Saturday, 2 November 2024

So, bought another keyboard, not sure if it was entirely worth it.

So I'm not a huge keyboard snob, but I do have preferences and I don't like using really cheap spongy keyboards that feel like mush when typing. 

Gengerally I've been sticking with mechanical keyboards using either Cherry Blue or Brown keys, but I haven't spent more than 100$ on a keyboard until this week. This week I picked up a Logitech MX Mechanical Mini for almost 200$.

Now a real keyboard snob is going to look at that and start sneering about it, but I didn't actually shell out 200$ for the thing - it was bought using reward points from a laptop purchase that I did recently so it cost me about 15$ in shipping costs. And that's probably a good thing given that I'm not as enamoured of it as I would have thought given the price tag for the thing.

For comparison I have been using a Keychron K6 for a while now, This is something that I picked up for a good price and it's been a great keyboard for personal work on my desktop machine. The only thing that I find that I'm missing is dedicated function keys across the top. The one that I've just picked up has the function keys across the top, and the key feel isn't bad but it's not the same as what I've been used to on the other one. 

Given that the newer keyboard has low profile keys that's probably where most of the difference is coming from. The key profile is fine, but it feels like things are bottoming out quicker more like a laptop. 

The funny thing is that a lot of this comes down to keyboards being very personal devices, what I like isn't always going to be the same as what someone else likes. Although if I could get this type of typing response on a laptop I would be very happy with that. To bad that all the laptop manufacturers are going to thinner and thinner devices leaving no space for things liker a mechanical key switch in the device. 

Either way, it's probably a good thing that this one didn't wind up costing me as much as it did. For 200$ I would probably be taking this thing back, but for the cost of shipping it's definitely worth keeping around. 

Thursday, 31 October 2024

New Intel Processors, more of the same (kind of).

Now that some of the reviews have hit on the Core Ultra Series 2 processors it's interesting to see how a lot of the reviews are panning them.


Personally I like the fact that they are getting the power draw down on these things, for the past couple of years it's just seemed like both AMD and Intel just kept pushing the power limits higher and higher to clock more performance. At some point it has to stop - personally I'm not wanting a computer that's pulling 1500w on the CPU by itself. 

The thing that gets me though is that there's nothing that's come out since I built my last machine that was a "must have" upgrade and that was a Ryzen 3700x when I put it together. I did wind up tossing a 5800x in when the price tanked on those at one point but it was more a convenience thing since it freed up the 3700x to go into another machine. Even my recent purchase of the Macbook Pro wasn't driven by a need to get something faster - that was a need for something portable. 

And while the ARM based Apple Silicone and Qualcomm chips are pretty dammed cool it's going to take time to find out if they will disrupt things enough to really make a difference in how things are going. Apple's transition is pretty darn smooth, but the Windows side of things is a different situation entirely. 

I would really love to see more disruptive stuff in the CPU space but these days it's not about the hardware, it's about what you can do with the software that's going to govern who's stuff is successful in the market. 

Back in the day spreadsheet applications where the killer apps, these days, there's so many out there and technology is so integrated into our lives that there is no single killer app kicking around. So there's a potential that we could start seeing specific types of computers used for different tasks. High efficiency lower powered devices for using for day to day office type work, higher powered x86 systems to run games on, or something else for other specific scientific workflows? 

Either way I hope there's something new on the horizon. Faster is cool, but it would be nice if there was something compelling to upgrade to that wasn't some "faster" version of something that we already have. 

Friday, 11 October 2024

Macbook Pro for personal use, what about the office.

Well, I've been posting about the Macbook here for a while, it's not really the tool for me to get work done on. It's not that I can't get the work done on a macOS system, it's that I have to use a lot of Windows specific tools and running through hoops to make that work just slow me down and complicate things. For work I prefer to just keep things simple. 

So when my previous work laptop started acting up I wound up sourcing a replacement device. First thing to note we are generally a Lenovo shop, at least for laptops. 

As far as what I needed;
  • Reasonably quick device for general office use and Windows admin tasks.
  • Ability to run VM's for testing. 
  • Solid battery life. 
  • Lightweight and portable. 
Since I use the device docked most of the time the screen has to be "good enough" and since I don't use the thing for gaming I'm not looking for anything with a high refresh rate display or dedicated graphics since most of my work is just admin work and zoom meetings. 

Many of my coworkers are running current versions of the X1 Carbon, and while that device would have worked fine it's limited to the U series of processors, and they are a bit larger than I would have prefered. The 14 inch thinkpads are a little smaller footprint but not quite as thin, but still don't have a H series CPU. However, for whatever reason, Lenovo sells a x13 Gen 5 where you have a option of a Core 7 155H processor as opposed to the 155U or 165U. 


While the 155H has a lower base clock than the 155U, it's also got more performance cores and better integrated graphics compared to the U series chips. Given that I'm running VM's on the thing those extra performance cores won't go unused. The battery life won't be as good I'm assuming - but I generally don't run the VM's when I'm not docked, and I can't imagine that the battery life will be that horrid comparing the two. 

As far as the AMD options. I've had two AMD based devices from Lenovo and both have had problems. For the most part it's all small stuff, but there's enough issues that the friction that they put into my workflow was just wearing on me. 

The other big thing that I like about the Lenovo devices is that I can get them with a built-in cellular modem. 

Yes, you can hotspot off a phone, and if you have a macOS system with a iPhone that process is very good. However with the built in modem you just pull the laptop out and you are online, and for work that let's me run the device without having to worry about burning through two device batteries at the same time if I'm working remotely. 

For personal use it's not something that i'm that concerned about, but for work, hell yes. Add that thing in there. 

After a week with the new work laptop the biggest takeaway from it is that it just seems to blend into the background and get out of the way while I'm working. The keyboard works, and is well suited to long typing sessions. The screen is good enough that it gets the job done. It's not as nice as what's on the Macbook, but it's not offensive by any means. And it's light enough that it doesn't feel like anything has been added to my backpack when I'm carrying it around.

Again, check back in three months and we will see where I am with it, but unless it's going to do a complete 180 and become a basket case it's probably a keeper and will just get used until eventually something does fail (hopefully out of warranty).

Saturday, 5 October 2024

Finally something good about video games.

I tend to bitch a lot about the state of gaming right now. 

It all boils down to a lot of games just not being worth shelling out 80$ for something that's a rehash of some other older concept or a game that just is not really enjoyable.

Even things like the freebie gatcha games are only interesting for a short period of time, they then either become boring grinds or holes that you sink buckets of money into just to try to progress your game further. 

However today I got my hands on something that. was actually fun to play. It got it's hooks into me and I sat and played at it for several hours over the course of the day and had a lot of fun just messing around. I died a pile of times and it really didn't bother me because the game is fun and has a awesome soundtrack (I'm almost wondering if I can extract it or something). 

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to Squirrel with a Gun.


You are a Squirrel.

You have a gun.

That's the entire real premise of the game. The graphics are simple, controls aren't too hard, and it's one of the most fun things that I've picked up in a long time. 

It's 25$ Canadian. 

I've already gotten enough play time out of the game to justify what I've spent, and I'm nowhere near bored of the thing yet. 

I wonder if they have any plans for making a co-op version? 

Monday, 23 September 2024

Thoughts on macOS & Windows

Ok, so now that it's out Sonoma is installed and for the most part, it's much the same as what was in place before. The one new thing that I'm really playing around with is the iPhone mirroring. 

Having the ability to just hit the iPhone and grab 2fa tokens, or poke a App on the device that I don't have sitting around on the computer is neat. I'm, not sure that it's a game changer but it's something that you just don't get on a Windows device at this point. 

The integration that Apple has on it's ecosystem is something that's really easy to overlook if you are looking at any one device. There are computers that can outperform, there are phones that have more unique features or better performance, there are better headphones, but as far as I know there are no combinations our there where I can be listening to audio from my computer and have the wireless headphones flip back over to the phone when a call comes in. 

And I'm sure there may be some, but not ones that I've come across that just freaking work right out of the gate like Apple's stuff does. 

At the end of the day I would love to see Microsoft get to a point where it's got the same level of integration that Apple has, but at that point I don't see how you could do that given the number of different companies making machines that run Windows.


Saturday, 21 September 2024

Macbook Pro - M3Pro - What's it like now that the new toy feel has worn off.

 Whenever you purchase a new toy there's always a period where it feels like the greatest thing that you have ever bought. After a while, once the newness of whatever it is has worn off, that's when it's interesting to hear what people think of the purchase. 


For the Macbook Pro that I picked up the newness has kind of worn off, and it's kind of time to update my thoughts on the device.

For about 80% of what I'm using it for it's overkill.

There were a lot of things that I used to justify the purchase, and there's not a lot of point in going into them again, but at this point the device still feels like it's a good purchase. While it's overkill right now as new versions of macOS show up and things change over time having the extra headroom will be good to keep the device from becoming obsolete overnight. The screen kind of hits the sweet spot for me, sitting between the 15 and 13 inch options on the MacBook Air's and having one that runs at 120hz is definitely something that I'm enjoying.

It's almost got me thinking about getting a higher refresh rate display for my desktop machine. 

Either way, still satisfied, and hopefully this will last a good long time before I have to worry about replacing anything. 

Saturday, 14 September 2024

Is it just me, or is the gaming industry a bit of a hot mess right now.

So over the last couple of years there have been a number of large and not so large studios that have wound up folding or having large budget games completely bomb, and honestly I'm almost surprised that it's taken this long to happen.


The most recent example of this is Concord, a game developed by a studio owned by Sony that was released and the pulled from market after about two weeks after it's release. 

There's lots of chatter about why this failed, but my personal thought is that the game didn't hit well because there are already many other games just like it floating around that are free to play. Overwatch, Valorant, Apex Legends, Fortnite, all have modes that sound like the same thing that Concord was offering. Without some interesting hook or gameplay mechanic that would make the game unique I'm not shocked to hear that it flopped.

Looking at a bunch of games that were huge in their day many of the sequels are just re-hashes of the same game over and over again. 

If you look at what's been going on this year it's painting a interesting photo;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%932024_video_game_industry_layoffs

It's not just one game being canceled this year, that link has a list of multiple game studios that have been closed, and paints a rough picture of the layoffs that have happened this year. And honestly my thought is there are just too many games that are being positioned as AAA games that are rehashes of the same dammed thing over and over again and I think that people are starting to notice and are getting less and less interested. 

I've been around long enough to remember the video game crash in the early 80's that happened. And I'm feeling that we are looking at something similar. I don't think that we will see the industry completely collapse and burn, but I would not be shocked to see more larger studios collapsing and taking smaller ones with it as they go. And honestly while I can sympathize with the folks caught in this I also think that might not be a bad thing. My hope would be that the process would carve room for some new developers to come up with something that's not a rehash of existing games and stories. 

Sunday, 8 September 2024

And here we go...

Ok, if you haven't been keeping up on what's going on with VMWare, you should probably look into that and then read the link below;

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/att-sues-broadcom-for-refusing-to-renew-perpetual-license-support/

It looks like somebody who's big enough to be able to afford the lawyers is taking objection to the new licensing terms that Broadcom is forcing on people. In a lot of cases companies and people just don't have the money to go to court on things like this, so it's going to be interesting to watch this play out. 

I'm thinking that there will b a settlement at some point, so likely a quiet boring outcome, but still interesting to see the shots fired.

Uni-taskers vs. Multitaskers - round 2

So, last round I was singing the praise of the Kindle, a purpose built book reader. Now I'm going to talk about the other side of the coin and another device that I have in my bag. 

Yep, a Leatherman Wave. 

While it's not the best single tool that I own it's one that I continually have on me and make use of more than a lot of the other tools that I have kicking around. And the entire reason for that I just because it's so dammed convenient. 

The tools on the Leatherman aren't the "best" version of a given tool that I own. I have better pliers, knives, screwdrivers, and scissors sitting around but I can't carry all of those in my backpack without having a lot of extra weight to carry around. Nevermind the looks that I would get if I pulled a four inch hunting knife out of my backpack to cut a rope or open a box at work. 





Thursday, 5 September 2024

VMWare, Proxmox, and other fun things (if you work in IT).

 So, a while back VMWare was purchased by Broadcom. 

If you work in IT you already know where this is going. If you don't there are a couple of things that you should know. 

VMWare makes a number of products, one that I have worked with quite a bit is called ESXi, it's effectively a platform that lets you run virtual machines so that you can run multiple things of of a single piece of hardware. It's a huge thing if you work in IT or like to pretend that you do. One of the big reasons that it was popular was because VMWare basically let you use ESXi for free and you would have to pay for some of the more advanced features.

While those advanced features were freaking cool you could still get a lot done with the free version of the platform, with a little more running around and manually poking at things. 

When Broadcom bought VMWare a lot of people started to worry about what Broadcom was planning since they have a bit of a reputation as to how they handle companies they purchase. Sure enough earlier this year they killed off the free version of ESXi and then started putting the screws to people who are using their software with price increases.

Strangely enough they have released VMWare Workstation and VMWare Fusion, the desktop versions of their hypervisor, as free for personal use. 

Regardless seeing the writing on the wall I was already looking into other options for running virtual machines and in the end Proxmox became the platform that I decided to put into production in places where I needed something. And when the time came to put other projects underway VMWare was basically ignored as a potential platform just because of the pricing and uncertainty regarding what was going to happen.

I'm very glad that the FOSS options managed to get caught up to VMWare - at least as far as I needed it to get for my workloads. 

Friday, 30 August 2024

Uni-taskers vs. Multitaskers

Generally speaking I like having technology that's flexible enough that it works really well no matter what I need to do. Generally a multitasking device is something that I keep around a lot longer than something that I purchase for a single purpose. 

However, there's a piece of hardware that I have had for years that only does a single thing, and dos it so very well that I have continued to replace them as I've worn them out.


Yep, an Amazon Kindle. 

I bought into these things back when the second generation of them came out with the embedded keyboard that I never actually used. I managed to use that for years, eventually having the device replaced multiple times as buttons failed and cases cracked. 

I think that I'm on my fifth or sixth one, and while that might not seem like a impressive statement I read a lot and the failures are all things that are just wear on the device. To put it simply I just wore the buttons out on the ones with physical switches, and the ones that are touch based I used them so much that the batteries eventually just gave up the ghost. 

I keep coming back to them for a couple of reasons;

First - battery life.  When I'm on a reading binge I will rip through a book a day in some cases. Granted we aren't talking larger novels but a good Reacher novel will last me a day if I really tear into it. My last camping trip had me read through the first three books of a six book series without really trying too hard. Having a device that can allow me to do that without having to constantly recharge in the middle of a given book is a requirement, and that's not something that you can do on a iPad or a Laptop.

Second - weight. With a Kindle I can walk around with a entire library in my bag, where with a paper book I'm stuck with whatever I can comfortably carry in the bag. That usually works out to one or two books at most, and even a single paperback weights more than my Kindle does.

Third - the screen. This is huge, and if you haven't looked at a e-ink screen you really should. A modern LCD is basically like looking into a light, and while it's fine if you are writing something or watching a movie it's does cause eyestrain, but the e-ink display doesn't put out any light, it's basically a piece of paper that can be programmed. Some of the new ones do have backlights but that can be turned completely off if you don't want it or aren't reading in the dark. 

On a iPad or other device I can only read for a few hours at a shot, however a e-ink display can be read for a entire day without getting any headaches or other eyestrain. 

The last thing that keeps me coming back is the price, the base device usually runs around 120$ CAD, and I generally get several years out of one before the batteries give up the ghost. The ones with the physical buttons tended to fail quicker, but the touchscreen ones take care of that quite nicely. As long as i'm getting a couple of years from the device it's well worth the 120$ to keep the weight in my bag down.

Thursday, 29 August 2024

Old Hardware

Last weekend I had a bit of a discussion with a younger family member who is very much into technology and all the bits a pieces that come with it - specifically he's into older "vintage" tech. However for him "vintage" is stuff that I worked on earlier in my career, or spent my childhood cutting my teeth on.

Anyhow he managed to get his hands on a 2000's era laptop computer - specifically a Centrino based device that would have been considered resonable before Intel kicked off the release of the dual and quad core CPU's that would then become the default for the next decade. The problem with this device - it wouldn't boot properly. Initially it looked like the device had a dead disk, but after digging into it a bit it looks like the problem may be that the power supply he's got to run the thing just doesn't have the juice needed to get the device up and running. 

He was disappointed because he was specifically looking forward to playing some older games on this thing. 

Now there are some really good vintage games that are definitely worth playing, some of these are things that I would consider classic masterpieces and there are others that have not aged as well. 

This is something that he's brought up before, at point point I know he was really wanting to get hands on a SNES and a copy of Earthbound to play on the "original" hardware. Now, given the cost of a "original" copy of Earthbound;
And the cost of a working "original" SENES I really have to question if playing the game on original hardware is worth it any more. 

The only thing that I can agree with is that you should probably be using a SNES controller - or a good reproduction like the ones that you get from 8bitdo and others. Even a cheap one would probably work since the original ones, while good, were not that much better built than the USB knockoffs that you can get these days from Amazon. Having something that feels the same in the hand is something that makes the experience of playing the game complete. 

And the thing is that Nintendo knows that people still play this game - it's on the SNES library on the Nintendo Switch as a game that you can play so there's no need to resort to piracy to play the game. Nintendo also convienently sells a set of SNES controllers for the Switch, and even though they aren't cheap they are still cheaper than a copy of Earthbound.

Between DosBOX, PCEM, RetroArch, and other tools that exist in the world there are really few, if any, games that you can't play on a modern computer. And, now that USB versions of most of the popular controllers in the world exist it becomes hard to suggest pursuing original hardware to play these games on. Emulation avoids all the hassles that the vintage hardware brings with it - problems with bad capacitors, problems with broken cables, and brittle plastic that breaks as soon as you look at it. 

As much as I have nostalgia for the now vintage hardware that I sued to work with I don't miss having to manually set jumpers and other configuration options to make a sound card work. 

After talking to the family member about if they should spend another 50-100$ on a laptop that should have been in a recycling bin a decade ago I suggested that if they are only looking for a way to play old games that virtualization should be the way that they approach the problem. Hopefully they will go through the process of learning that and pick some skills that can be used in other places aside from just playing games. 




Saturday, 24 August 2024

Telegram may be in some trouble...

Well, this is a interesting development. 


https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-816149


TLDR. The guy who founded Telegram, a secure messaging service, has been arrested in France for not cooperating with law enforcement. He's also being charged for terrorism, narcotic supply, fraud, and money laundering. 


Telegram is one of many messaging services that claim that they don't provide details to law enforcement regarding your conversations due to the way that they are encrypted, and the platform has little to no moderation on what you can discuss there. That's likely where most of the charges are coming from, but until more information comes to light it's going to be hard to know exactly what's going on here. 

This may however be related to some legislation that is being pushed in Europe that would implement governmental control over chat services like Telegram; 


https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/29/europol-sought-unlimited-data-access-in-online-child-sexual-abuse-regulation/


The logic here is that the government, specifically law enforcement, require this level of control over messaging services to allow them to combat CSAM and other criminal activities. I suppose having the entirety of all chat services laid open would make that process simpler but that's giving law enforcement a huge pile of data to go through and I have concerns. 

Obviously the first one is who's getting access to this data and how is that being policed to make sure that nobody is doing something they shouldn't be? Since you know law enforcement never does anything that might call their integrity into question. 





3d printing is a beautiful mess.

So a couple of years ago I was kind of lusting after a 3d printer.
2020 Creality Upgrade Ender-3 V2 FDM 3D Printer with Silent Motherboard  Meanwell Power Supply Carborundum Glass Platform and Resume Printing ...
The idea of having a device that would let me just crank out a physical object on demand was something hugely attractive for me. What I didn't understand right out of the gate was the amount of tweaking and configuring that is required to get a good quality print out of the thing.

At various points I've had to deal with issues from worn out nozzles on the extruder, problems with the print bed needing to be replaced, issues with the extruder not feeding properly, and problems with the filament getting too much moisture in it to be able to print properly. And while these are all things that I was able to figure out it is not a really simple plug it in and print type of situation.

And yes, I know about the newer stuff from Bambu labs that claims to be able to make things easier but I don't think they where even a option when I got the printer I'm using now, and even if they were they are a lot more money than what I wound up getting. 

In either case it's been interesting re-learning how to use CAD software and transitioning from using it for 2d stuff into using it to build a 3d model that's actually printable. The last time that I had spent any real time working on a CAD program was using a cheap one called KeyCad that was put out by Softchoice back in like 1996 or so. Needless to say the state of CAD software now is completely different compared to the tools that existed back at that time. 

The most useful thing about the 3d printer however is the ability to just crank out brackets and mounting hardware for things that I have sitting around the house. Cable management clips, brackets, and holders for things that were never intended to be mounted in any way are all things that I have cranked out of this thing. As these things become more and more popular I can see them replacing simple plastic parts that you might have to purchase from other places, but right now it's more a novelty for me. In the future this may change as the learning curve flattens out and the technology becomes more accessible. In the meantime, I suppose printing off flexi-rexi can provide me some entertainment. 



Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Unifi Networking - Longer term thoughts.

For the past several years I've been running Ubiquiti's network gear for the router/firewall and wireless access points that provide connectivity in my home. And after several years of working with it here it's getting to be time to look into moving to something new and I'm of a mixed mind of sticking with Unifi for the entire stack.


The wireless access points work great, and I really have no complaints about them. They provide great coverage, reliable uptime, and haven't given me any real issue over time. 

Routing however, that's more of a mixed bag.
 
The main reason that I don't just run whatever the ISP provides for a router is because they don't have the flexibility that I want to play around with. If all I was doing was using the web to watch content and check email then it would be more than fine, but as soon as I need to start messing with the DNS servers and other things it suddenly starts to become limiting. 

Previously I was runing PfSense for my routing and firewall, but when that hardware gave up the ghost I picked up a USG3, and it's great about showing statistics in the Unifi Application and giving me a single point to manage everything from there are a few things that it doesn't have in the UI where you have to fall back to command line on the router to make the changes that you need. 

Thankfully most of the things that require manually poking at the router are things that don't change frequently, but it's still frustrating enough that I'm questioning sticking with Unifi routing as a platform when I need to replace the device that's currently sitting in my wiring closet. 

Going with a SFF or Micro PC running something open source wouldn't cost really any more than getting the latest version of the Unifi kit. 

The other option that i'm considering is looking into some of Mikrotik's equipment. We wound up picking up some of thier stuff for a project at work and so far no complaints. And given the pricing that I'm seeing on their stuff it seems like it's better priced in a lot of ways compared to the stuff that Ubiquiti is putting out. 

On the downside I would have to learn a new ecosystem, but on the upside I can get a fancy red router. 





Sunday, 18 August 2024

And again, things are coming full circle.

So, I'm old enough that I remember a time before being able to stream almost anything that you wanted to watch on demand. Either you waited for things to show up on the television, or you would wind up heading down to a local video store to pick out a video for the evening. 


When I was around it wasn't even blockbuster that you would go to - there were piles and piles of independent video stores that were scattered around. In my neck of the woods there were at least five that I can remember off hand each with a slightly different selection. 

Over time they dwindled and were bought out and amalgamated into larger chains but in the end streaming, specifically Netflix, basically killed off the whole rental experience. 

That's something of a shame since going to the video store and browsing for something to watch was always kind of fun. You could go in there looking for something specific, but if it wasn't there you might have to pivot and find something else, and depending on who was with you you could wind up having a polite discussion about what you are going to watch on a given night. 

Despite that the convenience of streaming eventually killed the local video store, but the main reason why that happened was simply availability - having everything in one place so that you didn't have to go hunting for a video, or worry about it being out of stock was a huge thing. I remember times where I would go to get a movie and be unable to see it because they just ran out of copies. 

Since Netflix was the standard and everything was on there getting a Netflix account was basically a no-brainer. Now however we have more and more streaming services popping up and the content is splitting up between different services. Like Star Wars? Pay out for Disney+, like Star Trek, go get yourself Netflix, like something from HBO, or Paramount? Well there's two more in there and we still are not counting for things that are service exclusive like Fallout, Altered Carbon, or others. 

Even if you are paying for a service that still doesn't mean you that you don't get bombarded with adds.

The current situation with the streaming services reminds me more of the situation with cable subscriptions back in the 80's when you had to pay to get the channels and then had to sit through the adds even through you where paying.  And frankly that having to pay hand over fist was what made things like Netflix attractive, and if they are going to continue to adopt the things that made cable frustrating I don't know how much longer I'm going to be willing to put up with it. 

Tuesday, 13 August 2024

macOS window management kind of sucks a bit

So a couple of weeks in with the macBook, and most things are just working for what I need them to do. A big thing that I’ve gotten used to on the Windows side of things that macOS just doesn’t do is how it handles window management. 

In Windows if you drag a window to the left or right it’s possible to snap it so that it covers the left of right half of the screen, there’s other options but that makes putting things in a place where they can be easily accessed really quick. It’s great for when you are wiring something but need some reference material on the side to be digging through. 

macOS just ignores it like it’s 1999. 

I’ve seen some notes on 3rd party applications that apparently address this, but I’m not super keen in tossing in lots of 3rd party tools if I can avoid it. 

Apparently this is something that Apple’s got stuff in place for in the macOS 15 beta, but again, daily driver system, not too interested in running beta software on my daily driver.


Sunday, 11 August 2024

Thoughts on the Cybertruck

It's been a hot minet sine the Cybertruck started hitting the streets and after seeing the thing in real life and seeing how some of the reviews and panning out I have some thoughts. 

First off, the looks. 



Now there are a lot of different designs for vehicles, and not all appeal to me. The Cybertruck is definitely something that does not really appeal to me. From my viewpoint the design of a vehicle should follow it's function, and the Cybertruck in my mind allows the design to dictate the function of the truck. 

The way that the sides of the truck angle down towards the tailgate eliminates using any of the truck bed campers that I'm familiar with, and depending on how fat those come up I might start to worry about them interfering with using a 5th wheel on the thing. 

The other big thing that I think would be a issue for me are the sight lines and visibility when driving the truck. Having those wings going down the side of the vehicle can't be great for visibility when trying to back the thing up. And yes, I'm sure they have cameras covering all that space but I prefer not to have to be reliant on a camera to be able to see where I'm going when maneuvering a truck.

The biggest complaint that I have however is that the thing just looks cheap. 

I didn't really want to draw a conclusion until I saw one in real life since it's hard to tell from a photograph what something really looks like when you are standing in front of it. Recently however I had a chance to get a look at a couple of these things on a recent trip and having had a chance to see one in person I have to say that they don't look at impressive in real life as they do in the photos. 

IT's probably not helped by the body panels looking like most of them are glued on. It's probably due to the way that the thing is all sharp edges and thin lines, but to me it makes it looks like most of the body panels are just glued on to the front and sides of the thing. 

Secondly, function.

I'm sure that everybody has seen photos of people wiht Cybertrucks doing "truck stuff" that ammounts to tossing a couple of bags of dirt into the back with a case of water from Costco. That's not truck stuff, that's just vehicle stuff that you can do with anything with a trunk.

And while there are lots of videos with people taking Cybertrucks off road and having them get stuck and breaking down there are as many videos of that happening with normal trucks so a lot of that was stuff that I was willing to just write off as people playing with a new toy and not really understanding how to use a 4x4 off road. 

Then a guy on youtube who goes under the handle of Whislingdiesel got his hands on one. 

Normally I don't really watch his stuff, but the few videos that I've seen had him taking trucks and just absolutely beating the living hell out of them. When I saw that he got hands on one of these trucks I figured that it would be interesting to see how long the thing survived. And what was interesting is that the took both a Ford F150 and the Cybertuck and did the same thing with each one to see how they hold up. 

Now obviously a EV Truck will just murder a conventional one in straight line accelleration and torque, but what kind of shocked the living hell out of me was what happened when they tried to pull the F150 off of a situation where it got stuck and they wind up ripping the entire bumper off of the back of the Cybertruck.


And it's not just that the bolts that hold the tow hitch on sheared off and broke, this looks like it tore the end off of the frame that the truck and I don't see how you can fix that without replacing the entire body of the truck. 

Now, I'm pretty sure that pulling something with a truck is pretty basic "truck stuff", I use my truck to tow trailers, and to pull sumps and such out of the ground all without any problem. 

There's a lot of stuff done in that video that would normally never happen, but hooking up one truck to another to pull it out of a place where it's gotten stuck is not something that I would have thought would result in the entire bumper and it's casting getting torn off the back of the truck. 

The air-ride problems, the tonneau cover, even the doors coming apart when slammed, those are all things that I can't see happening during the normal course of using a vehicle, but the problems with the bumper - that's something that would be a concern. They point it out in the video - what happens if you have a trailer with a heavy load on it and that happens to hit a pothole while you are towing it? 

I have other concerns with the steering being drive by wire and so much being tied into that central screen, but that's common on all of the Tesla vehicles. 

Personally what I want is just a EV powertrain in the same type of truck that I have now. I don't need a huge screen to control the functions on my vehicle. The controls work, the layout works, hell I don't even need the thing to look any different. Just give me a electric version and I'm going to be pretty happy with that. 

Sunday, 4 August 2024

The enshitification of hardware in the real world.

Ok. This post is going to be a bit of a rant. 

Read the link below. I'll wait.
 
https://www.theverge.com/24206847/logitech-ceo-hanneke-faber-mouse-keyboard-gaming-decoder-podcast-interview

So if you read the entire thing there's a mention in the interview of a "Forever Mouse", a mouse that you would never have to purchase again, but that would carry with it a ongoing subscription that you would have to continue to pay for software updates.

I mean we are talking about a god dammed mouse. 

These stupid things should just work. They shouldn't be something that requires an ongoing subscription for them to keep working. It's something that I pay once for, use until it breaks, and provided that it lasts long enough I would go and pick up a new one once the old one dies. 

I can't see any point where I'd be willing to have a subscription that I'm paying for a mouse, even if it was going to cover all warranty issues or other problems that came up. I mean how long can you pay for the subscription before you have spent more than the replacement cost of the mouse in the first place?

There are places where subscriptions make sense, but in my mind most hardware should be a one-time purchase. To be completely honest we have seen this happening with printers over the years. 

I've been working with computers for a very long time at this point, and printers have been something that I've had to be fighting with for my entire time working with computers - both personally and professionally. Back in the day printers were generally well built and there were models that you would pick up and run for potentially a decade or more unless there was some compelling reason to upgrade. 

I ran a HP Deskjet 830c for way longer than I can remember. At some point the thing threw a belt or something and stopped working. At the time I wasn't really printing any more and it wound up getting sent out for recycling and I was without a printer for several years. When I needed one again I ran down to the local retailer and picked up one for cheap and the thing lasted about a year before it started jamming up. This repeated for a couple of years, and eventually being a bit sick of it I picked up a laser printer that stuck around until the drum died, and it was then replaced with another HP printer that I absolutely hated.

Right now there's a Lexmark unit sitting at my house that works well that I picked up on clearance. 

The thing that I noticed each time that I was picking up a new printer was that the quality of the devices was continually decreasing each time that I had to get a new device, and the price of the toner or ink was going up, and up, and up every time that I looked at a new device. If you think about it this does make sense from the stance of the company making the printer - it's not about the printer, it's about selling you the ink for the printer. 

HP now offers a Instant Ink program where you are basically paying a monthly cost for ink based on how much you are printing. This type of thing has been around for large companies for a long time - especially when dealing with higher volumes of printing but it's starting to push down to the consumer level, and the quality of the printers has basically fallen off the face of a cliff in response since the printer only has to last long enough to sell ink and then be disposed of. 

And now it's spreading to mice. 

Sure they are talking about doing this with a "really nice" mouse right now, but you can't tell me that they won't eventually build the things to basically be disposable enough that you can't get away from having a subscription because the device is a piece of crap. 

Frankly, if Logitech does this it's probably going to be the trigger to keep me from ever using another one of their products in the future. 





Saturday, 3 August 2024

Battery life and chargers.

So after having the MacBook Pro in hand for a week the one thing that I really have noticed is that the battery life on the darn thing is impressive.

On my windows devices, regardless of if I'm actually working with the device, the batteries on the laptops wind up running down and becoming dead within a few days. Generally if I don't have the laptop sitting hooked up to a charger for more than a weekend it's going to be a complete dead brick by the time that I go to make use of the dammed thing again. 

Due to this I've simply gotten used to hauling around the power brick for whatever laptop I've been using in my bag almost anywhere that I go. It's not been a huge issue in the last couple of years since the laptops that I have been working with have switched over to USB-C for power since the laptop charger would handle the laptop, battery pack, and anything else that might take power from a USB-C connection. I still need either adapters for Apple's lightning, Micro USB, and a couple of oddball things, but I always have a way to put power to the laptop.

The MacBook Pro however has been running all week and I don't think that I've seen the thing under 50% battery all week and I haven't been being super conscientious about making sure that it's connected to power. Granted It's not being run as a daily driver all day long, but it's still a new toy so there's a bunch of things that I would normally have done on my desktop have been being picked up on the laptop instead. 

Since I was worried about the battery life I have picked up a compact travel charger that I can use to keep the batteries on all my devices topped up. These new GAN based chargers are about half the size of the one that shipped with either of my laptops, so they take a lot less space in the bag. They are just as heavy as the larger ones though - and with multiple ports I can charge up the Laptop and the Phone at the same time if push comes to shove.

The specific one that I've grabbed is this one;

I've had some good results with Ugreen's stuff over the last couple of years for cables, and this seems pretty well reviewed.




Sunday, 28 July 2024

A decision has been made.

Well a couple of days ago I picked up a MacBook Pro for a "daily" driver laptop for personal use. Given everything that's been going on with Mcrosoft and the latest releases of Windows, and the problems with the 13th and 14th generation Intel CPU's that is getting reported on now I'm thinking that this is probably going to be a better purchase longer term.


I'm still going to have to maintain a desktop machine for gaming, and the one that I have right now is more than capable for what I need for gaming around here. Anything else that I want to do can generally be done wither remote on another machine or will run fine on the hardware in the device that I've picked up this time around.

The one thing that I have noticed with it is that the Pro unit is snappier than the MacBook Air that I have had access to at work. I can see why most people are saying that a Air is good enough for most of what people will be doing, but there is a performance difference. The higher refresh screen is a definite improvement, not that Apple has ever really put crappy displays on any of their laptops but this one is a step above over what's in place on the Air.

I'll be picking through this more over the next couple of weeks but I think that I'll be putting this thing through it's paces over the next couple of weeks.


Saturday, 27 July 2024

Chromebooks, and why they are not a option for almost anything that I do.

While looking into laptops I have thought about running a Chrome OS device. However I've ruled them out for a couple of reasons, however most don't relate to the OS that they run.

The common theme of all the Chrome OS devices that I have worked with over the years is that they are all cheaply built devices that feel like they are about to fall apart as soon as I start using them. And yes, I know that there are more premium devices floating around that would address the build quality issues on the ones that I have worked on the pricing of those better quality devices makes them cost as much as a full freight laptop from a fairly major vendor. 

And that negates a huge reason to go Chromebook, since the real hook for them, at least for me, is that they are cheap.

I don't run enough machines to make any of the management stuff on them attractive, and the limitations in having a device that only works on web based application is something that I could overlook on something that's a sub 400$ CAD device. But once you get up above that there are a number of options, both refurbished and new, that start to become far more flexible in what they can do and what my options are in using them. 

And yes, I do know that I can run android apps on the things, at least on most of them, but there's a lot of stuff that I do that really does not have a android app to work off of.

But again, the deal breaker is the general quality of the devices running Chrome OS.




Friday, 26 July 2024

Apple, macOS, and the laptops that run it.

One of the things that's kind of convenient about my work is that I have access off and on to a bunch of different hardware to play with from time to time. 

One of the things that I've been playing with recently is a M2 MacBook Air. 

I did wind up purchasing one of these and returning it a long while back, it was an impulse purchase and at the time it didn't scratch the right itch for me. However I'm going to be needing something that I can haul around and use for personal computing over the next few months and I don't like mixing personal and work data on the same device. 

Given recent problems with Intel CPU's and the fuzzy situation with Windows and where they are going from a privacy standpoint I'm thinking more and more that macOS may be the way to go this time around. 

Given that I have a device I can play with I've been playing around with the base unit and I think that at this point there's a couple of things that I'll have to consider if I'm going to swap over to macOS as a personal device.

  1. The AIR would work for a lot of what I do, but if I want to keep playing around with some of the large language models and things of that nature the faster CPU in the MacBook Pro's would be a huge advantage.
  2. I would really prefer a high refresh rate display. That's only something that can be had on the Pro models. 

The big down side of this is that the pricing on the pro devices is much higher than the Air, enough that I'm seriously having to think if this is something that I should be picking up. While it's not like I'm going to be replacing the thing in a year it's still a lot of money to put down on a single device. 

I can pickup hardware that will run Windows much cheaper, but unless you are looking at something as expensive end most of the hardware out there isn't  as well put together as a Apple laptop is. Apple's had the design nailed for years and each generation generally just improves on things in small ways (with the exception of that butterfly keyboard from a few years back). 

So is a 120hz panel and the faster CPU worth the extra? To be honest I'm not 100% sure yet.

Thursday, 25 July 2024

Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 - It's not really a Thinkpad as you expect.

So, previously I posted about a X13 that I ran for a couple of years. After fighting problems with the specific unit that I was shipped Lenovo did wind up swapping that out with a Thinkpad X13. 

And after having used it for a year I think that it's a pretty decent device for a ultraportable device,  but it's not really the Thinkpad that you would expect if you are used to the older Thinkpad models. And that's not really a huge issue since it is good for what it is. 

The first thing that's different is the keyboard, it's not like a traditional Thinkpad keyboard, it's more like what you find on the current models of MacBook's. Depending on what you like as far as keyboards go that could be either a good thing or a bad one. Personally I'm ok with either type of keyboard - generally my preference leans towards a proper mechanical keyboard, but as far as laptop keyboards go either a Thinkpad or MacBook keyboard works well enough for me.

The other thing that was different at the time was the little knobby bit at the top of the laptop. Instead of cutting down into the screen with a notch Lenovo kicked the entire lid of the thing up into a little handle that houses the web camera. It's a bit odd at first but it makes opening the device simpler since you have a handle to pull up on. It's also something they have started putting into other Thinkpad's in the line up. 

The body is also more like an Apple device, lots of aluminum, solid construction, and nice and light. 

So physically it's all good. However, there's still some strangeness when docking and undocking the laptop. It's better than the x13, but I still do get occasional crashes if I'm using a Thunderbolt 4 dock. A USB C dock however works like a charm. So while there's obviously been some improvement there's still a ways to go.

The other annoying thing that can happen when the Thunderbolt dock crashes the device is that it seems to get into a state where it's just running the CPU doing nothing but dumping out heat. I caught it a couple of times where the device crashes and won't turn off. Tossing it into a bag would probably result in the thing cooking the CPU. That's in fact one of the things that may have toasted the X13 that I had back previously since it was much more prone to those crashes. 

Overall the Z13 is a good device and I will probably be able to squeeze some more life out of it. At least until the current issues with the Intel 13th and 14th generation processors are sorted out or the stuff from Qualcomm is working properly. 

Wednesday, 24 July 2024

Windows Recall and why you should be concerned.

I'm a touch late on this one, but a few months back Microsoft kicked out a feature called Windows Recall that would be coming in future releases of the operating system. The idea behind this would be that all your activity on the device would be tracked and logged to allow you to roll back and quickly find what you were doing and go back to things that you may have lost track of. All using the power of "AI" to help you navigate that data. 

On the surface that sounds like a great idea. 

However, to do what they are talking about the computer will have to be recording all your activities, what sites you visit, programs that you run, possibly even the keystrokes that you are entering into the system. And that data is going to have to live someplace, and if they are going to be using AI to process that information where is that process going to take place, and what else will they be doing with that information once they have it?

Well turns out the data is going to be saved locally, not in the cloud, and while that's a good thing there have been a couple of posts showing that the data saved on the machine can be pulled from the system and quickly accessed without a lot of fanfare. While the data is on your machine, and arguably a bit more private than something in the cloud, anybody who's able to access your computer could pull the data from your system.

How many people have watched the videos about scammers getting access to systems and pulling data from them? How many of us know people who have had this happen to them? 

If suddenly there's a complete record of everything that you have done on your system, including your banking details and personally identifying information that's going to be gold for people trying to cause you grief, and suddenly Microsoft is collecting that information and putting it in a box for someone to just come grab. 

Personally I don't want the operating system on my computer to be tracking my activities like this. 

I understand that things like Facebook, X, and other social media services track everything that I do, but that's kind of the trade that you make. You get access to a platform and communication services in exchange for the information they can harvest to turn you into a product. 

What I expect from the operating system on my device is to boot the computer and run the programs that I tell it to, and to process data in ways that I expect.

The big issue with this type of functionality being baked into the operating system is that we are trusting that Microsoft is not going to change their mind and start pushing that information to some cloud service for processing, training AI models, or some other activity that we can't control. 

There's always that argument that if you aren't doing anything wrong you won't have anything to hide, but that doesn't mean that you should have to worry about having your entire personal life laid out in front of someone else. You may not be doing anything wrong, but it may not be something that you want posted on the internet for all to see. 

The only way that things like this stop is for us, as consumers, to reject this type of change. For computers this may require that we look at moving to something other than Windows as an operating system. Linux, macOS, something else? Who knows. 

Right now for gaming Windows is kind of the only option for a lot of people, but if there's a huge shift in the market the game Developers will move. Worst case I'll be keeping two systems sitting around and just using the Windows machine for running some games on. 

Tuesday, 23 July 2024

Lenovo X13 Gen1 - Post mortem.

 Ok, let's be clear here. This is not a review. The laptop in question is dead and gone, this is more a review of what happened with the device and my experience with the device over the two years that I was working with it. 

So, back three years ago I wound up getting a new device for work, this time around I picked up an AMD based Thinkpad X13 from Lenovo. The device had pretty much every option, and was a significant upgrade from the T480 that I was using previously.

And for the first couple of months it wasn't bad, I did have some oddities with putting the laptop to sleep and docking it, the biggest one was that anytime that you pulled it off a thunderbolt dock the device basically bricked itself and would require a hard reboot to come back, but I wasn't docking and undocking a lot during the day so while inconvenient it was not the end of the world. 

However about four months into the things the screen started developing bight spots that were distracting as hell. No worries since we did have a 3yr support contract on the device that included on site support. A quick phone call and a replacement screen was on the way and things were once again in order.

However about a month later a BIOS update bricked the motherboard. 

You can argue about why I bothered updating the BIOS but it was supposed to help some of the issues I was seeing with docking the device, and so that was motherboard one down the drain. At this point the display had started dying again, so another call, and motherboard and screen were swapped out again.

All in over the two years that I used the device it had three dead motherboards, four dead screens, and a dead set of speakers in two years.

To Lenovo's credit after the third motherboard died I asked for a replacement device and they swapped it out with completely new device without any real fight. 

And the frustrating thing is that this isn't something specific to the model, there are other units that I have sitting around that are exactly the same that work without issue even to this day. That being said, physically it was all you would expect from a Thinkpad, just a bit twitchy about what it was willing to do. I'd still look at another one in the series if I was looking for another work machine, or I didn't need to worry about it being docked. 

The one thing I will say, unless you have a requirement for it I would avoid the "privacy" displays that Lenovo and other vendors ship with these things. They sacrifice a lot of brightness for that privacy filter and honestly the trade-off isn't worth it. That would be the only thing that I would have changed if I was going to re-order the device. 

Monday, 22 July 2024

I've been around computers long enough to remember a time when you had multiple different platforms that all didn't talk to each other or interoperate easily. Try moving a file from a machine running macOS to a DOS/Windows 3.1 machine back in the day and it was a huge hassle even just to get that document off of one system and into another. 

And unfortunately I'm starting to worry about this happening again.

Right now Microsoft is pushing the new Copilot PC's running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. They are touting them as being hugely power efficient and having great performance per-watt compared to stuff on the Intel and AMD side of things. And for most people that may be true, but there's also a pile of software that has problems with running on these systems.

The obvious ones are games, specifically those that include anti-cheat software, and unfortunately that's something that I do like to occasionally use my computer for. 

Wendel at Level1Techs has a great video about this here;

https://youtu.be/qKRmYW1D0S0?si=Ru8VciH7rKkCwl9_

So, as much as I like the feel and design of the new Surface Laptops I'm turned off by the compatibility issues that exist. As a consumer if I am running Windows I shouldn't have to worry about what processor is installed in the dammed thing - the software should just run. 

Personally I would love to see a new entrant into the field for processors. Intel's problems with the 13th and 14th generation processors isn't really inspiring confidence in those systems, and my experience with the AMD laptop I have for work doesn't have me jumping at that platform eagerly, so another platform would be appreciated if it just worked. 

If Microsoft was managing this as well as Apple handled their platform changes I think I would be more interested in purchasing into the platform moving forward, but since that's not the case I think that I may have to look in other directions. 

Sunday, 21 July 2024

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

So I've been looking into a new laptop for personal use. 

Actually, it's better to say I'm looking to purchase my first laptop for personal use in well over twenty years. 

That's not to say that I don't have laptops around, work has plenty sitting about that I can grab, play with, and could potentially make use of. I just don't like the idea of mixing work and personal data on the same device and try to avoid doing so as much as humanly possible. So over the last couple of months I've been going over options and I'm sitting here unable to decide on what to do.

Looking into what I want on a laptop I really want something smaller, lightweight, and with a very good battery life. 

I would also prefer not to have the device being a slow piece of crap or built like a flimsy piece of crap. I can't stand laptops where the entire device seems to twist and flex when you open the screen or type on the keyboard. 

One option that I've been looking at is the current crop of Apple's Macbook laptops. 

While I have a general preference for Windows, since that's been my primary OS for many decades, the recent things that Microsoft has been doing with Windows has me less and less impressed and willing to consider what Apple has on offer. For most of what I do the "work" is done either in a browser, a terminal session, or some other type of remote session. This means that a lot of what I do is rather platform agnostic and being on Windows vs. MacOS or even a Linux system doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference. 

On the Windows side the new Quallacom based devices are a interesting option, however I remember the first time that Microsoft attempted to move into running on a ARM derived CPU with Windows RT and that was a huge flop. Even the more recent Surface Pro X hasn't really made a lot of waves from what I've been seeing. While these new Snapdragon processors sound promising software vendors still have a lot of stuff to catch up on to get everything working. Given that nobody seemed to bother with it the first time around and how Microsoft managed things the last time they tried to make ARM cpu's a thing for Windows I'm thinking that I might pass.

And with the news about the latest problems on the 14th and 13th generation Intel stuff hitting the fan right now I'm kind of gun shy about getting in on anything running Intel's latest stuff. 

AMD is an option, and I've been running Ryzen processors in my desktop machine and on my work laptop for years now and I have been quite happy with them overall. However the laptop side of things has had enough quirks that I'm not just ready to jump right in again. From a performance standpoint the AMD stuff is great, but the battery life leaves a lot to be desired if I'm going to be running around with the laptop in my bag over the course of a day. Having a highly portable system kind of becomes moot if you have to plug in for anything more than a hour or so.

I think I'm getting close to a decision, but I'm probably going to sit on this for a bit more and make sure that I've let things bake in my mind to make sure that everything is good.