content – Andrew the Hopeless Techie

Tag Archive: content

Inspiration for new content?

For several years since having this blog, I have added content ranging from Life updates to my take on Linux distributions, as you may have noticed my frequency with which this content is updated is unpredictable at best. My goal from the start was always to just post what was on my mind and hope others found it somewhat interesting, the reality it seems is much more complex than I originally anticipated. So the new focus was on trying to bring my point of view (for what it’s worth) on things around me (I.E politics, technology, and so on), but this to was problematic as the internet became flooded with people who have much more valued opinions then Myself. It became clear the only way to continue to use this platform for anything other than a stream of consciousness for my mind was to find new and interesting ideas, this is where offshoots like the Category 5 fan blog came from, however, due to time constraints I was not able to see shows live and it became near impossible to keep that site up and a full-time job.

So I am turning to what few people actually come across this blog for ideas, I have an accompanying forum thread which I would prefer suggestions be made as this allows for searching and archival of responses a bit better than the comment system here. I am getting ahead of myself however and will get back to that bit more later, for now, I want to throw out a few ideas and get your take on them as well as any original ideas you might have.

Idea number 1: Continue to try and post about my experiences with Linux or Windows and try to give an honest down to earth view point on both of those areas. I would try to do at least 1 if not 2 or more blog entries a week on this topic and try to really drill down my point of view, I enjoy using both Linux and Windows and this would give me an option to engage more in those areas. The draw back to this idea (at least on my intial view of it) is that things may be to opinionated and sometimes seem less informative and more reaching for content.

Idea number 2: Treat this as more a day in the Life kind of blog and just write about my experiences through the day this would generate genraly smaller posts but more of them typicaly one a day, the content would be very opinionated as it would essentialy be a stream of conciousness of my thoughts for the day on things I have done. While this idea seems to be the one to generate the most content to me it also seems to be the one that would also generate the most drama related to people with differing opinions. Its not my first choice and regardless of what direction i end up taking this blog key events and things i deem noteworth will get mentioned anyway this just would generate much more content in between chunks people may find interesting (I live a largely uninterasting normal life ).

Idead number 3: I am not going to lie this one might be my least favorite option and generate the most controversy among readers. I would scour the news sites and technology sites and try to give a run down of whats going on and my thoughts on these things once a week. It would kind of be like a week in review, only instead of focusing on one topic it would encompass all aspects that affect me from Politics to Technology. I have views on both of those that may not sit well with some people but I am willing to share my thoughts on the topics I find through out the week, I want to make it cear however this would likely generate the most negative push back from people specificaly those politicaly opposed to my view points.

Well, there you have it those are my 3 ideas I am open to additional ideas as well and would love your guy’s feedback on which you prefer if any from the 3 above. I am not expecting a huge response from this but I thought I would put it out there because I myself and not really sure which direction I want to go. Again please use the forum thread to discuss this topic so we can get better content filtering for this. Normally I am all for using the comments system here but given the interaction I want to give to this discussion, I feel a Forum thread more appropriate for this. Click Here to go to the Forum Thread

My Life at a Glance–New CPU, Gaming, Windows troubles, Linux Troubles, android tablets and more!

Well it has been a while since I posted anything to my blog, and I thought I would rectify that by making one huge post updating everyone on most aspects of my life currently.

New Computer Hardware

Recently I upgraded my old AMD Athlon II x4 620 to a new AMD Phenom II x6 1090T Black Edition.

The upgrade was relatively painless (typical CPU upgrade) and I did not notice a huge improvement at first in performance, however once the computer ran for a while I noticed some changes in both speed and the Heat the CPU generated.

With my older Quad Core CPU idle CPU temps were somewhere around 38c which is relatively hot I have been told for an idle temp. With the newer six-core the idle temps dropped to around 28c that is a 10 degree difference!

While I primarily upgraded to solve an issue Windows was having with the CPU (mine in particular not necessarily the same for others with it ) where it would frequently spike the CPU usage up and then not fully release capacity as processes slowed. I had tried numerous times to re-install windows in numerous different storage configurations (RAID 0, Use a separate drive for all Data and one specifically for OS and Important programs, Installing a tweaked version where certain features were turned off mainly indexing and what not), while most of these worked one in particular kept causing me to scratch my head as tried to get Windows running on it (RAID 0). With out boring you by going into detail on what I tried I will just say it did not work and ended up causing a new fresh install of Windows 7 using the default installation (which ironically ended up having better throughput). The CPU proved to be a good trade off as it increased windows boot time as well as offered a 6mb L3 Cache where the Quad had no such L3 Cache.

I ran the windows performance scoring tool (just for the hell of it not a big believer in what it says other then to pinpoint what hardware is the current bottleneck) finding that now all areas rated 7.5 where the HDD was the remaining bottleneck coming in at a miserable 5.9. Now I know Windows may not be the best OS when it comes to efficient write commands, but that was a good indicator it was time for a faster drive or to make the plunge into a reasonable SSD.

The issue here is that even though I could move about 95% of all my data to a external HDD and use the SSD as the boot drive, programs would continue to load slowly unless they were installed on the SSD. All that and not to mention the sheer amount that SSD cost per GB, it just was not worth the price at present.

Gaming

This all lead me into my next issue which was stuttering (video wise not audio) in the game Dragon Age 2, I examined this further and found that DA2 seems to see the processor correctly but only sees one core as being available. I then spent about 2 hours talking to EA support via chat to try and correct this, even tried reducing the available Cores it had access to in the affinity setting for the game.

Long story short we were unable to pinpoint the exact issue, but narrowed it down to something to do with the CPU upgrade (seeing as it worked fine on the Quad). The tech was so down that he could not solve my issue that he proceeded to go into the back end for my EA account and enable a whole swarm of free content (not DLC, promotional items mostly) for Dragon Age: Origins and one or two for DA2!. I literally now have so much stuff that when I log into the Bioware User Entitlements area to see what I have access to I have to scroll 3 times, and that is on a 27” monitor at 1920×1080 resolution with the browser full screen!

Did I also mention that earlier this month I had an issue with the DLC authorizing for Dragon Age: Origins? Well EA gave me a $20 voucher for the EA store and so I used that on Dead space 2 which was already on sale for $31 (Digital download version) so I ended up after tax getting a $50 game for $12 dollars!

Linux

Now all of you reading this from the Fedora Planet are by now wondering “what does this have to do with Linux?”

The answer is that had nothing to do with it but the headache did make me want to leave windows and try to install Fedora again on one of my free HDD’s

This brings me to where I had the issue with Fedora, to be fair here I was using the latest build of Fedora 15 alpha so the issues are not at all the fault of Fedora just my own lapse in judgment.

Here is what happened, I tried at first to do a custom install (like I always do when installing multiple OS) but that just caused me a headache because apparently my boot order for my HDD was set differently in the Bios then the physical location they are in (where they are connected on the mother board). That being said I managed to axe the small system partition Windows 7 makes for some reason. I panicked and though If I could install Fedora I could at least boot from Grub into Windows right? Wrong!

Second time installing is where I made the big mistake of choosing use all space when I meant to hit remove all Linux partitions, well as you can imagine this went bad as it wiped now my entire windows drive. While I chalk this up to my own lack of focus, my friend claims it was a sign from the Fedora Gods that Linux did not want Windows anywhere on the system.

I ended up just wiping that re-installing windows (to many good games that do not work in Wine plus school work that requires Windows programs) and just throw Fedora in a VM. So far this has worked well though I miss my dual boot setup and being able to run Fedora natively. I might try it again but making sure to backup my windows install prior to doing so.

Android 3.0

While I myself have not had any hands on experience with Android, I want an Android 3 tablet badly!

I began looking into the options out there and found out that not only do a handful exist but they are all super expensive!!!

I did find one that would have a 399 model but the specs on it were less then acceptable to me. While I generally am not a power user when it comes to mobile devices I found that a 512mb 8gb nand ram drive device to be a little underwhelming! How much could you fit on 8gb now days even if on Android!?

The next model the one I am seriously considering is 499 and has 1gb of ram and a 16gb nand ram drive. This to me seems sufficient and would work nicely, provided I decide to get it. ASUS the manufacture of this tablet apparently has released everything but the device itself in the US as of the time I am writing this. Will  I have the funds to spare when they do release it is yet to be seen but lets hope it gets released soon.

Well that about covers it, that should get most people who care caught up with what has been going on with me (not a lot of people care I get it but a few readers I know who read this do Winking smile ).

Feel free to leave comments below