Vakkotaur

Penguicon 2012 may be history or nearly so, but Penguicon 2013 is another matter. This time I'm not waiting around and doing things at the last minute. No, this time I am giving myself, and you, nearly a year to ponder, think, consider, scheme, or conspire as the case may be.

I'd like to avoid repeat recipients if possible, so that it isn't "Oh, ACME only delivers to that group." That's at an individual level. It certainly makes sense for, say, a Guest of Honor to get something, but "So & so gets something every year" is what I am concerned about.

( Advise ACME )

I've now stuffed the motherboard with the most CPU cores that it can handle with the X6 (though not the fastest CPU it could take - that's actually an X4 at the moment) and with all the RAM it can handle. The next upgrades are not urgent, or should not be. I have a choice of which way to go, but both are video.

Right now I am using a Samsung SyncMaster 930B monitor. It's a 19-inch diagonal LCD[1] in the 4:3 (non-widescreen) format. If/when I replace it, it will be with something widescreen and at least 25-inch diagonal. Anything less will be physically shorter and I know that will bother me even with a higher resolution. I am considering going to 27-inch - why mess around? I'd want LED backlit LCD and some sort of digital connector. DVI or HDMI will do.

I am also using an ATI Radeon HD 3870 video card (256-bit interface to 512 MB GDDR4, 320 stream processor, 16 texture/render units - if I am reading the right specs correctly). I could upgrade that. But to what? First, I would not go with another ATI. ATI might win benchmarks but I won't be at the expensive high end anyway. I will NOT be buying any $700(!!) video card or such. nVidia has open source drivers that work and work well. ATI... doesn't. And ATI's proprietary Linux drivers... give one good reason to seek open source alternatives. Allegedly those are coming, but they aren't here yet. Also, supposedly nVidia does OpenGL better and that's something that has become important to me. Thus nVidia wins.

But even so what parts matter? Does the amount of memory matter? Or rather, where does it cease to matter very much? Is there significant gain from 512 MB to 1 GB? Is there similar gain from 1 to 1.5 GB? From 1.5 to 2 GB? Is the big thing the move from GDDR4 to GDDR5? Or does it not even matter much and the number of stream processors or texture renders more important? Or is it some complex formula and there is no simple answer beyond "Get as much as you can afford"? And there is the possibility that I really wouldn't get any significant gain from a change at all.

Assuming that a video card upgrade is a Good Idea, is it better to do that first or would I be better off with a larger display first?

While at Penguicon I found myself pondering actually using Twitter for more than Orvan's odd moo (or very odd moos...). Before, I only used Twitter via the web interface since that was all I needed, I had a {dumb, feature} phone, and no data plan at all. Now I have a limited data plan, wifi capability, and a phone that I can almost type on that can deal with Twitter clients.

I know Twitter, being short text, is not much data - but I want to be sure that client knows my intentions (rather than AT&T's) which are: Use wifi first, fall back to regular data if I have the client active (and it will be inactive much of the time, I expect), and ideally never use SMS. Or use SMS only on my explicit say-so. Ideally that last with a nice "This will be overcharged. Do you really want to overpay for bits?" confirmation.

Being capable of multiple accounts would be nice (hey, Orvan doesn't want to be left behind...) but is not a deal-breaker.

Any recommendations? And if anyone needs to know, I am trying to not (need to) root the phone.

Due to some curious circumstances (a mix of bad & good) my new computer hardware is almost paid off, which means it's time to at least think about what to do next. I am no longer sure, but I had thought that the best bet was add memory first, and upgrade the processor later. Right now I am running a dual-core CPU and 2 GB of RAM. I want to go to, eventually, a six-core CPU and 16 GB of RAM.

I find I am using some swap, so more RAM is probably the right way to go. That still leaves a question or two. I can go cheap or I can go fast, but is the difference even going to be noticeable? The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-890XA-UD3 which according the manual can take DDR3 1866(though it may need overclocking work, which I am a bit leery of)/1333/1066 MHz. From Newegg:

$189.99 DDR3 1066 (PC3 _8500) CAS: 7 Timing: 7-7-7-18
$249.99 DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) CAS: 7 Timing: 7-7-7-21
$299.99 DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) CAS: 9 Timing: 9-10-9-28

For what it's worth, I am currently using 2 GB of 1333 with a CAS of 9.

While I'm currently using a "slow" CPU (Athlon II X2 4400e, which is an unlocked Sempron at 2.7 GHz) I will be going to something faster all around. My suspicion is that if it weren't for Phoenix (or Firestorm or other Second Life client) it wouldn't matter at all. But with that there, there might be some advantage to the faster RAM. I don't know. I am not versed in gaming-type system requirements and specifications.[1] Any advice?

I'm not asking about the CPU as things might change by the time I get to that part. Also, the price differences between the least of what I would consider and the fastest thing I can (now) get and use isn't all that big.

No, not about desiring a drink, but about humidity. Cold air can hold less moisture than warm air, and thus Winter is rather dry. This is apparent in how much more static (clinging clothes, electrical discharges) there is in the Winter. A few days ago I bought hygrometer to see just what the indoor relative humidity was. It has been solidly at 16%, save for the time I put it in the bathroom while taking a shower. The listed range of the detector is 20% to 95% so that 16% is likely wrong, but it does tell me it's too dry. Ideally, relative humidity should be in the range of 25% to 55%.

The obvious answer to the problem is to get a humidifier. The problem is, which one? I've looked around the web a bit and decided I do not want to go with an ultrasonic type, and I'd rather not go with a "warm mist" type due to the power draw, and that leaves the "cool mist" type. Even within that, which one? Inexpensive is good, but I'd like to avoid cheap - I want the humidity in the air, not spilled all over things I'd rather not have get wet. I don't need to see a visible plume of moisture. Something that just unobtrusively works is what I desire.

Any suggestions?

I've been wanting a portable (wearable) music player of a modern type (that is, an mp3 player rather than a Walkman) for a while. jmaynard had suggested I use his iPod. This falls under the "Great idea, almost" category as evidently one needs to use iTunes (and therefore Not Linux) to get it do things like load up files from a computer, which is rather the point of the thing.

My searches have shown that some folks can get the iPod to work with Linux, but it involves wiping the thing clean and since Jay has a bunch of stuff on it, I don't consider that a real option. Also, I don't know if it can then deal with silly Apple-specific encodings after that. I did install banshee and gtkpod which together are supposed to allow one to use an iPod with Linux. It half-way works. I can plug the thing in and it shows up. I can read the music of it. Put anything on it? Nope. Despite the claims, it refuses to do that.

So I have a couple questions and I will preemptively eliminate three unacceptable answers:

1. Use a Mac! If I wanted to do that, I would be doing that. Not a realistic option.
2. Use Windows and iTunes. See #1, add profanity for emphasis.
3. Use Windows iTunes under WINE. I'm reluctant, at best, to deal with WINE and iTunes is right out. I don't need that ill-mannered headache.

What I do need is one of these:

1. A means of using, including getting mp3 file TO it, the iPod from Linux.
-or-
2. A recommendation of a Linux-friendly mp3 player.

While option 1 is certainly less expensive monetarily, I like option 2 as then the device will be mine and I can do what I like without having to be careful to preserve someone else's music and such - and random playing won't be likely to drop me into stuff I'd delete or never have loaded up in the first place.

My idea of an mp3 player that works is one that I plug in via USB and it's simply a USB drive and I can do drag & drop copying to files to (and from) it without having to muck about with silly translations. Inexpensive is always a plus. I've seen a few fairly inexpensive portable mp3 players, but they give no indication that they work with anything but Windows. Maybe they work fine with Linux, but I'm not about to blow money in this so-called economy on something might be, for me, utterly useless. High capacity is good, but not essential. 4, 2, or even 1 GB might not be much nowadays, but even 1 GB that works will easily beat out 60 GB that doesn't work.

Some places are already playing Christmas music and nothing but Christmas music. This is rather early, I think, for that. The inclusion of the occasional winter tune might be acceptable, but full-on Christmas music shouldn't happen until after Thanksgiving if it happens at all. My problem with Christmas music isn't that I don't like it. It's not even necessarily the repetition, though by now there ought to be enough tunes that repeats shouldn't need to happen frequently, and that's counting by title rather than by performance. It's the poor quality of every b-list,c-list, d-list... z-list quasi-celebrity cover of tunes that have been better by better. While White Christmas might not require Bing Crosby and Here Comes Santa Claus might not require Gene Autry, they are destroyed by various wannabes and also-rans putting their undesired mark on them. One thing I will agree with the bletcherous Beavis and Butthead on: "Michael Bolton can make anything suck."

I know there are some radio stations with an all-Christmas format, but the places where one encounters this most are stores that have Muzak or such (no commercials save what the store adds) and those seem to be sanitized of the more interesting Christmas and Winter tunes, such as Christmas At Ground Zero.

Now I'm pondering the interesting not-so-standard Christmas and Winter tunes. I know of a few:

Christmas At Ground Zero - Weird Al Yankovic
Happy Hairy Hippie Santa Claus ("You bet your sweet bippy Santa Claus is a hippie...")
Rusty Chevrolet - Da Yoopers
My Car Won't Go - Da Yoopers
I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas - Yogi Yorgesson
A Christmas Carol - Tom Lehrer
I'm Spending Hanukkah In Santa Monica - Tom Lehrer

Any others that wouldn't be all that likely to played in a store, but might provide some welcome relief if they were?

A couple days ago I saw a store display of colorful dried or candied fruit that was clearly meant for fruitcake and so I've been thinking about fruitcake. Fruitcake, some say, is a nasty unwanted (and probably dry brick-like) thing. This has become a joke in The Single Fruitcake Theory: "There is only one fruitcake and people keep sending it to each other." Others say that sure, bad fruitcake can be a dry brick that might only be budged by thermonuclear weaponry, but there is good fruitcake if only you can find or make the stuff.

I've not encountered the truly miserable fruitcake, but I suppose I've sampled some so-so stuff due to the effects of commercial mass production. And now I'm pondering making a fruitcake so that I have control the quality - or lack thereof. But I haven't done this before and I have no idea what a good recipe is. There are several variations.

Some recipes soak the thing in rum. Others call for brandy. Others call for whisk(e)y. Some say substitute orange juice for the spirits, while others don't mention any spirits at all. So one question is: spirits or not? If so, which? And if brandy, which flavor? I'm not a huge fan of apricot. I don't really dislike apricot, I'm just not that fond of it.

Another question is, should I do this? I don't mean in the "Aie! A fruitcake! Run!" sense, but I've mainly just been baking cookies (scratch), simple bread (scratch), and the odd cake (mix). Is this a reasonable step or a flying leap?

And of course there is the Big Question even assuming the others are answered and I proceed: Which recipe ought I go with?

Shamelessly swiped from towyncoyote's post Species stereotypes..

In furry fandom foxes, deservedly or not, have a certain reputation. What of other animals/creatures? Naturally I am most curious about the ones close to me. Thus I am curious as to what folks might think of:

* Horses

* Centaurs

* Bovines (Ox/Bull)

* Warners (the species of Yakko, Wakko, and Dot)

And if there's anything else that comes to mind, especially that you might somehow associate with me, I'm curious about that too.

Fill in the blank:

_____ and tonic.


The reason I ask will be revealed later.