Alright, it's been a while. Time to write something here.
So, Eileen-II has more or less run her course. It's not that she has broken down, but let's face it---I didn't plonk down serious cash all those years ago ``just'' to use her for web-browsing only.
It has been about the games; it has always been about the games. This time though, there was no COVID-19 lock down to justify getting yet another laptop form-factor, but it was basically a simpler statement: space is premium that is worth paying extra for.
I could rebuild Elysie-II completely, but where would I put her? I've more or less compacted myself into a single room of my childhood apartment home, as things got a little weird with the whole ``study room'' affair, and my general dislike of basically occupying ``public space'' by sleeping in the living room. The day that I discovered that I didn't really need the high-powered ceiling fan in the living room to cool me off was the day that I decided to set up base in the bedroom that I had once shared with my sister before she moved out after getting married, some four to five years ago. I don't remember if I wrote anything about that entire set up phase, but the gist of it was a complete rework of the bedroom---all my books were finally unwrapped and sorted out into the massive shelf that houses that and more.
But that's history. I'm here to talk about Eileen-III.
Eileen-III is an Alienware m16 R1, with an Intel i9-13900HX (24-core (8 P-cores and 16 E-cores), 36 MB cache, up to 5.40 GHz with Turbo Boost), 64 GB DDR5 RAM at 4800 MHz, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 16 GB GDDR6 discrete graphics card. Her screen is 16″ (2560×1600) with a refresh rate of 240 Hz with G-SYNC, and her storage are 2× 2 TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs in RAID-0 configuration.
In short, she's an absolute beast. Her graphics card is equivalent to the desktop version of the RTX 3080 Ti, but with less power consumption and no over-sized form factor, and her CPU is also doing much, much more while consuming much, much less power.
She also has 4 cooling fans, which is 2 more than what most laptops will have. For operating such a machine in a non-air-conditioned place in SIN city the way I am, having excellent cooling cannot be overstated.
She's superlative to Eileen-II in almost any way, though the keyboard layout is a bit janky---the right shift key does not fully extend to the bottom of the enter key, with the up-arrow key occupying that last sliver. The reason for this jank is the decision to create a new right column of convenience keys for the volume up, down, mute, and microphone mute buttons. They made it such that the right arrow key is now part of that column, instead of being flush with the rest of the main typing area.
It's not bad per se, but considering how the keyboard layouts of my as at then two most commonly used machines' layout are exactly the same as what I had described, the muscle memory kept screwing the crap out of it.
And oh, I had to run Windows 11 for Eileen-III---it was the only [gaming] operating system that could ``understand'' and therefore properly schedule tasks for the heterogenous CPU set up with the P-cores and E-cores.
So, how does she perform?
Like a damn dream. Seriously. Cyberpunk 2077 running at 2560×1600 at an average of 110+ fps. My ``industrial complex'' of farms in Minecraft (link is to the old version) with all the bells and whistles of full-shadow shaders was performing at least 50% better in terms of frames per second than when it was running on Eileen-II (there was severe lag that dropped things to around 40 fps), considering also that we are rendering things at 2560×1600 instead of 1920×1080, a good 97.5% more pixels to draw.
And Grim Dawn did not have a moment of lag while rendering all the fancy effects when procc-ing things.
In short, Eileen-III is a true beast.
Am I happy with the upgrade? Hell yes. It married super-powered graphics power, with fantastic memory/general processing power, with tiny pixels, while keeping the keyboard at a comfortable enough temperature. What's there to not like?
Alright, I think I've gushed enough for now. Yesterday was the public holiday, and today was an additional leave day that I took to just sit around and do nothing.
Till next time.
Showing posts with label elysie-ii. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elysie-ii. Show all posts
Friday, June 30, 2023
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Heat Fogs Everything
Today's not been a good day.
I have a strange throbbing headache in the left hemisphere of my brain---I think it could be a result of sleeping at 0200hrs this morning instead of a more sane hour. The reason for sleeping that late was the ``wind down'' I did venturing into Night City, after having spent the morning of yesterday helping a friend move house, and the afternoon just hanging out.
But the headache aside, it is not a good day because of an unspeakable anger that has been brewing within me since yesterday. The anger stems from the apparent shade that was being cast on me by those whom I have supposed to cut out of my life. The anger is likely to be coming from an understanding of impotence, that understanding that yes, I am no longer there and therefore whatever is being said has no effect on me, but at the same time, there is this burning injustice that I feel that needs to be righted, except it is not I who can do it.
Gotta trust God on this one. He will handle it. But old instincts die hard, and it will take me a little bit more time to reframe and excise the thought from my mind.
I wanted to wait a while before I wrote about this, but after 9 weeks, I don't think I can wait any more and need to vent. My hiking boots are out of commission thanks to the breaking of the lacing hook, and I had sent it in for repairs. The repair person did not have the part, but had ordered it from the supplier, who is bringing it from China, and till date the bloody part hasn't come in just yet. This is frustrating because the lack of my hiking boots has significantly limited my mobility---I want to go for super long walks over all kinds of terrain in all places, but am limited by the footwear that I have.
My old huaraches are starting to fall apart from wear and tear (they've been with me since 2011/2012), and I don't want to drive them too hard because I'm afraid of losing them forever (the company that sold them seems to be re-pivoting to selling more conventional shoes instead). My combat boots are in semi-storage, and I don't want to pull them out because I don't actually have good working long socks to go with them (I don't want to pull out the stuff in my packed up duffel bag of military equipment in the very long odds chance of being called back). I have a pair of Teva sandals, but my ankle skin is raw and garbage, making it actually physically uncomfortable to wear them (which is why I haven't been cycling also)---however, I did run an experiment for two days where I wore socks with them; those worked out well in the comfort department, but for goodness sake, it is still socks in sandals levels of badness.
And I'm down to my two dress shoes that I alternate, which I use most of the time when I head out to places that are farther than just the neighbourhood. They aren't bad---I deliberately chose dress shoes that I can, in theory, run about in---but they do limit the amount of walking and the places where I can walk about in. The dress shoes have a slight elevation in the heel, and it does make it rather uncomfortable on the foot for long enough (think ten to twenty kilometres) distances of walking.
I really wish that my boots can be fixed soon. All this lack of ``hard core'' walking is making me feel down, perhaps more down than usual.
------
I have been thinking about life and relationships over the past couple of months in an on/off fashion, and there are some truths that I am starting to think to hold for me.
Before I go into them though, I need to add some qualifiers. I am not so well attuned to God's will like some people around me to the point where I can immediately sacrifice everyone and everything to follow Him. Call me a sinner, call me a loser, call me whatever you want---the judgement is of your folly to make, but it is what it is. In other words, what I say here in terms of what I think is my current so-called level of understanding is not at a high enough confidence interval that I will exclusively work towards these goals.
Because I'm a coward and refuse to commit so hard to thoughts that are happening in the echo chamber of my head during a period of time where everything is, for lack of a better description, fucked six ways to Sunday.
Okay, with that out of the way, let me write down some things.
I don't think I will have children. I cannot fully rationalise why I can/should have children. The society I live in is exploitive in more ways than I can count, and bringing in a new life to contribute as the exploited is not as just as I think it ought to be. Moreover, thanks to things that happen in the generation before mine, I am also a person without a real root, which makes bringing in a descendent even harder to justify---there is no true heritage to bring this so-called descendent to anyway. All these are not even about how children can ``cramp my style''---having my so-called style cramped is a minor issue compared to the larger picture of just contributing to an ever-more-fucked world.
If I cannot even contribute to solving the world's problems, why would bringing in a completely different person that needs twenty years of careful guidance, teaching, and nurturing be of any use? It's just another case of kicking the problem down to the next generation, something that every other fucking generation has been doing.
I can't claim to be a problem solver if I am a contributor of the problem, right?
Now, that said, I want to emphasise that this is my personal perspective on my personal decision---I do not look at those who choose otherwise in disdain, nor will I judge them. Maybe they know better than I because God inspires them better due to their sensitivity---good for them, I suppose.
I think that's enough of venting for now. At this point after I have said all these, it is still not that great a day. I think I'll scrounge up some whiskey that I have lying around and continue touring Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 for a while more. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Eileen-II in the afternoon of a place that is of high ambient humidity and temperature is challenging---despite all the counter-measures that I have taken to keep temperatures low, I was getting CPU temperatures hitting nearly 90 °C---it's bad enough that I decided to just use the keyboard from Elysie-II (currently sitting quietly in a corner not plugged in) just so that I don't burn my finger tips.
Such is life of one who lives in the tropics.
Sometimes I just wonder, why am I still alive now? Yes, a non-sequitor type of segue... whatever. It's not been a good day.
Till the next update.
I have a strange throbbing headache in the left hemisphere of my brain---I think it could be a result of sleeping at 0200hrs this morning instead of a more sane hour. The reason for sleeping that late was the ``wind down'' I did venturing into Night City, after having spent the morning of yesterday helping a friend move house, and the afternoon just hanging out.
But the headache aside, it is not a good day because of an unspeakable anger that has been brewing within me since yesterday. The anger stems from the apparent shade that was being cast on me by those whom I have supposed to cut out of my life. The anger is likely to be coming from an understanding of impotence, that understanding that yes, I am no longer there and therefore whatever is being said has no effect on me, but at the same time, there is this burning injustice that I feel that needs to be righted, except it is not I who can do it.
Gotta trust God on this one. He will handle it. But old instincts die hard, and it will take me a little bit more time to reframe and excise the thought from my mind.
I wanted to wait a while before I wrote about this, but after 9 weeks, I don't think I can wait any more and need to vent. My hiking boots are out of commission thanks to the breaking of the lacing hook, and I had sent it in for repairs. The repair person did not have the part, but had ordered it from the supplier, who is bringing it from China, and till date the bloody part hasn't come in just yet. This is frustrating because the lack of my hiking boots has significantly limited my mobility---I want to go for super long walks over all kinds of terrain in all places, but am limited by the footwear that I have.
My old huaraches are starting to fall apart from wear and tear (they've been with me since 2011/2012), and I don't want to drive them too hard because I'm afraid of losing them forever (the company that sold them seems to be re-pivoting to selling more conventional shoes instead). My combat boots are in semi-storage, and I don't want to pull them out because I don't actually have good working long socks to go with them (I don't want to pull out the stuff in my packed up duffel bag of military equipment in the very long odds chance of being called back). I have a pair of Teva sandals, but my ankle skin is raw and garbage, making it actually physically uncomfortable to wear them (which is why I haven't been cycling also)---however, I did run an experiment for two days where I wore socks with them; those worked out well in the comfort department, but for goodness sake, it is still socks in sandals levels of badness.
And I'm down to my two dress shoes that I alternate, which I use most of the time when I head out to places that are farther than just the neighbourhood. They aren't bad---I deliberately chose dress shoes that I can, in theory, run about in---but they do limit the amount of walking and the places where I can walk about in. The dress shoes have a slight elevation in the heel, and it does make it rather uncomfortable on the foot for long enough (think ten to twenty kilometres) distances of walking.
I really wish that my boots can be fixed soon. All this lack of ``hard core'' walking is making me feel down, perhaps more down than usual.
------
I have been thinking about life and relationships over the past couple of months in an on/off fashion, and there are some truths that I am starting to think to hold for me.
Before I go into them though, I need to add some qualifiers. I am not so well attuned to God's will like some people around me to the point where I can immediately sacrifice everyone and everything to follow Him. Call me a sinner, call me a loser, call me whatever you want---the judgement is of your folly to make, but it is what it is. In other words, what I say here in terms of what I think is my current so-called level of understanding is not at a high enough confidence interval that I will exclusively work towards these goals.
Because I'm a coward and refuse to commit so hard to thoughts that are happening in the echo chamber of my head during a period of time where everything is, for lack of a better description, fucked six ways to Sunday.
Okay, with that out of the way, let me write down some things.
I don't think I will have children. I cannot fully rationalise why I can/should have children. The society I live in is exploitive in more ways than I can count, and bringing in a new life to contribute as the exploited is not as just as I think it ought to be. Moreover, thanks to things that happen in the generation before mine, I am also a person without a real root, which makes bringing in a descendent even harder to justify---there is no true heritage to bring this so-called descendent to anyway. All these are not even about how children can ``cramp my style''---having my so-called style cramped is a minor issue compared to the larger picture of just contributing to an ever-more-fucked world.
If I cannot even contribute to solving the world's problems, why would bringing in a completely different person that needs twenty years of careful guidance, teaching, and nurturing be of any use? It's just another case of kicking the problem down to the next generation, something that every other fucking generation has been doing.
I can't claim to be a problem solver if I am a contributor of the problem, right?
Now, that said, I want to emphasise that this is my personal perspective on my personal decision---I do not look at those who choose otherwise in disdain, nor will I judge them. Maybe they know better than I because God inspires them better due to their sensitivity---good for them, I suppose.
I think that's enough of venting for now. At this point after I have said all these, it is still not that great a day. I think I'll scrounge up some whiskey that I have lying around and continue touring Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 for a while more. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Eileen-II in the afternoon of a place that is of high ambient humidity and temperature is challenging---despite all the counter-measures that I have taken to keep temperatures low, I was getting CPU temperatures hitting nearly 90 °C---it's bad enough that I decided to just use the keyboard from Elysie-II (currently sitting quietly in a corner not plugged in) just so that I don't burn my finger tips.
Such is life of one who lives in the tropics.
Sometimes I just wonder, why am I still alive now? Yes, a non-sequitor type of segue... whatever. It's not been a good day.
Till the next update.
Saturday, July 25, 2020
Eileen-II and Other Stories
To say that the past week-and-a-half is a roller coaster is a bit of a cliché, but it is an unfortunate consequence of my lack of imagination in the use of the English language. Let's see what I can say here today.
I've bought a new 22-inch 16:9 monitor from Dell (P2219H) that can swivel, and is primarily set up to be vertical in nature. No name for this device, though it can technically be called ``Eirian-V'' since its role is similar to the Eirian series of devices---but I'm not going to. The problem I was facing was the reading of certain PDF forms of e-books that had the two-column layout. On a normal screen, no matter what resolution and dimension, if we keep it in the usual landscape format, each column ends up taking up at most one quarter of the screen by width. It is basically unreadable. What I needed was something that had more physical dimension in the height department. I could get a tablet like Eirian-III, but I didn't want to have to lug it around with my hands just to read the document---I have grown used to the smaller form factor. Eirian-IV has superior pitch density, but even then, it can be a challenge to read really tiny text that was supposed to be ``normal sized'' in a more traditional A4/letter sized setting. And so, the monitor was obtained.
Edythe-III is still hale and hearty, but her 3-year warranty is almost up. And if the behaviour of Edythe-II was of any indication, it was clear that I needed to get a replacement soonish. At the same time, Elysie-II was starting to become a little... unstable, partly because of age, partly because of hardware (old school spindle HDD), partly because of software (Windows 7), and partly because of circumstance (it was hard/impossible to head out to the venerable Sim Lim Square to source for parts, with the COVID-19 pandemic raging and stores closing left and right). So I decided to spend a little more than what I had originally saved for and get a new iteration of Eileen, now known as Eileen-II.
So, what's Eileen-II?
She's an Alienware m15 R3, with an Intel i7-10750H processor (6-core, 12MB cache, up to 5.1GHz with Turbo Boost), 32GB DDR4 RAM at 2666MHz, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB DDR6 discrete graphics card. Her screen is 15.6" (1920×1080) with a refresh rate of 144Hz, and her storage is a 1TB SSD.
Her specs are on par with Elysie-II in many ways, except for a slightly better parallelisation capability with 50% more cores and a faster secondary storage, and a much more portable form factor (laptop vs desktop). She's pretty portable for a stronk person like me, but I think I may actually need to use the provided carrier bag instead of whatever I had---she is a little larger than the 13" laptops that I have.
For a portable machine running the specs like the beast that is Elysie-II, Eileen-II runs surprisingly cool. Let's hope this continues.
------
On more different matters, it had been quite trying for the past week-and-a-half. Work had some extra certification thing that needed to be done to address a tender, and I was tasked to get it with a colleague. The whole process was a little harrowing, partly because the item that we were getting certification on wasn't exactly directly aligned with my interests/area of work/domain of expertise per se, and partly because of the super shortened duration we had to actually prepare for it, even though we managed the expectations of that to have two attempts instead of the one that was originally envisioned. Then there was the need to book a time slot to actually take the certification exam---it had to be online proctored, and the only time slot that fit the original planned schedule was at six in the morning (or any time between three and six in the morning in roughly fifteen-minute intervals). Thankfully it is now over; well it had been over since the Wednesday just passed. I passed by the grace of God---the score I had was exactly the one needed to pass, no more and no less. Just to be clear, this was one of those exams that the passing grade was a ``high'' percentage that was not fifty percent.
The Friday before, I had a near breakdown. I don't know why---suddenly I felt completely useless for some reason. I felt as though I would just fade away if I didn't pay attention to myself. I think I was just overwhelmed with the stress of not willfully failing that certification exam, and the combined stresses of a general lack of coping mechanisms (no Chinese Orchestra rehearsals, no meet ups with friends, no more confidante in general) with additional social stresses (what is the new norm for me now that I am a believer, am without a wife-to-be-candidate, basically having my life rewritten to the past) meant that I just sort of lost sense of where I was. I mean, yes, I'm a believer now, I know God is with me because I've chosen to walk with Him in my life, but I'm still a neophyte in the ways of Christ, and more importantly, I'm still a mortal.
Given all that I felt, I did something pretty uncharacteristic; I posted a plea for reassurance on my ``wall'' in Facebook.
I am really heartened by the responses that came in. Friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances started coming out of the wood work to send me private messages, asking my well-being, and giving me really positive encouragement that I had indeed impacted their lives in a positive way during the times when we were walking closer together than now.
I teared up. I tear up still. I wasn't expecting all that love and concern to come in like that. Don't ask me why---I don't know. I've never really had these kinds of feelings before.
It definitely helped ground me back into reality. That I was, and am here.
------
On yet another note, I've also bought some Oval-8 finger splits by 3-point products. They are for my two pinky fingers---they have a mild form of swan neck deformity. They only show up when I need to be playing the dizi or when I'm going for the pinky-notes of the right hand (instrument C♯, C, B), in which case it is bad. Most of the time I don't have to actually ``stretch'' my fingers, but under those circumstances highlighted, I have to, and it is a problem. The Oval-8 finger splits block the middle joint from bending backwards, which allows me to safely stretch out the pinky without jamming the joint up. It is super useful. I first learnt of them at the Flute Forum on Facebook, and bought mine from Fu Kang, a Singapore company.
And that's about it for now. Till the next update I suppose.
I've bought a new 22-inch 16:9 monitor from Dell (P2219H) that can swivel, and is primarily set up to be vertical in nature. No name for this device, though it can technically be called ``Eirian-V'' since its role is similar to the Eirian series of devices---but I'm not going to. The problem I was facing was the reading of certain PDF forms of e-books that had the two-column layout. On a normal screen, no matter what resolution and dimension, if we keep it in the usual landscape format, each column ends up taking up at most one quarter of the screen by width. It is basically unreadable. What I needed was something that had more physical dimension in the height department. I could get a tablet like Eirian-III, but I didn't want to have to lug it around with my hands just to read the document---I have grown used to the smaller form factor. Eirian-IV has superior pitch density, but even then, it can be a challenge to read really tiny text that was supposed to be ``normal sized'' in a more traditional A4/letter sized setting. And so, the monitor was obtained.
Edythe-III is still hale and hearty, but her 3-year warranty is almost up. And if the behaviour of Edythe-II was of any indication, it was clear that I needed to get a replacement soonish. At the same time, Elysie-II was starting to become a little... unstable, partly because of age, partly because of hardware (old school spindle HDD), partly because of software (Windows 7), and partly because of circumstance (it was hard/impossible to head out to the venerable Sim Lim Square to source for parts, with the COVID-19 pandemic raging and stores closing left and right). So I decided to spend a little more than what I had originally saved for and get a new iteration of Eileen, now known as Eileen-II.
So, what's Eileen-II?
She's an Alienware m15 R3, with an Intel i7-10750H processor (6-core, 12MB cache, up to 5.1GHz with Turbo Boost), 32GB DDR4 RAM at 2666MHz, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB DDR6 discrete graphics card. Her screen is 15.6" (1920×1080) with a refresh rate of 144Hz, and her storage is a 1TB SSD.
Her specs are on par with Elysie-II in many ways, except for a slightly better parallelisation capability with 50% more cores and a faster secondary storage, and a much more portable form factor (laptop vs desktop). She's pretty portable for a stronk person like me, but I think I may actually need to use the provided carrier bag instead of whatever I had---she is a little larger than the 13" laptops that I have.
For a portable machine running the specs like the beast that is Elysie-II, Eileen-II runs surprisingly cool. Let's hope this continues.
------
On more different matters, it had been quite trying for the past week-and-a-half. Work had some extra certification thing that needed to be done to address a tender, and I was tasked to get it with a colleague. The whole process was a little harrowing, partly because the item that we were getting certification on wasn't exactly directly aligned with my interests/area of work/domain of expertise per se, and partly because of the super shortened duration we had to actually prepare for it, even though we managed the expectations of that to have two attempts instead of the one that was originally envisioned. Then there was the need to book a time slot to actually take the certification exam---it had to be online proctored, and the only time slot that fit the original planned schedule was at six in the morning (or any time between three and six in the morning in roughly fifteen-minute intervals). Thankfully it is now over; well it had been over since the Wednesday just passed. I passed by the grace of God---the score I had was exactly the one needed to pass, no more and no less. Just to be clear, this was one of those exams that the passing grade was a ``high'' percentage that was not fifty percent.
The Friday before, I had a near breakdown. I don't know why---suddenly I felt completely useless for some reason. I felt as though I would just fade away if I didn't pay attention to myself. I think I was just overwhelmed with the stress of not willfully failing that certification exam, and the combined stresses of a general lack of coping mechanisms (no Chinese Orchestra rehearsals, no meet ups with friends, no more confidante in general) with additional social stresses (what is the new norm for me now that I am a believer, am without a wife-to-be-candidate, basically having my life rewritten to the past) meant that I just sort of lost sense of where I was. I mean, yes, I'm a believer now, I know God is with me because I've chosen to walk with Him in my life, but I'm still a neophyte in the ways of Christ, and more importantly, I'm still a mortal.
Given all that I felt, I did something pretty uncharacteristic; I posted a plea for reassurance on my ``wall'' in Facebook.
I am really heartened by the responses that came in. Friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances started coming out of the wood work to send me private messages, asking my well-being, and giving me really positive encouragement that I had indeed impacted their lives in a positive way during the times when we were walking closer together than now.
I teared up. I tear up still. I wasn't expecting all that love and concern to come in like that. Don't ask me why---I don't know. I've never really had these kinds of feelings before.
It definitely helped ground me back into reality. That I was, and am here.
------
On yet another note, I've also bought some Oval-8 finger splits by 3-point products. They are for my two pinky fingers---they have a mild form of swan neck deformity. They only show up when I need to be playing the dizi or when I'm going for the pinky-notes of the right hand (instrument C♯, C, B), in which case it is bad. Most of the time I don't have to actually ``stretch'' my fingers, but under those circumstances highlighted, I have to, and it is a problem. The Oval-8 finger splits block the middle joint from bending backwards, which allows me to safely stretch out the pinky without jamming the joint up. It is super useful. I first learnt of them at the Flute Forum on Facebook, and bought mine from Fu Kang, a Singapore company.
And that's about it for now. Till the next update I suppose.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Goodbye Edythe-II
The inevitable has happened. Edythe-II decided to give up the ghost about a fortnight ago, and I was stuck in a strange position of not having a portable machine to get [some] things done.
I was, by no means, completely machine-less, since there's always Elysie-II to fall back on. But it is different---Elysie-II was built to be a gaming machine, and as a result, had much of the set up favouring that of playing games than actual working. Explained simply, it meant that the set up was more amenable to having wonderful visuals and large-ish text over the tiny text that I would use for ``work''-related manipulations.
The failure of Edythe-II came very suddenly. The night before, I suspended her and went to sleep, and by the next morning, it was no longer possible to wake her up. I tried various combinations of power/power button manipulations, but none of them were working. In the end, I had to go back to technical support because it is fast becoming apparent that there was a hardware issue that I had no chance of resolving on my own.
Later tests confirmed that it was a motherboard issue, and the price in replacing it was high enough that it didn't make any sense for me to do so when I can triple the amount and get a brand-new replacement with three more years of warranty (Edythe-II's warranty was just expired by 2 months, which led to the really crazy high price for the replacement).
So, what is Edythe-III?
She's a Fujitsu S937, Intel Core i7-7500U, 8GiB RAM (8GiB soldered, going to get a 16GiB RAM stick to max it up to 24GiB) with Intel HD Graphics 620. Her form factor is almost identical as that of Edythe-II, but with ``worse'' display (instead of 2560×1440, we're looking at 1920×1080), and ``better'' storage (Crucial 525GB SSD as primary storage as opposed to the original 1TB HDD---it was an upgrade that I decided to get because I realise that many things that I was doing had a lot of disk I/O, and so having an SSD is likely to improve the performance). Writing and compiling are the primary tasks that I do on the Edythes, so an SSD would make everything run much better. The original HDD is not tossed into the bin---it is going to live its life in the modular bay HDD kit to act as secondary storage for when I intend to sit down somewhere and stay plugged in (i.e. less need for the modular bay battery).
Thus, after three years of glorious Unifont use for the console, I'm back to using the Proggy series or even the Tom Thumb-esque font. I haven't actually managed to successfully convert that into a form that Windows can use, so I'm likely to be using Proggy (8×8) or some 5×7 font instead.
My biggest pet peeve is that I am literally stuck with Windows 10 with no reprieve. I did my best to reduce the amount of suck it could generate, but I have no idea just how much of it I managed to avoid through careful reading and adjusting of the underlying configuration settings. Classic Shell is a definite must, but even then it seems to act a little buggy with regard to the start menu.
Only time will tell.
And that's all I have to write about for now. It's really says something when the only times I have a ``proper'' blog entry is when something bad happens.
I was, by no means, completely machine-less, since there's always Elysie-II to fall back on. But it is different---Elysie-II was built to be a gaming machine, and as a result, had much of the set up favouring that of playing games than actual working. Explained simply, it meant that the set up was more amenable to having wonderful visuals and large-ish text over the tiny text that I would use for ``work''-related manipulations.
The failure of Edythe-II came very suddenly. The night before, I suspended her and went to sleep, and by the next morning, it was no longer possible to wake her up. I tried various combinations of power/power button manipulations, but none of them were working. In the end, I had to go back to technical support because it is fast becoming apparent that there was a hardware issue that I had no chance of resolving on my own.
Later tests confirmed that it was a motherboard issue, and the price in replacing it was high enough that it didn't make any sense for me to do so when I can triple the amount and get a brand-new replacement with three more years of warranty (Edythe-II's warranty was just expired by 2 months, which led to the really crazy high price for the replacement).
So, what is Edythe-III?
She's a Fujitsu S937, Intel Core i7-7500U, 8GiB RAM (8GiB soldered, going to get a 16GiB RAM stick to max it up to 24GiB) with Intel HD Graphics 620. Her form factor is almost identical as that of Edythe-II, but with ``worse'' display (instead of 2560×1440, we're looking at 1920×1080), and ``better'' storage (Crucial 525GB SSD as primary storage as opposed to the original 1TB HDD---it was an upgrade that I decided to get because I realise that many things that I was doing had a lot of disk I/O, and so having an SSD is likely to improve the performance). Writing and compiling are the primary tasks that I do on the Edythes, so an SSD would make everything run much better. The original HDD is not tossed into the bin---it is going to live its life in the modular bay HDD kit to act as secondary storage for when I intend to sit down somewhere and stay plugged in (i.e. less need for the modular bay battery).
Thus, after three years of glorious Unifont use for the console, I'm back to using the Proggy series or even the Tom Thumb-esque font. I haven't actually managed to successfully convert that into a form that Windows can use, so I'm likely to be using Proggy (8×8) or some 5×7 font instead.
My biggest pet peeve is that I am literally stuck with Windows 10 with no reprieve. I did my best to reduce the amount of suck it could generate, but I have no idea just how much of it I managed to avoid through careful reading and adjusting of the underlying configuration settings. Classic Shell is a definite must, but even then it seems to act a little buggy with regard to the start menu.
Only time will tell.
And that's all I have to write about for now. It's really says something when the only times I have a ``proper'' blog entry is when something bad happens.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Graphics Card Upgrade and 10-holed dizi
Some time back, I picked up the news that the NVidia GTX 1080 was released. That got me thinking---was it time to update the GTX 680 currently in Elysie-II? I scoured the info-sheets to get more information on the performance characteristics of the GTX 1080, and compared it to that of the GTX 680.
There was definitely a significant improvement by the numbers. Almost 3× in fact.
So I ended up getting the ASUS GTX 1080-8G Founder's Edition. That it was a ``founder's edition'' was more fluke than planning. So far I am liking the kind of throughput I am seeing from the card. Of course, I probably should replace my aging monitor (it's one of the oldest components that have been around since I first built Elysie) especially since the LCDs along its edges are starting to fade away into white. But it's not like I'm using Elysie-II to do anything important whilst sitting in front of it---I do most of the coding and what-not through SSH-ing into the Xubuntu partition of the machine.
Speaking of Xubuntu partition, I need to install the custom drivers from NVidia on it soon. The existing drivers, possibly from the ``noveau'' package are not working at all with such a new card.
Performance-wise, the GTX 1080 seems to run much cooler than the GTX 680, even at a more punishing setting. That was one the big reasons why I chose to get it now instead of waiting for later. Running cooler in the hot and humid weather is a definite advantage.
Another big push towards getting the GTX 1080 has been because of the games on the list that I'd like to play. I had completed The Witcher and The Witcher 2, and am about to start on The Witcher 3. That last Witcher game is a demanding beast. From what I had read, my GTX 680 was going to have a hard time playing it even at low settings. I am also waiting for the price for the new DOOM game to drop so that I can get it too.
So that's at least two AAA games that require the kind of horsepower that the GTX 1080 can deliver.
I know that the GTX 1080 is supposed to be VR-ready as well, but I don't really care about it since I'm not into the whole VR nonsense. 4k gaming is also touted to be a strong point of the GTX 1080, but again, with a 1080p screen, I'd rather much prefer 1080p@60Hz smoothness than 4k whatever.
All in all, a good use of money for my own entertainment.
------
The other day, my 10-hole dizi finally made its way through the world and on to my door-step. I had asked sifu about his opinions of that instrument before, and he said that it was in general, not really worth it due to too awkward fingering and a general lack of actual pieces that demand its exclusive use. Nevertheless, I got one mostly to mess around with, and to test the particular e-commerce chain that I had not tried before.
He wasn't kidding about the awkward fingering. I found that the fingers on the left-hand suffered quite a bit of strain from trying to keep them bunched up the way one might do while holding a concert flute with a shelf, while trying to simultaneously cover all the wholes that each of them had. It also took me quite a while to figure out how to set up the correct balancing point positions so that the dizi can be held up while the fingers are racing up and down to play the various notes.
But other than that, that dizi actually has a decent tone. It is probably wise to treat it like another instrument in the dizi family as opposed to unifying it under the same ``style'' as the 6-hole dizi.
And that's all I have for now. Till the next update.
There was definitely a significant improvement by the numbers. Almost 3× in fact.
So I ended up getting the ASUS GTX 1080-8G Founder's Edition. That it was a ``founder's edition'' was more fluke than planning. So far I am liking the kind of throughput I am seeing from the card. Of course, I probably should replace my aging monitor (it's one of the oldest components that have been around since I first built Elysie) especially since the LCDs along its edges are starting to fade away into white. But it's not like I'm using Elysie-II to do anything important whilst sitting in front of it---I do most of the coding and what-not through SSH-ing into the Xubuntu partition of the machine.
Speaking of Xubuntu partition, I need to install the custom drivers from NVidia on it soon. The existing drivers, possibly from the ``noveau'' package are not working at all with such a new card.
Performance-wise, the GTX 1080 seems to run much cooler than the GTX 680, even at a more punishing setting. That was one the big reasons why I chose to get it now instead of waiting for later. Running cooler in the hot and humid weather is a definite advantage.
Another big push towards getting the GTX 1080 has been because of the games on the list that I'd like to play. I had completed The Witcher and The Witcher 2, and am about to start on The Witcher 3. That last Witcher game is a demanding beast. From what I had read, my GTX 680 was going to have a hard time playing it even at low settings. I am also waiting for the price for the new DOOM game to drop so that I can get it too.
So that's at least two AAA games that require the kind of horsepower that the GTX 1080 can deliver.
I know that the GTX 1080 is supposed to be VR-ready as well, but I don't really care about it since I'm not into the whole VR nonsense. 4k gaming is also touted to be a strong point of the GTX 1080, but again, with a 1080p screen, I'd rather much prefer 1080p@60Hz smoothness than 4k whatever.
All in all, a good use of money for my own entertainment.
------
The other day, my 10-hole dizi finally made its way through the world and on to my door-step. I had asked sifu about his opinions of that instrument before, and he said that it was in general, not really worth it due to too awkward fingering and a general lack of actual pieces that demand its exclusive use. Nevertheless, I got one mostly to mess around with, and to test the particular e-commerce chain that I had not tried before.
He wasn't kidding about the awkward fingering. I found that the fingers on the left-hand suffered quite a bit of strain from trying to keep them bunched up the way one might do while holding a concert flute with a shelf, while trying to simultaneously cover all the wholes that each of them had. It also took me quite a while to figure out how to set up the correct balancing point positions so that the dizi can be held up while the fingers are racing up and down to play the various notes.
But other than that, that dizi actually has a decent tone. It is probably wise to treat it like another instrument in the dizi family as opposed to unifying it under the same ``style'' as the 6-hole dizi.
And that's all I have for now. Till the next update.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Ping and Observations
Ah. The end of November is upon us again, and soon December will arise. Already there are noticeably fewer people on the roads, which of course grants me the opportunity to sleep in just a little bit more since the incidence of slowing traffic jams is just that much reduced.
It's very early a week since I've returned to the usual apartment, having bivouacked at my sister's place for nearly three weeks while they were doing some government mandated/subsidised block-level renovation programme. Things have finally started to become more normal, and as such, my mood has been steadily improving. Elysie-II has been hooked up again, and is currently undergoing various software updates as I am writing here. I had to borrow a power cable because I left the original one in the office when I was moving her there to be out of the dusts' way.
Of course, I've brought my dizi back as well. Cannot do without them, especially since I really need to practise more because I have stupidly decided to take part in a dizi choir. The dizi choir isn't stupid---I am the stupid one here because it is obvious that they are operating at a much higher level than I care to be. Most of them have performance degrees or related certification/awards for dizi playing, while I'm just that guy who plays in a neighbourhood (literally!) Chinese orchestra who hasn't had a proper lesson for a very very long time.
Come to think of it, I think I haven't had a proper lesson from sifu for nearly a decade. A very sobering thought.
But we'll see how it goes. If they want me, hooray! If not, well, no loss. I can still make music no matter where I am.
It's kind of funny. Here I am, at the near perfect witching hour for writing a blog entry and what do I have to gripe about in my mind? Almost nothing. Perhaps it is a sign of good things to come.
Or I'm just too damn tired to do any more writing. Work throughout the week has been quite interesting but draining. I'm not complaining though, just observing---in this economy, finding a job can be considered much harder than it was before (was it ever easy?), and in some ways it is nice that I have a job doing what I like that pays me so I can pay the bills.
Of course the pay isn't fantastic---that's what one gets from a quasi-government outfit. Quasi-government statuses generally imply that we get the worst of the possible pool of accessible private/public traits. Like many things, it's a trade-off---quasi-government status usually implies company longevity, and potentially enough research in the pipeline that they are a little more willing than the government proper to take calculated risks. In that sense, there is some job security.
Alright, till the next reply then.
It's very early a week since I've returned to the usual apartment, having bivouacked at my sister's place for nearly three weeks while they were doing some government mandated/subsidised block-level renovation programme. Things have finally started to become more normal, and as such, my mood has been steadily improving. Elysie-II has been hooked up again, and is currently undergoing various software updates as I am writing here. I had to borrow a power cable because I left the original one in the office when I was moving her there to be out of the dusts' way.
Of course, I've brought my dizi back as well. Cannot do without them, especially since I really need to practise more because I have stupidly decided to take part in a dizi choir. The dizi choir isn't stupid---I am the stupid one here because it is obvious that they are operating at a much higher level than I care to be. Most of them have performance degrees or related certification/awards for dizi playing, while I'm just that guy who plays in a neighbourhood (literally!) Chinese orchestra who hasn't had a proper lesson for a very very long time.
Come to think of it, I think I haven't had a proper lesson from sifu for nearly a decade. A very sobering thought.
But we'll see how it goes. If they want me, hooray! If not, well, no loss. I can still make music no matter where I am.
It's kind of funny. Here I am, at the near perfect witching hour for writing a blog entry and what do I have to gripe about in my mind? Almost nothing. Perhaps it is a sign of good things to come.
Or I'm just too damn tired to do any more writing. Work throughout the week has been quite interesting but draining. I'm not complaining though, just observing---in this economy, finding a job can be considered much harder than it was before (was it ever easy?), and in some ways it is nice that I have a job doing what I like that pays me so I can pay the bills.
Of course the pay isn't fantastic---that's what one gets from a quasi-government outfit. Quasi-government statuses generally imply that we get the worst of the possible pool of accessible private/public traits. Like many things, it's a trade-off---quasi-government status usually implies company longevity, and potentially enough research in the pipeline that they are a little more willing than the government proper to take calculated risks. In that sense, there is some job security.
Alright, till the next reply then.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Excitements
I know, I know. I copped out again after having taken a four-day break of some sorts and reverted to using six-word stories. It's not as though I had deliberately planned for that---I was trying to deal with a silly tension headache while simultaneously trying to contain all manners of excitement and trying to keep a level head in this ever increasingly hot weather, the kind where one immediately feels muggy just from stepping out of a cold shower.
So, all manners of excitement huh. I'll bet some of you who are reading this are wondering just what kind of excitement are there. Well, allow me to enumerate briefly. Over Friday and Saturday, I was half-expecting a text message from a friend who was to inform me of the details for a planned blind date that she thought would be an interesting fit; such a date was planned to occur on Sundays, hence the wait with half-expectations. There were some... complications with respect to the original plans that she had made with her boyfriend over this girl, but we'll just leave it as such for now and not talk about it. Over Sunday I was excited for the arrival of Edythe-II as well as the watching of the new X-Men movie with Moo, Paul and his wife. Those were the main excitements that were keeping me up and making me feel too tired to give a damn about writing.
Of course there are more interesting things that have occurred in between. After nearly a month of running computations and ahem hosting, I finally could reboot Elysie-II back into Windows to play a bunch of games over the weekend. One of the games that I had wanted to start on was Unepic. I had heard of interesting responses from KK about this a long time ago, and had gotten the game from GoG some time back, and I was finally going to give it a go. Man, it was totally worth it. It had a rogue-like sort of feel, very similar to Rogue Legacy for example, except that there isn't any perma-death. So the pressure was actually off the game play and learning-by-dying, which actually gave a little more time towards the small puzzles and the hilarious dialogue. I won't spoil it any further, but considering that I had only played a quarter of the game by this point, there really isn't much else that I can say about it. The platforming felt a little stilted though, the manoeuvrability of the protagonist is surprisingly mediocre---it was impossible to say move in a direction and change weapons at the same time. This also meant that cool platforming tricks like side jumping up a platform immediately above the one that the protagonist was standing on was basically impossible.
I had also started on Bioshock, and suffice to say, the horror ambience was starting to get to me. I'm starting to wonder if I'm not really a fan of the horror/survival genre. Most of the FPSes that I play and particularly enjoy are those that involved relatively fast action, with lots of heroic moments, like Borderlands 2 or even Serious Sam. Deus Ex: Human Revolution actually took me a while to get to to complete it, and till date I still haven't completed Doom 3 and Quake II despite restarting on them every few months. Hell, I don't even play Left 4 Dead 2 anymore. But that's probably a slightly different story.
Oh right, Edythe-II. She's a Fujitsu S904, Intel Core i7, 8GiB RAM (4GiB slotted and 4GiB soldered, going to get an 8GiB RAM stick to up to the maximum of 12GiB) with Intel HD Graphics 4400 and a 1TB hard drive. And those aren't the real reason for me getting her. The answer lies in the form factor---13.3'' screen with a resolution of 2560×1440. Well, screw the fact that she is running Windows 8.1 Pro and therefore has a useless Metro UI and the whole App marketplace concept as well as the touch-screen mechanism. That the screen has so many pixels at such a density meant that I could literally use GNU Unifont as the default coding font for all my terminals without having to sacrifice the total character cell count, as opposed to using the Proggy fonts series. This doesn't sound like much, but really, GNU Unifont is more useful than the Proggy series in that it is pan-unicode in nature, which makes things much more coherent when mixing multiple languages. GNU Unifont has the added advantage of actually being taller than its width, something that is false for the Proggy series (they were all 8×8 compared with 16×8 and 16×16).
More pixel space also means that using tools like Scrivener and FL Studio become more viable, something that I will be doing a lot from this point onwarrds. I have two novels that I want to write (more like three based on NaNoWriMo standards, but no one is counting). I had heard of Scrivener and was contemplating its use in organising more complex novels as compared to the slice-of-life stuff that I had been beating out time after time, and bswolf gave what I would consider a glowing recommendation for the tool since he was using it to organise his own novels. But on a small screen, Scrivener doesn't show off its prowess that well, and so Edythe-II was obtained.
Anyway, this week is a short one. Soon YT will be back in town for a meet up, which is good because I have someone more sane to talk to that isn't related to work, and Brian is actually in town right now, but I will only be dragging him all over the bloody place come Friday where I had taken leave just for that. And with my proposed architecture for an access control service approved in principle, things are just getting peachy.
Now, if only that blind date were to occur, and I have some luck and meet someone who is compatible...
So, all manners of excitement huh. I'll bet some of you who are reading this are wondering just what kind of excitement are there. Well, allow me to enumerate briefly. Over Friday and Saturday, I was half-expecting a text message from a friend who was to inform me of the details for a planned blind date that she thought would be an interesting fit; such a date was planned to occur on Sundays, hence the wait with half-expectations. There were some... complications with respect to the original plans that she had made with her boyfriend over this girl, but we'll just leave it as such for now and not talk about it. Over Sunday I was excited for the arrival of Edythe-II as well as the watching of the new X-Men movie with Moo, Paul and his wife. Those were the main excitements that were keeping me up and making me feel too tired to give a damn about writing.
Of course there are more interesting things that have occurred in between. After nearly a month of running computations and ahem hosting, I finally could reboot Elysie-II back into Windows to play a bunch of games over the weekend. One of the games that I had wanted to start on was Unepic. I had heard of interesting responses from KK about this a long time ago, and had gotten the game from GoG some time back, and I was finally going to give it a go. Man, it was totally worth it. It had a rogue-like sort of feel, very similar to Rogue Legacy for example, except that there isn't any perma-death. So the pressure was actually off the game play and learning-by-dying, which actually gave a little more time towards the small puzzles and the hilarious dialogue. I won't spoil it any further, but considering that I had only played a quarter of the game by this point, there really isn't much else that I can say about it. The platforming felt a little stilted though, the manoeuvrability of the protagonist is surprisingly mediocre---it was impossible to say move in a direction and change weapons at the same time. This also meant that cool platforming tricks like side jumping up a platform immediately above the one that the protagonist was standing on was basically impossible.
I had also started on Bioshock, and suffice to say, the horror ambience was starting to get to me. I'm starting to wonder if I'm not really a fan of the horror/survival genre. Most of the FPSes that I play and particularly enjoy are those that involved relatively fast action, with lots of heroic moments, like Borderlands 2 or even Serious Sam. Deus Ex: Human Revolution actually took me a while to get to to complete it, and till date I still haven't completed Doom 3 and Quake II despite restarting on them every few months. Hell, I don't even play Left 4 Dead 2 anymore. But that's probably a slightly different story.
Oh right, Edythe-II. She's a Fujitsu S904, Intel Core i7, 8GiB RAM (4GiB slotted and 4GiB soldered, going to get an 8GiB RAM stick to up to the maximum of 12GiB) with Intel HD Graphics 4400 and a 1TB hard drive. And those aren't the real reason for me getting her. The answer lies in the form factor---13.3'' screen with a resolution of 2560×1440. Well, screw the fact that she is running Windows 8.1 Pro and therefore has a useless Metro UI and the whole App marketplace concept as well as the touch-screen mechanism. That the screen has so many pixels at such a density meant that I could literally use GNU Unifont as the default coding font for all my terminals without having to sacrifice the total character cell count, as opposed to using the Proggy fonts series. This doesn't sound like much, but really, GNU Unifont is more useful than the Proggy series in that it is pan-unicode in nature, which makes things much more coherent when mixing multiple languages. GNU Unifont has the added advantage of actually being taller than its width, something that is false for the Proggy series (they were all 8×8 compared with 16×8 and 16×16).
More pixel space also means that using tools like Scrivener and FL Studio become more viable, something that I will be doing a lot from this point onwarrds. I have two novels that I want to write (more like three based on NaNoWriMo standards, but no one is counting). I had heard of Scrivener and was contemplating its use in organising more complex novels as compared to the slice-of-life stuff that I had been beating out time after time, and bswolf gave what I would consider a glowing recommendation for the tool since he was using it to organise his own novels. But on a small screen, Scrivener doesn't show off its prowess that well, and so Edythe-II was obtained.
Anyway, this week is a short one. Soon YT will be back in town for a meet up, which is good because I have someone more sane to talk to that isn't related to work, and Brian is actually in town right now, but I will only be dragging him all over the bloody place come Friday where I had taken leave just for that. And with my proposed architecture for an access control service approved in principle, things are just getting peachy.
Now, if only that blind date were to occur, and I have some luck and meet someone who is compatible...
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Workarounds...
Some notes to myself for Elysie-II since the update of the BIOS from release 5 to release 7:
Very very curious.
It's probably only a slight annoyance for now, considering that the Windows set up is used only for gaming.
- Xubuntu: For Hyper-Threading to work, ACPI needs to be enabled at the BIOS.
- Xubuntu: To not cause a device driver crash, disable integrated VGA support in the BIOS.
- Windows 7: In total contrast to Xubuntu, to not cause a device driver crash, enable the integrated VGA support in the BIOS.
Very very curious.
It's probably only a slight annoyance for now, considering that the Windows set up is used only for gaming.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Feed Not the Troll, but Ban it Instead
It has been a while since I last wrote here. The lack of updates isn't really because of a lack of want to update, but really because there is just so little to update. But, to keep things interesting, allow me to spew some vitriol on something controversal first, before expounding on more... mundane things. I mean at the end of the day, what's the point of a blog if not to rant?
``Victim blaming'' is a phrase I keep hearing time and time again, and often times, this is associated with the loaded word ``rape''. ``Rape'' is a loaded word because in many cases it ends up becoming a case of circumstantial evidence, a case of ``he said, she said'', and only because the conditions in which it is set up is based around the notion of consent, yet without the formality that is provided by usual contractual law. But that's not what I'm going to rant about -- I am ranting about the notion of ``victim blaming''. One common defense that rapists make is that the victim ``had it coming by dressing in a way that is sexually provocative''. Is that a valid defense? No, definitely not; in a liberal society, everyone is allowed to wear whatever the hell they want and walk wherever the hell they want. However, and this is a really big however, we should all be aware of how certain seemingly innocent factors can cumulate towards increasing the risk in which someone can become a victim.
Here's a slightly less controversial example. Suppose that there is a step ladder leaned against the wall, with someone on top of it painting. You are walking and you see this ladder. Will you walk below the ladder or around the ladder? Here, I am creating a scenario where there are two obvious courses of actions, one that is obviously less risky and one that is obviously more risky. A rational agent assumption would suppose that a rational agent would be slightly more risk averse, and therefore choose the course of action that is least risky, and in this case, walking around the ladder. Will anyone stop you from walking below the ladder? No, not really -- you can always do that, though if the ladder falls on top of you, you have no one to blame except for your own judgement.
Accusing someone of ``victim blaming'' is jarring to me only because it pre-supposes that the consequences of all possible actions taken are solely dependent on the environment, and that the victim is an innocent party. I disagree. While the victim ought to be empathised for his/her plight, he/she should also be taken to task for having poor judgement on his/her choice of actions given that the world is not an ideal non-hostile environment. I have to emphasize that last point because it is crucial -- just because you can dress skimpily (for example) doesn't mean that you have to. Should you be raped if you dress skimpily? Definitely not! But by doing so, you've already shifted the odds against you -- so while you shouldn't be sexually assaulted at all no matter what you wear, by dressing skimpily, you are already sending the wrong signals out. And I find that yelling at people who point out this at-risk behaviour as ``victim blaming'' is not only unfair, but highly irrational.
But try to get this past the general population. Good luck.
------
In other news, the eye infection that I was fighting for the past three weeks has finally been fully healed over. It was stupid -- I thought it was yet another one of those corneal abrasions that I seemed to be prone to getting, but it turned out to be a viral infection. The opthalmologist suspected that it was a Herpes Simplex (HSV-1) infection; the infection managed to clear up from a sustained dose of topical Acyclovir. Having one blurry eye and one good eye made it really hard to see things and get stuff done, and more often than not I was just feeling rather irritated.
After nearly 4 years of service, Elysie finally kicked the bucket. I ended up making Elysie Mk II with a Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H mother board with Intel Core i7 4770 Haswell processor and 32GiB RAM, housed in a Coolmaster HAF 912 chassis. I cannibalised the relatively new ASUS Nvidia GTX 680 and PSU from Elysie Mk I for Elysie Mk II, and moved the 1TB hard drive over to join with the 2TB hard drive. I had originally planned to rebuild Elysie next year, probably when Broadwell is released, but due to the sudden death of the old motherboard, I had to bring forward the upgrade plans. I ditched the Windows XP 64-bit Professional edition ``gaming'' operating system and installed a Windows 7 64-bit Professional edtiion one instead. I tried to get Xubuntu 12.04 LTS to work, but the Intel GbE ethernet interface was completely unrecognised -- had to use Xubuntu 13.04 instead.
I find the Elysie Mk II (or Elysie-II from now on) is not very stable for some reason. On Xubuntu 13.04, I started to get random kernel panics from kswapd, so I disabled the swap partition -- that seemed to do the trick. But then after nearly 24 hours of running the prime95 (version 27) program, she suddenly had a black screen and seemed to be turned off, and I have no bloody clue what was going on. On Windows 7, I had slightly different problems -- some of the graphics when playing Poker Night 2 were jittery, and there were a few random crashes for almost no reason. Thinking that the virtual/physical memory map was the issue, I have disabled the page file, and so far, that seemed to do the trick also.
I'm starting to suspect that perhaps 32GiB of RAM is starting to encroach upon other reserved memory locations that I was previously unaware of from running everything with memory of at most 8GiB. I have run memtest86+ on the RAM chips, and they seemed to be good. Guess I'll have to keep an eye out on things from now on.
Finally, my Bose QC20 In-ear Active Noise-Cancelling Headphones finally arrived last Friday. I test run the device on over the weekend and damn was I impressed. The comfort was like the usual IE2 that I use regularly (audiophiles can take a hike -- I value comfort over ``audiophilic quality playback'' from the headphones since I wear the damn thing for at least 8 hours a day), but it was damn good at blocking out the mundane noise that one would expect from living in a non-air-conditioned HDB flat on a low floor. Earlier today, I used the QC20 on the bus, and in the office before finally using it on the train, and I have the same comment as before -- the damn thing does a really good job at blocking out the unwanted noise, whether it was a consistent hum or human speech. I might have over-paid for this (it is Bose after all), but I'm not regretting it at all. I have tried many types of in-ear headphones, but of the lot, I still like the comfort that the basic Bose IE2 design has, where the speakers sit in the bowl of the pinna instead of digging deeper into the ear canal to find a hold there. The sound reproduction of the QC20 is not fantastic, but for what it is supposed to do (cut back on ambient noise), it does it really well in a form factor that lends itself to a much longer use time.
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Man, this is fast turning into one of those über-long and ranty posts. And I'm still not quite done yet. The last thing I want to rant about is the incident that occurred in my previous post. Let me put things into a little perspective. I write entries on this blog mostly as a way of airing my views on issues big or small, as well as to highlight some observations that I have made about the world around me. I love comments, because it is one of the ways to have some light interaction here. But I maintain an iron-grip on what comment gets published and what doesn't -- this is just prudence at work, and not really about censorship.
Recently, there have been two instances of trolls who have decided to make use of the anonymous commenting capability of my blog to slam me with rather negative and useless comments. One basically accused me of ``wasting my advisor's money'' (false: I was funded directly by the Organisation) and the other was goading me into thinking that I was a loser. I could have easily refused to publish those comments, but I chose to do so, as well as to rebut their allegations. Immediately after the appearance of the second troll, I promptly disabled anonymous commenting on my blog.
In all the years that this blog has existed, I have rarely had a troll situation like this. Yet in the short span of less than six months, I see two instances of such abuse of the anonymous comment system. I can shrug it off and get on with life, but I suspect this is likely to escalate over time -- I doubt that these comments happened ``by chance''. I don't have to deal with this crap -- and so, the anonymous commenting capability is removed.
Those who care will still know how to get hold of me, so nothing of value was truly lost. =)
And with that, I'm done with this post. Till the next entry then.
``Victim blaming'' is a phrase I keep hearing time and time again, and often times, this is associated with the loaded word ``rape''. ``Rape'' is a loaded word because in many cases it ends up becoming a case of circumstantial evidence, a case of ``he said, she said'', and only because the conditions in which it is set up is based around the notion of consent, yet without the formality that is provided by usual contractual law. But that's not what I'm going to rant about -- I am ranting about the notion of ``victim blaming''. One common defense that rapists make is that the victim ``had it coming by dressing in a way that is sexually provocative''. Is that a valid defense? No, definitely not; in a liberal society, everyone is allowed to wear whatever the hell they want and walk wherever the hell they want. However, and this is a really big however, we should all be aware of how certain seemingly innocent factors can cumulate towards increasing the risk in which someone can become a victim.
Here's a slightly less controversial example. Suppose that there is a step ladder leaned against the wall, with someone on top of it painting. You are walking and you see this ladder. Will you walk below the ladder or around the ladder? Here, I am creating a scenario where there are two obvious courses of actions, one that is obviously less risky and one that is obviously more risky. A rational agent assumption would suppose that a rational agent would be slightly more risk averse, and therefore choose the course of action that is least risky, and in this case, walking around the ladder. Will anyone stop you from walking below the ladder? No, not really -- you can always do that, though if the ladder falls on top of you, you have no one to blame except for your own judgement.
Accusing someone of ``victim blaming'' is jarring to me only because it pre-supposes that the consequences of all possible actions taken are solely dependent on the environment, and that the victim is an innocent party. I disagree. While the victim ought to be empathised for his/her plight, he/she should also be taken to task for having poor judgement on his/her choice of actions given that the world is not an ideal non-hostile environment. I have to emphasize that last point because it is crucial -- just because you can dress skimpily (for example) doesn't mean that you have to. Should you be raped if you dress skimpily? Definitely not! But by doing so, you've already shifted the odds against you -- so while you shouldn't be sexually assaulted at all no matter what you wear, by dressing skimpily, you are already sending the wrong signals out. And I find that yelling at people who point out this at-risk behaviour as ``victim blaming'' is not only unfair, but highly irrational.
But try to get this past the general population. Good luck.
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In other news, the eye infection that I was fighting for the past three weeks has finally been fully healed over. It was stupid -- I thought it was yet another one of those corneal abrasions that I seemed to be prone to getting, but it turned out to be a viral infection. The opthalmologist suspected that it was a Herpes Simplex (HSV-1) infection; the infection managed to clear up from a sustained dose of topical Acyclovir. Having one blurry eye and one good eye made it really hard to see things and get stuff done, and more often than not I was just feeling rather irritated.
After nearly 4 years of service, Elysie finally kicked the bucket. I ended up making Elysie Mk II with a Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H mother board with Intel Core i7 4770 Haswell processor and 32GiB RAM, housed in a Coolmaster HAF 912 chassis. I cannibalised the relatively new ASUS Nvidia GTX 680 and PSU from Elysie Mk I for Elysie Mk II, and moved the 1TB hard drive over to join with the 2TB hard drive. I had originally planned to rebuild Elysie next year, probably when Broadwell is released, but due to the sudden death of the old motherboard, I had to bring forward the upgrade plans. I ditched the Windows XP 64-bit Professional edition ``gaming'' operating system and installed a Windows 7 64-bit Professional edtiion one instead. I tried to get Xubuntu 12.04 LTS to work, but the Intel GbE ethernet interface was completely unrecognised -- had to use Xubuntu 13.04 instead.
I find the Elysie Mk II (or Elysie-II from now on) is not very stable for some reason. On Xubuntu 13.04, I started to get random kernel panics from kswapd, so I disabled the swap partition -- that seemed to do the trick. But then after nearly 24 hours of running the prime95 (version 27) program, she suddenly had a black screen and seemed to be turned off, and I have no bloody clue what was going on. On Windows 7, I had slightly different problems -- some of the graphics when playing Poker Night 2 were jittery, and there were a few random crashes for almost no reason. Thinking that the virtual/physical memory map was the issue, I have disabled the page file, and so far, that seemed to do the trick also.
I'm starting to suspect that perhaps 32GiB of RAM is starting to encroach upon other reserved memory locations that I was previously unaware of from running everything with memory of at most 8GiB. I have run memtest86+ on the RAM chips, and they seemed to be good. Guess I'll have to keep an eye out on things from now on.
Finally, my Bose QC20 In-ear Active Noise-Cancelling Headphones finally arrived last Friday. I test run the device on over the weekend and damn was I impressed. The comfort was like the usual IE2 that I use regularly (audiophiles can take a hike -- I value comfort over ``audiophilic quality playback'' from the headphones since I wear the damn thing for at least 8 hours a day), but it was damn good at blocking out the mundane noise that one would expect from living in a non-air-conditioned HDB flat on a low floor. Earlier today, I used the QC20 on the bus, and in the office before finally using it on the train, and I have the same comment as before -- the damn thing does a really good job at blocking out the unwanted noise, whether it was a consistent hum or human speech. I might have over-paid for this (it is Bose after all), but I'm not regretting it at all. I have tried many types of in-ear headphones, but of the lot, I still like the comfort that the basic Bose IE2 design has, where the speakers sit in the bowl of the pinna instead of digging deeper into the ear canal to find a hold there. The sound reproduction of the QC20 is not fantastic, but for what it is supposed to do (cut back on ambient noise), it does it really well in a form factor that lends itself to a much longer use time.
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Man, this is fast turning into one of those über-long and ranty posts. And I'm still not quite done yet. The last thing I want to rant about is the incident that occurred in my previous post. Let me put things into a little perspective. I write entries on this blog mostly as a way of airing my views on issues big or small, as well as to highlight some observations that I have made about the world around me. I love comments, because it is one of the ways to have some light interaction here. But I maintain an iron-grip on what comment gets published and what doesn't -- this is just prudence at work, and not really about censorship.
Recently, there have been two instances of trolls who have decided to make use of the anonymous commenting capability of my blog to slam me with rather negative and useless comments. One basically accused me of ``wasting my advisor's money'' (false: I was funded directly by the Organisation) and the other was goading me into thinking that I was a loser. I could have easily refused to publish those comments, but I chose to do so, as well as to rebut their allegations. Immediately after the appearance of the second troll, I promptly disabled anonymous commenting on my blog.
In all the years that this blog has existed, I have rarely had a troll situation like this. Yet in the short span of less than six months, I see two instances of such abuse of the anonymous comment system. I can shrug it off and get on with life, but I suspect this is likely to escalate over time -- I doubt that these comments happened ``by chance''. I don't have to deal with this crap -- and so, the anonymous commenting capability is removed.
Those who care will still know how to get hold of me, so nothing of value was truly lost. =)
And with that, I'm done with this post. Till the next entry then.
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