John's Newsletter of Nonsense #27
A possibly weekly email about what's been going on in my brain
22 - 28 May 2023
It was only a few of weeks ago when I was saying how healthy I'd been and now, less than a month back, my body creaks and groans with all the high-impact sitting down I've been doing. In fairness, two of my new ailments are carry overs from when I was travelling, and part of my steady descent towards the constitution of a Victorian urchin is not having anything else to take my mind off things. It's easy to ignore the odd twinge or sniffly nose when you've got trains to catch and sights to see.
So please, put your hands together for my latest maladies: tennis elbow, a likely tear in my triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC, wrist area), and the most overstuffed sinuses you ever did see. The former two get brand new stretches and exercises, joining the already lengthy list to manage the list of ongoing complaints I've accrued throughout adulthood.
Now I'm sure this is the kind of deep insight and joyful writing you all signed up to receive in your inboxes.
New Pee Cee
With all of the RGB lighting set to "obnoxious"
The last time I bought a new computer was shortly after I went to Japan in 2018. The timing is no coincidence as with all that time to think and plan and scheme, as well as time to actually investigate what the heckins all the latest terminology means (like what is screen space ambient occlusion?), I end up putting together possible configurations in the quiet hours between finishing sight seeing and heading to sleep. I'm sure more energetic travellers would spend those hours sampling the varied night life rather than watching CPU reviews. My three month trip also ended up being less expensive than I'd budgeted for, leaving me money left over for such an extravagance.
Ever since I was a teen I've built my own computers rather than buying pre-made from the likes of HP, Dell, or PC World. It was never a matter of saving money or squeezing out the most performance, building it myself was just the natural state of things. The laborious research, purchase, and especially the construction filled me with stress, often the parts would be at the limit of my budget and without the safety features common today, one missed step meant that much expensive silicon turned into e-waste. The most notable occasion was with an early AMD Athlon processor that burned out due to an incorrectly seated heatsink, and after a fruitless shouting match with Overclockers over the phone trying to get them to replace it, I eventually drilled a hole through the dead CPU and turned it into a keyring. Building my own did let me try out weird and wonderful set ups though, all part of the charm of early 2000's PC components.
This time though, I got someone else to do it for me. Partly so I didn't have to deal with the stress, but also to remove the probability of me missing some setting somewhere that would get the most out of my configuration. I've yet to feel the embarrassment of realising "doh, if I'd flipped this easily overlooked setting I could've gotten 30% more performance!" but it was only a matter of time. The aim was to have my new computer built and delivered shortly after arriving back in the UK so that any photo editing was done on the new machine. That didn't pan out and a couple of frustrating delays meant it arrived a full two weeks after the estimated date. In that time I, of course, changed my mind about various decisions I'd made, such that shortly after it arrived I had it open and was tinkering - precisely what getting someone else to do this was supposed to do away with!
After watching a video on case airflow I bought more case fans (with RGB lights in them naturally), the theory being that more fans spinning slower would be quieter than a few fans spinning faster. My PC builder though had, in the nicest possible way, cable managed the shit out of it with smart turns and tie wraps all tucked away to maintain that unique aesthetic of 90's raver in a stealth bomber. This did not make moving things around easy, and required an Amazon order for cable cutters as scissors were, quite literally, not cutting it.
Adjustments made, I started setting up the software. What a lot of flipping noise. Ignoring that a lot of the test programs that had been used to verify the system were still installed (including all the professional license keys, hmm!), it seemed that every driver - be it video card, chipset, RGB controller, mouse or otherwise - wanted to shove their custom UI in my face with every time I started my computer. Then there was all of the Windows 11 "features" that I peeled away like so many grotty plasters before my desktop began feeling like home again. Then I had to log back in to every website I frequently used, and if you thought clicking through one "we are compelled to tell you about cookies, a standard web technology" dialog was tedious, try doing it thirty times in quick succession. Most of those sites also notified me via email that yes, in fact I had just logged in. Deep breath.
To be clear, my old PC was absolutely fine and more than up to whatever task I had for it, including working with my two year old scanner as Canon's drivers don't work on Windows 11. Now though, when I edit photos I can have music playing without stuttering, apparently complex mathematical operations on 26 million pixels is taxing, who knew? I can play games at native resolution at full quality. I can browser Tumblr at least... 3% faster. It's all very pleasant in a way that two generations of technological improvement would imply and after the grand faffery that was my recent laptop experience, it's nice to have something that just works. Parts list for those who are interested.
Paraphernalia
- How Real Vermont Maple Syrup Is Made - I'm not sure why I didn't connect "maple" syrup to tapping actual trees, I have played Stardew Valley, but seeing it in the real especially at this scale is still peculiar
- 50 Cal Poolstick and 50 Cal Hammer - despite the titles, these aren't by Stuff Made Here and are in fact by I Did A Thing, they're less nerdy and far more haphazard but their videos do regularly make me laugh with just the right amount of vulgarity
- How Laboratory Glassware is Blown in the UK - another makery YouTube channel, Alec Steele mostly focuses on blade making but his out-and-about videos are great, see also How Carabiners are Forged in Wales
- Aubrey Plaza Rewatches some of her roles - almost breaks character but mostly remains peculiar and deadpan throughout
- The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth - a fascinating test of several engineering disciplines, I admit to being a little tempted to dip into this...
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Series 2 trailer - the first series was brilliant and this looks to continue that, something to be said for episodic Star Trek rather than prestige TV "bit" storylines
- Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite Diffuser - this definitely isn't enough to convince me machine-learning / AI isn't the harbinger of creative homogeneity, but I like the idea of style-shifting the different empire's structures
- Fernanda Dias's Witch Bunny and Save Me - some really lovely, characterful animation; it's taken me an embarrassingly long time to appreciate the human effort behind hand-drawn animation, seeing something so skilled reminds me not to just consume it
This was hand-crafted by John.