Tag: geeky

A life of pane ?

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April 21, 2024

5:54 pm

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photography

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Hello everyone,

Picture. Meme. A tortoiseshell coloured cat wearing glasses. The cat is in a sitting down pose on a chair, with paws up on a folded newspaper. The captions are "The face is like a work of art." "It deserves a great frame."

I meant to do a post last week but something happened which meant having to ration the rational thought for a while :

Picture. We're looking at a pair of broken glasses and a dwagon. We see one half of the glasses, with the dwagon in the background holding up the disconnected glasses leg in outstretched paws.

Eek. That happened while I was cleaning the reading glasses while at an off site meeting a couple of Thursdays ago. The optician and me didn’t think it was fixable but they were able to pop me in for a rather emergency appointment on the Friday. And the new pairs arrived Friday two days ago. I could have done with an upgrade anyway, that pair were done during covid times and the mask was making the machine fog up … so the prescription was a bit off.

So what happened there ? The learn from experience wise after the event thing points me towards that join there. Most of the frames in the shop look like they’re made with a bend in the metal or plastic to make that 90 degrees between the lenses part and the legs part. A bend means the metal is somewhat gently formed through that 90 degrees and it’ll keep the bonds between the atoms intact. Those frames were made with a fold, which will break the bonds between the atoms and introduce a weakness that’ll lead to cracking and the fairly clean break you see there.

If you see the metal formed into a U shape throughout the bend, that makes it still more stronger.

So I have new glasses now but for a week I’d gone back to an ancient maybe 25 year old pair which were before my broken nose. I think they’re actually the pair that mean I still have 2 intact eyes, because they withstood the impact of a cricket ball. And I can still read in them ! The misalignment (my nose is still 2mm off centre) leads to headaches though and a rationing of that rational thought.

Pictures. A set of 4, top left showing my red plushie dwagon looking at a comprehensively wrapped and taped cuboid box. Top right, the outside is off and we see dwagon looking at clear white bubble wrap. Bottom left, dwagon is looking at a white box, with a tall camera lens on top. Bottom right. Dwagon is beside camera, with the new long lens fitted pointing upwards and the shorter lens in front.

I’ve had another couple of arrivals and deliveries as well since last time. The Canon R50 did remarkably well at Insomnia, with all of the pictures coming out looking great and most importantly … properly sharp. Love that, people were loving the pictures I was sending out as well.

That’s a big thanks to Geraldine of the MS Maud cruise too, Geraldine was the ship’s photographer and part of the expedition team. Early on in the cruise, Geraldine was leading workshops on how to get great photography pictures out of the cruise. Because it’s not just about the time on the ship, it’s about getting those memories to look at afterwards as well. There were separate workshops for those with DSLR and Mirrorless (like the R50) cameras which I didn’t go to but a couple of tips from the main presentation are things I’ve tried to keep with me … So that’s :

Be selective about the pictures you send to the world. The Insomnia day collected 109 pictures, of which 18 went to the bigger collection on Facebook. That might still be too many for a day :-D. That’s the thing though – people will turn off their attention by picture 25, if they even get that far. With this age of digital photography and big memory cards, take lots of pictures but just show off the best ones. Hold back the mediocre ones or the ones that didn’t quite work.

Composition – it helps a lot to turn on the 3 x 3 grid facility that’ll be in any camera (if you can find it!) Our brains like to see things in certain places in the pictures. The 3 x 3 box grid helps to set everything up for best effect. Maybe that works here …

Picture. We're looking out across a dark grey sea, rippled by waves. Above is a light blue sky, with white clouds dominating. At the horizon, we see the two vertical towers of a bridge that marks the horizon. A faint rainbow can be seen to the right.

Or maybe I need to upgrade my tripod :-). That was from the first little field test of the new lens. It’s a 55-210mm lens to fit the R50 camera. That means it picks up from the maximum zoom of the lens I got with the camera and extends all the way out to get pictures like that of the nearer Severn Bridge between England and Wales. That first bridge is 10km away and you can (on the native resolution ! This is 1/3 height and width) electronically zoom in to see individual suspension bridge cables.

Happy with that, looking forwards to seeing how it does in the cricket at Lords. I took that picture at Portishead’s Battery Point, which has the advantages of 24 hour parking, easy roads to get there and great access to cafes.

Picture. We're looking at the assorted building of a town, clinging to the side of a hill overlooking a very stony beach, with the tide and sea approaching from the lower right.

Good little trip to the sea side, with it taking about an hour for my fingers and eyes to thaw out again. Shoulda brought my scarf :-).

Not sure whether the bridge pic was on the tripod or not but it was a good trip out and test of the new lens. Found some wildlife too :

Picture. We're looking out over a field of light green grass, with centre stage being taken by a black and white bird, looking right. Hedges make up the background.

That’s something we can all do with our cameras as well, with modern ones with so many pixels in the sensors. The native resolution is 6000×4000, that little cut is just the 1078×768 pixels in the middle with it mostly arranged to have Birdy in the centre of the 3×3 grid. The rest of the pictures from the R50 here are the 6000×4000 reduced to 2000×1333.

I might be looking at my tripod though because it was being very awkward to adjust it to the optimal angle. It’s gone a bit stiff and there’s a huge change in angle when you tighten it all up. Perhaps fixable by taking it apart, might be looking at one with a ball joint instead though. That’s one for when I go hunting for pictures of the stars again though, wonder when I’ll get that chance ? (It’ll need a late night trip now – lots of daylight)

Thinking of late night trips …

Picture. We're looking at a collection of five boxes, all different colours with Naked Marshmallow banners and the flavours marked. In the centre, the head of our red plushie dwagon is poking out.

Last delivery – a consignment of goodies from the Naked Marshmallow Co. At the back, there are Chocolate Orange and Mini Egg marshmallows. In front, Vanilla Bean, Candy Floss and Salted Caramel. I’ve gone through the Candy Floss and Mini Egg marshmallows already, on to the Salted Caramel and they are as lush as you can imagine them being. More from Naked Marshmallow, thoroughly recommend them and they still have some last chance sales going.

Link to camping ? I knew I wasn’t going to be in so I opted for the “deliver to pick up”, with the chosen spot being the camping place. (I’m not going to give them free advertising this time). A wonderful recent video discovery has been Wildbeare (youtube link). She’s a lovely person who goes off for camping expeditions and comes out with fun, quick videos to capture the adventures. Hugely recommend giving her a watch, both for the lovely chilled out vibes and also for very honest and open opinions on how the gear does in the conditions she takes the gear into.

They’re inspiring stuff and picking stuff up from the camping place let me evaluate with my own eyes what’s available and what kind of size and weight it might be. Cos chasing those stars is looking like it might need an overnight in a tent in a place where Dodgy People won’t be.

I think I need to change car though again before I think of doing that … as my current physical condition (aka potato from legacies of the condition of my outsides and pandemic living conditions) would mean I wouldn’t want to be too far from transport. And while Red is a lovely little car, it also suffers from only having 140mm of ground clearance and I’m worried I might tear something off the bottom of it on the more rugged roads and tracks.

Time to close out though (10 minutes left in the Imola World Endurance Champ race). Time for pre dinner noms ?

Picture. Our green dwagon is on the right, adorning an apron with "feed me" written on it. To the left, a faintly pink cube of a fluffy looking marshmallow.

Have a lovely evening everyone.

Where I let the geek out with cameras

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February 9, 2024

6:20 pm

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technology

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Hang on, I haven’t done anything rash with money … yet …

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cat, with paw held up to their mouth in a thoughtful looking pose. The caption is "What if that red dot is both particle and a wave?"

We might hit that as we go into what I’m about to launch into … Hopefully not that deep but let’s see how far it goes.

One thing wasn’t making sense to me yesterday with the camera specifications. If a lower f number for the aperture is better, what’s the advantage of getting a mirrorless camera with a lens that goes down to f4.0 over a mobile phone camera that was taking pictures at f1.7 aperture and the little Ixus that was going to f3.6 aperture. Lower number better right ?

And then I realised that I wasn’t talking like for like. The phone camera is the smallest, the Ixus camera is in the middle and the mirrorless camera is a bit of a whopper. Time to look at numbers :

Pixel 4 has 2 main cameras. Camera 1 is 12.2 megapixels with aperture f1.7 and the metadata told me it was a focal length of 4mm with a 35mm number of 27mm (I think they compare everything to a 35mm camera standard). Camera 2 is 16 MP over a 50mm telephoto sensor with aperture f2.4 and a 2x optical zoom. The Northern Light pic would have been with the Camera 1. Oh and the resolution is 96 dots per inch with each pixel being 1 micrometer (0.000001m) so the sensor will be 4mm across.

(note to geeky tendency readers – run a check over numbers as you do them to see if they make sense. A 27mm sensor in a phone doesn’t feel right, a 4mm sensor feels right)

The Ixus 265 has a 15.2MP sensor with 180 dots per inch resolution. The focal length is quoted as 4.5mm to 54mm (the lens comes in and out on a motor) for 35mm numbers of 25-300mm. The f numbers for the aperture go from f3.6 to f7.0. It does actually have 2.5 stop image stabilisation … (Spec sheet link) The sensor is 1/2.3 inches which is apparently 6.16mm across making it 50% bigger than the phone sensor. (Dunno about the sums there, feels about right again).

Let’s see what the chonky camera has …

Canon EOS R100 has a 24MP effective pixel sensor that’s 22.3mm by 14.9mm. So that’s 5.5 times the size of the phone camera. Peek back at yesterday and the focal length is 18-45mm for a 35mm equivalent of 29-72mm. The f numbers on the lens go from f4.5 to f6.3.

Picture. Meme. A very confused looking little grey cat with a white chest is looking at us. The captions are "What did the confused cat say?" and "I'm purr-plexed"

What do all those numbers really mean though ? Let’s look at the sensor first. The bigger the sensor, the more light can hit it in a set amount of time. So the mirrorless would bring in over 5 times the light information in a given amount of time, compared to the Pixel 4 camera. The little Ixus sensor brings in 1.5 times the information of the Pixel 4 sensor but …

The Pixel 4 won with the Northern Lights pictures because the Pixel could be set for a far longer exposure time. Yesterday’s picture was over a 16 second exposure, the best I could get from the Ixus was a surprisingly short 1 second. Let’s invent a unit called the Light Wibbly, the Ixus pulled in 6 LWsecs (Light Wibbly Seconds), the Pixel 4 pulled in 16LWsecs with the 4 second exposure pictures. Result, you can see Northern Lights in one camera and can’t in the other. The EOS R100 can do shutter speeds as fast as 1/4000 seconds up to an exposure of 30 seconds. So, bigger sensor, more light getting in per second, much bigger range of how long it’ll take the light in for. The R100s would pull in 22LWsecs with a 1 second exposure, which is how people can get those time lapse videos of the Northern Lights.

And that all adds up to me looking at future Google searches for “star seeing viewpoints Bristol” :-D. The Pixel was just starting to pick up galaxy background pictures … I really, really want to see those. But I’d need to be somewhere relatively remote with minimal light pollution and those areas are tough to find in the UK.

On to the focal length – a big number means that distant objects can be brought much closer. That’s how I get the really zoomed in pictures of the cricketers at Lords, the camera is operating at a really high zoom level. I’m curious as to how the 25-300mm numbers of the Ixus 265 compare to what could be gotten out of the starter 29-72mm lens of the R100 pack. But … that’s one other reason you get the cameras with interchangeable lenses. There’s a lens that goes to 800mm for being able to read the road signs in London from Bristol but that’s also £1100 so maybe not. There’s also a more affordable high aperture one for low light photography which I might have to check out (£200).

Oh gosh. Big yawn. It’s Friday afternoon / early evening and I’m going to be catching up on sleep all weekend. Time for a sum up ? First another link for some optics theories, it’ll help peeking here (linky).

Mobile phone camera – they’re doing an AMAZING job with these. They only have a tiny amount of real estate to work with in terms of space for the sensor and the depth to turn the picture from light into 1’s and 0’s. As you’ll see from the Visual Education link above, cameras benefit from having a lot of depth to focus up the image. Mobiles do a fantastic job with the space they have available and the software is incredible at making the great pictures happen. Cost is minimal because they come with the smart phone you likely have already.

Compact digital camera – they do the best they can with the package available and the little Ixus is a really flexible device. It has massive zoom capability and it fits inside a small pocket. Portability is a wonderful thing but … you have to be really careful about keeping the camera steady and it’s almost useless in minimal light conditions. The latest Ixus 285 is £270 but it looks like they’re being phased out for Powershot cameras.

Mirrorless / DSLR modular camera – they have the size and versatility to get professional level amazing photography but … they’re also way more expensive. I’m still going to get one though because I do enjoy taking pictures of Stuff and sharing them with people. The pack I’m looking at is currently £650 or you could win the lottery and get the R3 camera body for £5500 and multipurpose RF28-70mm f2L lens for £3400.

No I’m not going to be spending nearly £10k on a camera system :-D. That’s actually double what you could get a Rolls-Royce for. (True statement ! Autotrader has a 1976 Silver Shadow for £4,675) I’d actually save a few pennies more for the pretty Mk3 Spitfire going for £16k.

Oh there I go dreaming again. I wouldn’t actually want to drive a Triumph Spitfire (horrifically dangerous suspension set up) but they are a very pretty old car.

Picture meme. A red squirrel is standing on their back legs, reaching their front paws to the sky. The captions are "Stop Typing" "Stop Typing" (there was a repeat)

Ok ! have a great weekend everyone.

Land ? Huskies Ahoy, Lights Ahoy

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November 26, 2023

1:16 pm

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Hello everyone,

Last post from on board ship today. It’s a case of LAND AHOY on each side of the ship as we start making our way up the Thames. But that’s something for a later post. It’s been a wonderful cruise, talking to the other guests has been lovely and we’ve been incredibly well looked after by the crew. I’ll definitely be doing another cruise holiday at some point when I can see how to fit it in and it’s almost certain to be with Hurtigruten again.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a snowy scene, with a lady and a dog standing on a platform. The dog is a white furry Husky coming up to between her knees and hips. Husky is looking over to the right, surveying all. The lady is reaching down to give Husky a bit of stroking.

Saturday saw us heading into Tromsø, which is a larger Norwegian city set on an island in the fjord, with additional settlement spreading into the mainland on either side. We had a little look around the city itself with a little bit of scouting in the local souvenir shops. But it was a little limited for me because ….

HUSKIES

Yep. I didn’t sign up for many of the additional trips but I didn’t want to miss the visit to the Huskies. And it was a magical couple of days too. The Huskies were just one evening, we’ll get back to Sunday later. We visited a farm where they breed and train up the dogs, taking the best ones into the racing team and looking after the rest of them. Whether that’s using them as sled dogs or looking after them until they can be adopted by loving homes.

And they’re lovely dogs too.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a man standing up, holding a dog in his arms. There are more people in the background, everyone is wrapped up warm with coats and woolly hats. The dog is looking directly towards us, with a curious white and grey face as he's enjoying a view from higher up than usual.

That’s one of the puppies. Very curious, very bouncy, totally acclimatised to the conditions. Ready for running across the snow, very happy to have all of the attention they can get.

Picture. Photograph. The foreground is lit, showing a snow covered field extending into darker fields in the background. We see a wooden snow topped dog kennel in the lower right with the names Fjord and Katla. In the background, a series of sleds with dogs harnessed eager to run.

And there they are, ready to run. And run fast. No rides for us because the snow isn’t old enough yet to support guest safety but it was a definite case of feeling the excitement in the air as the dogs were getting ready to do what they were born and bred for.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a wood fire in the centre of 4 posts. In the background, is a table with cups and a kettle. Everything is lit by a faint purple.

And then we disappear back inside a hut and enjoy a warm fire, a bit of cake and some hot chocolate. Best trip of the cruise. And I have a few more pictures too, including a couple that went to Geraldine, expedition photographer. We’ll be getting all of her stunning photographs later (I’m in some !) and I’ll be sure to drop the link when we get it.

And then there was Sunday. The morning was in Narvik and one thing about this trip has been educational about Second World War history. Terrible things happened all of the world, Norway definitely wasn’t spared. We don’t hear enough about it … The northern parts of Norway above Narvik were essentially Scorched Earthed as the Germans made their way out and that’s just one of the terrible things. It’s well worth educating about it, more than I’d want to go into here. And it does make you ask the question : we seemed to be winning the Battles of Narvik and pushing out the Germans. And then we abandoned the town to try and protect France. What would have changed if we’d held that northern flank of Norway ? That’s a definite one for the alternate historians.

Yep. Check out the Norwegian side of the WW2 story, it’ll be illuminating.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out over a faintly lit ship deck, with the railing on the right and chairs stacked in front. In the sky, there are a couple of dark clouds but behind them, a band of green glow in the sky going from centre bottom to up and left.

And then there was the continuing transit south … With a break in the overhead conditions too ! I have to admit, the pictures are much better than I could see. The assembled Northern Light Hunters were limited to seeing a grey on the horizon as our eyes couldn’t make out the lights.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking across the deck of the ship towards the rail. Above the horizon, there is a patterning of dark clouds with a green aurora glow behind them. You can perhaps make out bands in the green. Oh and in the centre foreground, a grinning idiot in a bright yellow hat, a dark jacket and a blue and white scarf.

I’d mostly figured out how to get good pictures out of the Pixel 4 camera by this stage and then had a bright idea involving the camera timer … A guess at a good spot, a tap of the timer, a gentle saunter across to the rail and there we go.

This was about the last chance we got (except maybe last night, faintly) to see the Northern Lights, the remaining nights saw the clouds coming in a bit too much. It was an amazing sight to see though, definitely a Bucket List thing if you do those.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking across to the ships rail again. Clouds are on the horizon but above, we see the green bands of aurora stretching across and upwards. Quite pretty. Oh and there's the grinning idiot in yellow hat, dark jacket and white and blue scarf over in the bottom right.

There we go. Last one for now, this was just after midnight on the same day. It’s the Pixel 4 camera again on a tripod, with me gently sauntering over to the rail to do the timer selfie. This was the best spot on board for these, there wasn’t enough incidental light on the flight deck to pick up the grinning idiot.

I should probably hit post now and start to pay more attention, docking soon !

I’ll do more steady catching up later. Tilbury Docks are very nearly in sight …

Lighting up and a little ceremony

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November 17, 2023

11:47 am

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Hello everyone,

I’ve now seen the Northern Lights ! We’re also above the Arctic Circle now so it’s definitely a case of wrapping up warm when we venture outside. We were greeted by this fellow, after a rousing cheer to wake him up.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking upwards at a manic looking figure leaning over the white deck rail and gesturing upwards with an open right hand. He's wearing an orange tunic under a thick white woollen cloak. He is wearing a pointy white hat.
NJORD

That’s King Njord, who led the Arctic Circle crossing ceremony on Wednesday morning, where crew and guests were (optionally) baptised with a spoonful of codliver oil followed by a “drink” of water. And by “drink”, we mean a bucket down the back of the neck.

I’m sad to say that I kinda hid when the baptising was occurring, mostly because my back has been giving me the warning signs to tell me to look after it better in case the pain levels increase to where I’m going to have to restrict the movement even more. But it also let me disappear to the stern of the ship where …

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out across a sea with small waves. Above the horizon, we can see a scattered low level of darker thinner cloud with blue sky above. On the horizon, peeking out behind low hills is a very bright sun, with a reflecting glinting off the waves below to the left of the wake of the propellers of the ship.

Sun says hi. We’ve been treated to some lovely sunrises and sunsets as we go up and down the coast. It’s a fairly extended period too, so that picture was at 0935 and it was already pretty light outside at before 0900 when we passed this lighthouse.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out over the sea towards a lighthouse on an island. The lighthouse is a tower painted in bands of red and white. The light at the top is shining towards us. There are a couple of small houses at the base.

That was from Wednesday morning and at time of writing, we’re headed past glacier covered hills on our way into Alta. But that’s for a later post as I catch up more. Alta is a northern town/city and we’ll be visiting their Northern Lights cathedral. I’ll have the old (yep, the one I’ve owned for 7 days) tripod with me and we’re hoping for clear skies so we can see more of …

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a dark night sky, with occasional dots of light from the stars. But the main thing here is a thin strip of green light, hazily starting to the centre left and going upwards to the right hand side.

That’s from my Canon Ixus 265 as I steadily figure out how to get the best out of it. I think I’ve learned a fair bit so far. One of the expedition team is the lovely Geraldine, expert photographer. While there isn’t much scope to do much with my little Canon camera, Geraldine’s tips to us all have pointed me towards the settings needed to start getting pictures like that on the little camera (high ISO, long exposure and the tripod is coming in handy too). And I’ll hopefully get more aurora pictures soon.

Geraldine’s excellent tips and advice also let me figure out what was going wrong on the more automatic settings … like a night setting with ISO 100. ISO is a sensitivity setting. Lower settings are less sensitive, so pointing the camera at an aurora at ISO 100 and long exposure time was just giving me a black screen. The picture above is ISO 1600 and I have another click to ISO 3200 to try. I have some decent pictures of one of the bridges that we passed under that may make it to a later post.

But one real start with the aurora is …

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at Aurora Borealis again, with a much bigger green glow covering most of the upper part of shot. Down below, we see the rail in black, with three ghostly figures with red jackets visible.

Cor. Looks good doesn’t it. That’s from the Pixel 4 mobile phone camera in its night sight mode. It’s given me some spectacular looking views of Trollfjord. That’s on an automatic setting, on a tripod and I’m really impressed with how that one has turned out. Maybe a bit over exposed at ISO 5877 but I really like the picture, especially having the ghostly figures below.

I’ve really enjoyed seeing the lights and also learning how to get the best out of the tools to capture the memories of them.

If you’re curious about the equipment, the compact camera is a Canon Ixus 265 and I’m now doing the night shots in P for Program mode, which lets me open up the ISO settings. It’ll be sitting on a tripod for these shots and I bought the cheap £30 National Geographic tripod. It’s simple, does the job, although I have trapped fingers a couple of times with the smart phone attachment. (It’s a springloaded thing with sharper edges than need be). The mobile phone camera is a Pixel 4, running the automatic settings of Night Sight.

I might be steadily catching up with posts. Since King Njord gave us his blessing yesterday morning, we visited the pretty fishing town of Svolvaer, with a longer visit coming up to Alta today. Pictures later ! For now though, I’m wondering how they fit everything they need to into this boat …

Picture. Photograph. We're looking over a rippled sea towards a short ship. She's blue below upper decks painted white. In the small space are winches, a crane, the bridge with radar and communications above, a small orange boat and then the engine exhausts with more winches and crane at the back.

That’s not processed or squished at all … She really is that short and is packing a lot in there. She’s the fishing vessel Skolmen and is just 27.4m long. (Marinetraffic link)

The port there is Svolvaer, with drying racks for cod visible in the upper right. More about Svolvaer later. Sadly no souvenir because I forgot to bring my wallet with me … oops :-D. I’ve seen several Orca as well this morning but sadly wasn’t fast enough to bring the camera to bear.

It’s probably getting time for food though before a couple of activities prior to the ship coming into Alta. More on the weekend :-D. Have a lovely day everyone.

Comic Con and other travels

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November 1, 2023

10:11 pm

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events

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Hello everyone,

I’ve been off to Comic Con again ! It was a run to London MCM Comic Con on Friday just gone. Pretty good day out overall, although that was with its ups and downs. But first ! The thumbnail. Let’s see what it’ll be …

Picture. We're looking at two flat pieces of pale wood. Burned into the top one is a cute dragon looking at us, sitting on his haunches with front paws between back paws. The caption is "Have you hugged your dragon today?" The lower one is a cute dragon standing up, short arms to the sides, holding hands on sticks to make their hug wider. The caption here is "I love you THIS much!"

I saw those at Scorch’s Pyrography stall and knew I needed to take them home with me. Very cute. After using an AI assisted picture for Halloween, I’ve now turned the top one there (Have you hugged your dragon) into my latest avatar.

The day started with me rushing in to try and meet someone before she had to disappear. I had a Thing that I needed to drop off and she wasn’t going to be there that long after my ticket would let me in. London’s always a slightly awkward place to travel around in a car. The trick is to go in just far enough to swap to the Underground and then you go the rest of your way from there. The Underground has always worked really well for me, although certain stations (Baker Street) and peak travel times make me very nervous about being around too many people. And that’s from the Before Times too, when we only had to worry about pickpockets.

So this time, I head in via the Westfield next to the Shepherds Bush stations. It’s a big shopping centre with a massive (and cheap) car park, so it’s a good place to drop off the car and change to train. It also allowed me to pick up something for the Shenanigan. I don’t think I’ll be using Westfield too much more though, one of the downs of the day was the last mile or so getting in and the trip out to the motorway again. It’s probably a bit too far in to London and traffic was nasty on the way out.

As usual for Comic Con, there were some amazing outfits on display.

Picture. A slightly blurry image that doesn't do justice to the lady's outfit. She's wearing a floor length dress, the centre panel is light coloured with patterns of roses. The outer section is light red. She's carrying a big axe, with hearts and more roses. Her hat is emblazoned with more roses.
Definitely a Queen of our Hearts

Absolutely stunning, I hope she managed to get to the drink and munchie she was on the way to when I interrupted her. (I was taking a quick stop too before my legs exploded).

Not the lady I wanted to catch before disappearing though. I’m not going to say who that is here. I’m not sure she wanted it known that she was going to be there that day. I have pictures but I’m similarly keeping those off the internet because while I think they’re some of the better ones I got that day, she doesn’t like them :-D.

Always respect people’s wishes like that.

This particular lady’s going through some rough moments currently. Hopefully she can get to bouncing and dancing around again soon and that the pain subsides to tolerable levels quickly too. She’s a very special one and you always hope that people like that are feeling up to brightening up the days of people they’re around, because of the wonderful people they are at their core.

So while she’s having the rough times, I hope I balanced that a bit with the gift that brightened up the day. The chat we had definitely brightened up my day and I was floaty happy Sleepy for most of it.

And that’s what we should all do where we can, enable people to be the best they can be. Enable them to have a better day. And when we’re not having a great day ourselves, then if we’re around the right people they can enable us to feel a bit better. And we respect what they want or need to do as well.

We all have vulnerable times, we all have times when we’re not feeling too good whether that’s from physical, mental or other kinds of illness. It’s up to us to enable people to feel better, whether that’s celebrating their wins, or giving them that metaphorical hug when they’re down. The “Thinking of you, hope you’re ok, feel better soon, you Matter.”

Oh ! I got more loot on Friday too …

Picture. We're looking at a t-shirt, with a grey haired fox standing up. He has a sword in his right paw, in his left is a very long scroll. He's between trees to the left and right. The caption is "I'm not procrastinating, I'm doing side quests"

It was a bit different going round Comic Con this time, without my usual Comic Con Friend. You kind of bounce off each other there. One person sees something fun, tells the other, both enjoy it. And vice versa for other things that might not have been spotted. Always taking pictures too. Maybe even a bit of helping each other when the physical-ness of the day might be getting too much.

Yep, I had to take breaks a lot :-D. I started cramping up fairly early, the Excel Arena is a bit overheated, especially with that many people inside. I didn’t quite heed the signs early enough and ended up with my legs locking on me a couple of times and probably microtears in the calf muscles that have only just about recovered. So after I’d been round once, it would have been good to head around again but the Homing Instinct kicked in and I was on my way.

It would be good to do one of these with a Comic Con Friend again. Hopefully my usual Comic Con Friend is feeling better now, she’s also been going through the Life Stuff and has been ill. Feel better soon ! It would have been lovely to see what you made of what was around at the show. Like …

Picture. We're looking at a display area with several people milling around. Taking centre shot is a display stand with a yellow creature built from blocks. It has white and black eyes, a black nose and red cheeks. The caption below is "nanoblock", they're a Pokemon Pikachu about 50cm high made from blocks.
PIKA !

Other loot I picked up was :

CAKE – there’s always cake. It was good cake too.

Lego Lightsaber – this will probably be in another post at some point.

More t-shirt – the other one is about mimics

Happy smiles. (I think there was more too).

So there we go, I’ve named the picture folder “Comic Con London 2023” in perhaps a hopeful thing. There’s another MCM Comic Con coming in Birmingham at the start of December. I am very tempted. But what I’m also tempted by is a cruise up the Norwegian coast starting and finishing at Tilbury Docks in London. That would be in a couple of weeks and in an older person (as in not kids) oriented cruise line. That might have to happen, if I can break free of the timid tendencies that have crept in over the last 10 years or so.

Might need to look at camera solutions if I do that Northern Lights cruise. I like my Ixus 265 but it’s got a tendency to blur … I’d need to look at vibration damping for it as it’s very sensitive to the small hand movements.

That’s another day, back to remembering a lovely lady blessing me with a little bit of her time on Friday before she had to rush off. I hopefully brightened her day with the Thing In Box, she definitely brightened my day.

And that’s where I’ll leave it today. If you can, help someone out. Enable them to do something they’ll enjoy. Give them a bit of confidence that they’re appreciated and they Matter.

If you’ve reached this part of the post, you most definitely Matter to me. Thank you for reading :-).

Where would you be in a science fiction universe ?

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October 23, 2023

9:44 pm

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musing

, ,

Hello everyone,

Yep. Odd thought, it got into my head last night when I was trying to get to sleep. I don’t think I did actually sleep last night, hopefully better today. I suspect it’s been showing in what I’ve been saying about certain groups at work. Like the one who’s head should be on a pike in front of the offices (there’s a few of those) and I was saying I wanted to burn some people’s houses down last week.

Still kinda feel like that. Maybe I need another break again, burn out can creep up on people without them realising and it leads to being intolerant where you should be more ready to retreat, reset and try again from a different angle.

Picture. We're looking at the face of a brown and white cat. It's looking directly at the camera, resting on a blanket. The caption is "I let my mind wander. It never came back"

Quite. Where did the last fortnight go ? Feels like it’s gone by in an absolute blur. A couple of books have been demolished since then too, with Illuminations by T.Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon, Hugo Winner) being a highlight. Maybe not as good as the two Clocktaur War books but those were for a more adult audience and could be a lot edgier, grittier and had a definite sexual tension running through both books.

Good stories too. T Kingfisher books are very inventive in how they keep the story unfolding before you and they surprise you too. Great books can tell their story in the perfect time. They’re not too short, not too padded or drawn out. They’re just right. And that’s how I’ve found the T Kingfisher books … and a little mention for Aliette de Bodard there too.

I didn’t think so much with Wool, the first book in the Silo trilogy. It felt padded and a bit too drawn out. The one I’m reading at the moment is book 6 in a series of 9 by James David Victor. They’re good … but they’re also so fast that I’m reading them 2 at a time.

Science fiction universe ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a space scene, with occasional stars dotting the background. In the bottom right foreground, we're looking at a red and white blocky spaceship flying away from us with two engines flaring purple exhaust. A ball like space station is in the distance, with white and black sections. Solar panels can be seen behind.
Dungeon Food Truck, departing

That’s the Dungeon Food Truck, callsign KN-00T after the lovely Knightenator (Twitch link). I don’t watch enough Knightenator, it can be a bit much sometimes for my brain, bit too much anarchy. Lovely lady though, well worth a watch and I couldn’t resist the meme this time with this particular ship. It’s a Type 9 Freighter Explorer, with the prime mission being to go out among the stars …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed on a reddish brown plain, with several sharp mountains behind, casting their shadows. To the upper right, we see the black, grey and white rings of the planet we are on. Above and behind, we see a small globe of a planet in eclipse shadow, with a set of rings surrounding it.

I was in pretty much full on Travel Mode (Honk, Scoop, Jump, Repeat sometimes scan the good systems) with a mission. Yep. Get to a far flung station …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship can be faintly seen lower centre, lost in shadow. On the left, the circular shape of a space station with the lit up rectangular docking entrance in the middle. On the right, a white moon pockmarked with small craters. Behind that, a faint blue planet with the line of a planetary ring.

I’ll come back to the mission later.

That question though, if you found yourself in a science fiction universe, what would you want it to be ? We can draw on any of the settings, either our universe or something different. Near future or far off ?

The Star Wars universe is an obvious setting to look at. There’s so much variety here and it’s absolutely full of life. This is a good choice as well, I could see myself being a Han Solo type, with a spaceship traveling between the planets being led by the next big score. Or getting by with simpler cargoes to pay the bills.

Elite Dangerous has a similar spread of life throughout its little populated bubble of stars. It doesn’t have the variety of Star Wars though, with just humans and badly handled Thargoids who won’t be buying you a drink in a bar.

Star Trek is the other huge one, with it close(ish) future of warp drives, impossible science and more great variety of alien life. Star Trek would be a great universe to live in, although it does seem a little limited for starfarers outside the Federation and other Empires. The ships seem a bit big for independent traders, compared to the little ships of Elite and Star Wars.

And then there’s Warhammer 40,000 … Oh my. In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, you’ll be dead before you hit the “May …” of the “May you live in Interesting Times” curse. It’s a bit too much of a stratified society for me, with very few people having any chance of an independent life.

It hasn’t really worked out that way for me (been held back by the health issues of the last 10 years and generalised inertia) but if I could be a ship captain visiting a different port with different cargo every run, yeah I’d quite like that. And the Elite and Star Wars universes both appeal to that with opportunities for the small traders. But you have to stay ahead of the criminal element.

Fun times.

Not so sure about the near future Earth universes. I think we’re exhausting what this planet has to offer, I’d rather be out in the stars seeing new things. I should book one of those cruise holidays though, so I can see a bit more of this planet.

(Back to reality) That’s one thing that has gone whoosh – a bit of a break out with my outsides with the usual thing of quick damage being slow to repair. But it’s getting there. Although I’ve had to add Lemon Sherbets to the suspicion list. Bad snacks. But I wouldn’t want to go away for that long without being able to use the healing gunk.

(Back to unreality) I do like playing in the near future universe of Deus Ex, although that might be more character than setting. Must go back to the Mankind Divided game soon. I don’t think I want to live in that world though, doesn’t seem that much future in it.

Big honourable mention to the Gareth L Powell universes too. He’s very inventive with his world building and can establish his worlds very quickly with the tight narrative. Another recent read was Descendant Machine, which is set in the Continuance series (2 so far hopefully more coming) where humanity has been banished from the Earth for being naughty with nukes. I’ve enjoyed both Descendant Machine and Stars And Bones. Without giving too much of the building away, humanity now lives on starship Arks, with smaller Vanguard scout ships investigating the space they go through. I’d see me being a Vanguard agent.

Yep. Put me in a spaceship and let me chart my own course and I’ll be happy. Journeying is better with a crew though.

Oh ! Here we are …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a space scene, our white and red spaceship is to the bottom left. We can just see part of a planet coloured white with thin dark bads. A couple of small interstellar clouds are to top left and between those, we see the lights of our fleet carrier emerging from a black cloud.

(That’s a little bit enhanced, the original was very poorly lit and Gimp has very effectively balanced it there)

That was journey’s end yesterday, with me meeting up with the fleet carrier for the first time in months.

Mission accomplished, carrier crew needed a consignment of Party Rings. (So good). Also needed to bring carrier fuel. But it was mostly about the Party Rings.

Time to post and enjoy more of a Tashnarr stream (Twitchy link). Have a good evening everyone, find snack, enjoy snack, be happy.

New Things Lead To Happy Thoughts

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October 11, 2023

8:38 pm

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technology

Hello everyone,

What’s this ? Two posts in a couple of days ? I’m ok, honest. Well, mostly but I’ll get back to that later.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cute grey and white kitten, sitting upright. Their back leg is in a long plaster cast. The caption is "My plan to dominate the world has been put on hold for *now*"

The widget I ordered yesterday arrived and it didn’t take too long (and one lost screw, I had a spare) to transfer my recent buy of a 2TB SSD from its USB enclosure into the widget that’ll see it living inside the case with a much better interface. The old performance numbers are in the last post (haha, that’s me shamelessly digging for an extra click for yesterday’s post!) and I’m happy to see a few orders of magnitude increase in performance. Numbers ?

Picture. We're looking at a series of benchmark numbers again for a solid state hard disc. More coming in the text.
Set speed to Zoom

So, looking at the numbers and comparing to last time …

Sequential read rates have gone up from the 40MB/s (megabyte per second) hard limit of the USB cable to 2765MB/s on reads and 4345MB/s on writes. That’s much closer to the theoretical performance of the drive, so I’m happy there.

The Randoms haven’t seen as similarly dramatic an improvement but I’m still very happy with 17 and 20 going up to 53 and 170. That’s still a significant improvement.

The Input/Output Operations Per Second have gone up from 4258 and 4913 to a massively impressive 13495 and 41717. That means it can zap backwards and forwards to find the right data before you’ve realised that the system has gone to the drive to acquire it.

The microsecond timer was good already at 234 and 203 latencys and is up an order of magnitude to 23 on the second number (74 on the first). So compare that to the conventional hard disc and it shows that the old system belongs in the last century.

The conclusion I take is that while you wouldn’t get the full performance out of the drive, putting an SSD into a USB enclosure is a perfectly acceptable way of adding a lot of space to a PC gasping for room. I was (mostly) happily running Starfield off the SSD-ina-box and Starfield will be notorious for demanding an SSD and not an older hard disc.

Jargon busty time … The newer solid state device drives are pretty much just memory chips, of the type that hold their state when the power is taken off. They’re ultra fast. The older ones are :

Picture. Technology. We're looking at the rectangular shape of an old style hard disc. There's a circular platter in the centre, with an arm reaching over. The "head" is on the end of the arm. The connectors are on the bottom.

The data is stored on a cylinder of round platters, which have coatings on top that are sensitive to the magnets in the end of the head. The head is on the end of an arm that will move to allow the head access to the full width of the discs. The thing is called a disc drive because the platters are shaped like discs. They’re spun up to usually 5400 revs per minute with faster ones going at 7200 revs per minute. The more revs, the faster the drive can get to the data and the quicker it can pull the data off the drive.

They were fantastic for the early days of computing but … there are a lot of drawbacks to this technology. Earlier drives would suffer from crashes, where the arm and head could contact the platter. That would dig a trench and pretty much wreck the drive. It didn’t happen too much though after the drives would park the head somewhere off the platters when the drive was powered down. It takes time for the arm to move, which means latencies on these drives are measured in milliseconds instead of microseconds. That makes a massive difference, especially with modern PCs.

And they’re pretty slow in pulling the data off too. That didn’t matter too much until around 10 years ago when improvements in processing speed meant we hit the limitations of how we stored data. (And perhaps some shenanigans by Microsoft too around the Vista times, which broke caching of data).

They did see us through a lot of decades though, going from the IDE drive in the picture through to EIDE, SCSI and into the SATA era. Lots of acronyms there …

IDE – Integrated Drive Electronics – the bits that make it go are on the drive and they’re connected up with a 40 wire ribbon cable. You could have two of these on a cable and the “Jump Block” would select between Master and Slave. There needed to be 1 Master on a cable. One really silly drawback here was that the Heads, Cylinders and Sectors values were mismatched between the various parts of the electronics which put an artificial (528MB) limit on the size of the drives.

EIDE – Extended Integrated Drive Electronics – saw an end to that limit through some nifty translation. It also saw 80 wire ribbon cables come in to the same connector. The extra wires provided shielding to stop the signals in each wire transferring over to their neighbours. IDE and EIDE both used parallel or many wires to make them quicker, which was ok up to a point.

SCSI – Small Computer System Interface – was a competing and much superior interface from around the time of IDE. If I remember right, it could handle 8 drives on a chain, was much quicker and because it didn’t have that Head, Cylinder and Sector limit, could handle much bigger drives. But it also needed an expensive controller card at a time when we needed the scarce room and resources for sound cards and graphics and a SCSI set up would add a zero to the cost of a machine. SCSI died out when SATA appeared.

ATA and ATAPI – was the logical side of the interface. It stands for AT Attachment, with AT being the original IBM PCs. From the 80s. ATAPI stands for ATA Packet Interface, where the blobs of data would be parceled up into packets to bounce around the system. Here’s a link about ATA. We’re still using this original system for modern SATA drives.

SATA – Serial ATA – saw the 40 and 80 wire ribbon cables thrown in the bin in favour of one wire to rule them all. Ok more than one wire but instead of all the signals chattering to each other in the parallel wires, there’s just one signal wire. It meant they could crank up the speed significantly. EIDE was limited to 33MB/s with “Ultra DMA” (Direct Memory Access), my SATA SSD goes at between 300 and 500MB/s. SATA was also much easier to wire up than the PATA, the cables go round corners much better than those 40 and 80 wire ribbons.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a chubby animal I think sitting in a tree. It's holding up a paw, with the captions being "WHOA !! Now that's too much information"

I’m probably letting the geek out a bit too much there. I did mean to drop a link to the site I stole the hard disc picture from though. Here we are, I’d be curious to hear which you think is more understandable, this site (linky) or my ramblings above.

There is another drive type, the nVME or non-Volatile Memory Express. This was an interface designed for how SSDs, instead of SSDs being shackled to the ATA system from last century. It’s much quicker. But apparently it’s also too new for my desktop machine to handle so the new drive is going to be just games and data. I’m ok with that.

To other things !

I mentioned I’m only “mostly” ok above … What’s up at the moment ? Headaches and a poorly back this week. I think I have answers for my outsides, I apparently have a light tomato sensitivity. Too many cup-a-soups, or pizza and I’ll see the impact on my healing outsides. But it’s not a serious one, I should be able to have the tomato soup or pizza in moderation.

I think the headaches are resulting from my latest pair of glasses. The test was done with a mask on in pandemic conditions, so there’s going to be alignment issues there. I’m sensitive to those, they cause headaches. It’s sad to have to retire glasses that cost £500 (two pairs, distance and reader) but I think I’m going to have to retire them early.

And the poorly back is just … a reminder of an older injury. It should improve but I’ll probably have to look after it for a while. I have the poorly wrist as well at the moment, which means I shouldn’t be testing the Starfield out on the new SSD arrangements … Conveniently, there’s good streams on at the moment so those have my attention.

On that note … to the streams ! Nite all. Hope the geekiness isn’t too weird and obscure this time.

Tech, feedback and there must be a third thing

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October 10, 2023

9:45 pm

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technology

,

Hello everyone,

I had the idea to look at tech again.

Picture. Meme. We're looking downwards at a black dog and a shaggy brown haired dog. Their mouths are open. They are eager. They are looking directly at a grille with cookies on. The caption "We are here to delete your cookies".
Do they mean Deleat ?

I’m not in danger of going for any serious PC upgrades any time soon, although I did acquire a nVME solid state device disc drive that caused me a little bit of grief. If you remember back a couple of posts, my desktop PC has the following disc drives lurking inside :

It boots off a 500GB SATA m2 SSD, which works very nicely. It just doesn’t have the space for games like Starfield and now Forza Motorsport which each take 120GB. Yep. Chonky.

There’s a smaller SSD in there as well but I don’t use that one any more, just haven’t removed it.

I have two active conventional hard discs, an older 1.5TB drive and a newer 3TB drive. That’s where the games and the multitude of memes go. It’s actually a bit of an accident that they’re both active, I copied the contents over but forgot to update the linking of one of the drive partitions.

(A partition is where you split up the drive into sections. It used to be handy in older times, not so useful now, plus it’s how you would split up Windows and Linux installations)

And then there’s the 2TB fast SSD hanging out the back of the machine inside a USB enclosure. It works much better for Starfield, which is much more playable on that drive. It’s still got issues but not nearly as many as if you try and play it on a conventional hard disc. What’s the issue there ?

Picture. We're looking at a benchmark result for a hard disc. It's showing the Read and Write speeds and a mixture of both. More info coming in the text.
For a 3TB conventional hard disc

These will be results taken last month. That first one is for my 3TB conventional drive. The things to look at there are the 158ish for the SEQ1M (sequential access?). That’s how quickly the machine is pulling the data off the drive. The IOPS is for Input/Output Operations Per Second, giving 166 on reads and 423 on writes. The RND4K is the time in microseconds it takes the drive to start doing its thing. The read is higher on almost 6000 microseconds, the write is quicker at 2356 microseconds. I think the difference there is because on a read, the drive has to find exactly what you want. On a write, it’s just looking for spare space. It doesn’t care what’s in the empty space.

Picture. We're looking at another benchmark output for a hard disc, this time it's for a solid state device drive. More info coming in the text.
Results for my older SSD

Those are the numbers for my older SSD, which is installed in the correct slot in the motherboard. It’s a SATA disc, which is why the numbers for Read (516) and Write (442) aren’t particularly high. Where all SSDs shine is in the IOPS, where it’s doing almost 10,000 reads per second and 16,646 writes per second. It’s taking 103 microseconds to find everything you want. That’s important if all of your information is either spread into many little files or if you need to find just the right bit of information. Starfield is crippled when it comes to the voice acting, it needs that fast to find thing in order to do voices without massive pauses.

Picture. Another hard disc benchmark result. This time for the new drive that's installed in a USB enclosure. More coming in the text.
Results for my new SSD that’s in the wrong place

And last one, that’s the results for my nVME SSD that’s currently in an external USB enclosure. It’s doing fairly ok in that box to be honest. It’s seriously crippled by the USB interface (it’s not the fast one) but the 234 microseconds for the Random Read is still exceptional compared to the old style hard disc. The 40MB/s read and write is showing where everything is limited by the cable it’s squeezing the data through. I suspect the data flooding the cable is also why the Random Input/Output Operations Per Second is only around the 4000s as well.

I’ll be curious to see how the new drive does when it’s installed in a widget that’ll let it go full speed. That’ll arrive tomorrow for installation in the evening after I finish up work.

As for curiosity, I did a check on PC prices again last night. But instead of looking at similar devices to what’s in Meltdown, I looked at the Intel options instead. What I noticed surprised me a fair bit but it backed up something I noticed with the AMD machines.

(Jargon busting – there are two competing computer processor makers at the moment, they cost about the same but I went with AMD because they are apparently technically superior now, that’ll vary over time)

The surprise comes from the hardware makers moving on really quickly from older technology. Meltdown is based on a 4 year old Ryzen 5 3600 processor that fits into a X570 chipset motherboard. What’s a chipset ?

Picture. We're looking at a block diagram of a computer architecture. More coming in the text again.
UNLEASH THE NERDISM

What are we looking at there ? The green blob is the processor and the chipset’s job is to martial all of the data going around the system. To the left, we have 3 orange blobs talking directly to the processor. That’s for PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) Express lanes that couple the processor to the graphics card. There’s a huge amount of data going through that link. There’s also huge amount of data going to hard discs and USB devices. The chipset comes in over to the right, it handles everything else like your keyboard, mouse and any controllers. It also gives access for the other drives in the system or in the olden days, things like dvd decoder cards or sound cards. Oh ! Chipset is how the sound chips in the system connect up.

Each type of processor has a specific set of chipsets designed for it, usually a good one and a budget one. The good one for my Ryzen 5 3600 third generation of that type is the X570 chipset. I could put a newer 5th gen Ryzen 5 5600 processor in there if I wished to. But … there are only 3 of those listed on Scan today. That means the manufacturers have effectively put it in the bin for the newer model.

It’s the same with Intel, there are only two of the older Socket 1200 Z590 boards available (ok there are more but they are double the price). There are 64 (sixty four) of the current Socket 1700 boards available.

So yeah, the old systems have gone in the bin even though the processors for them are still very available.

It was a curious and a little bit eye opening check realising that yesterday. What does it mean though ? Firstly, you have to be really careful about what you buy. Going for that slightly older 2 year old Socket 1200 cpu will give a massive problem in finding something for it to fit into. It’s been put in the bin for the 13th gen Socket 1700 chips released in October last year.

That’s a fun one for anyone thinking about obsolescence by the way … I might know some of them :-D.

Secondly … if you don’t care about obsolescence issues, then it can mean that it’s a PERFECT time to buy. The processor in my one year old laptop is an 11th gen laptop chip. Acer could well have been giving the big discounts because they needed to dump the stock while they thought they could.

So that’s the lesson I picked up … keep an eye on the market, sometimes opportunities come up because the people who make stuff are shifting from one product to the next and they want to dump the old stuff. Meltdown got put together when it did because AMD had just come out with a very superior product. The Dwagonsong laptop was bought because product change had led to huge discounts.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cute little white dog on a sofa, with paws on a laptop. The dog is wearing a sweater and a red and white bobble hat. The caption is "If you don't want me to shop online, you really shouldn't use my name for all of your passwords."

Quite. I think that’s enough for me for today, back to watching Billietrixx (Twitchy link) while she’s still on and then I’m somewhat grinding through the first book in the Silo series. I’m not quite sure what to make of that, the pacing feels off compared to the other books I’ve been enjoying far more. It feels hugely padded with a lot of character introspection which I don’t think exactly adds much.

We’ll see. Good night everyone, enjoy your books, your music (Dire Straits Making Movies track now – Expresso Love) and the rest of your evening.

And there’s a thought … (adds Dire Straits Alchemy to the wish list)

PS Forgot the feedback thing … The Novotel from Sheffield started badgering me for feedback … so they got feedback. It wasn’t the feedback they wanted. (TLDR – got nickel and dimed on extra charges, go with the competition instead)

Technical Difficulties May Delay Cruise

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September 11, 2023

11:02 pm

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games

, , ,

Hello everyone,

It’s been a curious few weeks since I posted last time. (I do like that word, “curious”, it covers a lot of meanings.) I’m on leave for a week now, it’s been delayed a little bit by me doing Work Stuff but I’m in chill out mode at the moment.

Cartoon picture, credit to "Regan". We're looking at two dinosaurs sitting on a rock jutting out of a rising ocean, there is the top of a tree to the left. In the background, a ship with pairs of animals on board. The caption "Oh crap! Was that TODAY?"

Yep. Could have been on a cruise this week. The why not is because I’ve been dealing with another flare up with my outsides again. The pattern there seems to be about a week of slow healing followed by a day where it’ll suddenly reset back to the start of that again. I think it’s steadily improving but I’m not wanting to be too far away from the gunk I’m using to medicate it at the moment. Including an overnight away for work last week … It was threatening again on that.

How come it’s bad ? To be honest, not sure. I think I’m reacting to something I’ve been eating again but I can’t localise what it could be. Outside of maybe something garlic related. I know, weird thought. But I did get a reset this weekend after garlic butter infused bread with my dinner on Thursday and pizza garlic bread on Saturday. Need more data.

After living with this condition for over 10 years now, it’s something I have to keep a very close eye on. The psychologically damaging thought is “will it ever get better ?” And that thought does keep running through my mind. That’s partially answered by “It has got a lot better” because I can somewhat remember what it was like over 5 years ago when it was at its worst. I’m not going to go into too much details but one curiosity is that a large amount of my legs is smooth now, hairless. The hair didn’t come back.

Try not to think too deeply about that !

I do need to get myself out of the house for a decent amount of time though. I really need a good holiday I think, not just one spent being lazy in the house.

Picture. Meme. A cute little mostly white with black patches is sitting up on a tiny boat floating on calm water. The scene is just lit by the moon. The caption is "When you're just a cute dog on a boat, looking for a tennis ball"

There were a couple of cruise options I’ve been looking at. The main criteria are : not too far away, not hot, good places. I did enjoy the flying trips in and out of Norway and would like to see more. So … Option 1 :

Picture. We're looking at a map of the coast of Norway. There is a thin black line, joined with many red dots. It's the route of a cruise ship from Bergen in the South, to Kirkenes in the North.

That’s from Hurtigruten cruises (link) although I found that one from one of the cruise search sites. This looks like a very interesting cruise, especially in the shorter one way trip. Must research it a lot more to see if it could be made to work. The problem, is getting to or from Kirkenes in the North. You can fly there … from Oslo. So the travel around the cruise would be Gatwick to Bergen, then on the way back it would be Kirkenes to Oslo to Heathrow. I couldn’t see how I’d make that work. The there and back option would work a lot better.

Picture. We're looking at a map of Northern Europe. It's zoomed in a lot, showing just southern Norway and Sweden, Denmark, the top of Germany and a slice of the UK to the left. There's another route marked for the ship journey.

That’s another, much easier option going from Copenhagen to Molde Fjord and then back again with a side hop to Kiel in Germany. I think the flights worked out to going from Heathrow to Copenhagen, which makes it far easier for things like where do you leave the car. It’s a little awkward getting across from Gatwick to Heathrow, especially after being tired for travel. Better just to pile into the car and then use the remaining energy to cruise back down a hopefully quiet motorway.

Anyway, cruise didn’t happen this time because I was a bit too concerned about going away from home for an extended period where I wouldn’t be able to pop the medication to attack this ongoing skin condition.

Another option is a narrowboat cruise in the UK. This would be really valuable for informing the choices about the off in the future plan to get out of here and live on a boat. But I think I’d need to have a friend along for a narrowboat cruise for a) company and b) assistance with the locks and tying up the boat.

What’s these technical difficulties from the title ? I’ve had a look at another new game …

Picture. Meme. We're looking at an otter, swimming underwater. He's gripping a pair of water pipes quite tightly. The caption is "he needs those parts for his space ship, he's going to otter space"
It’s an older meme but it still checks out

The game I’ve been trying out is the brand new just released Starfield. I’ve been enjoying half watching a series of streams on it and it’s been intriguing up to what I’ve seen on it. I’d quite like to lose myself in it but … and this is a big but. It’s not unplayable when not installed on an SSD but the play experience definitely suffers to the point where I don’t want to open it again until I’ve migrated my system across to a bigger and better SSD.

Jargon buster – SSD is a Solid State Device storage thing. Whereas the older Hard Discs worked by having spinning discs with material that stored what was saved to them, Solid State Devices do that with electronic memory devices instead. Hard Discs take a lot of time to find what’s needed, SSDs just zap over to the data. They’re much faster in both finding stuff and retrieving stuff. But they were also subject to a massive premium on price, such that when Meltdown was built, it got a big for the time 500GB drive. I’ve now acquired a faster 2TB drive, I just need to install it.

The technical difficulties is definitely a TLDR. Basically, I have two suitable slots in my machine but one of them isn’t working. I think I know why … but available mental effort isn’t wanting to fix it that way. I’m having to ration that a bit at the moment. Anyway, instead of trying to make the dodgy slot work, I’m just going to acquire another slot. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, Starfield ?

Game screenshot. Starfield. We're looking at the side of a spaceship with all sorts of protrusions coming out of the sides. An orange planet is above us, half in shadow.
I did a space

It’s an intriguing game so far. It’s been heavily described as Skyrim in Space, which is a blessing and a curse. Skyrim was such a successful game with a go anywhere, do anything format. Translating that formula across to space makes for a very promising game from my point of view. Curse ? It looks like it’s inherited some of the user interface awkwardness from vanilla Skyrim. But … this is a Bethesda game, there are already mods out there to improve the user interface.

Game screenshot. Starfield. Our pilot is standing in front of a futuristic city. She's of medium skin tone, with faint blue hints in tied back hair. She's wearing a dark grey jumpsuit. In the background is a selection of people, standing around having a chat.
I did a ground

The thing I noticed a bit later there is the group of non player characters in the background. They’re all in different but lifelike poses. I walked past a different scripted conversation on my way out of the spaceport too. It’s a nice touch, whereas less technically complex games will quite happily do limited, unnatural poses, it looks like there’s more life in the background this time.

It’s a little thing but it’s tickled the geek in me.

Either way, I’m quite looking forward to going back into Starfield, hopefully I’ll be all up and running with the PC upgrade soon.

Time to sign off though – Hoping to enjoy a quiet week off work, it’s been a while coming. No sea cruise this time, I’ll keep that for later.

Talking about hybrids again

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August 29, 2023

9:38 pm

Comments Off on Talking about hybrids again

cars

,

Hello everyone,

Oops I blinked and a couple of weeks went by again. I think I nearly posted a week or so ago but may have got distracted by a) a flare up and b) a game again. Oh well.

Picture. We're looking at a white fluffy dog that's looking at the camera with an open mouth. They're riding in a small red fire truck model. The caption is "No time to explain just get in."

Yep. Had a flare up again, which got my legs a bit miffed with me (but not badly) and my arms quite angry with me. Enough for me to get a bit worried about it, sufficient that if the measures taken hadn’t addressed it I might have actually gone to the doctor. But using a tubigrip to protect it at night and more of the topical steroid gunk helped it out a huge amount and it quickly turned course into becoming much better almost immediately. It isn’t fixed yet but it’s not uncontrolled leaking now. (Too much info ? Maybe !)

I’ve been wanting to talk about cars for a while and specifically, developments with the hybrids and electric cars … Actually electric cars is a new one on that and it’s come from watching a The Car Care Nut video looking at a Tesla (youtube link). They have some stunningly amazing tech in those cars. And apparently atrocious build quality. I’d recommend that Car Care Nut video, he talks a huge amount of sense and can explain everything in a way that’s very easy to understand.

He’s mostly about Toyotas, from learning his trade in the Toyota system looking after their cars. As regular readers will know, I’m a firm convert to the Posh Toyotas aka Lexus cars. I like their hybrid system, the tech appeals to the geek in me and the way they drive aligns with how I want to drive instead of taking a few minutes to figure out what you want to have happen like that one Volvo.

So … Hybrids. When I started driving them in 2011, it was pretty much a choice between Toyota and Honda with a bunch of other expensive ones in the Coming Soon bracket. There are a lot more now … I’m back in a similar car to the 2011 one now with Red being a Lexus CT200h. A few of the myths and legends are things like they weigh more so they can’t be as good. Reliability is in question as well. The truth there is that they’re Different, some of those reliability and weight things just don’t apply. I’ve had multiple alternators and starter motors die on cars over the years, there is no alternator or starter on the Toyota system. There’s no gearbox, no clutch. The air con pump doesn’t work off the engine, so it doesn’t take 10% of your engine power when you turn on the chill.

Instead of alternator, starter and gearbox, you’ve got the two motor generators that work together to make the car go. Plus an invertor and battery placed around the centre of gravity of the car. (Which means it makes the weight balance better). The electric part is also pretty well balanced. The 1.8 litre engine gives 97bhp and the electric gives 71bhp for a combined total of 134bhp (they don’t add), so the electric can easily take the car up to 40mph on its own. The torque combines to give the car 300Nm of torque. The 0 to 60 is slower at 10secs but the car is much more flexible than the performance orientated Focus ST170 I had before (170bhp/195Nm torque). The driveability in traffic is outstanding.

So how come this idea popped into the head ? Mostly because an advert from another car company was annoying me enough to check out what they have.

(Ok it’s the Renault)

What are Renault doing now ? It takes a bit of digging to get to their actual tech specs but they’re saying 96kW for the engine (128bhp) and 50kW (67bhp) and claiming 200bhp for the advert. Oh dear, that’s a red flag. Firstly because you can’t add the power together because the power doesn’t come at the same time (motor power is max at 0rpm, engine power is max at high rpm) but they got their sums wrong there. Most people would call that misrepresentation. The torque is actually really good at 205+205.

On the surface, that looks like a pretty decent combination, with a turbo charged petrol engine combining with the motors for good performance (as good as my IS300h’s) and economy.

A very good friend is getting a Hyundai hybrid soon, that’s got a 105bhp engine and a 44bhp motor. Not so sure about that one, the motor might be a bit small. But … I’m not sure that my bigger motor combination is being driven at 71bhp all the time, I’m very curious to see what she thinks of the Hyundai set up. I hope it works out well. One thing about the CT hybrid is that it gives you everything it has when you ask it to, so a 10 second to 60 time works out similarly rapid to the 9 second to 60 time of the old Puma sport coupe.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at several dogs looking out of a car window. One is looking very shocked at us. The caption is "It was then that Carl realised they were going to the vet."
It’s ok Carl

Talking of vets … or mechanics … and Pumas. What’s Ford giving us now with the Abomination Puma ? Firstly, don’t buy one. The engine has so much designed in self detonation potential I’d be surprised if one lasted 50,000 miles. Nice range of engines and specs though but I’m not seeing anything about how big the electric part is outside of it being 48V. The Lexus system is a 220V battery that runs the motors at up to 650V. Higher volts are a good thing, they mean less Amps for the same Power. Less amps means less heat and less losses in the cables. Low volts is bad. 😀 It’s why a kettle takes twice as long to boil in a 115V country compared to how quick we can make tea with 230V kettles.

Don’t buy the Ford. (Also, don’t buy the Renault but I’ll come back to that).

I’ve had several Vauxhalls before but I’m not counting them or the other Plug in Hybrids here because I’ve got no way to support plugging in a car.

I’m struggling to think of more though (bit out of touch with the market) but Auto Express has an article recommending the Kia hybrids. No idea on the motor size again but it’s another 48V system. Sure, if they’ve made it work … that’s great but the numbers work against it. Heat is very much the enemy in electrics and lower volts means higher amps means heat.

Picture. We're looking at the front dashboard area of a car. There's a big screen area, except we can't see the screen, it's being used as a bed by a cute fluffy doggo.
Sleep well Fido

I better close up there … The specifications aren’t important though at the end of the day. What’s really important is what you think of the car on the test drive. How does it handle ? Is it comfortable ? Does it have the speed and flexibility you want in a car ? Does it have enough space ? What toys does it have and are you ok with how you can interact with them on the road ?

There are cars that have gone through the family which I’ve refused to drive more than once. Like the VW Golf TDI which had its weight distribution so bad, it would plough straight on instead of rotating through corners. Like the Volvo which had the complete opposite vibe to how I wanted to drive a car. We didn’t get on.

The IS300h powertrains were great in specification but it took a few iterations before Toyota/Lexus got it right. And the software in the car felt like it was constantly being tweaked between versions of the car with varying levels of success. The mouse like pointer in the CT looks like a great idea but the dial selector in the IS was actually easier and quicker to use. The ES didn’t have a pause button for the hifi. This doesn’t feel like much but when you’re pulling up to a gate person who you need to talk to, it’s really handy to have an actual pause button.

And that’s without getting into reliability. Toyota and Lexus built their brand on reliability and outside of damage (stone in the power steering pump, pandemic induced 12V battery death and a couple of on build defects), the 6 Lexus so far have been top notch reliability. I wouldn’t trust a Renault for electrics … even before considering the extra complexity of drive by wire hybridness. I wouldn’t trust anything in the Ford.

I’m very curious about that Hyundai though, I hope they’ve cracked it with the car my friend is getting.

I haven’t looked back since getting the hybrids, they work extremely well for how I want to drive. (50+mpg is great too) One legacy from the cricket is a lower back injury which affects my left leg. Driving the ST170 in traffic with its clutch would lead to actual high degrees of pain. That’s completely gone with the hybrid autos.

I’d definitely recommend the hybrids. But … as always with cars, make sure you know what you’re getting. If they’re being cagey about specs, like with the Kia and the Ford, then walk away. If you don’t like the driving experience, then walk away. If you’re suspicious about certain “CVTs are the bane of car existence” reviewers, pay attention to different ones. Yep, CVTs send the engine revs up high when you ask for speed … they’ll also send the revs high on part throttle, which those reviewers know full well about and they post the footage to let them grind their axes. How good the electronic brain is determines how quickly the CVT figures out that you want to go fast, you’ll be able to check that on a test drive.

What’s under the hood is pretty irrelevant. What really matters is whether you connect with the car, in all facets of how you interact with it. I like little cars that go round corners quick and quickly go fast with a nice noise when you ask them to. I like good sounds from the sound system too.

But that’s just me, other people want different things from their cars, like being able to freely rev the engine or make the gearbox go crunch. I prefer seat heaters and the simplicity of Left Pedal Made Stop, Right Pedal Make Go.

Must check under the hood some time.

PS The game was called One Military Camp, nice little base builder game with a strategic aspect to it as well. Would recommend.