After having some frustration over the weekend, I’ve been having crazy thoughts.
Heretical thoughts.
Dangerous thoughts …
Oh and here’s a gratuitous shot of an Internet Spaceship.
Bit dark maybe. I thought I should try out what the new monitor and desk arrangements were like. Now my desk is clear, I can go back to a better posture position having the flightstick where the keyboard usually goes and the keyboard on the top deck.
Yep. More roomy.
It does look a hell of a lot better in flight but most of that is down to new monitor factor. Monitors burn out after a while. With the old Cathode Ray Tubes, it was literal burn out where the electrons being fired at the bits that made colour would burn away those bits that made the colour. Now it looks like burning out of the LED backlight. So a fresh backlight makes the colours all rich again.
Very shiny.
It looked great too as I had the ship flying through space towards its destination. The stars flinging themselves past the ship. Actually, not stars because you’re in-system at this point travelling from the star to the planets. Perhaps space dust immolating itself on the warp field ? Being burnt away by the influence of the shields ? Little Space Fireflies flying along with you ? A case of overthinking on the behalf of the pilot perhaps ? Someone descending into space psychosis ?
Perhaps. It does look good. If a little less consistent on the frame rates because pushing pixels around at 1440p is tough for a mid level graphics card like what I have.
What are these dangerous thoughts I tempted you about ?
I am considering putting Windows 10 on my Macbook.
I know. Absolute heresy. If the MacFanBois here, they will hunt me down, burn me at my stake and before you know it, my head will be on a pike in front of the nearest Apple Store.
Why would I do this monstrosity ?
It comes from some of that frustration at the weekend. Apple devices are getting notorious for breaking when you put updates on them. They appear to be using this to counter falling sales. It’s anti-consumer and Apple haven’t figured out that consumers will desert the anti-consumer sellers after a while when the gloss rubs off. Consumers occasionally get smart and ignore the hype and marketing.
Ok :
Causes of frustration – being unable to run games like Darkest Dungeon on the Macbook. Like Elite. Like Planetbase. Like pretty much any game (there are exceptions that run) on the Macbook. The reason is that I keep it on 10.8.5 so I’m not forced into a downgrade of iTunes to version 11+.
And at the weekend it was getting in the way of me watching the Grand Prix, the cricket and World Endurance Championship … simultaneously. The GP was on the desktop, the cricket was attempting to go on the laptop and WEC was on the telly. Laptop wasn’t playing with the cricket particularly well. One reason is Sky using Silverlight, which wasn’t cooperating with the Firefox browser. Switching to Safari mostly sorted that but … unnecessary frustration.
Reasons for changing :
Windows 10 is actually really smooth. I’m impressed. It’s stable too, I’ve only had one BSOD since switching and that’s definite oddness (it happened after I tried to put the proper graphics drivers on – there’s conflict there somehow). Putting Windows 10 on there would sort out all of the annoying software incompatibility problems.
Reasons for not changing :
Disk space – there is currently 80GB left free on the laptop with all my music … better not clutter it up more.
Money – I’d need to buy a Windows licence … these ain’t cheap and I’m not a pirate.
It’s unnecessary – the laptop’s job is not to play games. That’s why I maintain a good spec desktop.
MacOS X 10.8.5 is actually still pretty good – it’s the upgrades that cause problems.
Pretty sure it wouldn’t talk to my camera any more – there’s a bit of software called Calmain (Canon Camera Access Library) which I can’t acquire.
And the whole thing of it being pretty insane to consider changing the software a laptop runs on. There is so much of the proprietary in laptops that causes problems.
I think there were a bunch more reasons too.
Not those fan bois though. I’ll just shout “Your mother uses an iPear !!!” at them and they will run away crying. Or I’ll show the pictures of Pear computers that were in something I very vaguely remember (it’s an imitation on Nickelodeon) (actually they’re real … wow) and they will run away screaming.
Oh and … Pretty black Cookie Cutter spaceship.
Which you won’t see on my laptop screen due to … reasons. Which aren’t anything to do with me not really wanting to play the game at the moment. I did two trading runs tonight which was probably more than enough. I think I’m kinda burned out on Elite at the moment, it has gone very samey and definitely very grindy where no real progression happens without a lot of work.
That might come back over the next week – I’ve been feeling burned out in general and next week looked like a good opportunity to take a break.
Hopefully I get some rest, repairs and recuperation in !