Final Thoughts for March - Apple M1

I've been looking at the new like of Apple equipment, now I'm not an Apple guy... I only recently acquiesced to buying a second hand Mac Mini (Core i5, very old) not really to play with the old version of Mac OS it could run, but to use it as a Linux box.... Of course I took a look at the Mac OS and the hardware.

It is very neat tidy design, but awfully bespoke, terribly difficult to repair, but not impossible, I actually was able to fit new SSD's, upgrade the memory and fix a failed fan.

That's the bare minimum I'd ask of a piece of kit, to be able to change the storage, upgrade the RAM... fix a fan... Hard drives, be they mechanical or solid state fail over time, they literally wear out.

Hearing that some Apple models have their only storage literally soldered onto the main board was a real turn off, how can such a thing be upgraded or repaired?  Well it can't.

And this ability to repair something is pretty key to me, and I presume a lot of other people.

Soldered on, fixed in position, storage is just a no-go... And as I understand it this is how the new M1 Mac's all work, they have a fixed amount of storage, no additional storage interfaces (SATA etc) sure you could use an external USB drive, but that's... that's not going to stop the main boot drive taking a battering.

Worse still I've anecdotally heard about the massive swap usage on the M1 Mac's, which prematurely ages the storage.

It is the perfect storm to leave a lot of electronics in ruins and the waste of resources and environmental impact of all this just has be aghast.

People : Again Who is Robert Yates?

I asked before who Robert Yates was, because I don't know, I still don't know... He's linking to my blog in some way, but I don't know who he is... And now, rather puzzlingly the post I made asking who he was, it keeps coming up as one of my top 10 viewed daily posts... 100+ people a day want to know like me, who Robert Yates is?

Someone suggested to me that this was a little like the character Robert Paulson in Fight Club... He had no name until named...

Story Time - Pulling My Nutz Out the Fire (Work Place Meetings)

Last week in Story Time I talked about my best-worst day, related to that is my most embarassing moment at work... It happened at that actual company I got caned by....

And this story came to me after I'd read this post from DadHacker... 

The company was split into two custom made buildings, the down stairs of building 1 was admin and offices, most of the directors sat there with plush offices, there was also a single large meeting room - which was always the hottest room in the company, come rain, wind, shine or snow you could pop in there in and get warm.

This was important between the two buildings as if you were based in the more technology orientated building 2, then you had to cross the open car park frequently to meetings & presentations, and in the hills of Derbyshire this was COLD!

So a warm, communal and often empty warm room got you back up to speed, you could organise yourself and your notes and then pop into the meeting you had on hand.

But this warm, embrace, was also a deadly enemy.  I was once called over to a very boring meeting, three technology guys, the totally real director and then me on just a couple of hours sleep...

They presented their idea, the tech guys dissected it for the hardware, and I was to provide the software, but it was way beyond any of the machines they had in the building, I straight off asked for a few reference books and a nice graphics card... Spending money!...

And Spending money on something other than camel cigarettes was something this guy didn't like, so he shelved me and they four went off on their own conversation.

Now I don't know how long it took, or what noises I made, but I was startled awake a indeterminate amount of time later by the lit cigarette end of this guy waving up and down in my wave... He was holding my shoulders and looking very angry.

Panick, panick... What to say... "Oh help" I wimpered "my bloooo" I stumbled on purposed "blood sugar low"...

SAVED IT!

The anger melted from his face and ordered one of the techies out to find something to eat, they came up with a banana from the receptionist - I hate banana's, but I unzipped that one and ate half chewing slowly and then holding a piece under my tongue as if recovering...

With the secretary at the door looking concerned a flow of cool air came in from the glass fronted reception area, and it revived me more.... I could almost convince myself that I had had a hypo... Despite not being diabetic.

They clocked me later, as another time I munched down a four pack of mars bars for lunch, but on that day... I pulled my nutz out the fire.

Busy Week

I'm afraid I have a very busy week on my hands, both with work project and home projects, so no CPU project update his week.  However, I have just spent an inordinate amount of time trying to think around a problem which I've come to the conclusion is in the Operating System below my software.

And I set about the interwebs to satisfy my self proclaimed hunch... I'm yet to get my confirmation, but I did run across this two year old post which pretty much sums up working on any damn project in Windows.

http://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0007.html

The next CPU Update may be skipping to the Z80 CPU, so bear with me... Is that the right spelling of bear?... Bare... Bear... Whatever... Stick around!

500

This is my five hundredth post, I never expected to post this many entries, but here I am.  Some say  you throw enough shit and some will stick, well this is the definition.

My most popular posts are by far the ones concerning code, especially the ones writing my own virtual CPU, something I do promise to revisit as soon as I get some time.

And anything I mark "review" gets visits.  But yeah, 500 posts... No idea I'd be here.

There have been over 55,000 views too, from around 41,000 unique sources, so there's at least a few people who come more than the once, thanks a bunch, lets see where Christmas and the New Year take us.

Comments or Spam

I have a huge apology to make to some of you folks out there - I've just been looking at the settings for this site and I've noticed there are two areas for comments... "Published" and "Spam", you may have spotted that I remove ones which appears to be adverts from time to time, but I'd never been in the Spam one.

I've just been in there... There were like 200 comments from all over the world, mainly people saying thanks for some random piece of information I've spewed out over the years, a couple of college kids asking for permission to use code snippets I've thrown up, and citing references to my site back to their work.

And even just people who  have read though my rants and had a laugh and so have said so.

But Google has been sweeping these folks off as Spam, you are not spam folks, I've restored ALL the comments in there - rather than reading them all - so anything dodgy, defamatory, nice or horrid has been restored to this site.

If I spot adverts I'll re-remove them, but with the threat of missing comments from folks, I've restored the lot to working order - some dated back to 2011 - some 2012 and some very recent.

So Sorry folks, it was automatic rejection of your posts, not me myself doing it.

Bjarne Linked to Here...

I'm stunned, and a little honoured, that my tiny - and not very good - review of the latest C++ from Bjarne Stroustrup actually caught his attention and he linked my review on his site... I'm truly shattered I got noticed.... I wish I'd done a proper review now.

I have continued to read the book, its such a delight to behold too.  My preferred approach is to go down the references at the end, pick one of two items - sometimes at random - and then look them up.

A good one last night, which had me all excited was "to<int>", I spotted this nugget and was excited to potentially see a way to tidy my recurring use of boost::lexical_cast<int> (et al), reducing the function to something like "std::to<int>(std::string)" I was rushing page after page to get forward into the book and find the reference... Doh.

Its not a new entry in std::algorithms or anything, it was a function Dr Stroustrup had written further into the book.

So, I'm going to keep using "boost::lexical_cast" for the foreseeable future.

Yo Dr Stroustup, if you come past my blog again - I'm honoured you visited, thank you.

The rise of the frivolous Communication

In today's society with the proliferation of the mobile phone the purpose and limits of communications is being blurred.

There was a time when to communicate a message to someone quickly one had to send a telegram, or even a runner, and this was expensive stuff.  Words and meaning were eked out onto the missive and transmitted.

The postal service also played a part in the blossoming of beautiful and well thought out letters between people.  And due to the long turn around time the communicated messages were sweet and thoughtful, full of information and the spice of life.

With the birth of e-mail came a way to transmit near instantly such missives, but it slowly devolved and l33t speak became the de facto standard, along trotted SMS and the problem magnified terribly... "R U OK", the bane of any SMS, but it still has meaning.

However, with the rise of the smart phone, the multi-part SMS and contracts allowing for near unlimited, costless, communication the art of communicating is dying.  And I have an example for the day...

I have a mobile, its a very old, battered, Nokia.  I keep it because a) I hate smart phones b) I used to be the text king, sending near letter long texts and incurring HUGE phone bills and c) I only want to be disturbed at work if its important.

My importance thresholds are simple:

1. Is someone stuck/broke down?

2. Is someone Ill?

3. Is someone dead?

4. Has someone been born?

If it does not fall into these categories the rule is wait until out of office hours, or just mention it in passing...

And I established and popularised these levels with all my friends and family... They all pretty much apply them when contacting me at work.  Except for my Mother.

Now, I should explain, Mothers do get some special dispensation to contact you, but mine is taking the piss now... I'm getting messages about Eggs... and bread.... messages about the weather... and all sorts of trivial frivolous shit... Which to be frank shouldn't be a text or a mobile message... They don't warrant being delivered to me whilst I'm on the bog, let alone whilst I'm at work... They're in fact messages which would struggle to pass as small talk when face to face.

They are in short of such low magnitude of interest, I've just asked her to stop texting me at work... "Stop texting me, I'm at work".

That was the whole text reply I sent... It's short, and to the massed whom work (my parents being retired) it would make sense... But not to my Mother, oh no, she lives in this little world where everything she is doing is very very important... "We're going shopping"... "I must blog about this" sort of shit... And its pointless... Its everyday crap... I dread to think what she'd put on twitter if she ever worked it out.

But, after asking "Stop texting me, I'm at work"... you know what I get?....

"Reel your neck in, I text you because its important"....

Erm... First of all, its not important... second of all... I've asked you to stop texting and you just text'd back...

My reply was the rather generous "Get fucked, I'm at work".... emphasising my position... Did the hint get through?... Nope... Nope, I just got a seven page text... And cus she's angry, its all garbled... here's the exact text verbatim:

"Thats nr eally nice repl 2ur mum...ithink note. it'd far b appalling 2 any1 n uncalled for. but 2me is a lve 2 far"... and it goes on and on...

You can make out what's being said, but its so shite as to beggars belief... if she realised the point, that time needs to be taken, this is not urgent, eggs is not worthy of interrupting me at work, when we were kids (without mobiles) if she'd have called my Dad at work and said "pick up eggs" he'd have gone nuts, just as I'm not happy I'm being asked to sort out eggs for her... But this is all forgotten, as far as she cares the world goes into a little box and waits for her when she's not looking.

And this communication is rubbish... I'm tired of texting her, tired of texting anything but the bare essentials to people, I write letters or e-mails and I check them, and re-read them before sending them.  My previous post was decrying my hate of twitter, I blog here to pretty much get things off my chest, and that works for me... but if I had a pen pal I'd write them a nice letter...

I may call my mother out on this, I might send her a letter (large print) and make it clear that these stupid text's she sends need to be e-mails or letters, or waited on until she see's me and can talk to me... They are not worthy of the interruption they cause.

Twenty Seven

I'm beginning to believe there's something special about the number twenty seven... I've just been into the listing of my blog posts, and on the first page of listed posts, several (that is more than one, less than all) of them have exactly twenty seven views... This would be unremarkable if I had 27 followers, or had 27 friends... But I don't... And I don't...

The posts are seemingly unrelated too, the internet in its infinite wisdom has seemingly guided 27 random people to several random posts on this back end of the world blog of mine... Go figure.

Chronicles of IT Life

Sometimes, my eyes hurt with the way journalists present information, this one which they appear to present as fact:

Comes from a blogger at the site shown, I really didn't know that having a blog, which is hosted with its own unique URL qualified you as a valid source for quotations... Maybe I need to start stating facts at random?  Maybe my friend needs to keep up his fantasy ornithological posts in the hope of getting into Encyclopaedia Britannica...

But what has me roaring with laughter at this reporting is, sorry Anna Leach you need to hear this, the line:

"The IT Crowd and other TV shows that chronicle of life in the tech industry"

Chronicle of life in the tech industry?... Really?... Are you insane?... They're TV shows, this is a comedy show, its not a fly on the wall documentary... A real chronicle of life in the TV industry would not make it to TV, it would be more boring than watching cress grow... Channel 5 are not about to throw 50 cameras into any of the IT departments, or programming areas, I work in and have their announcer make a dogs dinner of it:

(Queue Geordie Accent)
Eight Twenty Eight Aee Eme - No one is in yet...
Nine Fifty Two Aee Eme - The first programmer arrives, blurry eyed and turns on his computer - the Coffee machine is activated.
Four Twenty Nine Peee Eme - The programmer is now out of coke and has bitten each fingernail down to the nub whilst swearing about Cee Sharp Generics...

It would never make TV, it would never make anything interesting... Not even for Open University... This is why the Computer Programme got scrapped, talking about lines of Basic, or how the filing cabinet will disappear was... boring to 99% of the population.

Even entertaining aspects of technology shows get shuffled off to channel 5, or obscure satellite channels, every main stream IT or technology related programme has been cancelled from TV...

So... We're left with comedy, parody and jokes... And this moron blogger, come charity scrounger, reckons IT Crowd is a chronicle...

New Following Blogs

I think I need to find new blogs I'm following, because... Well I'm not following a single one of the ones listed down there, Darren changed his blog from the venerable "Common Sense Gamer" to the"Catholic Gamer".. Not long after I appeared on his great podcast... and I lost the taste for it... My friend at Wenton changed and has two other blogs, and of the others only Massively I've visited in the last month.

I need new blogs folks, so suggestions please.