Month: January 2016

New toy, eh?

You know me.

Get my hands on something techie and I will want to investigate what it can do. And that goes for various bits and pieces of kit :

Seeing how the pooters behave when I ask them to do stuff.
This isn’t particularly geeky or non-sensible, problems tend to happen with pooters when you load them up. When the processor or graphics or memory is busy and things get hot (unless it’s Windows, then expect problems at all times). When you’re asking them to use parts of them that don’t often get used. My pooter isn’t actually exercising all of the bits of it that would have made it more powerful than supercomputers of 15 or so years ago. But I do want to know that it won’t fail when I’m in a game or something similar. So I exercise it to see how it will do.

When I build a new one, I’ll also run the various (free!) benchmarks on it to make sure it’s at about the same level as similar machines. I don’t want it to be the best (this involves much tweaking for 0.5% better speed), I just want to be sure I’ve not ended up with something going half the speed it should be.

Enough of that !

Except to say that when you do buy stuff, when you part with cash :

Make sure there’s nothing at a similar price that would do the job way better. (And stay doing the job after the cheap stuff breaks!)
Make sure what you bought does what it says on the tin. (VW diesel people will facepalm at this).

Oh and check stuff out to see what it can actually do for you. Use as much of your bits and pieces as you want to but make sure you’re not missing out.

So me with the iPad, I’m using it for iOS games (currently Astronest has my attention), I occasionally use it for Facebook and Twitter and Messaging when I’m not doing those on phone, laptop or desktop. I haven’t written a blog post on it yet (proper keyboards are better) but I am pondering developing scribbledrawing skills with it. I’ve also been using it for reading Kindle and Applestore books (shop around, Kindle/Apple can be cheaper than paper books). Reflecting back, I’m glad I bought it.

Oh and it has Siri too, which I’ve disabled. (If you haven’t already, ask Siri what is zero divided by zero)

The latest gadget I’ve been geeking over is the smart meter smart meter thing. (And the next one will probably be a combi boiler that I suspect I will get fitted at Easter). It has a real time monitor for how much power is being used. And it’s quite quick too.

I’ve been looking at it perhaps a little too much, seeing how the power requirements change with the various bits and pieces that I have. Let’s see what I can remember :

Resting state – about 4p/hour.
This is with the pooter doing sums on the processor but not the graphics card (no sums available at the moment). It’s with the lowest level of stuff on that I have. So telly’s off, music off, fridge on, all the other stuff you keep on as a baseline like alarm clocks, ovens, microwaves in their resting state. 4p/hour seems ok. Wonder what it would drop to if I stopped the pooter from doing sums.

Music and telly – up to about 7p/hour.
This is how I’m like most of the time. Modern tellies don’t actually take much power. I have a surround sound amp, so there’s lots of individual power amplifiers in there which consume the electricity. But not as much as :

Electric heater on – adds on about 17p/hour.
Although that’s when it’s running. The instantaneous readout will jump up when the heater is heating and fall back to 7p/hour when it’s having a break.

Kettle – adds on a whopping 35p/hour.
Crikey – that’s a lot isn’t it ? But bear in mind that the kettle isn’t actually going to be on for long.

There’s a bunch of confusing units for energy, which all come from pretty much the same source. Pure energy is measured in Joules, with Joules/second being the unit of power, otherwise known as the Watt which you’ll be familiar with. That’s then turned into another unit for energy consumption, the kWh. I.e. how many 1000s of Watts have been used in an hour. It’s just Joules by another name.

The thing to remember though with Energy use is that it’s the kWh or Joules which matter. Yep, the kettle uses 5 times the power of everything else but it’s only on for a very short time, so it consumes far less energy overall.

And it makes a nice cuppa.

It does help having things like energy saving stuff, if only because it means far less changing of light bulbs. (Haha – I rarely change my living room light bulb now, it used to blow far too often with old tungsten bulbs). But don’t begrudge that occasional cuppa for the energy it’ll consume. In the big scheme of things, it’s not using that much and you get a good cuppa out of it.

(I’m still kicking out this cold and some thick soothing hot chocolate is going down extremely well at the moment.)

Watch out for nasties. Having that heater going and keeping warm will hopefully keep you healthy :-).

And …

Cya !

(Hopefully this is a better post than the ones I’ve come out with lately – it’s not just the cold, latent depression has been getting me down too)

Think I need ’em.

This is going to be one of those “How did your day go dear ?” posts where the person asking the question instantly regrets having asked it …

Phew ! Found a thumbnail pic which was better than what I nearly used :

It has been that kind of a week so far since coming back into work. Work’s been fine, it’s just :

Bugs;
Recovering from bugs;
Really unhappy ankles from breaking in new shoes;
Super unhappy legs that are complaining at me for walking them around;
(the muscles think they’re being overworked – it’s a symptom of bugs)
Silly day today.

I had to take a day off work today to support a visit from the electric people who wanted to switch me over to smart meters. Good idea for them, totally ambivalent to it from my point of view.

So today was pretty much wasted due to waiting for someone who turned up at about 4pm in a window of 12pm to 6pm. And I needed to be around. I wouldn’t even have been able to do ballcock fixing because with me up in the attic doing that, I’d never hear the guy tapping on the door. (B+Q didn’t appear to want to sell me what I needed anyway, still need parts).

Ok – stress.

These bugs have been way more noticeable this week than last. Perhaps because when I was being lazy, I wasn’t pushing for strength that wasn’t there cos of the bugs. Back at work tomorrow again and I have two secret weapons … Coffee and Mini Eggs !

Yep. A fix for anything.

Including disasters happening at the same time as the meters were being changed …

Disaster number 2 is easier – I need to stop procrastinating and get the boiler man in ! It won’t relight after the pilot light was extinguished for the meter change. Urg. It’s done this before, I suspect the thermocouple that tells the boiler that it’s safe to light (not overheated) has burned up again. Had that boiler for a while.

Disaster number 1 is fixed but it’ll get me talking about PC bits and pieces. Tonight’s disaster was the power supply to my desktop going *pop* almost as soon as it was turned back on. It was a Corsair CX600 (600W capacity, decent for budget, good make) that was 4 years and a couple of months old. I don’t think it was being particularly stressed. My desktop now has three hard discs and just one moderate power graphics card. Yet the power supply goes bang anyway.

When stuff goes Bang inside a PC, it can be tough to figure out what. The first thing to do is see if anything twitches, anything at all. That means fans trying to start up, lights on the mainboard, things like that. In this case, it was stone dead. (I was also able to test it on an older PC which made noises and shone lights with its own supply).

I’ve had to buy another Corsair supply (a 750W which may support a second graphics card if I ever do that) because that’s all PC World have but they’re definitely off the recommended list now*. When there’s equally high quality competition, you can afford to blacklist certain suppliers if they let you down. And a power supply should not go bang after just over 4 years.

*(a day later and a correction – I’d still buy a Corsair supply, this one failed gracefully. I’ve had 2.5** power supplies fail including the Corsair. A no name one went *pop* and took down several other components with it. The protection circuits in the Corsair apparently kept the other bits in my desktop ok. Thumbs up)
**(the 0.5 was where a fan failed and stuck. These things happen … I resurrected that supply … but would definitely not recommend opening up a power supply to fix it unless you know the big dangers of electrocution that it exposes you to.)

I’m also blacklisting Roccat. I bought a new mouse from them sometime last year to replace one which was wearing out. I think this one is failing already … the middle mouse button (the wheel) seems to be loosening up, I suspect I’ll be mouse shopping again this year.

The last of the current blacklist is Saitek, these people make flightsticks. Trouble is, their quality has declined severely over recent years. That seems to be the way, a company gets a great reputation and then trades on it for years after while quality declines. I used a Fly.5 from Saitek, which inherited the unwanted yaw problem too many people suffer (It turns hard right when you want to go straight). Other people complain about buttons falling off and throttles failing. The Fly.5 was also very difficult to handle precisely around the middle.

Yep. Today has been way tougher than it should have been. But …

Desktop PC is now resurrected with a new power supply;
A few regiments of the Dust Bunny army have been exiled from said desktop PC;
Boilerman visit was overdue anyway;
I have Mini Eggs.

PS It’s always a wise idea to start up a PC somewhere accessible before closing it all up. Guess who had to pull it out of its hole again in order to put in a power lead that had come out …

I’m not really one for new years resolutions.

If they’re that important, I’ll have been following them already. If they’re New Years specials, I tend to forget them by the time I finish my first packet of Mini Eggs.

You know the ones I mean – the I must eat less, diet more, be more healthy resolutions. Being healthy isn’t something for a new year resolution temporary thing, it’s something that evolves over time.

(Note – I have absolutely no idea where this post is going, definite ramble time !)

What I eat has caused me lots of problems that I’m still recovering from. There is a falsehood that says that to be healthy, you must eat from a selection of munchies to cover dietary needs. You do need to cover those dietary needs but they will change according to what you are doing and it’s a fact of life that there are certain foods that some people can’t tolerate. Those differ between people.

For most people, pizza just makes you feel good and get chubby. For me, it does both of those but the cheese sparks off a lactose sensitivty that causes me to make too much acid. Not good when it kicks off while you’re trying to get to sleep.

I used to drink a fair bit of milk while I was still playing cricket – the abuse from running around and bouncing off things meant I needed the calcium in the milk to keep my bones happy. I don’t need the milk so much now (plus there’s that lactose tolerance thing).

There’s an eternal balance of calorie intake vs energy consumed. I have to admit, I’ve been eating too much and not exercising enough. It’s been making me heavier than I need to be.

So I’ll be continuing to keep an eye on what I eat and how I react to what I eat. I’m apparently sensitive to :

Lettuce – it sparked off the major skin allergy thing.
Orange – critical breathing problems – not good.
White flower – brown bread seems fine.
German market Bratwurst – cook your food right !
Hayfever tablets – yep, you read that right.

With all that though, there is a tolerance factor. I can have occasional hayfever tablets when I need them but if I went back to 2x 8 hour tablets every day, I bet I would have the same issues I had before I stopped taking them. And I need to get all those confirmed with an allergy test.

I’m getting healthier overall. My outsides are gradually recovering and healing, albeit slowly and it’s still easy to reverse that healing. I’m shaking off a bug at the moment which is in its 6th day. I’ll be sniffly at work tomorrow but hopefully not for long after. I do need to do more exercise though. My insides are … getting older. But they’re ok. The shoulder doesn’t hurt much at all at the moment and I’m very close to being able to wear the knee pads again that support weak knees.

I do need to get some stuff done though that doesn’t involve me :

Lots of jobs in the house …
I’ve had a drippy ballcock in the roof for ages now – I need to fix that. It’s been on hold while I figure out how to stop the supply to it (stuck tap, wrench applied, tap not stuck now).
Fixing the boiler. It makes hot water but it isn’t very happy about it. The house is heated by an electric fire and the computer. And I’m warm because we’re having an exceptionally mild winter.
Changing the meters. This is annoying. Having a smart meter is … unnecessary from my point of view, especially when it requires that I take a day off work in order to babysit the person changing the meters over.
And lots of other jobs that I think are necessary before I let someone else see this place. (Or the other long term objective of moving onto a boat).

I was also looking to spend some money on the pooter with a graphics card replacement. How come these jobs didn’t happen over the last week ? Having a cold kicking my butt has a little to do with that but it’s also the exhaustion that was building up over the past year. I need my sleep pattern back in order. The graphics card stayed in the shop (well, the warehouse!) due to stock shortages. Plus I’m fairly sure the prices will come down in the next few months and there will be more stock availability. The closest pooter shop to here is either Telford or Portsmouth (similar distances), other than that it’s trusting a £200 item to questionable couriers and having to be in to receive the item.

One resolution for you – if you don’t need to spend money on something, don’t. The old graphics card is still poorly (I suspect it’s why Flash videos are so crashy on this machine) but still supports the games I play (which isn’t actually that many at the moment !) so I can hang on until I want to spend my cash and not spend when the retailers are happy for me to spend it. Spending when the retailers are desperate is the route to discounts

This has been very texty so far hasn’t it …

This holiday’s been :
Restful while tiring – the travel does knock me out somewhat.
Solitary while loved – I’ve been on my own for most of it but it’s always good to see the family and Ben the Staffy.
(There’s been some controversy break out about animal cruelty with a twitch streamer being rightly kicked off their accounts and pics posted online of a cat in a monkey outfit – I don’t think that cat was too happy about that. Ben always gets ear scratches, belly rubs, strokes and a little bit of love in return for photos, especially when I wake him up or he notices while resting – he’s a loved dog)
Illness and recovering – my outsides are improved but it’s been annoying being affected by the cold bugs.
Presents ! I’ve read Man Plus, enjoyed that. Thank you CG ! It’s the tale of an astronaut subjected to heavy modifications to turn him into a cyborg that can live out in the open on Mars. And I got a game called Darkest Dungeon from the Steamgirl, I’ve enjoyed an early look at that but I’m going to wait until it’s on full release in January before diving into it more.
Lots of music – I reset the library playcounts at the start of the holiday and I’ve managed to listen to 2149 unique tracks (some several times) for 5.1 days worth of music (iTunes remembers and counts). Next album up is Velveteen by Transvision Vamp.
Beardy – last time I left the beard this long was in the worst days of my outsides being bad. My face was so torn up I couldn’t shave. Happily that didn’t last long. My bald patch has fixed (from an injury when I was 12!) but … beards = itchy.
Crickety – England have been playing well in South Africa, I’ve been enjoying watching some spectacular cricket.

Another resolution – I must play more of the games that I pick up in sales. I still haven’t flown my Elite Internet Spaceship since they enabled Planetary Landings. There’s also Alpha Protocol (shooty role play game), From The Depths (build an AI controlled Navy) and Planetbase (manage a colony on a hostile world).

But I do need to do more than just the games. Over this week, I want to get that ballcock repaired, which means a Mall run to get the parts. Not quite as easy as it sounds, it’ll take a couple of days to get back up to speed cos of this cold, plus the road mayhem will continue. I literally can’t drive out of my cul-de-sac some nights due to excessive traffic. I need to turn right into that traffic.

Too many words !

To finish off – one resolution we should all follow is : Be a better person.

This isn’t just being kinder to others, it’s also about not putting off the jobs that we need to do. Because it’s not right to foist those jobs off onto others. That’s one thing about living on my own, if the jobs aren’t done by me, they don’t get done. And I’ve neglected this place a little too much while I’ve been affected by the problems with my outsides.

There are a few places I’d like to go over the next few months :
London Boat Show (mebbe) – starts on Friday. Lots of travel though.
Bristol Planetarium – please someone give me the excuse to go ! 😉
More Comic Con – last year’s NEC Comic Con was magic, mostly due to the company.
And seeing more lovely people.

Cos I do mirror the people I’m around and it’s great to be around lovely people.