I've been tied up with work (and trying to catch up on sleep) the last couple of weeks, hence the recent lack of posts.
But I have picked up a few new toys. Mostly they're just sitting here until I have a chance to play with them, but I do have some first impressions.
Sony Xperia Z Ultra + Sandisk 128GB microSD Card
I was intrigued by the Z Ultra when it first appeared, but it was a bit expensive for what it offered. And at the time I'd recently bought a Nexus 7 and a Nexus 5. Sony recently cut the price by 25%, and I've managed to scratch up my Nexus 5 somehow, so I decided to take the leap.
This is the first Android device I've bought not sold by Google, so (a) it's the first to support microSD cards and (b) it has Sony's UI overlay on top of stock Android. I picked up Sandisk's brand new 128GB microSD card to go with it. Sony only lists support for cards up to 64GB, but the card works perfectly.
It's a huge phone, with a 6.4" 1080p screen, but my real use for it is as a mini-tablet. For that purpose it's almost perfect. The screen is bright and sharp, performance of the Snapdragon 800 CPU is all I could ask, and Sony's UI is unobtrusive. I loaded Nova Launcher on it anyway, and that was quick and painless.
It's easier to list the handful of flaws than the catalogue of things Sony got right:
There's no camera flash.
The headphone jack is at the top right rather than the top of the device.
Sound is a bit tinny - but then, it's waterproof, which makes things tricky.
It only has 16GB of onboard storage.
Of those, only the storage bothers me. Android's support for removable storage is... Limited. Frankly, broken. There's no general way to store apps or arbitrary app data on an SD card. But the big three eaters of space on my other devices are BeyondPod, Audible, and Google Play Music, and all of those support SD cards. (Play Music requires Android 4.4 for this; fortunately, Sony have been good about updates, and after a few reboots I had the Z Ultra running the latest KitKat release.)
With those taken care of, the 16GB - about 11 real GB available after the operating system, restore partition, and stock apps - is just enough. I installed all the critical stuff, like Final Fantasy I through VI, every Kairosoft game so far translated into English, and the thousand-odd books in my Kindle library. Turns out that the biggest remaining space eaters are my subscriptions to Analog, Asimov's, and F&SF. For some reason - apparently unmitigated incompetence - the average issue, while being almost pure text, takes up 80MB.
Physically, the device looks and feels like a small slab of dark glass; it's very thin, only about a quarter of an inch, which contributes to this impression. Very solidly constructed and designed with a certain minimalist elegance.
If you're in the market for a huge phone or a tiny tablet, the Z Ultra is going to be hard to beat.
Western Digital My Book Live 8TB
I have a couple of LaCie 5big NASes. I bought one with 10TB of disk included, and while it was expensive, it worked very nicely except for a certain lack of performance - which turned out eventually to be a problem with my network switch, and not am issue with the NAS at all.
I bought another 5big NAS without disks, and it sucks. The physical UI of the 5big consists of a glowy blue button on the front, which flashes red when it breaks. You manage the device through a web interface.
If you buy a diskless 5big NAS, this doesn't work. In any way whatsoever. It's a $350 sculpted aluminium paperweight. One of the most useless and worst-designed devices I've ever bought.
The Western Digital MBL8TB isn't anything special; it's similar to WD's other two-disk external storage widgets, whether USB or networked.
But it distinguishes itself from the 5big in two important ways: First, it was on sale and cost only a little more than the disks it contained, and second, it actually works.
It took a few minutes to set up - it picked up an IP address from DHCP, and the web UI worked fine. It does about 30MB per second reading or writing.
That said, unless you also find it on sale I wouldn't recommend it. WD's newer My Cloud Mirror and My Cloud EX2 - apparently the same updated hardware but targeted at home and business users respectively - are faster and only a little more expensive at list price.
Crucial M500 960GB
It's a 960GB SSD. It's not made by OCZ. It was, by strange coincidence, on sale. (It's just been replaced by the M550, which is slightly improved but also more expensive.) It wasn't cheap, but it means I don't have to fuss about with a small C drive on my Windows system.
Lenovo PX6-300D
This is another NAS. It's diskless, like the LaCie Paperweight, with six hot-swap bays. But it has a little LCD screen and buttons you can push instead of a big blue light of uselessness. It runs Linux, and has management software by EMC.
It cost over $1000 when it first came out; it's currently on sale for $550 on Amazon, and I picked it up for A$419 including sales tax and delivery. Benchmarks put it at around 95MB/second, which is close to saturating a gigabit ethernet link (of which it has two).
I don't have it set up yet, but should have it working in the next couple of days unless it turns out to be another expensive paperweight.
Update: And now it's gone back up to $900.
Steelseries Apex Gaming
Just a keyboard, albeit one with colour-controlled backlighting and an extra 26 function keys. I spilled a drink on my old keyboard and the Z, 8, and 9 keys stopped working, which was kind of awkward.
1
I'm confused. Are ANY Crucial SSD's made by the best company to ever enter chapter 11 (aka OCZ)?
Posted by: Kevin at Thursday, June 05 2014 05:14 AM (SO0R9)
2
Sorry for the confusion. Crucial is brand name of Micron; they make their own flash memory and SSDs.
What I meant was that the failure rates of OCZ drives was among the worst (if not the worst) of all the SSD manufacturers; that's a large part of why they ended up in chapter 11. The first thing to check with any SSD is that it's not made by OCZ.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, June 05 2014 08:27 PM (PiXy!)
3
Uh oh. I've installed OCZ Vectors in 8(ish) of my neighbor's computers. Sounds like you're saying I've made a terrible mistake.
Posted by: Kevin at Saturday, June 07 2014 02:29 AM (7Kmo3)
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And if she wakes up and sees her shadow, it'll be six more weeks of cleaning up spam.
Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, May 18 2014 08:43 PM (TJ7ih)
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Are we running on slower hardware now? I've noticed that I often have trouble loading my page, sometimes taking upwards of a minute, and sometimes some of the pictures time out.
Also, just now it took me three tries to load this page to get the comment entry box.
By the way, whatever you did that made it so that we didn't have to log in all the time, you need to do it again.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tuesday, May 20 2014 03:04 AM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tuesday, May 20 2014 08:06 AM (RqRa5)
4
I second Steven's comment... everything seemed okay for a few days, but
now The Pond is awfully slow. Actually, every member of Mee/Mu.Nu.via
seems to be slow.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, May 20 2014 11:19 AM (ekFa5)
5
Steven & Wonderduck - Not a hardware issue this time, but a combination of spammers and web spiders. Whacked the spammers; we should be able to cope with the spiders now.
Pete - Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, May 20 2014 12:21 PM (PiXy!)
Quite a while ago we had a situation where people were having to log in a lot, because their previous login timed out and expired. You made some sort of change that lengthened the timeout, I think, so we didn't have that problem anymore.
Whatever you did wasn't in the backup, and we have to log in all the time, again. Could you make that change again?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, June 01 2014 02:36 AM (+rSRq)
10
Preved-Medved
It is a pity, that now I can not express - I ma late for a meeting. I will be released - I will necessarily express the opinion.
Posted by: BenQued at Sunday, June 01 2014 02:07 PM (he/be)
1
Just a head's up in case you thought you were finished fixing your websites - Ace's RSS is still screwed up. First, it connects to a page that tries to redirect (probably only annoying to people who have web redirects turned off, like me), and then it loads the article, followed by the comments, and then the next 10 or so articles and their comments as well. All in ever shrinking blockquotes.
Just fyi in case you're bored.
Posted by: Kevin at Friday, May 16 2014 12:54 AM (Mik+4)
2
Oh dear. I'll get that sorted, thanks for the heads up!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 16 2014 12:55 AM (PiXy!)
1
.... SWG is still down, sir...... as is the mail send and receive function.... is this a DNS issue as well?...... sorry for all the trouble.... I wish that I were there to help... or at least to make the coffee/margaritas!....
Posted by: Eric at Thursday, May 15 2014 10:57 PM (d7gLI)
2
Sorry about that Eric! Your blog is up now; I'll get your email sorted out ASAP.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 15 2014 11:14 PM (PiXy!)
3
.... any word on the DNS updates, sir?...... still can't get to my .com or the .com mail server to send and/or receive......
.... good luck with all the updates!... .
Eric
Posted by: Eric at Friday, May 30 2014 12:02 AM (d7gLI)
Which is worse, kidney stones or Adaptec RAID controllers?
Hard to say. Both lead to sleep deprivation and intense pain, but Adaptec RAID controllers do not literally cause... Uh, I'll just cut of the metaphor at that point if it's all the same to you.
1
Thanks for fixing it up. Are you in the software RAID camp yet?
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Thursday, May 15 2014 12:06 AM (IX6IV)
2
For most cases, yes. The new servers I just set up are software RAID-1 - a pair of disks and a pair of SSDs each. Cheap and easy to set up, and much less that can go wrong.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 15 2014 12:38 AM (PiXy!)
3
Glad to see you are recovering! That was an epic outage.
Posted by: Kurt Duncan at Thursday, May 15 2014 02:00 AM (c/F3T)
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As if you didn't have enough problems, Brickmuppet and Wonderduck are both drowning in spam. (And you are, too.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, May 15 2014 02:02 AM (+rSRq)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 15 2014 02:38 AM (PiXy!)
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Ooooh hate Adaptec RAID controllers. Sorry bout that. Unfortunately, my blog isn't back yet. Still getting the unavailable notice. I tried doing a cache check with Open DNS and it doesn't like it one bit. Luckily I've been too busy fighting with our Adaptec controllers to have much posting time. Ha.
Posted by: Teresa at Friday, May 16 2014 03:40 AM (GxMbS)
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Hi Teresa. Your blog has been restored on the server, but I need to fix your DNS, hang on at tick...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 16 2014 10:20 AM (PiXy!)
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No problem. Like I said, I've been too swamped with stuff lately to blog much. LOL.
Posted by: Teresa at Friday, May 16 2014 10:46 AM (GxMbS)
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Kidneystones. Oh lord on a stick, I had a large kidneystone that threw off what I called kidneygravel for about a year. I thought I was used to the pain.
Then the Big One moved.
What I'm sayin' is, I understand what you experienced.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, May 16 2014 12:40 PM (cx8j7)
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What I had was probably only mid-level on the kidney stone scale. I don't want to think what a really bad bout of kidney stones would feel like.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 16 2014 01:23 PM (PiXy!)
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Steven - the extra bonus plus smilies are back!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 16 2014 01:24 PM (PiXy!)
12I don't want to think what a really bad bout of kidney stones would feel like.
Take what you experienced, then roll it in broken glass. Then set it on fire. Then shoot yourself in the head.
That last part is optional, but it's what I wanted to do.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, May 17 2014 07:29 PM (Izt1u)
Sorry about the outage. We got hit by a meteorite and reduced to our component atoms. It's taken us this long to reassemble into functional molecules.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Thursday, May 01
Indecision
That Dell 24" 4K monitor is currently on sale for $1019. But the sale ends today. But I've just been paid, so today is actually a good time for me to buy it. But I still haven't decided whether I'd prefer the Dell or the (lower quality but more versatile) Samsung.
On the fifth hand, the last couple of times Dell have had this monitor on sale, the end of the sale was followed soon after by a permanent price cut. (From $1699 to $1499 to $1199.) So it may be selling for $999 soon anyway.
When you transform a square-bracket IMG tag into an angle-bracket IMG tag, could you include width and height for them?
In IE when I have a post with a lot of images, the comment entry box placement and the buttons below them are placed before the images load, so they end up in the middle of the post on top of the images.
Clicking on the box moves it to the bottom, but the buttons stay where they were, no longer anywhere near the box.
The reason is that IE's rendering engine doesn't know how big the images are before they load, because you aren't telling them. If you include width and height fields, then the rendering engine will place everything properly even before the images load.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sunday, May 04 2014 04:49 AM (+rSRq)
5
Let me look into that. I can probably fix it without needing to put the image sizes in the HTML. (That's possible too, but the facility to upload zip archives makes it tricky.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, May 05 2014 11:51 PM (PiXy!)
On The Subject Of The Higgs Boson And How We Know For Certain That All That New-Agey Spiritual Crap Is, In Fact, Crap
Sorry, jump forward to about 34:00 to get to the delicious creamy filling. I did have that working, but now it doesn't want to behave.
Though then you'd miss the chocalatey coating, with tidbits like the fact that the amount of energy in the particle beam of the Large Hadron Collider is equivalent to a freight train moving at 100 miles an hour. (Which is why the thing is so big - freight trains have lousy turning circles.)
In essence, any hypothetical event - say, faith healing - can be reduced to particle interactions under Quantum Field Theory. People are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, so whatever happens to us has to interact in some way with those particles.
We know the properties of the known subatomic particles, and none of them allow for faith healing. So if faith healing were real, it would have to be carried by a new, previously unknown particle. And under Quantum Field Theory the properties of that particle would be constrained by the very fact that it interacts in normal, perceptible ways (curing illness) with normal everyday matter.
The trick shown here is that the same equations that describe this hypothetical interaction also describe how new particles are produced in particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider. And the constraints on the properties of our hypothetical faith healing particle include a constraint on its mass. And for our hypothetical particle to interact in perceptible ways with everyday matter, that mass would be low enough that existing particle accelerators would generate it in quantity.
And yet, they don't.
In other words, any such particle would already have been found and catalogued, and the mechanism for faith healing discovered.
Which means that Quantum Field Theory can be correct, or faith healing can be real, but not both. The evidence for Quantum Field Theory is vast; if it were wrong, you would not be reading this, because computers and fibre-optic links simply would not work.
This doesn't mean that there aren't exotic undiscovered particles that show up at very very small scales or at very very high energies. It doesn't mean that we won't find such particles and harness them in advanced technologies. It just means that we know for certain that they play no direct role in our everyday lives.
There are known unknowns in physics; we don't know what dark matter is, and dark energy came as a complete surprise. And there are almost certainly unknown unknowns. But Quantum Field Theory tells us where these unknowns lie, and it's not in our day-to-day world.
Which means that not just faith healing, but anything that affects people in perceptible ways, that disagrees with known physics, is known to be untrue.
So bigfoot isn't ruled out (though it clearly doesn't exist), but ghosts most certainly are. Acupuncture isn't ruled out (though meridians don't exist), but crystals are just pretty rocks. And so on.
We reject all that stuff anyway because it's unsupported by evidence and contradicts well-tested scientific theories, but Quantum Field Theory tells us outright that it cannot be true. If the internet exists, then psychic powers do not. If you have an iPhone, you do not have a guardian angel.
Re Guardian Angel: The answer to your comment is that God created the rules, but God isn't constained by them. He can violate them any time He wants in any way He chooses to.
Thus even if it could be proved that Angels can't exist under Quantum theory, that wouldn't be important. They aren't under it; they're outside it.
(I don't believe this, of course. But it's important for an atheist to understand how the religious think.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, April 28 2014 05:14 AM (+rSRq)
I thought the faith-healing particles were what kept this guy alive...
Posted by: Mikeski at Monday, April 28 2014 07:03 AM (Zlc1W)
3
Steven - yes, special pleading is the first refuge of the wilfully deluded. This result does mean, though, that anyone claiming that their pet idea is supported by (unspecified) science, is consistent with science, that science doesn't know everything, or that it's "quantum" can be shot down immediately.
Then, of course, they too will resort to special pleading, and you can ignore them because they've established that they are immune to logic and evidence.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, April 28 2014 11:31 AM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 29 2014 06:05 PM (PiXy!)
9
Simple substitution. "We know the properties of the known subatomic particles, and none of
them allow for [consciousness]. So if [consciousness] were real, it would
have to be carried by a new, previously unknown particle. And under
Quantum Field Theory the properties of that particle would be
constrained by the very fact that it interacts in normal, perceptible
ways with normal everyday matter."
Consciousness particles don't show up within the Large Hadron Collider; therefore either quantum field theory is wrong or consciousness doesn't exist. Right?
Posted by: Michael Brazier at Tuesday, April 29 2014 06:56 PM (VlMqg)
We know the properties of the known subatomic particles, and none of them allow for [consciousness].
False analogy. Protons, neutrons, and electrons are all that's needed to build the big, complex, electrochemical computers we call brains, and brains are what produce consciousness.
We know this. It's not up for dispute. We are still learning the structural and functional details of the brain, but there are no exotic particles hiding there, and consciousness has no exotic properties that would require them.
This is not true of faith healing, ghosts, magical crystals, psychic powers, or guardian angels. All of those require interactions - and hence particles - with properties outside the Standard Model but with energies that would place them within the Standard Model. That contradiction immediately tells us that they do not exist.
Did you watch the video? If not, please watch it before posting anything else.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 29 2014 08:42 PM (PiXy!)
11
"We are still learning the structural and functional details of the
brain, but there are no exotic particles hiding there, and consciousness
has no exotic properties that would require them."
That's only true if you go all-out into the many-worlds interpretation of QM. With the Copenhagen interpretation, consciousness necessarily has causal effects that are impossible for any known subatomic particle (or really, any possible particle.) And more recent speculations involving an objective reduction process tend to assume that consciousness is a result of that process.
BTW any such process would have to operate at mass scales well above the particles in the LHC experiments, though it can be tested for - it involves placing an object with a mass in micrograms into a quantum superposition, then seeing if the superposition decays.
Posted by: Michael Brazier at Wednesday, April 30 2014 09:34 AM (VlMqg)
That's only true if you go all-out into the many-worlds interpretation of QM. With the Copenhagen interpretation, consciousness necessarily has causal effects that are impossible for any known subatomic particle (or really, any possible particle.)
This sort of statement is always false. Interpretations of QM are just that - interpretations. The calculations you perform and the answers you get are identical no matter how you interpret the result. If you think Many-Worlds makes a different prediction to Copenhagen, you are automatically wrong.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, April 30 2014 12:10 PM (PiXy!)
13
This is my first time pay a quick visit at here and i am
actually pleassant to read everthing at one place.
What the hell is it with Democrats and totalitarian iconography? They don't even seem to care whether they steal from communists, fascists, or movie posters for 1984.
The Hillary poster in particular seems to come from some weird alternate universe in which Eva Peron was an admiral of the Imperial Japanese navy.
Somehow it's been "cool" for a long time, as witness the long term popularity of T-shirts with Che on them, not to mention Mao and Fidel.
It's transgressive. Or something.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, April 21 2014 09:43 AM (+rSRq)
2
Many of them are actual totalitarians, so why WOULDN'T they use the iconography?
Posted by: RickC at Tuesday, April 22 2014 07:41 AM (ECH2/)
3
It's the imagery that surrounded them growing up, that fills their favorite political tomes, that filled the streets of their long-lost Workers Paradise(s).
Posted by: Robert Crawford at Tuesday, April 22 2014 01:33 PM (ECR4N)
4
Seems like a 'younger' Hilary which no one would dare criticise cause you would be a sexist hater.
Posted by: Bobbymike at Tuesday, April 22 2014 02:38 PM (hY7Vw)
It goes hand-in-hand with the Left's attempt at creating their own version of the New Soviet Man. Well, 'New Democrat Person,' since 'Man' shows gender-bias. He/She/It will have no eyes, just like Julia.
Of course, the Democrats have also learned the lessons of the totalitarians of the People's Republic of China, in that they are trying to shape and control the language people uses. Control the language, control the thoughts, even if that ultimately requires reorganizing the alphabet to a bastardized version.
Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, April 22 2014 02:39 PM (G3pCP)
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Let's just say that they are lame hipster douchebag wannabe totalitarians, or are otherwise too ignorant to know.
Posted by: model_1066 at Tuesday, April 22 2014 09:04 PM (tNrYO)
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Ma Rodham is looking to the right, possibly to differentiate her brand from Soetoro's.and remain comfortably familiar at the same time. Or she is keeping an eye on the VWRC.
Posted by: thirdtwin at Tuesday, April 22 2014 09:06 PM (FIe2Q)
So, a reservoir in Portland is to be drained because someone urinated in it. Essentially, they're using 38 million gallons of water to flush the loo.
This is... Something of an overreaction. Apart from the ick factor, and the possibility that the phantom micturator has an implausibly infectious UTI, the toxic substance in urine is urea. And if the entire population of Portland emptied their bladders into that one reservoir, the concentration of urea would still be undetectable by taste or smell and below the allowed limit.*
It isn't actually all that big a deal. The Bull Run watershed produces far more water than the City needs, so this isn't a case of "wasting water in the desert" etc.
Here in the Tualatin valley our water comes from wells. But it isn't fossil water like in Oklahoma. We get 40 inches of rain a year, and most of it is slow rain spread out over days and weeks, which is optimal for getting the rainwater to soak into the ground and replenish the water table. So we don't have any shortage of water either.
An interesting piece of trivia: that reservoir is on Mount Tabor, which is an extinct volcano inside the city limits. Not too many cities have extinct volcanoes inside of them.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, April 19 2014 01:54 AM (+rSRq)
However, it is stupid for a different reason: that reservoir is out in the open. Ducks and geese swim in it, and shit in the water. Always have.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, April 19 2014 03:52 AM (+rSRq)
3
They are aware of that, Steven. But human pee is grosser than animal pee.
No, seriously, that's why they're dumping the water (unless you want to invent some kind of weird conspiracy theory):
"The urine poses little risk - animals routinely deposit waste without creating a public health crisis - but Shaff said he doesn't want to serve water that was deliberately tainted.
"There is at least a perceived difference from my perspective," Shaff said. "I could be wrong on that, but the reality is our customers don't anticipate drinking water that's been contaminated by some yahoo who decided to pee into a reservoir.""
Of course, it might be funny to help the government understand why this is stupid by arranging the need to have the water dumped again a few more times.
Posted by: RickC at Saturday, April 19 2014 08:27 AM (0a7VZ)
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Perhaps now would be a good time for Portland to have a serious discussion about homeopathy.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, April 19 2014 02:19 PM (1CisS)
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Are you kidding? The way homeopaths think stuff works, 1 bladder's worth of urine in 38 million gallons is probably the strongest formulation ever actually made!
Posted by: RickC at Saturday, April 19 2014 02:36 PM (0a7VZ)
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Precisely! And when they drain it, it will become even stronger!
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, April 20 2014 12:17 AM (1CisS)
