unnecessary … Understandable in some cases but not this one, I’d welcome it in the winter though when we’re crying out for intel on whether the snow will stop us getting where we want to go and our news people consistently let us down there.

Still very warm over here.

Started my summer break today 🙂 It’s only a week, much more than that tends to leave me bored and eager to get back in to things.

I’m hoping to get some healing in this week. It’s been delayed but the new shoes have conspired with the skin condition to have my ankles get damage … And not wearing socks for a few days will give those patches a chance to recover without the disruption that socks cause.

And to be honest, these are days for staying indoors in the shade and not wearing much … (apologies for any mental images you may have been inflicted with there !) :

(click for readability)

That’s Metcheck’s prediction for the next few days. Hot today, hot tomorrow, oppressive with chance of rain on Monday and potential light storm on Tuesday. When the weather does break, it’s going to be spectacular …

Heat does two things to air – it gives it energy plus it allows it to carry more moisture. What can happen is that hot air moves over the sea and draws up water vapour. Because it’s hot, it can carry lots of water vapour. When that air moves over land, hills make it cool down and as it cools, it can hold less water vapour. If “Water vapour held” is more than “Potential held”, it falls as rain. That’s why you get hill fog.

But what causes the most spectacular stuff is where you have a body of hot, wet air hitting a cold front (the edge of a body of cold air). The hot air bounces up and over the cold air and cools as it rises.

The result ? Tall, dark nasty looking clouds with a high potential of thunder and lightning. All that energy has to go somewhere.

The real world result – time to hide for a couple of days while it’s hot. It just so happens that :

Cricket is on the telly,
Open championship golf is playing on iPlayer on the desktop

Two big events. I’ll not be too interested in the golf today (the important stuff happens tomorrow) but I’ll listen because of that “story” thing you get in sport. In the cricket, Joe Root’s in at the moment and I’m hoping he can answer the critics with a big score.

But … Cricket + Golf = Recipe for sleep or eyeballs being torn out.

I have plenty of book in reserve.

PS None of those books are in meteorology, although I hope I remembered something from Geography lessons of 20 years ago !

Remember I had a mini whinge the other day about the heat ?

We’re in the middle of a heat wave at the moment in Blighty. The temperatures aren’t as say, Mediterranean or Middle East but we tend to suffer more here when the temperatures go outside the bounds of what we’re used to.

Because we’re not hot all the time, or freezing all the time, we have to design everything to both. Our bodies get used to both conditions too. One bit of craziness from the news was that homes upgraded with green grants to help insulate them in the winter are near uninhabitable now in the summer. They’ve gone so far towards being good for the winter that they’re deadly in the summer.

This house doesn’t really do well at either, it’s cold in the winter and traps heat in the summer.

I could do something about the winter chill by getting double glazing but to be honest, it’s not great for either summer or winter but both ends balance out. I have an issue where if I left my ground floor window open, I’d definitely get visitors of the feline variety. If I got double glazing, it would trap even more heat.

With regards the skin condition, it’s both a good and a bad.

The worst patches don’t appreciate anything touching them. So the hot weather is giving me a chance to indulge those bad patches without me getting too cold. (Don’t try to picture it ! I wouldn’t wish that image on anybody !). And the bad patches are, on the whole, gradually retreating.

The bad is when I have to go out in the heat. The sweat is damaging the half healed bits. That’s why I’m really appreciating being allowed back in the car park, air con is good, 40 degrees C on the bus = nasty.

I do however, have an answer for that too. Be lazy ! Ok, lazy is probably not the right word, it’s more like doing everything more slowly. Not charging around everywhere. Drinking plenty of fluids.

That’s working a bit, although I have been limping around today because lack of fluids lead to cramp. Meh.

I’m not playing any cricket at the moment. There’s been opportunities to play but the outside of my right knee is still too torn up to permit me using knee pads. The outside damage level is too high right now to risk it.

I’m looking forward to next week’s skiving week 🙂 It’s been a couple of months since I had a break so I’ve started flagging again. There’s still a few fairly critical things I need to knock out though before I can clear off on Friday :

Updating and issuing an early draft of a comprehensive test plan (it’s grown 20 pages to 110 since I started messing with it)
Updating one “how much we doing now” acceptance summary
And making another “how much is left” acceptance summary

We’re getting to the end of the old project’s first phase (end of an era!) and I’ll be getting more involved in it again soon. We need to see just how much work is needed to be done though before it can be all signed off as Job Done.

And looking back on it, it can only be considered as (cue up da Wurzel accent) : Proper Job.

We’ve made some awesome bits of kit, with me trying to harvest all the good ideas from how we did it for the new project so it doesn’t get forgotten. It’s so far in the future that I’ll either be running the whole programme or someone else will do the meaty bits I’m preparing them for now.

See ? I think my heat management is working 🙂 I’ve stayed a bit cooler and it’s allowed my brain to go racing off and Do Useful Stuff.

I’m not expecting to do much next week, I’ll make a start on cleaning the house up for one. To be honest, I don’t Need to go anywhere next week (trip to Lexus garage is needed) but I’d come running if the right person/people asked. Always willing to lend a friendly ear for people who need to talk through stuff. Not going to buy a laptop just yet, it seems more and more like they’re waiting for the new generation to come through.

Meeellltinggggg … But managing :-).

Another one from the Facebook feed :

Made me laugh 🙂

I’ve been indulging that Inner Geek a bit lately. Not as much as it could have done but still a little too much here lately …

Aside – Oh my – the Ashes highlights from 2005 are on and they just showed one of the England players get hit on the head. Instant bad memory flash there … This time it was a ball that bounced more than expected and the batsman pulled his head out of the way when he aborted the shot. The ball missed the helmet … and hit him below his ear. Ouch. My memory is from when I got hit in the same area, except I didn’t move my head so much (less time cos it was an edge).

It’s the scary when the difference between marbles being rattled so much that the batsman didn’t last long (England guy was out very soon after) and me being able to shake it off enough to bat through the remainder of the game isn’t much of a difference. It was about 1 inch in this case. So if I’d been a bit better in my evasive move, I may have been knocked out instead of taking it on the helmet.

Scary …

Back to the Geek !

I’ve done a few Kerbal programme posts lately … I like doing those. It lets me remember the hilarity that comes from watching a rocket launch with trepidation and wondering how long the rocket will survive before it pancakes itself. But … writing the text doesn’t carry that through particularly well.

If you’re interested in rockets, there’s still a few hours of Kerbal Space Programme being on sale on Steam and I’d heartily recommend it. It’s not finished and has a lot of holes in its physics engine but … games are supposed to be fun and this one can be hilarious.

I don’t think I’ll be doing many more KSP picture posts – although tell me if you enjoyed them, give me a challenge or an idea for something to do in the game and I’ll give it a crack. Feedback is good 🙂 I like doing the music posts too but I don’t know how many people click the links to watch the videos.

Talking of music – next up on the iTunes is … Wurzels ! Seriously ! And then some Edie Brickell (Volcano) as the next album tomorrow night.

Today was a good day. And I think I’ve found something I have to avoid for a while :

Minstrels !!! NOOOO !!!!! Minstrels are life for early morning driving sessions (even when you forget the pack you bought for the drive – doh). But after having a couple of packets last week, my knees and some other bits flared up again. Oops. I suspect the carnuba wax shells as that shares a commonality with Pick N Mix.

Yep. Flared up followed by steady improvement. Condition’s been “not bad” today. I’ve had a couple of bad bits but the visible bad spots have been under control. And that does good things for the confidence.

What else does wonders for the confidence ?

People giving you a wanted feeling. Definitely got that from this afternoon’s meeting. The old project is struggling really badly now to get the people it needs to finish the job. It’s nearly all done for the delivery step and is mostly in support now. But there’s still some work needed to finish off the delivery.

And the people looking after delivery seem to want me around. It’s a good feeling, although the pressure is there to justify that trust. Oh and at the same time I’m harvesting processy type knowledge to help out the new project.

Last bit – Pacific Rim = awesome.

It’s the best Big Robot Movie this year. What’s that ? It’s the only big robot movie this year ? Might be true. That doesn’t stop it being pretty awesome. Definitely enjoyed it.

PS I lied about the last bit – wanna give a wave to a special little lady, I’d have let you know about Pacific Rim but didn’t know if it was your type of film …
PS2 If there’s one music video link you click on from here, make it this one. Classic !