#grumpy git

[proud-and-exhausted]

-4°C?! How do you humans stand the cold? It's dreadful.

*he tugs his coat tighter around him with a scowl, gloved hands quickly shoved into his armpits*

I'd set myself on fire to make myself more comfortable but since the human world is so flammable that would be a terrible idea. Why did I agree to come here anyway...

*he continues to mumble and grumble, his shoulders hunching up closer to his ears the more he goes on*

[See, Lu, if you rested properly and took better care of yourself, maybe you wouldn't feel the cold so badly? None of your other brothers complain as much as you d--]

Yes yes, so you've said before. I just...run hot is all. Not designed for the cold.

[Mhm...okay~]

Silence or I will set YOU on fire!

[nickthebookworm]

{12.03.21}

Currently reading:

This is actually one of my TBR pile instead of a new one, can you believe it?!

Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I am a grumpy old man (the kind that would yell at kids who let their ball go in the garden... if I wasn't terrified of confrontation), so this seems like it will probably be a good book for me.

[zerohour1974]

Day 16 : Grumpy Git Returns 12

Hello  people, here we are again in the domain of the dark.  The tech world tyrant  on the edge of complete misery.  Delving into the underbelly of the twisted world of mediocrity so you don't have to.

It's a dirty job but someone has to negotiate the mire... So on the chopping block today...

The Grumpy Git Top 5 of Chocolate Teapots.

Chocolate Teapots in technology are machines that regardless of whether the machine still works.  They have been abandoned by even the most technical.

5.  PDAs of any form

Palm Pilots, Apple Newton and all of the Psion range.  Yes I now this blog has been looking at the Psion 5 but to be honest I really don't believe anything is currently being developed for these machines.

Sure they are available to buy but software is archaic and I doubt anyone is actively developing software.  Even the Linux community who were working on stuff abandoned their projects.

4.  The NeXT Cube & NeXT Slabs

Now I will not deny the NeXT machines were amazing looking machines.  I can see why people like them but I'm afraid that NeXTStep and OpenStep are long gone regarding current software.

You can definitely see where a lot of the Mac OS X came from but still development for these machines is long gone.

3.  Sun Micro SPARC Stations

Sun were the kings of CAD system in the eighties and nineties but although you can still get them.  They really are pretty useless.unfortunately.

Sure Solaris can still be downloaded but even Sun (Oracle) have abandoned SPARC platforms.  They won't stop you downloading the software but don't expect any support.

Even the Linux community have abandoned SPARC when Debian decides your platform is being marginalised you know the machine is effectively dead.  It seems playing with the SUN is not as easy as once was.

2.  SGI Machines

Yep as much as I like the look of Irix.  As nice as the SGI machines look aesthetically with models such as the Indigo, Indigo II and Tezro.  Thing is these machines had a lot of custom hardware so finding it will either cost you an arm and a leg, then even if you can get the hardware finding drivers is equally as difficult.

Like a lot of these machines software is very limited and to be honest while you can find some software its not exactly a large catalogue as these were marketed as pretty specialist graphics machines.

As such as they were nice to look at they are definitely in Chocolate Teapot Territory

1.  DEC Alpha systems

This one does pain me as the DEC Alpha was a processor I always wanted to run.  Obviously now they are becoming rarer every day and prices escalate every time I check.

Obviously DEC Alpha systems were primarily servers involved as data systems and graphics work.  However even if you get the hardware which is tough.  Finding Alpha software is not simple at all.

You may be able to run Windows software and using the multiple pass hardware conversion system you will eventually convert to Alpha level software. I've heard this conversion system once done is incredibly fast but to be honest I have never seen it in action so I only have the speculation of such.

Would I love to get my hands on a 21364 system.  Yes I would.  Is it a Chocolate Teapot most definitely

What Chocolate Teapot Technology would you like to get hold of..

[zerohour1974]

The Grumpy Git Returns

YouTube doesn’t want your content...

Hello people, I’m back and I have news for all of you out there.  It seems that YouTube is back on the controversy bus.  It seems apparently if your content is not seen as kid friendly or does not labelled itself as adult content then they will demonetise you.

Well got news for you... Its been an ongoing campaign over the last few years on YouTube.  It really started with the Adpocalypse where many well known YouTubers were getting their videos demonetised left right and centre.

People seem to forget that YouTube is a video site ran by Google.  Sure when it started it was an independent site but for many years it has been a Google asset.

To begin with Google didn’t really care what the content was as it was trying to push the site as somewhere to put video stuff.  So it was open to accepting almost anything that was thrown at it.

It succeeded in that respect and now it is one of the largest collection of videos out there on the Internet.  Several unknown artists became household names and made quite a lot of profit from YouTube.

But ultimately the bubble had to burst and man has it done so quite spectacularly.

First it started with YouTube Red aka putting content behind a paywall system.  Then came the Adpocalypse as I said.  This made people aware of the algorithm.

Yes YouTube uses an algorithm that decides what is going to be seen and what is not going to be promoted.  You Tube doesn’t care whether your content is entertaining, whether it is informative, whether it is worth watching.

They are only interested if they can make money from you and the only way they do that is by advertising.

YouTube is free so it has to maker money to pay for all the required bandwidth, servers etc.  So they have two ways of doing that.  One is data mining using all of the analytics it gets from, showing these videos and selling that data on. Two is to put advertising among your videos.

Data mining was frowned on recently after the Facebook Cambridge Analytica controversy.  When it was discovered just how much these sites are actually mining from you.

And I will tell you now.  No matter how much you want to believe your privacy is safe....You are being data mined.  When you watch YouTube it takes information such as the browser you are using, your location if it can gathered from your IP, the length of time you watch, the types of video content you watch, its all being stored by YouTube and sold to the highest bidder.

Similar with any social media the information, photos, etcetera you put up is been scraped of data and stored somewhere.  Why do you think it is free.  They need to be getting something in return that makes them money.

However due to the likes of the EU hounding the likes of Facebook and Google and all of the other social media platforms out there they are having to lower their amount of data mining in the public eye or be subject to heavy fines.

So such social networking companies are having to fall back on their second source of revenue.  Advertising.

However that is not easy any more as many people now use Ad blocking software on their browsers.

Also people are now much more aware of the data collection of them so with the introduction of VPN services a lot of the data these companies are now receiving is false.

What data the VPN companies are getting and what they are doing with it is probably a topic of discussion for another day but can they be trusted any more than the likes of Google we will see.

Because they are getting data.

Anyway back on point YouTube have now had to resort to getting a major revenue stream via Advertisers and these guys want to maximise that at every chance they get.

So the only way they can do that is to find content that can be seen as advertiser friendly.  So they don’t want your opinion pieces, they don’t want controversy, they don’t want anything that can not be seen as anything other than content they can monetise.

Now you have Coppa which is now being levelled at the YouTube community.

Even though this is down to Google itself and its data mining of minors, they are trying now to palm off the costs to the few remaining YouTube people who are still making money and trying to get them to foot the bill for Google’s mistake by now demonetising anything not suitable to kids.

This is why I am telling you Google doesn’t want your content.  They don’t want you to have strong opinions, don’t want you to be critical of anything, they want you to be neutral and nice to everyone and open to all viewers as that’s what Coca Cola, Snickers, or any other other major advertiser wants to be seen as.

So YouTube wants to be a bland, none confronting, all inclusive content platform where every one can feel safe from harm and no one can be offended or have an opinion that can be misconstrued as harmful in anyway.

Don’t like a game, Don’t like some music, Like some sort of thing better than others.  YouTube doesn’t want that.  That can be controversial.

Controversy means people take notice of you but not for the right reasons. They are not here to bring the platform money.  They may bring views but as I said to you earlier.  That is no longer a viable working money model to them as that’s data mining.

That has just cost the likes of Google several Billion to the EU so that is not profitable.

So Google is slowly trying to push people off its service and making itself the most generic video service on the earth.  Where they can advertise to kids, and all of their content is safe beyond controversy.

Why people still use YouTube well sadly it’s still the largest video platform.  However it is slowly wiping out its content which got it there in the first place and not encouraging anyone to adopt the platform by keep setting bars higher and higher to monetise.

Will YouTube die.  Not any time soon and the criticism will continue to be pushed out onto the platform by YouTubers  themselves to which nothing will be done.

Unless there is a sudden surge in a video provider which I can’t see happening any time soon.  Then YouTube can do what the hell they want as there is no one who can really compete or challenge them.

I repeat YouTube doesn’t want your content unless it’s generic, has no real opinion and is purely positive about everything.

And that’s the bottom line...

[zerohour1974]

Finger Dyslexia? I just can’t type …

I have “dyslexic” fingers… To explain what I mean, no matter what I intend to type even though I am a reasonably quick typist sometimes my fingers go there either before or after my brain meaning that keys or words just get completely messed up.

It’s also why I am a piss poor guitarist as my fingers kind of get ahead of themselves and fuck things up majorly.

I have absolutely no accuracy and my mind may be running at a million miles an hour but my fingers just struggle to type properly even though I have worked with keyboards for years and years.

It’s not that I can’t spell I can I just can’t type without mistakes. I don’t hunt and peck like some people do I can manage to find keys just not always press them correctly.

I just can’t seem to type consistently even though after all this time I should be able to type hundreds of words a minute but I can’t as my fingers are drunk I seem to hit extra keys add letters or completely miss spaces and it’s frustrating as hell.

In order for me to maintain a level of typing which isn’t totally illegible I have to level my concentration up and even then it fails me. It seems no matter how hard I focus on the keyboard my fingers just refuse to hit the right keys what the hell is wrong with my brain.

It drives me round the bend as my fingers are just so uncoordinated and its painful to think that I can’t type as fast as my mind is working without a major slowdown. If I don’t add keys that are adjacent to the key I want to hit due to hitting between two keys I get doubles of the same letter as my keyboard is adding a repeat due to my lack of delay.

Truly it is a frustrating thing because I really don’t understand why after all this time my fingers should just know where to go on a keyboard but then again I don’t follow the standard home keys setup of the typists of old because this isn’t a typewriter.

Even when I used a typewriter I never could do the home keys nonsense. I could type considerably quicker than most but I never could get muscle memory to develop to do such as instructed in the RSA typing courses.

It’s the same with a guitar no matter how much I seem to sit with it the muscle memory just doesn’t develop I kind of improvise the fingering rather than following the adapted methods used by musicians and I am bloody hopeless because of it. My fingers just get confused and end up in the wrong place.

It’s ludicrous when you think about it given I have been using keyboards since I was 8 years old I should be able to type consistently by now, but no that is not the case.

I type like a drunk man walking down the street very rarely do I manage to get through an entire paragraph without some complete gibberish which makes no sense and I have to go back and correct the damned thing.

Part of it wonders is it my ADHD brain getting totally messed up as even if I look at my fingers to do this I still manage to type so many mistakes its unreal.

If I didn’t go back and correct the many mistakes I make this entire thing would be completely unreadable. To prove a point I will type the next section without any correction.

So any mistakes that I make when typing this complet selection I| qam going to intyentionally leve in and see just how ridiculoius the typing truly gets

There you go, yes you can probably interpret what the hell I want to type but is got lots of stupid addition letters and mistakes, which no matter how hard I try not I completely fuck it up.

How is that even possible after all these years of typing I should be an absolute expert when it comes to typing as I have literally typed hundreds of thousands of words worth on various keyboards over the years.

I really wish I could explain the phenomenon but I really can’t it is totally beyond any form of reasoning or explanation. It’s as if my brain or my fingers have some form of mental block. There is definitely a communication breakdown between my brain and what my fingers do.

It is worrying because no matter how hard I try and concentrate on it the worse it seems to get. If I focus on every key press my brain seems to misfire even more and I type more mistakes then if I just let it flow.

I doubt I am the only person who has this phenomenon. In fact you should have a typing session and see what happens when you type at speed. Unless you have been classical typing trained do you type using this strange mistake making style or am I just an idiot.

Honestly I don’t have an answer for it I really don’t. Is it an ADHD brain thing? Am I mentally broken somewhere? Is it an issue to do with dexterity? After all its nothing wrong with my eyes its just my fingers either hit between keys and add extra letters or my fingers just doesn’t know when to stop.

I can see the entire keyboard so it is not an issue of sight, more that my hands just travel too fast over the keys and do things either before or after I should rather than being accurate.

It really is perplexing why such the two just will not sync up no matter how much I type if anything the more I type the worse it seems to get as my brain starts to run faster than I can actually type and things just become a complete mess.

It doesn't matter what type of keyboard I use either. Whether its a laptop keyboard or a mechanical keyboard I have tested with many different types and sizes I still make major mistakes when typing.

It truly is fascinating… Finger Dyslexia ?

[zerohour1974]

What Happened?

Why do I seem to have lost interest in everything computer related? I used to love playing with old machines but to be honest lately my heart has really fallen out of the industry.

I just don’t seem to enjoy playing with this stuff. I used to like messing around with emulators and playing with things like DOS but now I feel like I have played around and done most things I can do in that field.

I had an interest in Linux but to be honest it seems to have faded. Maybe because I have hit the limits of my hardware so I don’t have any areas to explore.

People have always said I have had an esoteric choice of machines I like. Although I admit my first machine was a 48k ZX Spectrum back in 1983 as common as you get. I have always been interested in the more obscure or failing machines.

I have always had an interest in machines such as the MSX machines, PC Engines & Sharp X68000. This is because they were not on every computer shop in town. They didn’t make huge impact at all in the UK where I am based.

Obviously a lot of the software is in Japanese and I have no ability to read Hiragana, which is what it normally is. So even if I get emulation running I have no idea what its about or what I am supposed to be doing if it’s beyond basic menus.

I also like machines like the NeXT, which was also not hugely available so when to get to see them I am really interested.

I then used OpenStep 3.3. via the emulator called Previous and really discovered how little software is actually available for this system. However using it really did show how much NeXTStep is still in Mac OS X even to this day.

Why do I prefer typing in old word processors like this one and Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS or LocoScript PC. Give me a copy of LibreOffice or Modern Word and I sit and stare at a blank page.

I also seem to type more if you give me a minimalist word processor like Writeroom or Focuswriter. So maybe it’s a psychological thing.

It seems the more obscure the item is the more my interest is.

I also have a vast interest in running things in emulators. I have no ability to write said emulators but have always had a fascination in seeing if I can do it on said machines.

It started when I got my first 486 SX25 . The first emulator I ran was JPP in DOS to emulate a ZX Spectrum. Then I found things like Z80 and Magic Engine I bought keys for both. The Magic Engine key I still have and still works but the Z80 one went AWOL a long time ago.

It was cool to subvert the machine make it doe something it was not designed by trade to do, It was exciting and when you got something working it was cool.

I then found things like Nesticle, (NES) Genecyst (Genesis/Mega Drive) and Callus (CPS1) from Blood software and I entered a rabbit hole of emulation. BSNES and ZSNES (both SNES ) and things like M72 (Irem M72 boards), RAINE (CPS1/2) and MAME.

Obviously I remember MAME when it started and would only run 5 games but it sharp managed to keep adding more and more games, making it very interesting at the time.

MAME of course is still going today and can do lots of things as it now includes many of the older projects being amalgamated into it. It now includes MESS, (Multi Emulation Super System), MFME (Multi Fruit Machine Emulator) and PINMAME (Pinball DMD roms).

All of these at one point had separate instances but now MAME coves them all including the ever growing arcade roms and architectures it supports.

As well as multi machine emulators like MAME. Several arcades had their own dedicated programs. I remember things like The New Zealand Story and the 4 player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had their own dedicated emulators written for them.

Obviously over the years many emulators have come and gone and the images of the roms have been upgraded or updated. I think I saw recently that if you wan t to emulate some of the newer systems on MAME such as Sega M1 or Naomi upwards you need to use CHD (Compressed Hunks of Data) files and if you want a complete collection of such then you need over 10TB worth of hard drive space.

Which is ludicrous considering that half of them don’t work very well due to requiring a beefy CPU to run said games and lots of GPU memory to create the virtual graphics cards.

So machines without a eight-core processor or higher and anything less than a Nvidia 3000 series graphics card need not apply.

Over the years the emulators have continued covering all major platforms and even to this day as I said MAME continuers its quest. However even more recent platforms are not safe from the emulators.

They have emulation for Xbox 360, Playstation 2 & 3 and even a Switch emulator. In fact was just announced about RPCS4, Orbital, PS4EMX, PS4Emus they have got Playstation 4 emulation now in the functional stages.

Scary stuff. I love emulation even though I could not program one to save my life. I just like seeing a machine running something it was not intended to do.

This is also why I used to like playing with Hackintosh stuff because it was once again subverting what the machine is. The PC was not supposed to run Mac OS X but the fact that someone managed to get such things running was absolutely fascinating.

People have accused me of being quite brutal on machines because I tend to try and get these emulators to work or run software never designed for it. The fact that things such as emulators and the various VMs to run obscure stuff I am not the only one who wants to do this.

Thankfully they do exist because if you were waiting on me to write such it would never happen as I just don’t have that sort of skill or knowledge.

Of course the new Apple Silicon has pretty much made the Hackintosh redundant and also I really didn’t quite understand how to get OpenCore working it was far too complex for my limited brain.

Normal stuff like PC gaming or consoles don’t appeal to me very much until they become a challenge to run them. As I said I like the obscure I like the having to resort to unorthodox methods.

I would be the type if I did play PC games and got good I would have to beat Call of Duty 904 with a Steering wheel just be obnoxious. I’m not going to do that so don’t look to find it.

Obviously as I said new emulators require machines far beyond my reach at the moment but one day who knows I may get back up in the high end PC market again.

Until then I type this nonsense on a iBook G4 using Microsoft Word 2008 then probably upload it using my Dell i7 M6800 laptop to Tumblr.

However to answer the question what happened. I think I have played with most of the obscure things and now I have nothing to do or see.

Going back to the run of the mill is boring and I honestly find most modern games and consoles lifeless. They may be photo realistic and have 4k graphics and more but have about as much excitement to me as a pebble.

However if I get a high end PC I will definitely try and emulate the consoles I don’t care about currently as it something the PC isn’t supposed to be doing. As I said it’s a psychological thing or basically I’m just weird.

[heretic-deb]

Grumpy Git - Results and Winner!!

Grumpy Git – Results and Winner!!

A reminder of the entries first of all:

Entry A

Entry B

Judge 1 – Nerodine – said this:

I like that both entries thought on their basing, and decided to push the sculpted theme a little further.

Entry A – Good palette and great use of colour. Yellow accent colour works well to break up the space. – Love the colour glow brought onto the base and a cheeky bit of colour blending there. Would…

View On WordPress

[zerohour1974]

Day 15 : Grumpy Git Returns 11

Hello people, here we are again at the well of infinite misery.  Pondering what hell today will bring with it.  As usual the tech world is more than adequate at delivering misery firmly to your door.

So on that joyously somber note I take another delve into the eternal pit so you don't have to.  Today's discussion is ...

WSL is anyone actually using it, and can we trust it...

WSL is a Microsoft product and to give it it's full title ... Windows Subsystem for Linux.  Now that immense mouthful basically is a compatability layer that allows certain Linux programs and files to be ran under Windows.

Now recently it has been updated to version 2.0 but very few people used version 1.   So who is it aimed at, primarily its aimed at developers who wish to write a piece of software and see if it can be ran in Linux.

As far as I'm aware it has a very basic graphics driver and in version 1 I believe it was purely terminal based applications that would run.

Now I don't think I need to go into the Microsoft vs Linux debate as I am sure it's been debated to death.  But Microsoft are now members of the Linux Foundation board and are trying to embrace Linux to some degree.

First there was Azure Sphere OS which is a Linux distribution completely ran by Microsoft.  Now WSL is designed so you can run Linux programs under Windows.

This is a complete turn around obviously for Microsoft since the notorious Steve Ballmer days where he declared Linux as a cancer.  However even with Microsoft embracing the Linux culture. it doesn't naturally follow suit that the Linux community has embraced them.Many still think Microsoft are implementing their EEE philosophy.  For those who have no idea what that is I will explain it.  

The first E stands for Embrace, where Microsoft show an interest in a product they have had no interest in whatsoever previously and suddenly keep going on like its the best thing since sliced bread.  So far pretty simple.

The second E is Extend, now this is where Microsoft write a program using said new product and adds features exclusive to the Microsoft platform which don't necessarily follow the previous ones.   For example Sun Microsystems (Oracle) sued Microsoft for modifying the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) because Microsoft added features which no other JVM had and the idea of the JVM was it was universal.  Sun won this case and the Microsoft JVM has been replaced with the standard JVM in every version of Windows since.

The third E is Extinguish now this is the scary one.  Microsoft push their way into a market, twiddle with it then the original version is seen as inferior.  So more people use the Microsoft version putting the original version into either liquidation or making it seem archaic and obsolete.  Just look at Word Perfect for an example of that.  They were one of the biggest suppliers of word processing software but Microsoft created Office.  Was it a better product not necessarily but it became the norm.  Now many will say you can still buy Word Perfect software.  You probably can but it put the Word Perfect Corporation almost out of business and since then the property has passed from company to company such as Novell, Corel and I think its owned by a venture capitalist company now.

So it's easy to see the Linux community concerns.  So far they have had the Embrace of them joining the Linux Foundation, WSL is been seen as the Extend phase so many are wondering wen Microsoft start the Extinguish phase.

I think also what doesn't help matters is Canonical the people behind Ubuntu seem to be working with Microsoft to enhance WSL.  Now many have speculated regarding ho Canonical have become something strange.  Many speculating they really needs a buyer.  Microsoft is the one company that could quite easily afford to buy Canonical so its easy to see why people are suspicious.

Is Microsoft just being decent human beings realising Linux's potential now that Sataya Nadella is at the helm.  Himself the ex head of the enterprise software division before becoming CEO.

Or is Microsoft just preparing for battle knowing Linux on the desktop is in decline and moving in for the kill.if you look at the server side of things.  Microsoft know Linux has them beaten so that's a market they know they can't remove.  They themselves use Apache servers to run their online operations.

The desktop version of Linux is definitely waning as the figures suggest.  Can they slay Linux at desktop level.  Wouldn't be the first time they have tried to do such.

Can Microsoft be trusted, who knows...