Well I got my new power supply unit for my gaming PC and installed it.
I was a little afraid that perhaps it wasn't the PSU that was the problem, so I stood well back when I turned it on. But everything was okay, so the PSU was definitely the problem.
The only shock I had was the noise - this new PSU is virtually silent compared to the old PSU. I think it's a bit of double whammy - this new PSU is a quiet model, but also the old PSU was incredibly loud.
I'd always known my machine was loud - it sounded like a blooming Hoover! - but I'd never realised it was entirely because of the PSU. I've got one of those mega-powerful PCI-E graphics cards in it that's a got a big fan on it (it takes up two slots) and there's the CPU cooler and stuff so I'd assumed all of that was making a large contribution.
Turns out not at all - with the new PSU in and the covers on, it's almost silent :/.
Of course, having regained my PC, guess what I did? Yup, played Anno 1404.
I could have used this as an excellent opportunity to watch some DVDs or do some scanning, but unfortunately, I'm now realising, because I bought as you do (Richard Hammond's book I mentioned earlier in the week) I've been reading that pretty intensely instead.
Ah well - at least this weekend is a bank holiday so at this stage I can con myself into thinking that I'll be utilising the bonus time to do something I should do, like scanning or watching DVDs. I'm sure the reality will be a great big pile of Anno.
I don't think I discussed it on here, but my landlord inquire about me getting cable and basically, virgin said they won't allow two separate accounts at the same address. This seemed very bizarre to me - I mean, what difference does it make how many accounts you have at the same address? Surely it just means they're turning away perfectly good business?
So having go this bad news my landlord came up with the idea of running a cable from his router to my place. I dunno what's happened with this, though, as I've not seen him to ask. I don't like to be pushy with it, because he's basically offering to give it to me for free.
I must admit to also being slightly worried about the practicalities - I'm an extremely high bandwidth user and I wouldn't want to push him over any sort of fair use quota.
In the meantime I've been investigating different broad band deals and phone lines and stuff.
I pay a lot for my broadband, I've always known that. The thing is though, it seems to be you get what you pay for.
Where I am, distance from the exchange wise and line quality wise, I get about 1.5 meg tops. This is pretty much as I'm expecting and all I will ever get, so deals going on about 24 megs and even 8 megs are just no-goers. I will never achieve those sorts of speeds (cable not withstanding).
But also, the line I'm currently on is a business line. This means it has a low contention (25:1 or 30:1 I believe). My experience is that this makes a lot more difference to your speed than anything else.
All non-business broadband I've seen has had contention of 50:1 - so a heck of a lot worse, meaning the speed would be a lot lower during peak times. Peak times are during the day and evening, when I'm either using P2P or doing my general surfing.
Also, as mentioned, I'm a very high bandwidth user. I have a facility for checking how much I've used each month and I've never checked it and seen my monthly usage bellow 100gigs.
That's a lot of bandwidth and the vast majority of ISP's "fair use" policies would be triggered. Indeed, many have stated monthly caps that are way below 100gig.
Basically then, non-business accounts are out.
So what about other business accounts? Well, the ones I can find are essentially either identical to my other account, or, again, they don't offer quite as good a service.
The basic point then is that while I could get broadband a heck of a lot cheaper, I can't get broadband that meets my needs any cheaper.
Unless I get access to cable via John. I may see if I can get hold of him this weekend and see if he's still keen on the idea.
If I could do that I'd be very tempted to dump my landline entirely. I virtually only have it for broadband - certainly I could cope with all my calls being via my mobile phone.
And speaking of phones I may have mentioned my bill had suddenly shot up - it went from £11 a month to £19 a month: nearly double. So I was looking at non-BT deals, but while I was doing so I was also checking the BT site and everything on the site seemed to be saying that although line rental had gone up, it was only by about £1.
I therefore gave them a call and what it seems has happened is that my direct debit for £11 wasn't quite enough to cover the cost of the line. Therefore, some automatic system kicked in and decided that £19 was the value for it be.
This is utterly ridiculous - across 5 years of having the line (so 5 * 12 monthly payment), the entire total of the deficit was £20. And in the space of 4 months paying at £19 I've therefore built up about £16 of credit on the account.
So the woman re-ran the software and it came up with the much more reasonable £12 monthly charge and she also said I can claim back the over-payment, apparently.
Bizarre.
Friday, 28 August 2009
Thursday, 27 August 2009
monaco pics - coach journey back
I thought what I'd do today was just finish off the Monaco trip pics.
One of the reasons I didn't take many non-race photos was because I wasn't' sure how long my camera batteries would last. As it turned out I didn't really have anything to worry about, but I thought it better to be safe than sorry.
As such, on the last day of the race, on the coach back, I decided I'd take a few snaps and these are the best ones. They're all very sunny and Mediterranean, and I don't have much more to really say about them than that, so here they are:
One of the reasons I didn't take many non-race photos was because I wasn't' sure how long my camera batteries would last. As it turned out I didn't really have anything to worry about, but I thought it better to be safe than sorry.
As such, on the last day of the race, on the coach back, I decided I'd take a few snaps and these are the best ones. They're all very sunny and Mediterranean, and I don't have much more to really say about them than that, so here they are:
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Wednesday, 26 August 2009
hellboy II - the golden army
I found the first hellboy to be enjoyable fair.
It had it's flaws, to be sure, but I thought as comic-book adaptations go, hellboy was entertaining enough.
Hellboy 2 is a direct sequel, made by the same director, Guillermo del Torro. Del Torro is probably one of the most imaginative and creative people working in film today. He has a simply amazing visual sense, but also manages to team this with a superb narrative style and strong story-telling ethic.
Proof of this abounds - Blade 2 is by far the best of the Blade films, both visually and from the story-telling point of view, for example. Then there's Pan's Labyrinth, a film I didn't quite see eye-to-eye with, but one that was dripping with gorgeous visuals.
Hellboy II therefore kinda shows-up the first film. Although I personally enjoyed it for what it was, this second film really emphasises what was missing from the first to make it truly great - del Torro himself.
I remember in the first film's commentary del Torro kept going on about how much of a Hellboy fan he was and how he'd strived to transfer Mike Mignola's characters to the big screen as faithfully as he could. And it worked - they're good characters - but what that therefore mean the first film was missing was a true del Torro-ness.
I'm struggling to explain this, to be frank, but in Hellboy II, del Torro really seems to have let himself go and infused the film with his style. But there's more - in the first he treated the Hellboy world with the utmost respect, whereas in the second it's more like he's expressing his love for the characters.
Does that make sense? So if the first film was reverential and slightly dry and stand-offish because of the respect, then this film is up-close and personal because we're getting a glimpse into the soul of its creator.
That's a bit over the top, but you get the idea.
The film is also staggeringly brave in places.
For example, there's a sequence where Hellboy has to fight an elemental. The elemental grows huge and is destroying the city in its attempts to kill Hellboy.
Hellboy fights back and shoots it and effectively has it on-the-ropes when the villain appears and explains that this is the last of its kind - if he kills it, he ends a race.
Even though this is a block-buster type movie there are shades of grey here. Protect the humans and the city (that is the humans who hate and fear Hellboy and his compatriots) by ending an entire race - it's an intelligent, thoughtful moment where traditionally you would not be presented with anything of the kind.
It had it's flaws, to be sure, but I thought as comic-book adaptations go, hellboy was entertaining enough.
Hellboy 2 is a direct sequel, made by the same director, Guillermo del Torro. Del Torro is probably one of the most imaginative and creative people working in film today. He has a simply amazing visual sense, but also manages to team this with a superb narrative style and strong story-telling ethic.
Proof of this abounds - Blade 2 is by far the best of the Blade films, both visually and from the story-telling point of view, for example. Then there's Pan's Labyrinth, a film I didn't quite see eye-to-eye with, but one that was dripping with gorgeous visuals.
Hellboy II therefore kinda shows-up the first film. Although I personally enjoyed it for what it was, this second film really emphasises what was missing from the first to make it truly great - del Torro himself.
I remember in the first film's commentary del Torro kept going on about how much of a Hellboy fan he was and how he'd strived to transfer Mike Mignola's characters to the big screen as faithfully as he could. And it worked - they're good characters - but what that therefore mean the first film was missing was a true del Torro-ness.
I'm struggling to explain this, to be frank, but in Hellboy II, del Torro really seems to have let himself go and infused the film with his style. But there's more - in the first he treated the Hellboy world with the utmost respect, whereas in the second it's more like he's expressing his love for the characters.
Does that make sense? So if the first film was reverential and slightly dry and stand-offish because of the respect, then this film is up-close and personal because we're getting a glimpse into the soul of its creator.
That's a bit over the top, but you get the idea.
The film is also staggeringly brave in places.
For example, there's a sequence where Hellboy has to fight an elemental. The elemental grows huge and is destroying the city in its attempts to kill Hellboy.
Hellboy fights back and shoots it and effectively has it on-the-ropes when the villain appears and explains that this is the last of its kind - if he kills it, he ends a race.
Even though this is a block-buster type movie there are shades of grey here. Protect the humans and the city (that is the humans who hate and fear Hellboy and his compatriots) by ending an entire race - it's an intelligent, thoughtful moment where traditionally you would not be presented with anything of the kind.
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
as you do
I've recently been reading Richard Hammond's new... I was going to say autobiography then, but it isn't really. It's more like a diary/journal thing, although there are some auto-biography elements.
The first part covers the race to the North Pole Top Gear did, where Hammond was racing Huskies and James & Jeremy went in a four-by-four. Later on - although I haven't got there yet - it seems to cover the Desert race they did, as well as Hammond's meeting with Evel Knievel in a documentary.
I remember those episodes and the documentary well and it's been interesting to read Richard's take on it and the behind-the-scenes stuff. I'd certainly recommend it, but probably only if you're a Top Gear watcher or interested in Hammond. It's not quite got the broader appeal of his autobiography, since it's a bit more focused on things you need to have watched Top Gear to get properly. But it's still an entertaining read.
And speaking of reading, although I've not been watching any anime (naughty Mark!) I have been plugging away with the old manga. So much so, in fact, that my pile of unread manga has almost halved. Indeed, where it actually consisted of two separate stacks, it's now down to 1 stack.
Okay - that's not quite true. Because I deliberately read all my manga twice, actually it's changed from 2 stacks of totally unread to 1 stack of read-once and 1 stack of unread. But that's a sufficiently good achievement for me to be happy.
Anyway, the point is I thought I'd do one of those summary-type list of my thoughts on some of the newer stuff I've tackled:
The Welcome to the NHK manga has been rather disappointing, if I'm honest. The main problem I'm having is that it doesn't seem to be very consistent, both in terms of plotting and tone.
I'm left puzzled as to quite what it's trying to say or to achieve. At some points it comes across as an all-out comedy, at others it seems to be trying to make more serious points about the hikikomori (shut-ins, basically, though this shut-in spends a remarkably large amount of time outside his apartment, which kinda exemplifies my issue with it). At others it seems be going for a more straight drama style.
It almost comes across as vaguely schizophrenic - switching from one idea to another as it suits the whims of the writer. Now this is either a clever representation of the psyche of the main character, or just plain bad writing. And unfortunately I've been erring towards the latter.
Samurai Harem: Asu No Yoichi is a series I picked up because I rather liked what I saw of the anime version. Whilst I wouldn't say I didn't like the manga, the anime is better. That's a raft of double negatives, isn't it?
Basically, what I mean is that the manga seems okay, where the anime seemed good. There's a lot of commonality between the two - all the same characters are featured and the set-up is the same - but the anime is slightly better written. Weirdly, this is because the anime is more happy to use already familiar harem-type devices.
Normally I'd have been rolling my eyes at this rolling out of clichés, but the thing with Harem was that the main character was actually quite likeable and not the usual loser/milquetoast they often feature. In the manga this is also true, but the writer has tried to be innovative about lost of other stuff too, and it doesn't quite work.
In other words, for the anime, they seem to have picked the best aspects and used those. Plus the tweaks to the chara designs make them a bit better in the anime, if I'm honest.
Two series I think I've mentioned before but I've now read a bit more of are Doujin Works and Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei.
Doujin Work I was a bit on-the-fence over, due mainly to the format, I think. Well I've decided I pretty much like it now. Weirdly, it actually reminds me of Garfield.
Not in the sense of sharing any plot elements, obviously, but Garfield was formatted in a rigid panel format that was designed mainly for short, gag-based strips. However, occasionally it would veer into longer stories across more strips.
Doujin works is very much like that and it suffers the same problem. Long-form comics almost demand the use of varying panel sizes. Kept in fixed formats they feel oddly contained; broken up somehow.
But the point is, when you get past that, it works as a series. It also helps that I'm now used to the weirdness of it all.
However, another series I was a bit on-the-fence about has proven to be less of goer. Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei is really leaving me cold.
And I just can't understand why - when I watched the anime I really loved it, but the manga. I dunno, I just can't explain it.
My only theory is that the manga is confusing me. A lot of the characters look very similar and the panels are riddled with obscure, Japan-centric visual jokes that I don't get.
But in the anime, these jokes are either ignorable, or they are better explained by being animated. For the characters of course, you have colour to help distinguish them and different sounding voice actors.
It's a pretty flimsy theory, but it's all I can think of.
The first part covers the race to the North Pole Top Gear did, where Hammond was racing Huskies and James & Jeremy went in a four-by-four. Later on - although I haven't got there yet - it seems to cover the Desert race they did, as well as Hammond's meeting with Evel Knievel in a documentary.
I remember those episodes and the documentary well and it's been interesting to read Richard's take on it and the behind-the-scenes stuff. I'd certainly recommend it, but probably only if you're a Top Gear watcher or interested in Hammond. It's not quite got the broader appeal of his autobiography, since it's a bit more focused on things you need to have watched Top Gear to get properly. But it's still an entertaining read.
And speaking of reading, although I've not been watching any anime (naughty Mark!) I have been plugging away with the old manga. So much so, in fact, that my pile of unread manga has almost halved. Indeed, where it actually consisted of two separate stacks, it's now down to 1 stack.
Okay - that's not quite true. Because I deliberately read all my manga twice, actually it's changed from 2 stacks of totally unread to 1 stack of read-once and 1 stack of unread. But that's a sufficiently good achievement for me to be happy.
Anyway, the point is I thought I'd do one of those summary-type list of my thoughts on some of the newer stuff I've tackled:
The Welcome to the NHK manga has been rather disappointing, if I'm honest. The main problem I'm having is that it doesn't seem to be very consistent, both in terms of plotting and tone.
I'm left puzzled as to quite what it's trying to say or to achieve. At some points it comes across as an all-out comedy, at others it seems to be trying to make more serious points about the hikikomori (shut-ins, basically, though this shut-in spends a remarkably large amount of time outside his apartment, which kinda exemplifies my issue with it). At others it seems be going for a more straight drama style.
It almost comes across as vaguely schizophrenic - switching from one idea to another as it suits the whims of the writer. Now this is either a clever representation of the psyche of the main character, or just plain bad writing. And unfortunately I've been erring towards the latter.
Samurai Harem: Asu No Yoichi is a series I picked up because I rather liked what I saw of the anime version. Whilst I wouldn't say I didn't like the manga, the anime is better. That's a raft of double negatives, isn't it?
Basically, what I mean is that the manga seems okay, where the anime seemed good. There's a lot of commonality between the two - all the same characters are featured and the set-up is the same - but the anime is slightly better written. Weirdly, this is because the anime is more happy to use already familiar harem-type devices.
Normally I'd have been rolling my eyes at this rolling out of clichés, but the thing with Harem was that the main character was actually quite likeable and not the usual loser/milquetoast they often feature. In the manga this is also true, but the writer has tried to be innovative about lost of other stuff too, and it doesn't quite work.
In other words, for the anime, they seem to have picked the best aspects and used those. Plus the tweaks to the chara designs make them a bit better in the anime, if I'm honest.
Two series I think I've mentioned before but I've now read a bit more of are Doujin Works and Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei.
Doujin Work I was a bit on-the-fence over, due mainly to the format, I think. Well I've decided I pretty much like it now. Weirdly, it actually reminds me of Garfield.
Not in the sense of sharing any plot elements, obviously, but Garfield was formatted in a rigid panel format that was designed mainly for short, gag-based strips. However, occasionally it would veer into longer stories across more strips.
Doujin works is very much like that and it suffers the same problem. Long-form comics almost demand the use of varying panel sizes. Kept in fixed formats they feel oddly contained; broken up somehow.
But the point is, when you get past that, it works as a series. It also helps that I'm now used to the weirdness of it all.
However, another series I was a bit on-the-fence about has proven to be less of goer. Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei is really leaving me cold.
And I just can't understand why - when I watched the anime I really loved it, but the manga. I dunno, I just can't explain it.
My only theory is that the manga is confusing me. A lot of the characters look very similar and the panels are riddled with obscure, Japan-centric visual jokes that I don't get.
But in the anime, these jokes are either ignorable, or they are better explained by being animated. For the characters of course, you have colour to help distinguish them and different sounding voice actors.
It's a pretty flimsy theory, but it's all I can think of.
Monday, 24 August 2009
kaboom!
My computer exploded.
Well, exploded is a bit of an exaggeration, but the power supply for my gaming rig shorted out. It made quite a bang, I can tell you, and I expleted quite loudly as a result.
At the time I wasn't sure what had gone so after the shock had warn off a little I reset the power for my bedsit and re-tried the power for my PCs and it shorted again with another loud bang. This time there was also a strong whiff of burning stuff.
I therefore decided to take my games rig apart and the smell was definitely coming from the power supply.
I've heard that power supplies actually store quite a lot of charge in capacitors, so I decided not to actually open the supply up. Pretty sure I wouldn't be able to fix it any way so I ordered a new supply.
So that was £50 I wasn't planning on spending :/.
In a way, it was a bit of a godsend, though. If the rig had been working I'm pretty sure I would have blown the entire weekend playing Anno. I would have enjoyed it, I'm sure, but the point is by not being able to play at all it meant I could do a load of stuff, and it turned out there was way more for me to do than I'd thought.
For example, I've prepared loads of updates for trismugistus.com - 8 weeks worth, in fact. This takes me up to the middle of October, I believe, which will be nice.
Also, I had a bunch of e-bay auctions on the go and there was quite a lot of effort with that. I always forget how much effort there is with e-bay stuff.
And then there was a surprisingly large amount of telly to clear. That was an odd one - at the start of last week I'd managed to totally clear my PVR and I was watching shows too, so I was keeping it clear. But then on Saturday/Sunday there were loads of unwatched things.
I think what happened was a conflagration of stuff - a few shows were coming to the end, some with double-episode things, while other shows were starting. And then there's the Thursday effect. For some reason loads of shows I watch are scheduled for Thursday, but by the time Thursday rolls around I'm often fed-up of watching telly or absorbed in the middle of something else and so I leave it to my PVR. I therefore end up with a big list of stuff being added on one night.
Plus it didn't help that this week's rental DVD had two commentary tracks on it, so that took way longer to watch than I had anticipated.
Still, the point is I cleared it all, which I'm sure I wouldn't have if I'd had a working games rig.
Unfortunately, I still didn't do any scanning, though. I did prep last months mags for scanning (taking out the staples and un-glueing them) but never quite worked up the desire to sit and start scanning. This is silly for two reasons - it builds up a barrier because the number of hours needed to scan it all is daunting, but also because I don't watch any of the fansubs I've got.
And there are a lot of unwatched fansubs. I mean, we're reapidly approaching the winter season and things will get bonkers if those shows start without me finishing most of the past two seasons :/.
Well, exploded is a bit of an exaggeration, but the power supply for my gaming rig shorted out. It made quite a bang, I can tell you, and I expleted quite loudly as a result.
At the time I wasn't sure what had gone so after the shock had warn off a little I reset the power for my bedsit and re-tried the power for my PCs and it shorted again with another loud bang. This time there was also a strong whiff of burning stuff.
I therefore decided to take my games rig apart and the smell was definitely coming from the power supply.
I've heard that power supplies actually store quite a lot of charge in capacitors, so I decided not to actually open the supply up. Pretty sure I wouldn't be able to fix it any way so I ordered a new supply.
So that was £50 I wasn't planning on spending :/.
In a way, it was a bit of a godsend, though. If the rig had been working I'm pretty sure I would have blown the entire weekend playing Anno. I would have enjoyed it, I'm sure, but the point is by not being able to play at all it meant I could do a load of stuff, and it turned out there was way more for me to do than I'd thought.
For example, I've prepared loads of updates for trismugistus.com - 8 weeks worth, in fact. This takes me up to the middle of October, I believe, which will be nice.
Also, I had a bunch of e-bay auctions on the go and there was quite a lot of effort with that. I always forget how much effort there is with e-bay stuff.
And then there was a surprisingly large amount of telly to clear. That was an odd one - at the start of last week I'd managed to totally clear my PVR and I was watching shows too, so I was keeping it clear. But then on Saturday/Sunday there were loads of unwatched things.
I think what happened was a conflagration of stuff - a few shows were coming to the end, some with double-episode things, while other shows were starting. And then there's the Thursday effect. For some reason loads of shows I watch are scheduled for Thursday, but by the time Thursday rolls around I'm often fed-up of watching telly or absorbed in the middle of something else and so I leave it to my PVR. I therefore end up with a big list of stuff being added on one night.
Plus it didn't help that this week's rental DVD had two commentary tracks on it, so that took way longer to watch than I had anticipated.
Still, the point is I cleared it all, which I'm sure I wouldn't have if I'd had a working games rig.
Unfortunately, I still didn't do any scanning, though. I did prep last months mags for scanning (taking out the staples and un-glueing them) but never quite worked up the desire to sit and start scanning. This is silly for two reasons - it builds up a barrier because the number of hours needed to scan it all is daunting, but also because I don't watch any of the fansubs I've got.
And there are a lot of unwatched fansubs. I mean, we're reapidly approaching the winter season and things will get bonkers if those shows start without me finishing most of the past two seasons :/.
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