Bloggings of Newness

How horrifically lazy of me, new bloggings here:  The Iron Jungle-Gym of the Girder Gibbon

Regenerative Blogging

I appreciate that this blog has been sparse on updates, but I'd like to give a few short messages about the future of this blog, and indeed my future:

1. This blog needs a re-vamp - name's too hard to google, sounds like a 15-year-old came up with it (because he did) and I don't feel like I'm writing with as much finesse as I'd like.
2. That house didn't come to me in the end - my friends live there, but the landlord (my pal's dad) didn't trust me on the grounds of my contractor job, pity...
3. The SLA 3D Printer design is virtually ready - I've enquired about pricing for the laser cutting and it came to £400 inc VAT, add £160 for 3D printed parts (I need clamps for the Projector mount among other things) and you have an expense comparable to a cheap 4K monitor (yum).
4. Talking of which, my PC needs new hardware - not just a new GPU, but both my monitors predate LED backlight technology and I generally need to invest in my PC to reinvigorate it.

I know, a pitifully short update, but I'm still thinking over which direction I can take my life such that I can take the time to make engaging, fully-featured posts without the slovenly tiredness that characterizes the end of a working day.  I need to bring my income in-line with my values and skills as much as possible and earn enough to afford tools and materials without working myself into the ground.

See you on the other side...

All quiet on the whimsical front...

I've been a bit of a ghost on this blog for quite some time now, so much of my energy is diving into my SLA 3D Printer Project over at the Tawe TMD blog it's unreal, I'm actually making use of my University Education, in my spare time, no less!

Anyway, here be a few life-related updates on my end:

1. Me and two of my pals have found a terraced 3-bedroom house only 30 mins away from my parent's house to move out to; the deal is that my pal's gran owns the place and staunchly refuses to sell, old age doing what is does to your sentimentality; this pal's dad has negotiated a bargain rent for us, the magic man that he is.  The only caveat - it's suffered hideous treatment from the previous residents, with some of the doors showing their cardboard honeycomb structures!  That'll take at least a month to work into an acceptable condition...
2. I've found some employment at an engineering firm in Farnborough on a contractual basis, I'm hoping to secure a full-time position by way of performance but either way, combined with the through-the-floor rent at the new place (shared rent ftw) means a massive boon to my projects, assuming I don't blow it all on an Ivy Bridge Extreme PC I don't need.
3. I want to be free...  because rule of 3...

Just for fun, I'll throw in some of the project ideas I have buzzing around my noggin, simply because containing my imagination is like keeping water in a bowl made of paper towels - not fun when you are trying to focus on getting just *one* project done:

• A new PC Case:  I've got an eye on a few manufactured cases to replace my antiquated workstation case, such as the Zalman Z12 Plus or even going mini-ITX with a Corsair 250D, but I still want a case with as many Bitfenix Spectre Pro 230mm fans as possible so I wouldn't count on that.
• PC Upgrades:  my GTX 560 is now thoroughly trounced by a card that doesn't even have a PCI-E power connector (The GTX 750 Ti), my HDD is 6 years old and my Corsair RM850 is going completely to waste only powering 250W during gaming sessions; not so sure I want to give my i5-2500K up though, a truly timeless CPU.
• A Python Recumbent Bicycle:  I don't really feel like I'm being so efficient on an upright bike anymore, the most glaring problem is the wind, but there's also the issue of the huge moment arm that gravity has in bringing your head into sharp contact with the road.
• A Model Railway:  There's space for a shed at the new house, and my pals are okay with it, why not?
• Network Attached Storage:  Not a sexy thing, but it'll be a fun exercise in configuring a linux PC and backing up will be easier than with a USB3 HDD.
• A new Kick Scooter:  I've got a Razor A5 Lux and it flies at warp speed compared to walking, but why not make one with a 100mm suspension fork and hydraulic disc brakes?
• 100 things to do with a Raspberry Pi.

Tawe TMD blog is live

This is a blog for Tawe TMD thingummybobbins.  Also, all my SLA 3D Printer Project posts will reside here from now on.

SLA 3D Printer Log 1: Projection, Projection...

In between dreaming of a house where model trains bring me pre-mixed Robinson's squash and keenly observing the cathartic tidal wave of backlash against Dungeon Keeper Mobile I have received a 720p projector from Ebay, costing £250.  Before launching into the specifics of how to use it, let's examine the unit itself.

The book is A4 width (and 2cm shorter lengthways) for comparison, and the unit weighs 1.13kg

The unit is actually 206 x 162 x 75mm (lxwxh), feels like a quality implementation despite it's low weight and is highly intuitive to operate; this isn't surprising when we learn that this model (Nobo X22PW) is simply a rebranded Optoma TW330, which is going for £410 at time of writing.  That is excellent value for money given that most projectors in that range will be 1024x768 native at most, not 1280x800 native (keep an eye out for native resolution, most projector sellers claim their model will "handle" 1080p, but this is done through upscaling and will make your movie look anything but sharp).

*Review Interlude*

The unit is surprisingly quiet in spite of the fan having to keep a 2200 lumen lamp from exploding (not a hint of facetious here), and that lamp gives plenty of brightness even on std-mode with 1700 lumens.  It is audible, but it quickly fades away during gaming since the noise has no irritating frequency (that goes out the window in bright mode, I suggest just turning up the brightness in windows).  Having played Medal of Honor: Airborne on it I can say that it eco-mode might not be to everyone's taste but with lamps costing around £90 I think most can sacrifice 29% brightness for 66% more lamp life.  This is also a Single-Chip DLP model so it suffers from a little colour separation during fast motion (highly noticeable when you shake your head viewing a black background); finally I would like a better contrast ratio than 2000:1 for more defined extremes in the colours, but I'm rapidly disappearing down a rabbit hole here.

*End Review Interlude*

Back to the point at hand, 1280x800 will allow for a detail level of 0.1mm per pixel for a build area of 12.8cm x 8.0cm; I'm looking for a minimum resolution of 0.05mm seeing as I design for FUD on Shapeways (0.1mm Resolution), giving a build area of 6.4cm x 4.0cm.  One of my ideas up to this point was to traverse the projector along a vertical rail, utilizing a redundant RAMPS axis to adjust the build area/resolution balance, but I forgot to account for projector focus; what's worse is that the minimum distance I could get the projector to focus was around 28cm, which gives an image of 197.5mm x 124mm - well above the 64mm x 40mm required.

Despite this, the brightness of the resultant screen area was highly encouraging.

In order to attain this build area, I need to add an adjustable lens with at least 3.0x magnification.  DSLR lenses can be had used for around £50, given that a UV filter is a common accessory it may be that the lens can transmit UV without hindrance, but apparently DSLRs have UV filters of their own and there may be some in the lens too - an optical testbed will be required to fully investigate the matter, as well as some actual 3D resins (no VOCs, please).

Free Ideas Bucket 1.0

I intend this project to be completely open-source, that means any and all STLs and diagrams related to the build will be available royalty-free and not on my Shapeways Shop; if *you* would like to sell it, go ahead but be prepared for a hard time making money given that the models are free and Shapeways can be used by a Bonobo.  Anyhoo, I present my current list of ideas:

• A standalone built-in computer, either a Raspberry Pi, it's more powerful compatibles or even a full-on x86 PC.  This is to allow the printer to run without having to keep either my PC or Laptop running with it all night.
• An ultrasound sensor to detect the resin level in the bath and adjust the build platform starting point to suit, this is only relevant to top-down designs.
• A touchscreen on top of the machine, adjustable to either face outwards (for desk use) or upwards (for floor use).
• Gullwing doors...  just because...

That concludes the first of hopefully many buildlogs to the SLA 3D Printer Project.  The ultimate aim is to largely free me from having to use Shapeways for every.  single.  solitary.  step.  in the R&D Process for Tawe_TMD.  It's always the way when you make something that you trip up on things you couldn't have predicted, but even if I flounder and fail, I can always watch Zero Punctuation across my wall.

Sirens of the 1080p screen, and the prints of reason.

As far as temptation goes, getting a new PC is up there with crisps positioned but a few feet away after 3 hours of CAD.  I say temptation because my current aim (and New Year's Resolution mind you) is to be able to subsist upon my own business alone - not to have to rely on a job to pay my bills.  I have already made inroads towards this with my Shapeways Shop Tawe_TMD but I've hit a snag:  Research and Development.

I am currently developing my first proper product, which is a Metropolitan Ex-Twin Brake Van from the turn of the century in N gauge (1:148); the body is pretty much sorted out, pending any minor alterations for functionality.  The chassis also pretty much looks like the final iteration, so the bulk of the work is now done leaving me with the R&D associated with functionality - and boy was I in for a ride!

Each one of those strips on the side is 0.1mm high by 0.25mm wide.

In the UK it takes around 3 weeks from order to delivery, in the latter stages of R&D (tweaking) this holds true even for minor changes like increasing the distance between the axle holes; this is doubly frustrating when a mistake is made, such as an item being wrongly printed, this being the direct inspiration for this post and the potential project I will get to in a moment.  Shapeways solved this issue with haste and care and I applaud them for such attention, however, I consider it a call to action for a proper solution.

That solution is my very own SLA (Photo Lithography) 3D Printer; this isn't as difficult as it sounds, because according to many Youtube videos and This Instructable, it is entirely possible to print a 3D object using nothing more than a Z-carriage, a beaker of resin and a DLP Projector.  Feature sizes can be minute, too:  a 1280 x 800 DLP projector (£250 from Ebay) can result in objects up to 12.8 x 8 cm in size with a resolution of 0.1mm in the X and Y; you can even get higher resolutions simply by reducing the distance between the Projector and the resin (e.g:  6.4 x 4 cm with and XY res of 0.05mm).

I have made a not-terribly-professional case study into this idea and found some interesting facets to the idea of running a 3D printer like this:

I was never noted for relishing writing novels...

For the record, here's some additional information for those looking to check all this out (I did this on many assumptions):

• 1 Metro Brake Van = 2656 mm³
• I set a budget of £200 for materials, this includes minor electronic items like stepper motors, and any 3D prints for special parts.
• I don't know what I will coat the build platform with, but it will need to hold things during printing whilst peeling off when done.
• I assume Council Tax to be included with the Rent.
• Food + Taxes is broken down thus:

1. Food = £30/week or £120/month
2. Income Tax = £38.12/week or £165.19/month from here (assuming gross earnings of £15,000 a year)
3. The rest is for other things like electricity, gas, water which I can't be stuffed to calculate, but the remaining £164.81 should cover it

• As for printing, I am assuming a perfect run of setting up supports (SLA prints need copious support material, maybe not in the case of the Metro Brake but I'll apportion it anyway), a successful print owing to a reliable non-stick application (that's what the Sylgard 184 is for - It stops the print from adhering to the resin basin in bottom-up designs), and finally a flawless post-processing run (fat chance...).

It is quite clear to me that running this printer to print Metro Brake Vans to sell is not a viable proposition - even with sufficient resolution, the time spent in preparation will ensure absolutely no free time, an unacceptable situation when this business is intended to help me achieve financial freedom.  3 hours per print sounds low compared to 3 weeks, but remember that Shapeways is taking on all the work in those weeks, and I am free to make new designs while my Metro Brake goes on sale.  This printer makes much more sense for Functional Testing, i.e:  making minor changes around the coupling area or testing strengthening ribs.

To any aspiring Shapies, I say this:  If you have passionate pride in your work, be prepared to test and test and test - go so far as to intentionally break your redundant testing models to reveal weaknesses.  On the note of final presentation, don't be like many of the modellers on this virtual superstore of human creativity and only upload the STL with some token renders; this really shouts "That'll do, next!", and is that the attitude you would tolerate from a carpenter?  An engineer?  A NEST team?  One of the best ways of showing that you have done such testing is to upload a Youtube video that will show it running.

I hope that PC temptation doesn't get the better of me...

Do you keep a PC lineage?

One of the benefits of Asperger's Syndrome (sadly one which you don't necessarily appreciate when scared to death of being discovered as such when talking to people) is that I keep a mental Rolodex of all the PCs I have ever owned.  This is off the top of my head mostly, so don't expect the strictest of accounts:

0th PC:  Mum's Socket A Machine

• CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 1833MHz
• Motherboard:  Some Abit model...
• RAM:  I suspect 1GB DDR-266 since it could at least play MOHAA on XP...
• GPU:  Nvidia Geforce 2 MX 64MB
• HDD:  ~80GB EIDE
• Resolution:  1024x768

This PC isn't strictly mine, hence the fact that it's my 0th PC.  While this is the PC that got me into gaming, I could hardly wait to be able to mutter 12-year-old swears about the rangers in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault without my dad browbeating me, having heard me in the same room (taking the computer away was like meta-death to me).

1st PC:  1st PC?...

• CPU:  AMD Athlon XP 1700+ 1467MHz
• Motherboard:  Abit KV7
• RAM:  1GB DDR-333
• GPU:  ATi Radeon 9500 Pro 128MB
• HDD: 80GB EIDE
• Monitor:  Viewsonic VX924 1280x1024

My first PC...  so goddamn old the CPU doesn't even have a sticker on my case's CPU lineage:

Unrelated items:
1)  The Pentium II Xeons were installed when my case allegedly housed one of the PCs rendering Lost in Space.
2)  The central barcode - Apparently scans as 'SEC' o.O
3)  Right items - random stuph that has ended up in my PC over time.

That said, this PC was instrumental in allowing me to graduate from muttering at MOHAA to screaming unspeakable possessed noises at it instead (seriously kids, DON'T attempt MOHAA on hard when you're 12).

Talking about this PC also reminded me of what stuff I also had in it:  for the longest time, or what felt like it, I had an all-copper Cooler Master HSF with the noisiest freaking fan I have ever heard aside from delta fans; combine this with barely-effective dual heatpipes at a time when a 1.6V CPU was considered a "Low Voltage" model (1.75V being the norm for AMD CPUs), and you have a genuine waste of space!  A waste of space that was replaced not before time by a Zalman Flower cooler and suspended 92mm fan ;)

Maximum Overclock:  ~1.8GHz

2nd PC:  SWAG in the proper sense of the word...

• CPU:  AMD Sempron 64 2800+ 1.6GHz
• Motherboard:  Some Socket 754 make
• RAM:  1GB Generic DDR2-667
• GPU:  ATi Radeon X1300 128MB
• HDD:  250GB SATA-1
• Monitor:  Viewsonic VX924 1280x1024

Not a great deal is known about this PC because it was so goddamn poor, plus the fact that at 15 I had pilfered a small trust fund to...  ahem...  fund it.  It spent several months (anything from 3-6 months from memory) stashed in my dad's shed after Maplin refused to return it (lack of receipt ;) ).

Maximum Overclock:  Did Not Attempt

3rd PC:  The Advanced Massive Dominator

• CPU:  AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHz
• Motherboard:  Abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X
• RAM:  Bizarre mismatch of 1GB Generic DDR2-667 and 2GB Super Talent DDR2-800
• GPU:  ATi Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB
• HDD:  250GB SATA-1
• Monitor:  Viewsonic VX924 1280x1024

Now we're getting somewhere!  Definitely a moment of pride for me since I now had a PC that could toast those Netburst heathens!  The defining title for this PC?  Battlefield 2 :P

Some notable facts about this PC:

1. The RAM Mismatch is down to me being completely unable to afford a replacement 4GB or even 3GB kit (DDR2 is still an anomaly of DDR pricing, with DDR2 costing more than either DDR or DDR3); I had to ship it in from the US, as well.
2. The Motherboard had a separate daughter-card for audio output - ostensibly for a cleaner audio signal; It was mounted on an offset PCI-e 1x slot that was also flipped round.  As well as this, 2 x 40mm fans were in the I/O panel, never turned on since they were just too fecking loud!
3. This was the first PC that was housed in my current TDZ 2000 GX1 case, before that it was in some no-name "Gaming" case which didn't even have a single 120mm fan mount, relying on 80mm fans throughout.  I ended it's tenure properly by giving it a puddly, poorly executed gold paint job.

This PC now enjoys a peaceful retirement as my dad's main PC, with the exception of the monitor, but that's another story!

Maximum Overclock:  ~2.6GHz

4th PC:  Defection Part 1

• CPU:  Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz
• Motherboard:  ASUS P5K Premium WIFI-AP
• RAM:  4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2-1066 Dual Channel
• GPU:  ATi Radeon HD 4850 512MB
• Sound Card:  Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi SB0770 OEM
• HDD:  750GB Samsung HD753J
• Monitor:  Dell S2209W 1920x1080

Yep, you read that; I bought Intel for this PC; was definitely impressed with a lowly 65W TDP under the previous 90W TDP, as well as it's increased efficiency in all regards.

This is the point it began to dawn on me that I'm not very lucky when it comes to overclocking - I only managed to squeeze some 600MHz out of this CPU when others were reaching 1GHz increases >:(

Nevertheless, this was the first foray into 1080p and DirectX 10 (I was with ATi so ADD A POINT ONE!!!).  S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is the game de jour with it's DirectX 10.1 adding sooooo much improvement to it's notorious performance issues; not that this was too much of a celebration since before I discovered how to turn noprefetch on I suffered hourly Blue-screens, sometimes within minutes of startup.

Interesting fact regarding the HD 4850 - I modded it's BIOS to overclock it permanently so that it would remain that way without needing the intervention of Rivatuner.

Following this was a stupid, ill-thought-out attempt to sell these bits in order to upgrade; forgot to account for depreciation and the fact that I used an iCute 600w (now forever rebranded iFryAllYourCircuitry with thanks to Autobot on the Bit-Tech Forum), which I suspect treated the VRMs to under-spec voltages for several years - this caused the motherboard to die on the poor fuck I sold it to, don't ask me how VRMs can "get used to voltages", it's the only theory I've got...

That left me without a PC for 1.5 years...

Maximum Overclock:  ~3.2GHz

5th PC:  Defection Part 2

• CPU:  Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz
• Motherboard:  ASUS P8P67 B3 stepping
• RAM:  8GB Corsair DDR3-2000 (running 1866) Dual Channel (2GB x 4)
• GPU:  Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 1024MB
• Sound Card: ASUS Xonar DG
• HDD:  750GB Samsung HD753J
• Monitors:  Dell S2209W and Viewsonic VX924

And so we come to the end of this carousel of silicon to my current machine:

What can I say?  2 screens is liberating enough to justify 2 desks :)

You know what, fuck it, I'll let you go TMZ on the internals:

A veritable nest of wires can be beheld...

A healthy PSU fan transplant - yes, it is possible!
Thankfully un-furrying a CPU cooler is much easier with an air duster.

Among the car-accident wiring and wholly ineffective sound-deadening foam there's an Air Penetrator in there somewhere...

The collapsed defeat of a Perks For Pocket Change post, will probably just leave it like that TBH.

That Sharkoon 1000 80mm fan really showed off a good shutter; god I love my camera!

This is my current gaming/CAD machine; she runs very well and Windows 7 is remarkably smooth given that it's on a 6-year-old HDD.  The dual-screen setup is odd in that the screen heights are dissimilar both in resolution (1080 vs. 1024) and in physical height - this leads to the pointer seeming to jump vertically when crossing the border.  The best thing about it though is using it in CAD, being able to view both the model and some research material at the same time is such a breeze to say the least; the other thing it's good for is to view a slideshow of railway station pictures during a loading screen, as well as a few gadgets to monitor CPU, Memory and GPU utilization.

Maximum Overclock:  4.6GHz at 1.425V - toasty and risky...

I hope this recollection stirred fond memories in you all, especially if you began in the BBC micro era or similarly early days.  I for one love to tell stories like this and I'm only 22!  Being an OAP suddenly sounds so much more fun...

Unloved...

5th of September since I made my last post; I don't think I would have made a great deal of sense if I kept posting anyway, looking back over my blog really did illuminate how whimsical and silly my choice of words was still is.

To compress events into a nutshell (Why not just say "long story short?", oh yeah, it would be derivative... and dull), I have been job hunting for the past months and have finally landed a Christmas temp job at BHS:  Simply put, I pull trolleys out, stack shelves, retrieve stuph from the stockroom, repeat.  Occasionally there is a customer query or Fitting Room duty where I can stand there and just exist in between dealing with customers; try it sometime, just stand somewhere alone or lie down with your arm over your eyes (my preferred napping method) and let you and your mind just be.

It's an okay job, but I didn't count on how it tires you out - I don't feel as exhausted after a long walk, cycling 10 miles and back to towns you haven't even seen in nearly a decade or even taking the train to Hull...  from Camberley.  It's bizarre to think that raw enthusiasm can dull the weariness from virtually anything you feel passionate about, whereas after a "regular" job your first instinct is to just crash in bed and watch NerdCubed.  Yeah, not a great endorsement there, but there is one major reason why I took it up:  to give my projects a sorely-needed shot-in-the-arm.

Like playing "Engagement Ring Extortion Hunt"!

In all seriousness though, I really need to increase the scope of my work.  Incidentally I completely failed to divulge the business idea my pal DigiShark along with me and another friend went into:  Kryian Cases.  Basically we decided to start a PC Case business and we were all eager to get going, me especially given my sore need for a new PC case.

It may not have cable-routing holes or a even enough width to house my CPU cooler with the side window on the inside, but it has A SHAPEWAYS SPARK!!!

To cut to the chase, we floundered because we were stupid with our money; rather humourously this is resulted in the threat of debt collectors on DigiShark's doorstep since he owes them money for the storage unit we rented.  The point is that I really feel I can take up the gauntlet (famous last words), not necessarily with PC cases but in other fields like my Tawe_TMD Shapeways operation, although my favourite idea of the moment is to develop R/C Aircraft plans and sell them online along with laser-cut wood packs on Ebay (probably through the Tawe_TMD ebay page since it ought to be used for something, right?).

I've run into a bit of a rut with respect to Tawe_TMD, I've discovered that copying plan views of carriages into 3D models for eventual printing is not something I want to be doing as my main source of income - 2 to 6 hours a week is where I'll draw the line since I need to make room for other business operations.  I think it is that I lack an outlet for my creativity in this line of work given that all I need to do is follow a plan.  Designing R/C aircraft will hopefully allow me to express both my imagination and my skills in creating aircraft, and I can finally transition properly from X-Plane 10 to real life; prepare for Eldritch Abominations that somehow fly in spite of their freakish forms!

Whew!  If you've stayed with me through this self-absorbed expulsion of literary gas I'm impressed with you, impressed enough to treat you to the adorable dog Ruby nuzzling under a sofa cover:

Death to interchangeability! And other stuph about my identity...

Seeing this video above got me thinking as to who I really was:  Geek or Nerd?

If you are like me I guarantee that you've come under fire from people who are lauded as "high society" in Secondary School (Guys who want women to be socks and girls who want their men like dividend stocks; basically, both are scum).  Due to the fact that they are usually legendarily thick and unable to close their mouth, they would have called us both with reckless abandon - Incidentally, if one dared to point out the difference, he'd got violently excommunicated for being a "literary faggot".

Anyway, I detest improper use of words like the use of "Gimp" to describe not a male sex slave but "Not cool, nerdy, ugly, stupid. This word can apply to people, places, things, or ideas." (Urban Dictionary), so this is my simple take on the Geek vs. Nerd dilemma based upon the highly-scientific evidence of this video (Well who would you ask? That pusher by the gate who hasn't gotten it up in since the Thatcher era yet has an entourage of squealing sluts wherever he goes?):

• Geek = Trivial Extrovert - This person tends to identify with a crowd based around a bizarre, non-mainstream subject matter; Trekkies, Sonic Fans and PC gamers all fall under this umbrella.  Basically these are ordinary people following something extraordinary.
• Nerd = Immersed Introvert - These people prefer to practice their craft on their own and are usually obsessed with something other people find trivial and orthodox; Railfans, Pleasure Pilots and Stamp Collectors are all found here.  Put simply, these are the extraordinary who find interest in the ordinary.

My personal theory regarding how these interact is that the Nerds invent things by tinkering with the mundane, then the Geeks will latch onto the resulting production and support it, eventually making it mainstream.  Keep in mind that these two do in fact blend together to form no distinct black/white but a very granular spectrum throughout the grey; My personal estimate for my Geek/Nerd ratio is 30:70.  What's yours?

One last note, there is no such thing as an 100:0 or an 0:100, just like there are no men completely masculine or women completely feminine.  The aforementioned "high society" may even suggest they are neither, but that'll be proven wrong as soon as they are spotted in a football shirt or a wonky picture with their friends of them topless with "S.L.U.T.S." painted in lipstick across their bellies (lol, geeks for hedonistic sex).

Hitler makes the music, Putin doles out the drinks.

Small update before we dive in:  massive sabbatical recently on this blog, since the 19th of July it seems; this was due to my withdrawal from my Swansea University Aerospace Engineering course and that shook up all my plans.  I failed one crucial module which I could have done the resit for but I just didn't feel like I wanted to go in the academic direction anymore and anyone who reads this knows that academia is nowhere to be found in my writing style (if you ask me, academia can best be described as "expand your sentences ten-fold, lest you want people to call you thick").  I have been looking for a job but all I've got is a couple of people looking to "forward my CV", basically the career equivalent of the bint who flirts with you only to leave when you get her a drink - boy am I tired of employers who don't take the trouble to tell you that you haven't made the grade...

I'm willing to bet my net worth (I hope someone bites, it's severely negative currently) that you have come across the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, and the new laws banning grown-ups telling kiddies that gays are worthy of anything more dignified than having a soldering iron shoved up the bum... maybe a little more brutal than reality, but the gist is there I hope.  Beans has done a similar post on this, raising the excellent point that it is fruitless standing up against one evil (this) while gleefully accepting another up the tailpipe (china's blasé attitude towards human rights), that makes you a political hypocrite, far from destroying your credibility these days that seems to make people respect you for being a "smooth talker".  However, I fear that in this case it is a question of economics - plenty of women buy cut-price fashionable label shoes and stuph, in spite of the fact that they are frequently made in 19th century visions of penal colonies in the 1950s.  The reason why we tolerate "Made in China" so much is because we simply do not have the time to conduct private investigations into where all our shit comes from, while the Olympics are in the laser-like public gaze every time they rock up; now we have all the time in the world for international finger-waving!

I'm going to bring my money to the table here, there are only two kinds of people who think too deeply into this shit - Flamboyantly out'n'proud gay people, and Overtly "Straight" people.  You really have to get a load of the "Straight" people, don't you; these are the people in prison who rape other men but, no no no no!  The OTHER bastard is Gay!  Seriously!  Why else would he accept my dick (in spite of my 3 equally disturbed buddies holding him down, as well as the fact that we are all grotesquely muscular and we only target people when there is absolutely no chance of retribution)?  I'm just showing the pitiful freak his place, after all...

If I seem to go against my "Bros" in the male gender, deal with it; there are lessons to be learned here for Western Society in that we men must not allow ourselves to become too mired in manliness.  Too much of the masculine can in fact be dangerous to society just as too much femininity is suffocating and stifling.  One will see a dog-eat-dog world where the weak are simply expunged from the face of the earth and the other will make everyone "play nice" in a superficial manner, where the people who make entire lives out of callous manipulation are the ones who get all the status.  Enticing?

In other words, Russia has too much of the masculine at play, with it's high murder rate, endemic sexism and grand-scale political corruption.  Amongst all this machismo and much more besides, such as not looking when crossing a dual carriageway (no legs, no problem, right?), it would be quite apt to compare modern Russia to Nazi Germany - think about it:

• Country is in incomparable turmoil caused by failure of leftist, rather feminine ideals (1991 fall of the soviet union)
• Political Personality (Putin) promises restoration of former glory, uses this to scale power ladder whilst forgoing any scruples with respect to the political process
• Once power is obtained a "Cult of Personality" quickly takes root, complete with pop songs designed to break minds in the most subtle and efficient manner possible
• Laws are then passed under the guise of protecting dem kiddies from dem darn purvurts in this case, and a litany of anti-jew laws in Germany circa 1933-1939 - This is where we are now, anything beyond this point is considered my personal prediction
• Putin will progressively drive the screws down on dissent, all the while heightening his cult to hysterical levels of popularity
• Russia's politics and foreign policy becomes more and more aggressive, annexations of neighbouring territories will be meekly accepted by the UN because "it was the old USSR, after all"
• Line is crossed, war begins
• Lots of people killded
• We all chant "Never Again!" and make another bullshit international conglomerate to replace the UN

Maybe this is more than a little bit nihilistic, but I can quite easily see this happening.  Russia is definately erring towards Fascism and the deeply patriarchial society seems to be quite pleased with it since 75% of Russians support the laws in spite of the fact that it labels LGBTs as paedophiles by default; may I direct sir's attention to a similar potential in Britain with regards to UKIP, skip to number 5 for a comprehensive list of fascist tenets:

ElectricUnicycleCrew is well worth a subscription, by the way; to a man only just starting to form decent political opinions, this is a guy who's history of ranting and political commentary begun in his early teens at a level I see myself reaching in about 5 years, if that.

So yeah, what Fry pointed out (again far better than I ever could) about Russia is spot on; I fear that Russia may be dancing to the Hitler Disco soon given that half the worlds Racist Skinheads live there:

Anna's Analogy

This is a post regarding Anna from Metro: Last Light, I know I'm being completely pathetic about this, but my mind just can't leave this alone!  It keeps returning to it in the most bizarre of situations like waiting for a train or testing out an old hand-me-down laptop for minecraft performance (I'm blogging this on a Toshiba Satellite A215-S4697 with a dead keyboard and dead DVD drive).

Let's recap, when she takes you to murder the Dark One, her first words are "come on, rabbit", wait, what?  Did she mean what I think she means?

Surprisingly not on the first page of google image search even with safesearch off...

Custom PC's review of Metro: Last Light noted that Anna had a "wicked sense of humour" - No objections there!

You can count on your "rabbit" anytime...

Anyway, it's time to put this fuming bollocks to rest, shall we?  I've thought this over and here is my (hopefully FINAL) sequence of events:

1. Anna has heard of your reputation - she becomes jealous
2. She berates you as an expression of said jealousy
3. You get separated, she believes you dieded
4. She finds you again, she is relieved
5. She gets captured (yawny bit starts here)
6. You rescue her, after she gibs your gas mask by running straight into it (RETARD!)
7. You boink - I like to think it happens to the tune of Benny Benassi's "Satisfaction"
8. You leave her, she eventually sees you off to war, looking a bit forlorn
9. She has a kid, and tells him what a lovely protector-slave you are (the greek word serow meant that, and that's where the word hero came from)

So basically, its your good old fashioned hero tale.  Maybe not the most exciting of plots or the most empowering to women (Anna seems to lose strength throughout the game, going from tomboyish sharpshooter to shallow pussy reward for our hero), but I can now at least put it to rest on a humorous note - no more filler like this nonsense, okay?  Good luck, brain...

When the Heroes joined the Company

Let me tell you how I first came into contact with Company of Heroes; upon seeing adverts in Custom PC, I thought that the 3 soft-pencilled men standing in formation was to be another WW2 shooter, something I had already played enough of given MOHAA and Bf1942 ate so much of time that could have been spent buying clothing that's marked up like it's 1943 and the "correct" brand is selling sky-high priced food into my local ghetto...  blimey, that's dark...

Anyway, that was until my brother obtained a new graphics card which contained a copy of COH, he wanted nothing with it for one reason or another and I fired up what I expected to be an FPS - I am way past Chamberlain for how wrong I was.  As I said before, this was a total game-changer; I stopped thinking like an ant colony when playing RTS... et cetera.  Point is, I've just played through the campaign again, and now I can properly compare COH to COH2.

I won this one with many snipers and Arty...  there were some tanks and rangers in the picture somewhere, too...

I'm too tired for paragraphs, have some bullet points:

Goodness

• Gameplay is stellar, as it should be if it were to deserve a sequel
• Story doesn't try to be anything more than a Company going through the war - if you are going to make a game story, either make a Novel or keep it simple
• More tigers

Gimpiness

• Gigantic Difficulty Spike on Mortain Counterattack level, similar to COH2's Partisan level; best to use Airborne Company and paradrop AT guns and troops and just let those buggers wreck your base!
• Graphics are noticeably lower quality (why am I even mentioning this?  Graphics never go DOWN in a sequel)
• More tigers

Overall, how should I expect the previous installment to be better; let alone the first campaign in such installment?  I shouldn't, otherwise why bother, right?  Anyway, have some death:

Ever gotten so immersed in a game you forgot to take screenshots?

The First company of... okay, heroes, I've no Kerbals currently

Recently gotten round to re-installing Company of Heroes; they seem to have shifted to steam, which is a goddamn boon since I no longer have to remember my convoluted COH login.  I've also had the opportunity to compare it to COH2, so consider this an epilogue of sorts.

What I imagine the landscape of love and dating to look like...

The cutscenes of COH2 I found to be stiff and lacking character, and I can say that they certainly don't hold a candle to the highly stylised, watercolour cutscenes of COH (above).  These have this effect often seen in animated comics, with static images sliding in relation to one another for effects of movement and depth, and they definitely help to cement the atmosphere of a dreaded undertaking at the beginning and a costly aftermath at the end.  COH2 cutscenes, even away from the interrogation room, simply have no charm.

The UI in COH2 is genuinely something you don't notice being slick until you use something less so, as in COH.  In this case it is marginally less so, but for one thing the units are more difficult to keep track of since they are buried behind some kind of blue shield; in COH2 they are always on display.  If COH2 sorted its buttons out (they sometimes skip a beat, not activating upon a click), this would be a whole-hearted step forward.

A poignant scene of morose victory.

I still cannot give a full opinion of COH yet, since I am only 4 missions into the original campaign (there are 6), it'll be a god knows how long, and god knows how much wasted productivity, before I can review it...  Perhaps...

Company of Heroes 2: The Human Floodgates open!

I don't really feel all that bothered about spoiling the story for this review, since Animal Farm is pretty much required reading in English Secondary Schools; if you are *really* that bothered about it, the back button comes in useful today.

The Mighty Whitey SturmGeschütz, commanding it's very own native population

COH2 centres itself around Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's headfirst charge into wiping the Slavs off the face of the earth, and I'm not just lacking tact today.  The Campaign sees you through 14 missions chronicling the actions of some guy who leads some soldiers, then becomes a journo who inexplicably stumbles on some facts about the war that fail to uphold his communist sense of self, consequently his CO assigns him to a "СТРАФНИКИ" (Strafniki) Penal Batallion where he continues to uncover uncomfortable trinkets to the point where, his faith completely destroyed, he attempts to defect; attempt being the word used since he gets caught.  The delivery of this narrative doesn't do anything to break the mould, it's told a lot like a distinctly more popular title, Battlefield 3, through flashbacks and the fact that the character is under interrogation.

It doesn't help that the animation has a stiff, railroaded quality to it, indicating that it was done using the game engine; the campaign also suffers from what I like to call "Call of Pripyat cut the crap Disorder" - super brief cutscenes lasting a few seconds which add little to nothing to the exposition ("So, the underpass was filled with gas after it was sealed?").  This happens twice, once when you breach the fortress walls and see dead Soviet Prisoners that could already be seen during gameplay, and once more showing troops charging the Reichstag.  The only saving grace to this otherwise mediocre story is the ending, which I will leave up to you to uncover...  or just give youtube a bell, I did that for the story of Modern Warfare 3.

Well, it was either that or some powermongering git with a pistol...

While COH2 was never meant to set the world alight with it's dashing wordplay and eloquent social observation (here's to you, Dishonored!), it doesn't need to; not when the gameplay leaves the game comprehensively spoken for.  Company of Heroes completely turned my perceptions of RTS gaming on it's head, and up until that point I believed the ability to churn out tanks like queen bees on E was the height of tactical achievement.  With it's ability to give even single machine guns imperious weight and heavy tanks the weight of celestial bodies, suddenly you felt like a right gimp chimp when that Panther sped into the cottage out of control as though it were coming to breakfast.  This forces you contribute more to maneuver and demand less in slaughter.

This is especially so when even the environment seems to be after your dignity, frozen rivers can cave in under artillery or even the heavier tanks,  towing them under the ice to provide a new home for all kinds of weeds and fish for centuries to come; Infantry shouldn't feel too safe away from the rivers, blizzards occasionally ravage the battlefield regardless of what us mere monkeys are fighting over, and fire is often all that stands between them and hypothermal metabolic seizure.  This is somewhat pretentiously called "ColdTech", and a system which shows you precisely what your units are perceiving through the fog of war is called "TrueSight"; personally, I'm not so sure that features which cause people not to see what destroys the nearest building causing them to freeze to death warrant the status of separate coding packages.

Snow could be the death of your men out here

The two armies in the conflict are balanced spot on against one another, with the Red Army suiting human waves, bombastic artillery and other assorted zerg rushing; the conscripts are offered anytime for free pretty much throughout the campaign and they are often the first to snuff it in combat, so when you get the chance to let them fall in with better units, do it.  The Wehrmacht, having more class than this, is much better suited to considered tactical planning with more expensive but more powerful units and fewer soldiers to a squad.  I tend to do a lot better when playing the Wehrmacht, moral implications of Lebensraum aside.

Worthy of honourable mention is the Theatre of War DLC, offered to pre-purchasers (me) and available with a lot of skins and a few commanders for £30 on steam (or just buy the digital collectors edition for £70).  Fucking steep, but just about worth it when you consider that Relic stated they were going to add to it, and Relic is not a company to abandon a fanbase.  This is a series of missions, co-op and singleplayer, which place you into specific situations in the war that limit resources to the point where most modern commanders would give up; this is where the game genuinely beats out any other RTS you care to name, and shows that the scale of an RTS, while admirable in the major, can be just as stunning in the minor.  The example I would like to pick out is the mission where using just infantry, 2 starting Katyushas and abandoned Katyushas scattered across the map, you need to knock down all the German buildings in the region with civilian buildings netting an extra minute.  You have to count on footsoldiers to scout out these buildings, since the list includes ammo caches on capture points, MG bunkers and other trivial constructions; to make matters worse, panzer IVs stand in your way (thankfully they are the "stubby" variant).

Scorched Earth is visually arresting...

Sound design, something I feel is not often considered in game reviewing, even though it could be the difference between mowing the human lawn and avenging the villages wiped off the map in the name of meaningless racial purity - there's a reason why I still play Medal of Honor: Airborne from time to time in spite of it's right honourable brownness, and that is because the attention to it's soundscape is exquisite; that and the fact that I am terminally addicted to it's upgrade mechanic.  There is a clear, distinct hierarchy of weapons communicated by how heavy they sound, i.e: sniper rifles trump infantry rifles, the T-70's 45mm vs the Sdkfz 222's 20mm and ideally the Tiger vs many T-34s :) .  I have to say that the idle chatter in this game falls significantly flatter than that of COH, probably owing to the indoctrinated nature of the soldiers dampening their personality, so ultimately it does fit in and keep the immersion going.

So what does it come to?  Definitely not a 10/10 given how flat the story felt to me, but no lower than a 9/10, yep, let's go with that.  For an RTS trailblazer, it doesn't get much (or any) better than this; was it right that the game was put before the story?  Absolutely.

Dual CPU Motherboards - The End?

Dual CPU motherboards, where will they go, will they ever go?  I am a frequent reader of Custom PC magazine, a UK publication owned by bit-tech; but it's not often that dual cpu motherboards make an appearance, not even in the "Crazy-but-Cool" category; the last time I can observe one is in issue 104 back in May 2012, page 36 (yep, I spent some 45 mins of my time checking that!).  In the November 2003 Issue, the 2nd issue and the oldest issue I own, there are two SMP motherboards on review and also the first Athlon 64.

This is a question I bring up because I spent some 2 hours on Ebay checking out potential motherboards for my new PC, a backup PC that will serve as my main PC when I am on my Easter and Christmas breaks from university and perhaps stand in for the actual main PC should it break (if my Graphics Card or CPU become silicon crackers through an OC'ing accident or a fall, I'll probably have to wait 2 months for the money to get a comparable replacement).  One of the specimens I came across was this, an Lga771 Dual CPU eATX motherboard for £30; accompanying CPUs were similarly astonishing at £7 for two and Israel can provide a suitable stack of memory at 8GB for £25.  Better still, spend £33 more and you get 8 cores with 16MB total L2 cache :)

To put this into perspective, £40 will get you a bog-standard Lga775 board that supports Core 2 Duo CPUs (sure, you can go as low as £15 if you fancy the Intel 915 Chipset THAT much), I spent £8 on a Pentium E2160 that didn't play ball with the ASUS P5SD2-TM/S I had because of it's obscure SiS chipset from the depths of Netburst, and I hold onto a stick of 2GB Corsair Dominator which has a bluescreen-churning brother simply because to get the same amount of DDR2 for £25 these days makes you supernaturally fortunate.

What this signals to me is that Dual CPU motherboards are becoming less relevant to the common man - Why would an enthusiast get an eATX monster-board that requires a corresponding cage to put it in (looks like a deal?  It comes with everything but all the things that make it a computer case as opposed to bent metal and plastic...  thanks lads) when a single CPU socket can play host to 8 CPU cores, even if the individual cores are not much cop?  There is also the fact that the cores arms race between Intel and AMD has juddered to a halt, largely due to the fact that programming an existing single-threaded game engine for parallel computing is a task comparable to writing an entire new DirectX Generation.

So why were these things desirable to begin with?  I suspect that back in the days when Pentium 4 was "winning" the Gigahertz war while simultaneously being tailed by Athlon XP at every turn (so much so that AMD called a 2.2GHz CPU a "3200+"), trying to edit a word document while a game was idling in the background could be described as flaky at best and rage-worthy at worst; what we needed, we thought, was a second CPU to handle the word document or perhaps something more risque like running video encoding alongside Bf1942 or maybe just open piles of word documents without reducing the windows desktop to a single-digit frame rate.  

Then along came Athlon 64 which roundly trounced Pentium 4, followed by Athlon 64 X2 2 years after in 2005; Netburst's final stand was with the Pentium D, the Presler models practically on fire with a TDP of 130 watts.  Two CPU cores in one package was a big deal in 2005 simply because it became so much less stressful to Alt-Tab Half life 2 to look up a walkthough owing to the second core being available for the browser; as was said before, parallel coding for consumer apps is a significant stumbling point even today.  In 2006, Core 2 Duo from Intel was released, finally putting that crispy-pink burnt old Netburst dog to rest and ushering in the "multicore war", a war which saw AMD, now on the losing side, stuffing as many cores as was humanly possible into an ageing architecture, resulting in this virtually meaningless overkill today.

Intel, meanwhile, saw no reason to give the enthusiast more than six cores and the consumer more than four; even the server motherboards of today don't get more than 16 physical cores from them.  And herein lies the answer - CPU cores simply outstripped the ability of reasonably-sized coding houses to take advantage of them, why trouble ourselves to code for more than 4 cores when the user is probably going to use the 4th core to surf the net while our program runs anyway?  Why take on such a gargantuan task within a 1 year release cycle?  In the aftermath of all this, we enter Core ix generation (I did my best to delineate the x from the i!), and TDP now becomes the battleground with Ivy Bridge i7s at 77w from Sandy Bridge at 95w (Haswell moves some of the voltage regulation circuitry on-chip, hence the 84w TDP).

The one customer base that stands no chance of relinquishing these gems, however, is computing-based research; Organizations that not only stuff as much CPU and RAM as they can into a case only 44.5mm high, but daisy chain hundreds of the damn things and pack them into a practically refridgerated room that reaches 30 Degrees C in spite of that, all to simulate a mouse brain in real time.  A fascinating phenomenon in relation to this is that for 8GB of RAM, error rates due to cosmic radiation is around once per 9 years non-ECC, 45 years for ECC memory; remember that as memory increases, the error rate increases with half as many years between errors for double the memory - the upshot is that based on these statistics, even WITH ECC, a server farm totalling 400TB of memory will have a single-bit error every 7 hours and 53 minutes (1 hour and 35 minutes without).

When PCs have arguably reached the point where CPUs are considered must-have at the same level as network cards, it is easy to forget just how desirable dual CPU boards once were - they once commanded massive attention from performance freaks and made a colossal difference in performance to everything imaginable; the idea of multi-tasking as fluidly as we frequently do now on an 11" netbook was a pipe dream worthy of comparison to interstellar travel.  Since server farms are compulsively upgrading to expand their research capability, there will be a steady flow of decommissioned server motherboards for us to play with, and if that isn't a dozen of fun, tell me what is!