Sandy Bridge

I'm now caught up on 1883, through the end of the season. It had a pretty great combination of things to make me like it. Adventure galore. Romance. Danger. Great writing, as well as acting and setting. Not to mention Sam Elliott in a western. And it really succeeded in making your care about the characters, and have an emotional connection to the events. The characters aren't just cowboys. It's pretty much everything I could want in a series about the Oregon Trail. I find the audience reviews to often be a more reliable indicator of whether I'll like a film or show than critical ones, although the recommendations of friends who know me are even better. The wildcard I watch out for are classics. Sometimes they're legitimately good, but other times they seem to get good reviews because people think they should like them because some critics decided they were classics. 2001 is one of those, IMO - it's just not good if the artistry of it isn't to your fancy. Or maybe the graphics made it good in 1968, but they aren't enough now that graphics alone usually just results in a forgettable film, if there isn't also plot. But the key reason professional reviews differ, IMO, is that they over-emphasize the artistry and uniqueness of a film. But I also have to consider what types of films I like. For me, things like genre are the determining factors. Politics, I like to say I'm a die-hard moderate, even though that's really just relative to today's often polarized politics, not because I'm 100% in the middle. But I can't think of a film that I've watched where I disliked it because of politics. Instead, it's keeping in mind that I'm unlikely to enjoy even the best-reviewed horror film, or raunchy comedy. And that if a superhero movie or sci-fi film dispenses with reality too much, it's going to break plausible deniability and I'm not going to be able to enjoy it, even if most people do.

I like to listen to this song after getting stronger, which I did today. Although I'm never going to be strong enough to face Apollo Creed in a fight.

Beyond a certain point, more Mbps is almost useless. I have 500 Mbps from my ISP, but my modem is only DOCSIS 3.0, so I only get about 343 Mbps. I haven't bothered to upgrade it, I'd almost never notice the difference. I only have that plan because it boosted the upload bandwidth majorly over the next one down. That can come in handy, and very much did so during the NBRchive operation (which wouldn't have been helped up by more download speed anyway, due to the need to not make the server think it was being DDOSed). My most recent purchase was a burrito.

I have mixed feelings about this feature - sometimes it would be handy, but often I want a fresh start with nothing running after a reboot. Though I can see why it would be beneficial in 10/11 with their proclivity to reboot when they feel like it after installing updates. It seems that the new feature is Windows keeping track of which applications were running. Some applications, such as Notepad++ and OneNote, have long supported restarting without losing track of which files they had open. Perhaps Microsoft also added an API to make it slightly easier for applications to add that behavior. Program Manager would do the same thing with restarting exactly as it had been in Windows 3.1, but sometime in the Windows 9x line that stopped being the default in its successor, Windows Explorer (though I believe it remained an option for a while). I often found it annoying that Program Manager would restart exactly as it had been, meaning I'd have to manually close each window.

Looks like AMD support just landed a few hours ago. I might have to try it, I have Doom on GOG. Although my GPU's support statuses are questionable... the 320x200 resolution sounds promising for my underspecced GTX 1050 though.

That was interesting tangent. I watched a video where a guy does a tour of one of those international car transport ships (though not the SFL Composer), and it's amazing how closely packed they are, as well as the low ceiling on the lower decks. Now I know more about my car's journey from Japan. Kind of glad it was already stateside when I bought it though!

Wow... that is dramatic, I hadn't heard about that ship. Glad you got lucky with that one. That could have been really inconvenient with the Tesla already being sold.

All right, time for a new poll. How much do you spend on your vehicle each year? I imagine it's a top 5 expense category for most people, although possibly lower than computers for some forum members. Depreciation. Insurance. Fuel. Maintenance. Repairs/deductibles. Upgrades. Registration. Tickets. There are a lot of things that can add up. For me, it's in the low $4000s, not counting the residual value of the car if I sold it tomorrow, which would take it to the mid-upper $3000s. The upfront cost/depreciation is the largest component, followed by insurance, gasoline, and maintenance & repairs, in that order. Upfront cost is still about 45% of the overall, but that will fall as the car ages. Insurance is about 20% of the total. Gasoline about 17%; I have a pretty fuel-efficient car for not even being a hybrid. It would be cheaper if I took public transit everywhere; that costs $744/year here for 12 unlimited monthly passes. But it doesn't go everywhere I'd want to go (friends' houses being a big missing part, parks being another), and in a lot of parts of town doesn't run late or frequently. Still, I could have a $60 weekly Lyft budget and still come out even. I did take public transit quite a bit pre-pandemic, so my gasoline/maintenance share - and overall car costs - would be higher if I had been driving to work as much as the average person in the U.S.

Oh my... did your original one wind up at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean? I heard about that Porsche ship that caught fire and sunk. I agree though, great color choice, enjoy!

One of the essential pieces of a modern Internet suite, what's your favorite RSS/Atom feed reader? I'm half-migrated between Opera Presto's integrated reader, and Vivaldi's new integrated reader. They have similar three-column interfaces and features. Vivaldi's probably the better one at this point due to more HTML/CSS capabilities when rendering, but I haven't fully migrated. They both allow various labeling options; Vivaldi has nice e-mail forwarding of RSS info that I haven't really used yet. In both cases, I like that they're integrated with the browser. Opera does a better job of letting me know that there are updates via toast notifications; I sometimes forget about my feeds if I don't use Opera for a while. But I haven't really explored the market much, especially the standalone market. I joined the RSS bandwagon late, and the general impression I got was that Google Reader was the best and everyone sort of stopped talking about RSS after it disappeared. So I just used what was built into my browser that seemed good enough. What have I been missing out on?

Noctua fans are the exception to the rule of things should look nice together. The ugly brown color is part of the appeal. Anyone looking at your case, who knows about fans, will instantly know you have Noctua fans. That alone offsets the fact that it will almost never integrate with the rest of your color scheme. And A12x25 as well... can't do better than that. At least one of my fans recently started spoiling the "silent PC" effect for several minutes after startup... so if I can't fix it I'll be looking to swap it for either a Noctua (brown, naturally), or perhaps one of the Corsair Maglev ones. I'd normally gravitate towards Noctua but I've wanted maglev something ever since learning about maglev trains... really either one would work great, and easily outlive the rest of the build. Except perhaps the SeaSonic PSU, that will probably still be working in 2070. It's the Prime Ultra 650 Watt Titanium, with a warranty until mid-2030. The previous PSU burnt a capacitor by the smell of it, so I decided to go for the highest quality in a replacement; I was lucky the old one didn't fry anything when it went. Which leads to another part of my build philosophy - don't rebuild often, but when you do, use quality parts. Not necessarily the highest-end performance-wise, or the most expensive, but quality. Other aspects of the build that contribute to its quiet nature - I got the RX480 with the best stock cooling on the market (way overkill for a 150W GPU), and a Hyper 212 Evo CPU cooler as a sweet spot of price:performance, a noticeable upgrade over the stock cooler. I upgraded the fan on it too, but only went for a mid-tier Corsair at the time... wish I'd went Noctua then, but it sounds like a case fan that's going, so the mid-range CPU fan is working so far.

Dell U2412M. 24", 1920x1200, 60 HZ, E-IPS (6-bit color, but IPS angles), matte. $300 new in 2011. I use it for everything, but mainly web surfing, gaming (primarily strategy), and software development. Bought it because it's 16:10, matte, and had good image quality at a reasonable price, with fairly good response time to boot. Also had a nice selection of input ports (DVI, DP, and VGA), so it worked natively with my old VGA laptop and then-new DVI video card. Now I have a DVI-to-HDMI adapter connected along with DP and VGA. Have kept it because literally nobody will make a 27" 16:10 laptop, and because it still works like it did when it was new. I know that a 27" 2560x1440 with a moderately faster refresh rate and FreeSync would probably make sense, but for the past 6 years or so I've been thinking, "surely someone's going to come out with a 27" 16:10 two weeks after I buy a 27" 16:9", and no one ever does. When they finally do, they can have my money. Oh and also the tilt/swivel/height adjustments are nice. Practically speaking I almost never use it in portrait mode, but Dell did a good job with their monitor stand, and they even included it with the monitor instead of charging $1000 for it.

Ask, and ye shall receive: https://archive.org/details/feature_films Admittedly, it can be hard to stay engaged with silent films in this age of talkies... I look forward to the mid-late 2020s when talkies start going out of copyright. In this age of $10/month streaming services, $2 Redbox rentals, and free library collections, though, why bother with piracy? Amassing a large Blu-Ray collection is a hobbyist's task, and if that's your hobby, you can spend money on it. But if you just want to enjoy some movies for less than the cost of a single movie ticket at many theaters... that's eminently possible via legal services nowadays. Though the two-for-a-dollar 5-day rental option at Family Video was nice while it lasted.

My desktop is proud to be RGB and tempered-glass free. It looks like this, although it's rarely outdoors: It fits in nicely with my Sony camera, which is black; my TV, which is black; my monitor, which is black; my keyboard, which is black and also lacks RGBs; my speakers, which are black with white accents; my phone, which has a black case; and the nearby furniture, which is dark brown or black, with exposed medium-gray steel on the legs of the desk. It clashes with my printer, which is blue. Aside from matching the traditional Sony electronics color scheme, my main goal in its design was to build a quiet PC. And in that regard, the Antec P280 case has done a very good job. It's a bit more sizeable than I'd expected, but it's quieter than my laptops, or my fridge's compressor that's significantly farther away, even with a moderate load. Thus, it also fits in with the "sleeper" aesthetic that I like - you wouldn't guess it was fast given the lack of noise and lights, but before its parts aged 5 or 10 years, it was. ------------- I expect everyone else posting to this thread to have more LEDs. Although not necessarily such a nice water cooling system as Mr. Fox has. I also appreciate that its LEDs are coordinated and moderate, rather than the gaudy and blingy that took off in the mid-2010s. More accents than spotlights; if that had been the initial trend, I might not have run the other way.

Has anyone picked up one of these? https://frame.work/products/laptop Looks interesting, I like that going forward you'll be able to replace the whole mobo and keep using the same chassis/screen/etc. Less e-waste, and ought to be less expensive as well. They're available in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, and Austria, so semi-decent availability. I'm hoping they eventually have a larger model with slightly more key travel (they have 1.5mm; I'm used to 1.9mm on my current laptop), full-height arrow keys, and perhaps more ports. Still, they have some cool features such as swappable ports, QR codes on the parts so you can look them up and order replacements if need be, and generally making it easy to replace things one component at a time. It still isn't quite as upgradeable as my old Dell with a socketed CPU... but it is easier to swap out some other components like the motherboard and display bezel, and if they come out with a swappable second-gen mobo, they'll be blazing new ground.

I looked that up, and it does have a lifetime warranty... but excludes wear and tear. It seems somewhat contradictory, but I guess it means it it literally falls apart after 20 years, it's covered, but if it just wears out, it isn't? Considering it was cheaper per GB in 2011 than the exact same stick is now, though, I feel like I got my money's worth. I also found a secondhand upgrade that'll let me add 4 GB net for a pretty low cost.

Most recent fancy-ish recipe was penne alla vodka, made with vodka distilled so close to home that I walked to the distillery to buy it. Next will either be a simple made-from-scratch pomodoro sauce with fresh roma tomatoes and basil will be next, or pork chops with apple cider and rosemary. I usually make pork chops dredged in a variety of spices and cooked with apples and onions, which works great, but an old French cookbook I was browsing suggested this combination, and who am I to turn down a reason to buy cider?

The Ten Coolest Things About New Jersey by the Bloodhound Gang. Worth a listen if you haven't heard it before.

Oh man, Afroman. I remember him. My college had an annual festival weekend, and as part of that, they funded a concert by an artist of the student body's choosing, within a set budget range. One year I was there, the plurality of the student body voted for Afroman. Why? Because they got high. So the day of the festival and concert arrives, and one of my friends was an enthusiastic voter for Afroman. I only knew one of his songs, so I show up late for the concert, thinking I'll catch the last song or two, and it turns out Afroman isn't even there yet. Why? Because he got high, most likely. He eventually shows up about an hour and a half late. There are a few hundred students still there, but even my friend had been on the verge of giving up on him showing, and said there'd been at least twice as many people there earlier. For all I know he may have been stuck in traffic or had a canceled flight... but it seemed fitting given his most well-known song. ------------------ I've been listening to Something Corporate. One of my favorite early-2000s pop-punk bands.

I never actually finished the original... I did play the demo just to see if my 2007 laptop could play Crysis (it could, at 22 FPS with the lowest graphics settings), and eventually bought the original, but for me it never out-competed COD4, the Half-Life series, and Chivalry in terms of what I wanted to play. Mainly I'll be interested in this one to see whether my PC can run it. I'll be disappointed if it can.

We're often talking about what hardware we want next, let's have a thread for the hardware that failed for us, whether that was well before it should have, or after a long and effective life. Today I determined that one of my DDR3 DIMMs, one half of a G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL, is on the way out. I'd been getting blue screens slightly more frequently, then a lot more frequently, so I fired up MemTest86+, and was able to determine all the slots were okay but one of the DIMMs isn't. I can't really complain though. It's been in my desktop for over 10 years, and has run for 70,188 hours, according to the SMART stats of the surviving hard drive - now a backup drive that itself has a backup - that was installed at the same time. That's just over 8 years of runtime! Its sibling DIMM continues to operate normally. I don't know how long that will continue, but for now I'll let it be.

Re: the cables, indeed, I was thinking, "the device side when the cable has both", which is why I added "device" to the poll (although I see now that one could equally well answer "type of USB device" as "mouse"). What's been fascinating to me is how incremental the transition to C has been. It makes sense; I prefer buying A devices because if I have more than one C device, I'll need to buy A-to-C adapters (and I already have C-to-A ones because of a work laptop that had C ports only when almost all its peripherals used A). I do see the advantage of reversibility - I was literally just trying to plug in a type A cable the wrong way on the back of my desktop - but it's not enough of an advantage to swap out working components. I suppose part of it is that computers last a lot longer than they used to, and a fair amount of peripherals do as well. In the old days, a five year old machine was an antique; now it's perfectly serviceable in most cases, at least as long as you aren't planning to play Crysis 4 with it.

I intentionally let my battery run down today, turns out that in 10, it's a full-screen fade-out (similar to the shut down menu in XP), with a large notice in the middle alerting your power is low. You could miss it in XP or 7, but there's no way you could miss it in 10 (not sure about 8.1). It looks like this:

7-8 streaming services... if they average $13 per month, which seems reasonable given Netflix/HBO Max/Hulu Adless being above that, that's $100/month, or $1200/year. You can buy a 12 TB HDD for less than $300. So if you add in redundancy, that's up to 24 TB of local storage per year for the cost of being able to stream pretty much whatever you want. But for Blu-Rays, some of that would go to media. Looking at BestBuy.com, it seems the average price for a new Blu-Ray is about $15. You could buy 80 average-priced Blu-Rays for $1200 year, assuming you already had infinite storage. That would be way more films than I watched last year, so for me it would be cheaper to buy Blu-Rays than to subscribe to 7-8 streaming services. Without additional compression, a Blu-Ray backup takes about 30 GB... so 12 TB can back up 400 of them. So let's say over five years, you buy two 12 TB drives for redundant backup... that's $600 out of the $6000 budget, leaving room for 360 Blu-Rays, which use up 90% of that back-up space. 72 new films per year, that would keep me happy, although it may not be enough for someone who views a lot of them. Whether you can tell a difference also will depend on the size of the screen. On my 48" TV, it's pointless to go above 1080p. If you have an 85" TV or a 4K projector, odds are better than you'd be able to tell a difference. It may also depend on the streaming service. I know some (e.g. Fandango) are horrible at standard def relative to a DVD. I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of compression used for 4K varies by streaming service as well. It would be interesting to read a comparison evaluating that sort of thing, but so far I haven't seen any studies on it.

Since we're in the USB A to C industry transition, I thought it would be interesting to see which types people are using in Q2 2022. We're also at the point where according to the Wikipedia chart, there are 14 competing standards of USB connector types... which leads to the obligatory XKCD: For simplicity's sake, however, I've left the poll at the three most common types and glossed over the differences between standard/mini/micro and changes in connectors between generations. If someone else wants to start a poll with all 14 types, go right ahead! ----- I use Type A devices the most. Mice, keyboards, USB drives, webcams, microphones... all the things I use most frequently use type A, and I'm almost always using a Type A device. I also use Type B devices. My printer is 2.0 Type B, and my external hard drives are USB 3.0 Type B. Both my desktop and my laptop have a type C port, but I don't have any Type C devices. On rare occasions I also use a mini/micro connector, and I think most of those are type B... but those are rare occurrences and I'm not nearly as good at identifying the mini/micro ports just by looking at them.