I'm in the future. Like hundreds of years in the future. I've been dead for centuries.
Oh, lovely, you're a cheery one aren't you?
Oh, lovely, you're a cheery one aren't you?
Sunday, December 06
Hell Bound and Heaven Sent
I wasn't feeling this season of Doctor Who as much as some of the recent ones (the Amy and Rory seasons, and the first Clara half-season), but they certainly went out with a bang.
I wasn't feeling this season of Doctor Who as much as some of the recent ones (the Amy and Rory seasons, and the first Clara half-season), but they certainly went out with a bang.
Nothing Stephen Moffat likes better than messing with fans' expectations - except messing with fans' expectations of messing with fans' expectations.
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Friday, December 04
Two Weeks-ish With A Mac
After about 10 years in Windows and Linux-land, I've been setting up my new iMac over the last couple of weeks. This takes a while, because I use a lot of different applications.
After about 10 years in Windows and Linux-land, I've been setting up my new iMac over the last couple of weeks. This takes a while, because I use a lot of different applications.
My impressions so far:
- Performance: 9/10. Almost everything is zippy. Best result ever on my Python benchmark, twice as fast as running in a Linux VM on my four-year-old Windows box.
That was one of my main reasons for getting a Mac - I can run the server-side applications I work on directly under OSX rather than having to run Linux virtual machines. I have VMWare Fusion so that I can run virtual machines, but I don't have to.
- Screen: 9/10. Exceptionally sharp and vibrant, let down slightly by the reflective finish and lack of adjustment options (tilt only).
- Sound: 6/10. Adequate and inoffensive, but far from amazing.
- Noise: 9/10. Pretty much silent when you're not asking it to make noise. My Windows box gets quite loud when it's busy. (Though for about $100 I could add a closed-loop water cooler that would silence it.)
- Mouse: 7/10. The mouse is a bit oddly-shaped, but the "magic" part works very well - you can left-and-right-click even though it has no buttons, and you can scroll up, down, and sideways even though it has no scroll wheel.
The only problem is with mouse acceleration in OSX. Mouse acceleration sucks and there should be an option to just have a constant but high mouse resolution.
- Keyboard: 2/10. The so-called Magic Keyboard sucks. It's a mediocre notebook keyboard with no feel or key travel, transplanted to the desktop where it has no reason to exist. I dug my 15-year-old G3 iMac keyboard out of the closet and I'm using that instead.
- Gaming: 7/10. Runs Baldur's Gate EE, Torchlight and Cities: Skylines just fine. Haven't had time to try anything else yet.
One letdown is that it doesn't seem to be possible to run games natively at 5k; they default to the UI resolution, which is half that, so 2560x1440. That's the right resolution to run at given the mid-range video card it has, but I would have liked to see Cities: Skylines at 5k.
- UI: 5/10. Coming back to the Mac after a decade away, all the nice stuff is still there. Also all the bad stuff. A bit disappointing, really.
The single menu bar needs to die. It made sense on a 9" screen. It's absurd on a 27" screen.
Launchpad is dumb - it's the Mac equivalent of Windows 8's Games window. Snapping windows is dumb. Finder is dumb. Installing software works pretty well, mostly. Uninstalling is a mess.
- Developer tools: 9/10. All my JetBrains tools run on Mac, and handle the 5k display better than they do the 4k screen on my Windows box. (Plus AppCode for Swift and Objective-C, which is Mac only.)
The Homebrew installer is great. For my work I need MySQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, RabbitMQ, Neo4J, Redis, Python, PyPy, Ruby, Lua, Node.js, PHP, CouchDB, uWSGI, Nginx, LMDB, PhantomJS - oops.
The PhantomJS package won't install on OSX 10.11, but that's the first problem I've run into.
So overall it works pretty well, and I'm happy with it. Ran into some trouble with the Adobe installer (it basically refused to install anything), but they released an update and it started working.
The only worry now is how quickly I'm filling up the 1TB SSD. I have 70GB of loops to download (bundled with Mainstage) and I've barely started installing my Steam and GOG libraries, even though only about one third of my games run on Mac. I might add an external SSD at some point - the Samsung T1 looks like a nice option.
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Thursday, November 26
It's A River In Paris
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Wednesday, November 25
Pack My Box With Five Dozen Grumpy Jackdaws
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Tuesday, November 24
Facing The Raven
Warning: This whole post is a huge spoiler for current season of Doctor Who, up to episode 10 and possibly including episodes that haven't aired yet.
Warning: This whole post is a huge spoiler for current season of Doctor Who, up to episode 10 and possibly including episodes that haven't aired yet.
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Out Of Sight
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Monday, November 23
Never Mind The Quality, Feel The Gamut
So the new 27" Retina iMac isn't much of an upgrade from the previous 27" Retina iMac - very slightly faster processor, graphics, and memory, and a significantly faster SSD, though that was already quite fast.
So the new 27" Retina iMac isn't much of an upgrade from the previous 27" Retina iMac - very slightly faster processor, graphics, and memory, and a significantly faster SSD, though that was already quite fast.
What it does have is a wide-gamut screen calibrated for DCI-P3 - that is, it's designed to display the same colour range as digital cinema projectors, and in the same way. And that colour range is wider than the typical monitor or television - Apple says 25% wider.
Normally you only notice colour gamut when a device is bad, rather than good. The original 2012 Nexus 7 had a noticeably limited colour gamut - everything looked like a rainy winter's day even with the brightness at maximum. (The 2013 model was much improved on this, as on most things.)
And I didn't notice it on my iMac at first either, until the screen saver turned up this image of the Colorado River. It's a striking photo on my old monitor, but on a wide-gamut screen it's eye-popping. I've never seen that shade of orange on an LCD display, and I don't think I've ever seen it on a CRT either.
It's one of those things you have to see for yourself.
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Saturday, November 21
Taigalised
Posting from Taiga!
Posting from Taiga!
It works. Plugged in, switched on... Where's the switch? Where's the switch?! Ah. Switched on, poing sound, off we go.
Magic mouse is pretty good. Magic keyboard is a piece of crap with no feel or key travel. An entry-level Logitech keyboard is better than this. So was the old Mac keyboard from the 2nd generation iMac... Which I have sitting in closet upstairs, so I'll dig that out tomorrow.
Screen is all it should be - 14 million pixels and a wide colour gamut and great viewing angles.
Everything so far is pretty zippy. I'd hope so, since it has the fastest of everything that I could possibly get - and since I haven't done anything remotely taxing so far.
The memory upgrade was pretty nice. There's a couple of tricks to it, but they're well-designed tricks:
- There's a button that releases the hatch over the RAM slots. The button can only be reached after removing the power cord, so there's no way you can open it while it's powered on.
- There's a latching mechanism that locks all four RAM slots at once, and when you unlatch it, they hinge outwards for easy access. You just drop the modules in and push the latch shut again.
32GB of 1600MHz third-party RAM was $260, vs. $960 for the upgrade from 8GB to 32GB from Apple. For $700 I'll accept that 2-3% real-world performance difference. (Though why they didn't just use DDR4 I don't know.)
Now let's install Steam...
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Friday, November 20
Off-Ice Day
42.8C (109F) in Sydney today. (Predicted 41C, ended up slightly hotter.) A hot air mass moved in from central Australia and spent a day dry-roasting the city before heading out to sea.
42.8C (109F) in Sydney today. (Predicted 41C, ended up slightly hotter.) A hot air mass moved in from central Australia and spent a day dry-roasting the city before heading out to sea.
So I went in to the office where they have really good air conditioning. Problem solved. I turned off all my computers first so I wouldn't come home to multiple drive failures; if it's nearly 43C ambient I shudder to think how hot a disk drive would be running.
Meanwhile in Melbourne, 16C and raining.
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Monday, November 16
Taiga'd
Taiga arrived. Today. When I was at the office.
Taiga arrived. Today. When I was at the office.
And the delivery guy got confused because when he knocked on my door, my neighbours answered their door.
So I had to leave work early to head home and sort it out, which means I'll be working late tonight to catch up. But that's fine. Taiga is safe in the spare room and I'll get her set up in the next day or two.
Update: 32GB extra RAM and 5TB external drive arrived today. The Blu-Ray drive is back-ordered, but that's not urgent; I have on in my Windows PC.
Now I'm all set except for software, and that I can buy online as needed.
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