4000 Monthly Viewers

Back in May I came to these pages to thank my Russian viewers and I mentioned I had passed the 1000 viewers a month mark...

Well, here we are on the first of July, with the numbers in for June... 4143 viewers.... What the?

Where are all you guys coming from?  The google stats don't tell me :)

Reaching Out & Being Pushed Back

I've spent the last few days talking to a few companies I'd love to partner with, to bring you more reviews.  Now, on the internet we already have a lot of gaming related or performance reviews, but I was inspired more about the idea of working environment, development cycles, or throughput for the worker.

I'm interested in things like cables, drives, storage, cases and also the main centre piece of your working time, the machine itself.

I tried to speak to Intel, and was given a pretty flat "you're too small"... Believe it or not, 400,000 of you have passed through these pages in the six years they've been running (thank you so much), and by far the most popular posts are my programming tutorials, followed closely by the reviews.

Combining the two, could only be a win-win situation!

I have today therefore, sent missives to AMD, Asus and nVidia.  I've also sent online messages to some smaller storage firms, like Xstra in the EU and Kingpin.

It is actually quite hard to find UK based reviews of items, often you can be watching coverage of some great ideas from US sources, only to find either the items are not available or they cost an absolute fortune compared to US prices.

What else am I up to this week?... Well, I had a long researched article in the fire, it was related to my uncovering of several cheaters on US based IT courses, at least the US students were the only ones silly enough to get caught by myself.  However, during my uncovering of this situation one of the colleges in question took extreme exception to my posting about their students activities, and they slapped me with a "cease & desist" order.

Their order only covers publishing any names in the US, but my problem is, I can't prove conclusively who the students in question were, so if only one person out of a class of 29 were cheating in the manner I uncovered, then by just posting the name of the course or college, I would be defaming the innocent twenty nine; not something I want to do at all.

So, for now that article, as interesting as it was is on hiatus, and I can only thank the other three colleges and lecturers whom got back to me, however briefly, for your time and frank disclosures.

WarThunder - Battle Log is Useless

So, another stealth change, brought in by Gaijin has been a separate tab on your results screen, to let you see your battle actions... Now, I assume this is used to determine how "Active" you have been.  A statistic I've long had issues with, as flying present 100% in the cockpit I've had very low % activity rates, especially in bombers where you're doing your job flying to a target but only get 3% activity ratings.

Anyway, have a look at my results...

Seven ground kills and an air kill assist... I was flying out an Italian 3 engined bomber to get it spaded... You know, a ground strike mission, and I have the most ground strike kills on my team, but I'm still only mid table... GG on that one... But then look at my battle log...

Reading that you'd think I've only killed four ground targets... Three target kills are missed, as is the air assist kill!... Totally rubbish, the first rule of data presentation is to present the correct data, and this is just wrong.

WarThunder : BF109 - Stealth Damage Model Change

I would swear that there has been a stealth change to the damage model of the BF109... And a change at the fundamental level, take a look at these three screenshots....

They are three different fly outs...

Do you notice the common element?... yes, a wing tip missing, the spar exposed - but still present?.... and the aircraft can still be flown and controlled, but you are counted as shot down!... In the lower screen shot I actually held that E4 straight and level for five minutes and nearly managed to hold it til the end of the game!

But, this damage seems to come out of nowhere, and always against low-calibre fire!  It's almost like Gaijin have decided "Take a low cal hit in that box, and your wing tip falls off"...

There's no pattern to it, no reason, I've has it from behind, from head-on, from oblique angles, even from passing bombers!... BOOM no wing tip... 

And it's such a sudden change in and stark alteration of the damage model...

WarThunder V1.37 - Impressed

Had my first flights in WarThunder 1.37 last night... I like the new progression system... Also I noted there's a large increase in the numberof crew skill points one can receive.

I flew every nation, and had wins for them all, plus a loss as Germans and a loss as Americans... So I flew out seven times.

I'm a little preturbed I already own the 109 F3 and F3 Trop...but have to research the new 109 F1's... lol

Man Lab - Plastering Progress

So, I set about actually plastering... The first small wall was great, and I'm 90% happy with it... But the second wall, what a struggle... The mix had started to cure in the bucket within 10 minutes... I think either I did something wrong, or I'm unaware of quite how quick this stuff sets, but I had the first wall on and roughly smooth in about 15 minutes turned around and boom struggle, the second wall took ages to get the main bulk on, always getting heavier and harder to work until in the end I was resorting to patching little bits with finger fulls of very watered down plaster... literally running it with my fingered into the gaps and then floating the trowel over the top.

The biggest problems for both walls is the join between them, I get the impression plastering from the corner was a mistake, especially as it's an in-ward bend.  As I was smoothing one side, the pressure would push the other out, so that's lesson one, do one wall at a time.  Also plastering up to the skim bead was smoothest, so I'm going to put skim beads all around the windows without a doubt.

The next thing was smoothing it, I'm pretty sure at one point I smoothed really well, but then the next it was difficult, I need to learn from somewhere the skimming polishing technique a bit better, because I was expecting my trowel to be wet and then carry small amounts of plaster with it... But it didn't and it dug in, so my motion was sometimes right, sometimes wrong.

Another mistake I made was vibration, there are two or three distinct points in the plaster where I was under reaching (so not stretching out to far, I was pulling my trowel down and left past my own body too far) and the edge vibrated, this left ripples in the plaster which remain there now.

Finally, I masking taped the skirting, but plastered over the top of the tap, I should have taped 3mm away form the wall on the skirting.

All in all though, its better than what was there, its flat, it'll take a colour, and I've had my first experience.

My next job is to put the skim bead up around the windows, take down the blinds and plaster the inside of the window sils, this way they can be done when I come to do the whole rest of the main wall...

The skim beading around the small window and its plastering I may even do tonight.

I've clearly got to get quicker getting the stuff out the bucket and onto the wall, and I need to learn more about mixing it, because I mixed it as I'd seen in videos, so it was a thick cream which held a shape or peak... but it went off so quickly.

Either way, this is the first step to placing my desk and setting back up my gear, so I have to stuck with it.  I have to remember all the Full Real Battles in WarThunder I'll get once I'm done.

Manlab Progress - Sunday

Today was a case of just mixing 50/50 PVA and liberally applying it to all the holes in the wall...

The place looks like a small arms fight went off, you really start to appreciate how messy war is on your plaster walls when you come to remove a eight decades worth of rawl plugs and full their holes...

There's a good machine gun layer above the window where various curtain rails have been stuck up, cracking the plaster in the process... Then they even had those annoying hooks to hold the curtains back... There's of course the smaller window too, and it's got the top left corner totally missing, so I've built it back up in Bonding.

No big problems really, though my bonding mix was a little lumpy, so I have rough patches... But, I'm going to smooth the walls down with wet & dry anyway, so that'll get sorted.  I'll also get a chance to smooth the rebuilding by the second window too.

I suppose one thing which got me was that I had cleaned most all the holes out, even use the vacuum cleaner to remove the dust the moment the wet PVA hit the old plaster it oozed horrible mixes of dust and PVA, it looked for all the world like these many holes were bleeding ready brek.

Over the rest of the week I hope this bonding goes completely off, and I can clean up any drops on the skirting, mask the skirting, put up the skim bead and tape the inner corner... Then I might even try my hand at the skim coating plaster on the two minor walls...

Oh, and I'm going to have a nicer door fitted, going to get the father-in-law to hang it, maybe three for all three upstairs rooms, cus these doors are crap with a side order of WANK.

Man lab Progress - Saturday

I'm writing this post Saturday - well the wee hours of Sunday actually - just as a quick missive about the man lab, today I've spent like 3 hours stripping wall paper - and about the same time cleaning up - which thanks to a steamer machine was not as painful as previous plaster stripping endeavours were.  However, said wallpaper was covered in cheap emulsion paint... And the paper itself had a sort of plastic sheen... So the unless you scratched the paint and top surface off the paper was impervious...

But the heat from the steam would melt the paint, so there was this thick slick of pink shitty paint heading down the wall.

The walls which had the damp on them from the ingress of water however, when I steamed over them, they sort of bled black... Mould I assume, the plaster looked okay, just a little darker than other areas.. but the steam really bought out the spore I think.

The room smells a little funky right now, second hand... But I'm excited to prepare and try my hand at plastering... I may even get to try tomorrow on the two smaller walls...

Also, the walls were just utterly full of old rawl plugs... Like every other foot a plug... I'm down to 1920's plaster on lath backing, clean and paper free... removed three layers of paper, and this emulsion.

So, I have one large wall to fill and put the skim bead up on the corner, then there's two walls at 90 degree's to one another, which are the left and back of the alcove where the desk will be built in.  Then the main front wall, which has two window openings... Now that front wall needs so much bonding and smoothing, there are just dozens of bullet like wounds in the plaster going into the wooden window lintel.

The walls have had to be let to dry out and I've pulled all these plugs out, and I've cleaned up... So all the shreds of paper are out, the window sills are clean and the skirting board clean...

Tomorrow, which is today, which was Sunday... It'll be time to mix up bonding and patch all these walls, the main bonding area is going to be in the corner at the elbow 90degrees between the two small walls in the alcove, because that needs fixing after years of neglect.

Hopefully though, with the bonding on I can put the skim tape up in the corners, and then go get a second skim bead to cut to size and fit around the windows.

The only thing I'm thinking about now is how dry the walls are, they clearly sucked all the moisture out of the paper when it was hung, so I'm thinking PVA it.... And then PVA it again just before the plaster skim coat...?

On, and I'm NOT taking the radiator off, they seem to use a custom/rare tapping connector, and since changing the heating is not a priority, its staying as it is... But I have taken the inside curtain rail down, so both front windows are down to just cheap, see-through roller blinds.  I may not get much lie in...

Finally, if I do do the two smaller walls in plaster, I'm going to look at fixing/buying a floating corner shelf to hold the printer up there out of the way, that could get fitted when the plaster is set... Alternatively, it'll have to wait for the large front wall.

The wife wants me to delay plastering until xmas, but I'm not up for a delay, to be honest I think I got a LOT done today, tomorrow is the final prep, and then I'll maybe try to do one wall, and then next weekend do the rest.

In other news, I may at sometime over the next week get some very good news... Or some very bad news... work related... if its bad, expect me to vent, if its good I may not be able to tell anyone much, so I'll just code word it... lets agree the code word is... "Juggling"... so if I'm "Juggling things in the office"... You'll know its good, and I can tell you the good news probably after Valentines 2014... Yes it is that secret.

WarThunder - Ranks to Tiers in Next Patch

Out with the ranks and in with the tiers... This seems to me to be going under the radar, or maybe its the elephant in the room....

But Gaijin are changing the progression system in WarThunder, from being Ranks, where by I'm like Rank 12 over all, but Rank 9 in the British... Rank 5 in the Americans... etc.... and the Rank in the individual airforces gives me access to certain planes...

Now the system will be to research fully the previous plane and then go up a plane, and the plans are divided by tier, so there maybe two planes to get through at tier 1 to get into tier 2.

Of course I've seen how quickly you can outstrip your crew skills to fly too high a rank aircraft and get your ass handed to you....

But, this new system is not being mentioned anywhere...

We can see it already in the test server.. and others have covered that better then I...

But even on the live server we can see the start of this system in the unlocks of equipment for each plane, you can see on the left as you unlock the rows, each row is a tier of gear.... Well now each tech tree row will be split by tier.

Now the top current rank is 20.  But it appears the top tier is V... that's a lot of compression put onto the planes...

However, over all I'm going to accept this with welcome, because I think I'm one of those players who has out expanded crew skill and equipment unlocks with my rank... making my game play poor.

This new system will make me rethink, and revisit, things.

PS3 Firmware Update

Right one of the things I have to do with the PS3 rebuild is check them out with a known working hard drive.

So, with a 2.5" SATA hard drive ready - clean - here's the steps I'm keeping to...

1. Format HDD as FAT32.

2. Create a folder called "PS3" on it.

3. Create a sub folder called "PS3/UPDATE".

4. Download the latest firmware from www.playstation.co.uk.

5. Place this extracted firmware into the "PS3/UPDATE" folder we've got.

6. Insert the HDD into an external USB caddy.

7. Plug this into PS3 and power through...

8. Place the HDD from the caddy into the PS3 itself.

And it anything goes wrong I gotta go back into the Recovery Menu...

On the reassembly front I'm still waiting for the Artic Silver paste to turn up.

Upgrading to 5ghz

I've been using my N-class router in single band mode quite happily for months, however, the street has taken a change of residents there are four new younger couples, and along with them have come more and more wireless networks - all on the 2.4ghz band.

Now, I had been being a bit sneaky and watching the bands being used, and switching to the quiet channels.  However, there's a whole flood now, on channels covering the whole spectrum.

The result has been a whole series of slow-downs, drop outs, and poor network performance on my systems, except for my laptop - which was using the higher 5ghz band on the router.

So, I've stuck a new 5Ghz card into the PC.... Lets see how it goes.

World of Tanks - Grinding to the T34

I've reinstalled the machine with Windows 7, and sure enough all the networking problems I was having have gone away, but I'm pleasantly surprised with how spritley the machine now is.

Vista must have been really really in efficient, for example, running World of Tanks, I would run her only in medium to low settings to get 20 fps...

With no changes of hardware, just an update to Windows 7, and I'm now in 1680x1440 resolution, high settings for everything and I get 50-55fps.

Its so pretty....

That was the main victory of the evening, which I spent enjoying with lots of rounds of World of Tanks.

My first discovery was something I had spotted before, but I think will take the next patch to explain, you see you now get missions in the game.  Or at least the rewards for the mission, but you don't have any way of knowing what the missions you have are.  They maybe listed somewhere, but no-where I've spotted in game.

In patch 8.8 however, which is coming soon, WarGaming are adding a way to spot what the missions are.

The night however, as enjoyable as it was, did result in a spectacular number of Defeats for me, despite my best efforts.

Sometimes I was simply out played, sometimes I was clearly stuck into odd matches, and I was spending a lot of games in my T-80 Light tank - an odd machine, grinding the XP for my T34.

But my efforts were not helped with derps like this

Or grease balls like this, whom I spotted on numerous occasions sat in strange locations usually at the back of the pack waiting to pick off enemy targets which the rest of the team - whom are lower tier - have softened up for them... Basically reaper creepers, that's the term I'm going to invent for them.

I did get my T34 before ceasing playing for the evening, and I even unlocked the high-pen gun, but I'm not happy with the vehicle, its match making is pretty terrible.

And I'm also stuck with the news that my favourite tank - with my most trained crew - the VK30.01H is about to be turned from a tier 6 medium into a tier 5 heavy?  Go figure, Jingles has made comment about this, but... Argh, I just want to smack WarGaming.

It might be time for a break and return to war thunder, in which I have also been playing recently, and made a level with my Japanese aircraft.

Also still enjoying Elite Frontier...