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Friday, September 10, 2010
Quakecon 2010!
Well I forgot my headphones for my flight from Dallas to Cleveland, so all I can do is type. Yet again, no one else has made a review of Quakecon 2010, so the job defaults to me.
Quakecon time is always my favorite time of the year. Mostly, I am excited to have my friends come down to Texas to visit me. This year I was really excited to have everyone over to my new house, with plenty of room for people to sleep, set up computers, and go outside. With two spare rooms with beds plus the pull-out sofa, I thought I was well prepared, however people ended up ignoring the beds to sleep on the floor, and slept on the sofa without pulling it out. This year I actually remembered to charge the pump for the air mattress, however it deflated a bit during the day and March slept on an under inflated mattress because I forgot to tell him where the pump was. Sorry about that. Sleep always seems like a minor concern though, as they are so tired from driving that they can pass out anywhere and be fine.
The best part of the entire weekend, in my opinion, was my little minilan party that I had for the people who were not volunteering. My sunroom is a natural candidate for LAN parties. Our new dining room table extends quite far, and I’m able to have 3-4 people on each side. Most people have pretty decent laptops these days to make the journey easier, and this helps the minilan setup as I don’t have to run cabling and power requirements are minimal. I will have to invest in some more fans though, as the air vent is small and the windows are big! We had fun all day wednesday playing Quakelive and soldier of fortune 2, starcraft 2 was also played. Quakecon 2010 was off to a good start and it hadn’t even begun yet.
The very second that I had finished packing up my desktop for the LAN, we got word from Tim that the line was moving, and the convention was accepting computers for drop-off. So we hastily packed up the Jetta and sped off downtown to get in line. Only to our welcome surprise there was no line! I’m not sure if there was just no one around, since no one had pre-registered this year, or if the system was so good that it destroyed the line in 45 minutes, but we cruised right in and started filling out our information. The registration system had its up and downs this year. It was lightning quick, but the only things you could register this year was a computer, monitor, mouse, keyboard, and headphones. Everything else was left at-risk. I’ve never felt less secure at Quakecon, but most people are decent folk, and as long as you don’t leave tempting items in full view, you’re probably fine. As far as I’m aware, no one from our group lost anything.
This year we followed my new seating suggestion, which was to sit our group with the aisle between us instead of the table, which I thought was much better. I got to sit next to Jo and Matt, but all I had to do to talk to everyone else was turn around and it was easy to talk to Ben, Joe, and Steve. I also tried to keep Jo and I on a schedule of arriving later and leaving later in the day to be around more when the Tech Desk volunteers were finished with their shifts. It’s strange to think about being lonely in a LAN party of 3000 people, and I felt that way in 2006, but I definitely had fun with everyone this year.
There were problems however, as anyone who follows the event knows. The story is, that at the last minute the provider of the network switches and routers backed out at the last minute. This caused the staff to have to use older, slower equipment which was quickly overloaded. Internet connectivity has never been fast at Quakecon, but I’ve never seen so many computers tethered to phones before. These days you are lucky if a game even comes out for the PC. You are luckier still if it has multiplayer mode. But now for certain, if it has multiplayer support, you know you won’t be able to play it unless you have an internet connection. So without the internet, basically every single new game wasn’t working, including their own Quakelive.
Well you’d think that’s not such a big deal, we can just play some old school games like the good ol’ days. Some Quake3, Jedi Knight 2, SoF 2, etc.. Only this year was also the beginning of the new authoritarian “no file-sharing” policy. While I won’t deny there is potential for illegal file transfers, file sharing through direct connect is the easiest way to share legal files like game patches and updates. While Adam did get a file server up and running later in the event, the effort it took to take files over to him, and get people motivated proved to be too much for most people. Quakecon can function without the internet, and it can function without file sharing, but without both of them combined, the party largely stalled and became IRCon 2010.
A big complaint many people had this year was that Quakecon has finally “sold out”. People point to paying to skip the (nonexistent) line, and the “Quakecon Store” where you could buy shirts instead of fighting for them. I hated fighting for shirts anyways, so those complaints didn’t bother me. But I do agree that the vendor area has a different aura about it than when I started attending. Maybe the new-ness has just worn off, but I thought in the beginning it was more personal. You could really actually use and test the new products instead of just look at tech specs and demos. A lot of vendors just play videos, and I have youtube at home. I forced myself to walk around, but I still don’t understand the rage about Rage or why there is a spaceship there. Now there are two mustangs for you to win a chance to lose, instead of 600 video cards which would be cooler and more useful anyways.
My usual review of the LAN events still stand also. The quickdraw tournaments are a hassle to get in the running for, and more of a hassle to actually get chosen for. I’m pretty sure that the winners from last year still haven’t received their prize money anyways. About the only reason to actually try for the quickdraw is that Quakelive actually worked on those computers, and not in the BYOC. Quakecon 09 ruined most of the events in my mind, as I have absolutely no desire to watch people humiliate themselves for a video card that will be outdated in 2 months anyways, or quakecon girls who are hired to distract you from the fact that there’s nothing interesting going on.
I have a lot of bad things to say about Quakecon in recent years, but the fact remains that it’s still one of the best things that happens every year. The fact that everyone wants to get together once a year and have a weekend just like old times means way more than a faulty network and stale events. I’ll host Quakecon myself next year if I have to, and I hope everyone will try to take time in August 2011 to keep the tradition alive. There were many good times, like the minilan, watching Avatar, going out to eat, and I did have fun playing the games we got to play. To the people who took the time to come, I still had a great time with you. To everyone, I hope you’ll come next year.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
The Macbook Air Experiment
I wasn't paying too much attention to the October apple keynote about OS X 10.7 but at the end of it, as everyone probably knows by now, Jobs announced the new Macbook Airs. I've always loved the macbook air, but with a 13" screen it's always just seemed like a crippled macbook pro. Despite rumors predicting it, I was honestly surprised when the 11.6" mini-air was announced. Anyone who knows me and my apple addiction knows how much of a fan I am of ultra-portable laptops and the 12" powerbook. I think this laptop combines the 12" portability with the form factor of the bigger air and that's what appeals to me. Now, you'll probably ask: didn't you just get an ipad? and yes....I probably don't need the air. And yes, it's not exactly a cheap netbook like the acer aspire (waiting to be sold atm). Yes the ipad is more portable to work since it can stay in the suitcase when I go through security. Yes, unlike the acer, I'm afraid the Air will get damaged or stolen if I take it to work too much. But in our short lives, sometimes logic needs to take a backstep to emotion. Do I prefer the Air to the acer? x1000!! Do I prefer it to the ipad? well....that's the test...First impressions of the laptop are VERY good! Despite low system specs like a 1.4GHz processor and 2gb of ram, the laptop feels very speedy. Finally, the airs have high res screens! At 1366x768 resolution, the screen space still feels like a bigger macbook. It plays back 1080p youtube video in full screen when the atomized acer choked on fullscreen 480p. It plays quakelive at about 50-70 fps. I don't plan to install bootcamp or take it to lans as my primary computer, so that's the most intense use I have planned for it. The keyboard is the same as the new macbooks and BT keyboards, it's a pleasure to type on. The 64gb SSD hard drive is small, but it fits what I want it for, and it combined with the Geforce 320m make this laptop scream. This is no netbook for sure.
As for OS X 10.7, for a first look it's not terrible. I'm very happy with Snow Leopard, so I don't want too much to change. I like that the OS finally has a unified application look (besides iTunes 10 ugh), so I don't want any theme changes. My hopes for it would be resolution independence and zfs support. The app store is not a bad idea, but I'm not too interested in a push towards fullscreen apps. Everything else is stuff I won't use. When the G3 iMacs first came out without floppy drives, everybody cringed and predicted failure, but the gamble was that the internet would be taking over for file distribution. The macbook air and the OS X 10.7 app store reinforce this concept, especially with Steve Jobs' comment "All notebooks will be like [the macbook air] someday". That's not a bad thing. So far I really like the Air.
Bring on the pics!
Friday, October 29, 2010
Our Wedding Story
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Computer Room Pictures
I don’t have any real substance to talk about at the moment, so here are some new house pictures of the computer room. The gray wall paint is awesome and we have shelves and curtains up now.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
FreeNAS Update: Rsync and Unison
I've been using FreeNAS since the beginning of April, 2010, and it certainly has met or exceeded my expectations in that time. It still serves its purpose well, however the way I have it set up has changed quite a bit since April. You can find my original post here (FreeNAS Review). I wanted to take the time to describe my first thoughts when creating my NAS file server, and how it has changed into its current form.My NAS's main purpose is to be a file server and store movies, tv shows, and music to be used mostly by my AppleTV, but also with all computers on my network. I had started in June/July '09 with an external hard disk plugged into my Apple Airport Extreme router. The disk spun 24/7 and eventually became unreadable by September and I was mad. Luckily for me, I still had most of my data backed up on the gaming desktop. But the backup was taking most of my desktop's HDD space and so I wanted it all on its own. For that reason, I bought a Linksys NAS 200 that featured RAID1. I thought a second disk would at least keep my data safe if the disk crashed again. It was waaay too slow for my needs and so I built the FreeNAS server.
RAID1 vs. Rsync
FreeNAS was set up with the same RAID1 as the Linksys and it was much faster, so life was good. But as I talked about it more and more, RAID1 sounded less and less secure. Sure, I was safe from a hard disk failing but there were other things that could delete my collection still, and I'd be SOL. I could accidently type a command wrong and accidently delete the entire /Movies folder with a hit of the enter key, and that would happen on both drives instantly. Or the flash drive containing my FreeNAS config could fail and my software controller would be erased. Without the software controller settings, you can't access a RAID array (at least not easily, like at the user level). So for these reasons I backed up, wiped the RAID array away, and changed to a local rsync service.
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Unison
In addition to backing up my media, the FreeNAS server acts as a remote location for backing up important files from my other computers, including my macbook pro(music), Gaming PC(Pictures), and Alison's files. The Macs simply use Time Machine to backup their files, and I could use Windows 7 Backup to store my desktop's files. But, I thought it'd be nice to sync my Pictures between the desktop and the laptops. That way, when I go home or do imagework, I always have the latest, up-to-date images on all the machines. Having them on different computers protects them against being lost if a disk dies, and unison can archive deleted files if you want it to which protects against accidental deletion. You can think of unison as two-way Rsync, in that any change you make will be backed up on the server, but if the server data changes, the changes will be sent to your computer as well.
Next, create a preferences file on each computer you want to sync files to. Probably looking something like this:
batchpref.prf
# Roots of the synchronization
root = /Users/username/Whatever/
root = ssh://username@192.168.X.XXX//mnt/Disk/PathTo/Wherever/
# Paths to synchronize
#path = current
#path = common
#path = .netscape/bookmarks.html
ignore = Name {._*,.DS_Store,Thumbs.db}
Obviously, you'll want to change the username, IP address, and path to your own settings. You need to give it two directories to make the same. One local to the computer, and one on the remote disk or network location. "ignore" tells the config to ignore whatever files or regex you want. In my case, it's ignoring those annoying hidden windows and OSX files. You can set it to anything, even entire directories. And there are lots of other options you can do as well. See the User manual for all options (User Manual).
Once the config file is done, save it to the appropriate place.
In OS X, it's ~/Library/Application Support/Unison/batchpref.prf
In Windows (Cygwin), it'll be c:\cygwin\home\username\.unison\batchpref.prf
Linux is probably ~/.unison/batchpref.prf (I dont have straight up linux, so I don't know for sure)
Now that the preferences are saved, you should be able to run unison from the command line. Type:
unison -ui text -auto -batch batchpref
This tells the computer to run unison, in the text-only user interface, in automatic mode (doesnt ask you what to do in errors), and to use the preference file we just made. From here, you can run it as a cron job in OSX/Linux, or make a .bat file in windows and run it with Task Scheduler. I have it run on windows at startup, and once a day on the macs. You can also run it manually when you want to make sure you're up to date.
Now, I guess websites like dropbox offer similar capability, but you're either limited in filesize or you have to pay for it. Paying isn't a bad idea, since I suppose if my house burned down I'd still lose everything. But I find unison to be a great way to back up and syncronize easily and for free. Especially if your data is the "nice to have" but not the most important memories of your life.
I'll finish the post off with a newer pic of my home network. It's clickable to view it a little bigger. I still have other FreeNAS updates I can write about, but since Rsync and Unison are so closely related, I thought I'd give them their own post.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Flying a real plane yet?
Today I was awarded a first officer position on the Embraer 140/145, based in Dallas-Forth Worth. Time to finally see some places more interesting than Lawton, OK? Sometime early next year I’ll start training, which will last about 2 months. Things are looking good these days, with lots of people supposed to leave for other airlines, pilots retiring at 65 years old, and more airplanes on the way. Hoping for about a year or two more until I can hold a captain position.
More Embraer pictures below
Sunday, December 19, 2010
The Most I’ve Ever Typed on an iPad
Since I got the iPad, I’ve known that bluetooth keyboards work with it, but I haven’t ever synced my BT keyboard to it until now. And I can’t decide if it’s awesome or terrible. Certainly, the best part about the iPad is that the keyboard is not necessary. I’ve always figured that if I need to type, I can just use the laptop and if I just want to read, there’s nothing better than the iPad. Today I had a flight sequence with a short overnight, and I didn’t really want to drag the macbook air through security, but I wanted to do some quick typing for my new bidding program so I brought along the BT keyboard.
It’s nice to be able to write something like this blog post with the iPad, but some things are very lacking. For a mouse-less computer, I thought keyboard shortcuts would work better. Tabbing between fields seems application-specific and other than the address bar, the keyboard is useless for safari web browsing. No page up/down or search. I thought my SSH program would work pretty well, but the control buttons don’t work which kind of limits using nano with it.
On the other hand, with cheap bluetooth keyboads these days, it’s not too hard to throw a spare keyboard in the suitcase and when the rare situation comes across that I want to type, I’m no longer limited by touch typing on the screen. The special apple function keys that adjust brightness and control music actually do work and are pretty nice. Command keys like cut/copy/paste do work as well, but without a mouse it can take some time to select what you want.
For now, I think the iPad has a way to go to meet the standards of someone used to controlling a computer almost purely by keyboard command. Maybe iOS 4 or 5 will address it, or maybe like OSX there’s a hidden option to turn on full keyboard commands. Using a bluetooth keyboard is a nice feature but I’ll stick to the air for now.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
PHP Programming and Google Adsense
I haven’t posted much here on DarkMercury lately (Happy New Year btw) because I’ve been pretty busy with a new website I’ve written for work. It’s a PHP script that loads schedules and sorts them depending on different criteria you input into it. Each month every pilot and flight attendant in the company looks through these lines to figure out which is the best for them and lists them in the order they want. The people who have been there the longest get the first pick, and so on down the line. On the ATR, I’ve only had about 35 lines to look through so it wasn’t much of a big deal to do it by hand. As I make the change to the Embraer jet, now I’d have to look through ~280 lines. I looked into other commercial bidding software and decided it wasn’t worth the cost. It’d be easier to just write my own. So for the last 2 months I’ve been working on a pretty powerful and unique bid software that I finally announced on company forums last night. So far, it’s gotten very good reviews, and because I can capture a little niche market here, I enrolled in the Google Adsense Program. Google displays relevant ads on the bidding website, and when someone clicks on them, the advertisers pay google and google lets some of that trickle down to me. It’s not a bad program and I’ve been watching it throughout the day as people learn about the site. Hopefully the system can kind of sustain itself and bring in some pocket money each month during bid time.
I rarely get much actual traffic on my DarkMercury website, and the traffic I do get is usually on my AppleTV and Freenas posts, so I’m running a little test to see if google ads work well with my site. I have one strip along the right menu bar, and individual blog entries that I choose can display an ad header. I pretty much set these only to pages linked from google for the visitors. I know most of my friends simply use the RSS and nothing will change for them. So far, the adsense program is looking good and I hope to open up another website with the same model in the next few months. Until that one is ready, you can check out the bid program, written from scratch at [link removed]:
[Edit 05/02/11: I removed the actual name of my work website due to Google showing my personal blog in its search results for the bidding program. While I realize that anything posted online should be expected to be read by anyone, I’d rather disassociate the two to the best of my ability.]
Sunday, February 13, 2011
MagpieRSS with RSS2.0 and Atom1.0
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MagpieRSS.zipRSS 2.0 / Atom 1.0 / Wordpress Fix / Category Fix02/13/11 |
This post is for the Googlers.
As I was making my Friends 3.0 page, where I have my friends' blog entries as if they were posted on my site, I came across some limitations of Magpie RSS. The software is very good at making a big array out of an RSS feed, but it can't handle some of the newer web standards like RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0. When I started to add a lot of personal feeds to the friends page, magpierss's limitations became more apparent.
As much as I searched, I couldn't find a real solution other than completely rewriting my friends page based on other RSS parser like Simple RSS. Luckily, I came across a hack of Magpie on Google, and I wish I could remember where it came from so I could give credit. The page wasn't even available anymore, but Google had cached it, and I managed to copy it. I had to do a lot of editing to remove the HTML formatting, but it does what it promises, and gives magpieRSS the RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 support it so desparately needs these days.
That's not the only thing special about this hacked together MagpieRSS file though. It seems Wordpress sites have broken most Magpie RSS feeds with it's "media:content" tag. For some reason, when MagpieRSS parses this tag, its "content:encoded" tag changes simply to a big letter "A". It through me for a loop for a while, and not seeing a good fix online, I simply edited the Magpie parser to ignore "media:content". This fixes the content:encoded issue, which I think is more important than some media file anyways.
The last edit of the MagpieRSS deals with categories. Many feeds list assigned categories with by having each one in a
<category>Sports</category>
<category>Baseball</category>
MagpieRSS will simply append the category array value each time so you end up with "SportsBaseball". My version appends a '@@@@' at the end of each category, so the array value will be "Sports@@@@Baseball@@@@". From there you can use the php function 'explode' to separate each category from the string.
Hopefully, someone out there will find this useful.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Left 4 Dead 2
It’s been a long time since I’ve been really into gaming. I’ve kept up with Quake 3/Live a little bit, but mostly I’ve been working on PHP programming and other stuff. Left 4 Dead 2 has changed that however, bringing me back into the world of PC gaming. I was never someone who was into the whole zombie apocalypse thing, but I do like this game a lot. Besides having a pretty fun mix of zombies, weapons, and adventures, what I like about this game is the teamwork. There are only a few campaigns, but trying to get through them with different people with different skills is challenging, and brings something new to gaming for me. I’ve always been the solo warrior of Q3 before this. I’ve been playing L4D2 with some random people online. When you find a good teammate online you friend them through Steam and can invite them to play with you again later. When you have good teammates you can ramp up the difficulty and have some fun. Here’s a gameplay video where I make some good appearances:
Since getting back into PC gaming, I’ve picked up a Razer Mamba mouse, which I love! I never thought I would like a wireless mouse on my gaming machine, but this is something else. I also got a Razer Megalodon headset, which is less impressive but still nice. Longer reviews of one or both may come soon.
In Quakecon News, QC is coming sooner than we expect! It’s may already and that means about 3 months to get good at Quake again. If people are interested, I’d like to start a QL night or something where we play some DM/CA/TDM together to prepare. Let me know! My Pre-Quakecon LAN will actually have some thought put into it this year. Can’t wait to see everyone.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Upcoming Upgrades
Since the last post way back in May, my computer hasn’t changed much. Back then I added the Razer Mamba mouse and Megaloden Headset.
The mamba has been amazing, like spectacularly good for a wireless mouse. Its only problem is battery life. I’ll often leave it on and leave for a 4 day trip at work and come back to find it dead. It’s not a huge deal since it can easily become a wired mouse by plugging it in. My only real disappointment is that as soon as I bought it they came out with a new mamba, all stealth-apple style. I don’t think the new one is vastly different though, it has some fancy lights. I will try to resist the temptation to buy another one.
The Megaloden headset is alright. It’s bulky and takes up a lot of room in my suitcase when I took it to DasLAN. I don’t like the fabric ear covers, compared to my Bose Triports, but the Bose has no microphone. The mic is alright when I’m at home in a quiet environment, but was almost worthless in the noisy environment of Quakecon. I’ll probably keep them because the market for them is pretty small.
My only big PC news is that, after 9 years, I’ve finally bought a new case for my computer. Since high school, I’ve rocked an old school Lian-Li PC-60 or something. I have pretty high standards for my computers, it turns out. I wanted a silver case to go along with the Apple Cinema Displays which narrowed me down to about 5% of the total case market. Go ahead and try to buy a nice looking silver case, I dare you. You can’t do it anymore. Your computer these days must be black, which is funny because in the past everything was beige and you could never find any black. We kinda went past the goal of customization and ended up back where we started. Anyways, I considered buying a dead Apple PowerMac G5 and gutting and modding it to make a PC from it. Not only extremely troublesome, it would limit me to one DVD drive and wouldn’t be very upgradable.
The bar by which I’ve always measured PC cases has been the Maximum PC “Dream Machine” for 2002. The case is a Cooler Master ATC-110, which went out of production soon after. I’ve occasionally searched for one, usually to never find one, or find one in bad condition. However, I recently came across one on ebay in basically flawless condition and so I pulled the trigger and bought it. I’m pretty excited to get it. It’s almost a full tower, so it’ll be larger than my current computer, but it doesn’t actually go to LAN Parties anymore. I have my Macbook Pro for that now, so I don’t have to worry about traveling with it much. I like the way the door covers the drives, and I have plenty of USB ports on my keyboard and monitors so I don’t need them on the case. Hopefully I can put up some images when I get the computer built. It’ll be fun to rebuild the computer, I never get to do that anymore it seems.
I considered buying an i7 setup to make it like a whole new computer, but the Core 2 Duo is still fine. Maybe next year for Quakecon (or whatever we end up doing).
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Quakecon 2011
Quakecon 2011 started off the same way they all do, with Tim and his friends arriving at my house on Tuesday. I was lucky again this year to get the time off work. Since the Quakecon dates are rarely announced in time, I had guessed the wrong weekend to apply my vacation time. We had a smaller group this year, almost the same people as last year. Tim, Adam, March, Steve, Matt, Joe and Jo all came down. Normally, they arrive early to help volunteer for setup. This year though, a vacation was needed and everyone just used the time to relax and have a good minilan (the LAN before the LAN). They do enough volunteering throughout the event, and it was good to finally see them. Usually, between their staying at the hotel and their volunteering, it would feel like I never saw them.
We were feeling a little skittish about the convention this year, after network outages turned Quakecon into IRC’con last year. This year the Quakecon website was hacked and there was very little information available. It seemed like no one really cared about Quakecon anymore and the magic was dying.
Overall though, I think we were mostly happy with Quakecon 2011. If you’ve ever been to one then you know what it is like. Depending on what breaks that year, they are all pretty much the same. The network was much more stable this year, due mainly to a routed network instead of switches. AT&T sponsored internet was a very welcome addition. But there was a flaw in the network this year. Using routers instead of switches meant that searching for LAN games wouldn’t work. To get into a game, you had to manually type in an IP Address, which is a pain to look up. Lacking an official solution to the problem, I personally started keeping track of LAN Games and sharing the info over a twitter account and the IRC room. It was a detriment to the LAN overall, in my opinion, but not a huge one. My efforts seemed mostly futile as there just weren’t enough people following the twitter accounts and joining IRC. Over time, we just started playing games online, since the speed was good enough. In the end, it didn’t really matter if you were playing with strangers in the room or strangers on the internet.
I played mostly QuakeLive of course, and did decent. The most fun, however, were the Left 4 Dead 2 versus matches we played. There were 8 of us, which is the perfect number for a L4D2 vs match, and of us only 3 really play the game. Dead Air had just been released, so we played a lot of that. It was pretty fun to stumble around as noobs.
The vendors area was borderline empty. There was a Dell/Alienware setup, and some Rage. I think a Silverstone booth sold some headsets. I can’t remember the other ones and frankly I didn’t spend much time there. Ventrillo again tried to give away a car and again I didn’t care. Joe wasted a lot of his time standing around the QuickDraw stage trying to win a chance to play a game and maybe win some money. Some money that they probably won’t pay anyways. I stopped fighting over the prizes a long time ago. I never win and why waste the time.
With Jo’s prompting, I went to more panels this year. They had one which was an interview with some of the key id software employees which was cool. John Carmack is a smart guy and it was interesting. What was less interesting was the PC Perspective event. Year after year we go hoping to win big prizes but as always, nothing. I can’t remember anything actually presented there except Nvidia was there and I can’t remember what they were on about. Nvidia Douche [1] [2] returned this year with a speaking role. I noticed that every picture I took of him always comes out the same. However, March, Jo and I made it interesting by (joining the crowd in) yelling crude things at them. They couldn’t hear us but it was funny to those around. What was terribly depressing was an actual fight that erupted over a PC case given out as a prize. They wrestled and twisted and fell over each other and we all watched in horror. Sad to watch people’s morality absolutely dissolve at the hint of material gain.
Though it was better than last year, we haven’t decided if we are going back next year. There was an idea floating around of renting a place to set up a big minilan and just have the week to ourselves. Maybe over time it will turn into our own convention. Either way, as long as we keep getting together once a year that’s enough for me.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Finally, an update!
Well, it’s certainly been a while, hasn’t it? Am I even talking to anyone anymore? My statistics page says 182 days without an update, which means half of a year. :( Terribly sorry. I’ve obviously been busy because when I’m busy, I don’t update. But I can’t really explain most of my time away. My Bidding website certainly takes a lot of credit for my virtual disappearance. It brings in actual money for me each month, so that is where my priority is for now. I’m also creating a new website, CFI-Wiki that will hopefully mature over time and pick up the slack when the bidding website becomes obsolete (new bidding system in the works at the company). Also thinking about a similar program that checks our paysheets. Though the other sites have been using the excuse of “making money” to keep me away from DarkMercury, I like reading through my history and large gaps like this one disappoint me a lot.
So happy new year, and what’s happening with me since Quakecon? Well Alison and I celebrated our first anniversary in October with a trip to Washington DC. We went to DC a few times when we started dating to see the pandas at the zoo. Traveled in our usual style this time though. Flew into DCA and took the subway to the Grand Hyatt downtown. The hotel sits right on top of the Metro Center subway station, making travel across the city pretty easy. Well our hotel experience was not the best, but we were getting by at the employee rate, so I will not complain too much. Worth the price, I guess. We spent a lot of time at the Smithsonian museums, and some at the monuments. I guess there is a Martin Luther King Jr memorial that we missed. They were also digging up the Reflection Pool, which was a bummer. But the Smithsonian is always amazing and I could spend the entirety of any DC trip there. Someday we will get to Puerto Vallarta, I swear! Also, I don’t know why my camera turns into absolute garbage as soon as the sun starts to set.
Christmas was pretty quiet. We spent it in Texas by ourselves. I think we both ended up with the flu. I missed a lot of work because of it and got invited to the chief pilot’s office, but what can you do. I’m almost a year in now on the Embraer 145 aircraft. I noticed I haven’t really made any real post about it. Maybe I will soon, but the ERJ is a good but boring plane. It runs more consistently, which is nice. I get home on time more often. But there aren’t many good stories. It hasn’t tried to kill me a single time, which is good but helps contribute to my lack of posts.
American has declared bankruptcy, which is stopping the upgrades to captain. I was pretty close, actually. Besides getting to be the big boss of the airplane and getting to fly it the way I want to, it comes with quite a pay raise that I want. A few months of captain time looks better on the resume than years and years of FO time. When people ask me what’s going to happen with the bankruptcy, I don’t have much to tell them. They are negotiating with the mainline unions right now. What comes of that will affect whether Eagle grows or shrinks. I’ve spent too much time at Eagle to give up my seniority by leaving, so I’m just going to stay put and see what happens. I don’t think the airline will shrink to the point where I get furloughed or anything. Eagle could end up growing to take over some mainline flying, or we could start competing with other regionals for American flying and shrink. Until the mainline negotiations finish, I just don’t know yet. I’m guessing that, like other legacy carriers, the unions will be stripped of their pay and pensions. This makes the whole pilot gig less appealing in the long run and will hurt the industry. I tell people I’m not afraid of losing my job, I’m afraid of losing my career.
In the beginning of this year, both Alison and I have gotten new cars. It was awesome having her car paid off, but it was starting to get up there in years, and I didn’t want to have her break down when I was away on a trip, so we looked into a new car for her. She wanted a Hyundai Santa Fe, so we found a good used one and traded in the VW Rabbit, plus some cash and got a low payment. I still need to get a picture of her with it.
On Friday, we went down to the VW dealership to look at a new Jetta for me. I’ve been going through cars pretty quickly in the last few years, but I really hope this is the one that sticks for a while. I have good feelings about it. I had a 2010 Jetta Limited Edition, and just traded it for a similar 2010 Jetta Wolfsburg Edition (WE). Over time, the 2.5 engine and the transmission on the old Jetta was starting to bother me. When I accelerated, the engine sounded kind of raspy, and it seemed to run at high RPM. Was it trying to force me to drive slower for more MPG? The actual car itself was very nice. While Alison was looking for her car, we saw a Salsa Red Jetta Wolfsburg in the VW lot. My cars have always been black or silver, but I was very impressed with the color(s). That particular one was an automatic, but I started to casually look at other Wolfsburgs.
A 6-Speed in the right price range finally turned up, looking very cool in the same red color, tinted windows, the rear spoiler lip, and tan interior. The WE has the better, turbocharged engine and it is quite an improvement over the old one. The features of the new car are pretty much the same as my last Jetta. It has the same dashboard and radio, although bluetooth audio finally works! So it’s really an upgrade of style and engine. I wrote in the last Jetta post that part of growing up was realizing your priorities and not necessarily needed the fastest car on the road. So I must be growing younger again, haha. That’s still true though. Alison’s Rabbit had a 2.5 engine with the 5 speed, and I loved that setup, even though it was 20HP less than the Jetta. Had the gearing been set up the same, I would have been happy. But I was just not enjoying the Jetta’s engine the same way as the Rabbit and I couldn’t see myself owning it until it died. Well I really like the new car, just hope that the previous owners were nice to it and it will last a long time.
On the computer front, my awesome 8800GT video card finally died after almost 4 years. I bought an overclocked 560Ti to replace it, and Left 4 Dead 2 looks awesome at 2560x1600 res. Both cards are made by evga and hopefully this one will last just as long. I’d like to further replace the cpu/ram/motherboard before Quakecon time, but I’ll save that for a summer project.
I sold my iPad1 to get some cash for the iPad3, which is coming out soon. I think I’ll dedicate a separate post for that. I also spent $25 and bought two G3 iMacs. The graphite one is pretty decent and I’m going to keep that one. The indigo one is slower, and scratched up so I’m trying to pawn that off on craigslist and make $20 back. I remember middle school when the iMac first came out, and I didn’t like it. I was very anti-Mac back then. However, it did what it set out to do and changed the industry. It was able to win me over eventually, so it is an impressive machine. For $25 (potentially $5), it’s a cool piece of history. It even runs OSX 10.4 Tiger pretty well. You can browse the internet, do email, run some pretty recent software, etc. Not bad for a 15 year old computer.
Hopefully it won’t take me 6 months to do the next one.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Realization
Sunday, December 11, 2016
It Lives?
Just about 4 more years later, an update! Life has changed dramatically since my last post. There are people here now who weren’t here when the last post was made. It’s incredible how fast time can fly by.
This update is prompted by my move to a new server. The old server was in need of software updates and rather than risk performing a command line update, I opted to create a new machine. This site is the testbed for the copy and reinstall process. Why go through all this trouble to avoid some updates? Since my last post, my app development company has taken off dramatically and I can’t afford for the other server to go down anymore. So rather than risk a botched update erasing everything, I’ll just create a duplicate and switch the DNS over to the new machine. The old server was giving me errors when I tried to post here so, it has a nice side effect of fixing this site; something that I never really had time to do before.
I really do want to write here more and making the first “I’m back” post is hopefully the hardest. The longer you go without posting, the more you have to cover when you come back. I don’t like the missing 4 years of my life on this site so I’ll try to make a post about each year or something.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Re: 2016 Macbook Pro
12:27:42 PM Eclipse: Apple’s response to Microsoft coming up in about 30 minutes
12:28:13 PM Eclipse: Oh you guys made a touch sensitive iMac studio? well we….took away the esc key
12:28:40 PM Krhainos: Surface Studio still has full-size USB ports, an ethernet port, and a headphone jack. Sad!
12:29:24 PM Krhainos: the new Apple Studio has two lightning connectors for all your connectivity needs
12:30:19 PM Krhainos: the new Lightning Hub adds an additional 4 ports!
12:32:07 PM Eclipse: cant wait to buy that
12:32:13 PM Krhainos: Esc is probably one of the few things that’s probably still easy to find on the touch-strip without looking
12:32:19 PM Krhainos: just mash the upper-left hand corner
12:32:27 PM Krhainos: good luck finding like F6 or something though
12:32:41 PM Eclipse: i haven’t found f6 in years
12:33:06 PM Eclipse: although i don’t do jack shit with function keys except brightness and volume anymore
12:33:19 PM Krhainos: yeah OS X has pretty much evolved F-keys out of the OS
12:33:27 PM Krhainos: so it makes sense to get rid of them
12:33:33 PM Krhainos: only nerds use f-keys extensively
12:34:43 PM Eclipse: there’s a movie in there somewhere
12:36:04 PM Krhainos: and it makes extensive use of http://hackertyper.com/
12:37:22 PM Krhainos: so this search engine cold-called me at work trying to get us to buy ads on their shitty search engine
12:37:29 PM Krhainos: http://www.dothop.com
12:37:45 PM Krhainos: and i want them to call back so i can tell them how shitty it is
12:37:50 PM Eclipse: lol
12:38:03 PM Krhainos: its like they saw coverflow and were like “lets make this a search engine”
12:38:03 PM Eclipse: oh man that red circle is catchy
12:38:43 PM Eclipse: i like how it’s slow and javascript heavy
12:38:55 PM Krhainos: they called us saying they increased the number of clicks to our website by 60%
12:39:16 PM Krhainos: and i’m like .. how do you know what 60% is if you don’t know what we had initially? did you hack into our Google Analytics account?
12:39:30 PM Eclipse: exactly
12:39:48 PM Krhainos: prtty sure they’re just a scam to sell us fake clicks (they’re the ones clicking)
12:39:55 PM Krhainos: and “keywords” for $500 each
12:40:26 PM Eclipse: I get sooo many fake “expiration” notices for my domains
1:16:23 PM Eclipse: as usual, the first hour of an apple keynote can be safely ignored
1:16:38 PM Krhainos: right haha
1:16:48 PM Krhainos: blah blah blah can we just skip to how to the new hardware
1:16:59 PM Krhainos: unless they’re tlaking about a new Apple TV
1:17:08 PM Eclipse: zomg you can play minecraft on an appletv or something
1:17:15 PM Krhainos: which is about how no one wants to buy one when Fire TV’s are like $30
1:17:40 PM Krhainos: “Today we’re annoucing a new app… and we simply call it TV.”
1:17:41 PM Krhainos: of course
1:17:48 PM Eclipse: If they would allow Kodi I would want one
1:17:58 PM Eclipse: so, TV on AppleTV on my TV
1:18:11 PM Krhainos: just like the iPod app on the iPod
1:18:56 PM Eclipse: oh shit are they going to release an app called Computer
1:26:00 PM Eclipse: “You can now say voice commands such as “watch the Louisville game,” and Siri will know which app has the football game, and start playing it.” as long as you dont live in fucking louisville
1:26:12 PM Krhainos: haha
1:27:01 PM Eclipse: i actually wanted to buy the NBA app subscription for my father in law, but fucking piece of shit won’t show cleveland games
1:27:27 PM Krhainos: yay market blackouts
1:27:32 PM Eclipse: and setting up a proxy and shit may or may not work and would definitely get broken
1:28:00 PM Krhainos: i read why they do blackouts but forget why exactly
1:28:04 PM Krhainos: because it was all bs anyway
1:28:49 PM Eclipse: basically because local stations would stop paying out the ass to air them
1:29:10 PM Krhainos: yea something like that
1:29:29 PM Eclipse: “lets talk about the mac now, we love it so much that you’re still paying top dollars for shit that’s over a year old”
1:30:28 PM Eclipse: or, if you’re buying a mac pro, over 3 years old
1:30:42 PM Krhainos: is the rubbish bin mac really 3 years old?
1:31:13 PM Eclipse: ok, almost 3 years old
1:31:16 PM Eclipse: dec 19 2013
1:31:24 PM Krhainos: thats still pretty old
1:31:58 PM Krhainos: oh god no
1:31:59 PM Krhainos: quick emojis
1:32:17 PM Krhainos: Millennials have ruined the MacBook Pro
1:33:03 PM Eclipse: pro just means more expensive now
1:33:17 PM Eclipse: why is esc not in the corner
1:33:26 PM Eclipse: now i have to press a fake F1 for esc
1:35:43 PM Krhainos: i wonder if you can move them around
1:36:19 PM Eclipse: why not just make the whole bottom of the laptop a touchpad
1:36:31 PM Krhainos: don’t give them any ideas
1:36:42 PM Eclipse: they’d have nothing to announce next year
1:44:25 PM Eclipse: fucking emoji
1:44:31 PM Eclipse: this must be what getting old feels like
1:44:36 PM Krhainos: hahaha
1:45:32 PM Krhainos: “but how can i use vim with it”?
1:46:22 PM Eclipse: “it shows apps from the app store right in the bar which you can buy and use instead of vim!”
1:50:14 PM Krhainos: https://syllabus.vox-cdn.com/uploads/photo/image/25136/apple-macbook-event-20161027-8403.jpg
1:50:18 PM Krhainos: there’s a man page button i’m sold
1:50:26 PM Eclipse: lol
1:50:35 PM Eclipse: honestly I am probably going to buy one
1:51:44 PM Eclipse: mine is a late 2012 and Alison’s desktop just died this morning
1:52:36 PM Eclipse: so I will probably order one and give her this machine
1:54:31 PM Krhainos: #DongleLife
1:56:12 PM Eclipse: macbook pros have been donglelife for a long time now
1:56:24 PM Krhainos: thats true
1:56:33 PM Eclipse: just usb instead of usb-c
1:56:49 PM Eclipse: i just need to make sure I can use my cinema displays still
1:57:27 PM Eclipse: ugh now they are talking about the freaking touchbar again
1:57:33 PM Eclipse: we already did this
1:57:45 PM Krhainos: hahaha
1:58:04 PM Krhainos: MacBook Pro more like MacBook Bro
1:58:58 PM Eclipse: i guess they know we need a short break here to google usb-c compatibility
1:59:46 PM Krhainos: Type c connectors are all backwards compatible with the old style port (Type A)
2:02:14 PM Eclipse: this is probably time-filler since the desktops aren’t ready yet
2:08:24 PM Eclipse: usb to single link dvi seems easy enough
2:08:36 PM Eclipse: but I was hoping for better
2:09:00 PM Eclipse: i dont see anything about getting the 30” to work with the usb-c amcbook
2:10:24 PM Krhainos: “Microsoft is bringing touch bar support to Office.” says Schiller to exactly zero applause or audience reaction.
2:10:53 PM Eclipse: obviously they are
2:11:10 PM Eclipse: everyone is pissed they are not releasing new desktops
2:15:35 PM Eclipse: ok finally back to talking about the laptops again
2:16:46 PM Eclipse: let’s hear available today
2:18:02 PM Eclipse: they never do that anymore
2:20:09 PM Eclipse: oh god
2:20:15 PM Krhainos: are you going to be pleb out and buy the touchbad-less version?
2:20:19 PM Krhainos: touchbar*
2:21:19 PM Eclipse: *looks on craigslist*
2:23:19 PM Eclipse: honestly I probably will pleb out
2:24:08 PM Eclipse: RIP 11” Air
2:24:13 PM Krhainos: haha
2:24:28 PM Krhainos: i bought my mom a 13” Air to replace her dying 2008 Mac Mini
2:24:47 PM Eclipse: i loved that machine so much, but once I started Xcode, I just didnt have the screen resolution
2:38:20 PM Eclipse: so if I were to buy new 27-30” displays, which ones are good these days?
2:38:20 PM Krhainos (Autoreply): I’m not here right now
2:56:47 PM Krhainos: LG makes a good display
2:57:04 PM Krhainos: but Dell and HP make good displays too
2:57:49 PM Krhainos: LG makes surprisingly good displays for the price
2:57:56 PM Eclipse: thinking a thunderbolt 3 dock should handle it, but they are like $300
2:57:58 PM Krhainos: i went to best buy to buy the cheapest 21” display i could
2:58:12 PM Krhainos: and that LG monitor i take to lan parties is probably the best monitor i own now
2:58:24 PM Krhainos: too bad its tiny
2:58:40 PM Krhainos: LED backlighting did wonders to LCD technology
3:31:07 PM Eclipse: ugh no minidisplayport really hurts on these new ones
3:31:30 PM Krhainos: heh
3:31:42 PM Krhainos: dongles tho
3:32:30 PM Krhainos: i think mDP and Thunderbolt devices can use simple passive adpaters for TB2 ports
3:33:16 PM Eclipse: the only other mac laptop with usb-c is the 12” macbook so I was trying to google using that with a 30 cinema display
3:33:22 PM Eclipse: but there isn’t much there
3:33:51 PM Eclipse: dvi is old now…and of course I still use VGA back by the switch rack
3:33:54 PM Krhainos: intel and the usb group sort of didn’t do the world any favors by using the same connector that can carry many similar yet incompatible busses across the same connector
3:34:21 PM Eclipse: they did themselves a favor by making us buy new shit
3:34:35 PM Krhainos: the USB Type C connector can carry : DisplayPort, USB 3.1, and PCI Express (aka Thunderbolt)
3:34:48 PM Krhainos: so the macbook only has USB 3.1 on its type c connector
3:34:56 PM Krhainos: while i think on the new mbp, all four are thunderbolt ports
3:35:25 PM Krhainos: you can tell which busses are available on each port with the symbols present next to the port : http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/usbs-will-have-more-logos-so-people-won-t-confuse-them-anymore-490299-3.jpg
3:35:48 PM Krhainos: every port will carry at least USB 2.0
3:36:13 PM Krhainos: that diagram appears to be German lol (USB 2.0 mit DisplayPort!)
3:37:30 PM Krhainos: TB3, not TB2
3:37:38 PM Eclipse: I need to get from the thunderbolt 3 port to at least 1 minidisplay
3:37:42 PM Krhainos: so in the case of the new MacBooks, you have 2 or 4 TB3 ports
3:38:03 PM Krhainos: so you would need a simple/passive TB3 to mDP adapter
3:38:21 PM Krhainos: since TB > DP with USB > DP without USB
3:38:22 PM Eclipse: but then there’s the question of whether it will push dual link dvi
3:38:32 PM Krhainos: all variants of DisplayPort will
3:38:56 PM Krhainos: what display do you have? DL-DVI Cinema Display?
3:39:28 PM Eclipse: yes, i also have another single link dvi 23” cinema
3:39:30 PM Krhainos: at worst, you might be looking at stacking TB3 -> mDP -> DL-DVI adapters, but i’m sure someone like monoprice might make one that does all of that in one adapter.
3:39:34 PM Eclipse: but i don’t use that much anymore
3:40:42 PM Krhainos: in the case of the macbook that only has usb on usb-c ports, since it doesn’t carry TB or mDP
3:40:58 PM Krhainos: you’re basically looking at a USB video card, and those naturally carry at least a $100 price tag
3:41:11 PM Krhainos: it’s the lowest form of USB C basically
3:41:24 PM Krhainos: where as the mbp has the highest form of it (carries everything you could possible want)
3:42:56 PM Eclipse: macbook says “Native DisplayPort 1.2 video output”, is that just via a usb-c style cable?
3:43:07 PM Krhainos: oh, i stand correctedi
3:43:07 PM Eclipse: like their own dongle
3:43:10 PM Krhainos: it does have DP out then
3:43:19 PM Krhainos: so it’d be the next-level up
3:43:22 PM Krhainos: USB w/ DP
3:43:46 PM Krhainos: in case you’re wondering who would implement Type C w/ USB 2.0 instead of 3.0, it would be like smartphones and chromebooks
3:43:49 PM Krhainos: stuff that plain doesn’t need 3.0
3:44:07 PM Krhainos: but you can safely assume any laptop that has a type c connector to have at least USB 3.0
3:45:31 PM Krhainos: PCI-E (Thunderbolt), and DisplayPort are high speed packetized interfaces (like ethernet)—so thats how they can get multiple things out of one port.
3:45:37 PM Krhainos: its like one small ethernet switch
3:46:16 PM Krhainos: and at 10Gb/s, half of it goes to your display (mDP), and the other half goes to data (USB 3.x or PCIE)
3:46:48 PM Krhainos: all this shit that’s part of the standard, nearly impossible to explain to consumers
3:47:01 PM Krhainos: but fairly important when it comes to purchasing stuff that plugs into these ports
3:48:18 PM Krhainos: i think at max you can attach three 4K displays before you run out of bandwidth
3:48:23 PM Krhainos: on Thunderbolt
3:48:41 PM Krhainos: and since its all bandwidth, maybe like six 1080p displays
3:48:55 PM Krhainos: er wait. four 1080p displays per 4K x 3 = so 12 actually.
3:49:16 PM Krhainos: in other words, enough.
3:52:58 PM Eclipse: https://www.amazon.com/Juiced-Systems%C2%AE-Multifunction-Display-Delivery/dp/B01EFMC6AK/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1477597871&sr=8-6&keywords=usb-c+mini+displayport
3:53:06 PM Eclipse: that looks like shit but will maybe work
3:53:21 PM Eclipse: i guess they come in not-gold
3:53:32 PM Krhainos: are you thinking of a macbook?
3:54:05 PM Krhainos: that is a neat looking solution for that though
3:54:57 PM Eclipse: no, i dont want a macbook, but the macbook’s limitation of only usb-c port(s) is the same problem I’d face integrating the new 13” mbp
3:58:33 PM Krhainos: gotcha
3:58:35 PM Krhainos: it should work
3:58:40 PM Eclipse: My 30 currently uses one of these: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MB571LL/A/mini-displayport-to-dual-link-dvi-adapter
3:58:51 PM Krhainos: it’‘ll expose the USB ports and the DP function
3:59:03 PM Eclipse: i need to test it and see if the usb is just for power
3:59:15 PM Krhainos: it probably is
3:59:19 PM Eclipse: cause I can plug the usb somewhere else
3:59:30 PM Krhainos: since DP to DVI would require power
3:59:42 PM Krhainos: its also equally possible you plug the USB plug into a iphone charger or something
4:00:03 PM Krhainos: because the cinema display doesn’t have a usb hub does it?
4:00:10 PM Eclipse: it does
4:00:13 PM Krhainos: oh what
4:00:22 PM Krhainos: wonder what voodoo they’re doing across that cable to carry USB then
4:01:03 PM Krhainos: oh wait there’s a usb port from the display too
4:01:05 PM Eclipse: the adapter actually has a usb port on it, which you can plug the display’s usb cable into
4:01:08 PM Krhainos: never mind. not so mysterious now lol
4:01:20 PM Eclipse: so i assume you dont have to use it
4:01:42 PM Eclipse: though I probably would…so as to get usb ports on the machine
4:03:45 PM Eclipse: that one I linked for the macbook should work though, one of the comments was about the 30” and that it worked
4:03:46 PM Krhainos: the adapter itself needs power
4:03:51 PM Krhainos: so you need to get power into the adapter somehow
4:04:12 PM Krhainos: be it’s just convinient that it gets it from the host machine since thats what also feeds data into the usb ports on the display
4:04:17 PM Eclipse: the single link dvi didn’t need the usb part of the adapter
4:04:50 PM Krhainos: yeah, i think that might be because it gets enough power from the DP port
4:05:10 PM Krhainos: DP doesn’t output a lot of power, dual-link might be more power hungry
4:08:31 PM Krhainos: it might be like back in the day of some of those external usb hard drives that needed two usb ports
4:08:51 PM Eclipse: it is some old shit now
4:09:08 PM Eclipse: only 1680x1050 on the new screen, that is disappointing
4:09:25 PM Eclipse: retina, of course but still
4:09:26 PM Krhainos: the gtx1070 i bought a couple months back has one dvi port and the rest are DP ports
4:09:32 PM Krhainos: had to buy a bunch of adapters
4:10:38 PM Eclipse: ugh the low end only has 2 usbc and the headphone port…lets put them on the same side maybe…..of course not fuck off
4:10:47 PM Krhainos: hahaha
4:10:57 PM Krhainos: usb audio it?
4:11:04 PM Eclipse: more shit to buy
4:49:43 PM Eclipse: i dont know, this release kind of pisses me off
4:50:33 PM Eclipse: $1500 without the touchbar for only 8gb ram/256gb ssd?
4:50:46 PM Eclipse: my 2012 has 8gb of ram
4:50:54 PM Eclipse: and 256
4:51:17 PM Eclipse: less screen res, hard to adapt to my setup
4:52:08 PM Eclipse: maybe I’‘ll just get a new battery for my laptop and get some stuff for alison instead
5:06:02 PM Krhainos: hmm
5:06:09 PM Krhainos: no desktops is a bummer too i guess
5:06:14 PM Krhainos: i was going to say “why not a mac mini”
5:06:21 PM Krhainos: but when was the last mac mini—like 4 years ago?
5:07:36 PM Eclipse: Oct 2014 it looks like
5:09:59 PM Eclipse: I can probably get a decent iMac for less than 500 on craigslist and a new battery will be about 125 and be good with that
5:17:06 PM Krhainos: the new aluminum-glass ones
5:17:06 PM Krhainos: ?
5:17:45 PM Eclipse: looks like the core 2 duo ones are about 500 if they top of the line back in the day
5:17:49 PM Eclipse: i was hoping for i5
5:21:44 PM Krhainos: wondering why no more MagSafe though
5:21:47 PM Krhainos: people loved MagSafe
5:22:11 PM Krhainos: Apple has no problem making their own ports (Lightning)
5:22:16 PM Eclipse: the current fantheory is that now the laptops are too light for magsafe
5:22:16 PM Krhainos: maybe their patent was going to run out
5:22:33 PM Krhainos: hmm
5:22:44 PM Krhainos: weaker magnets
5:22:53 PM Eclipse: then it just falls out
5:23:37 PM Krhainos: dont the MacBook Airs have them?
5:23:41 PM Krhainos: thsoe are pretty light
5:23:51 PM Krhainos: 2.38lb sez wikipedia
5:25:16 PM Eclipse: i don’t know, the airs had special magsafes. probably lawsuits over fires or something
5:25:25 PM Krhainos: fires
5:25:27 PM Krhainos: pffft
5:25:32 PM Krhainos: samsung made fires normal
5:25:41 PM Krhainos: you should expect fires from consumer electronics
5:26:08 PM Eclipse
: i don’t think the market went for that