Friday 22 April 2011
The Sushi FAQ - The Definitive Guide to Sushi and Sashimi
The Sushi FAQ - The Definitive Guide to Sushi and Sashimi
just thought i'd try the "share this" button. i love sushi - and my dream is to be able to make it just like the chef at Hasekura used to make - Takeshi, here's to you kid, your sushi was the best i have ever tried.. and i tried a few.
Sunday 17 April 2011
WD hard drives are ok, after all.
Ok, two days ago something happened to my PC - a power-related problem, that ctually wound up frying one of the SATA ports on my motherboard, and it led to me discovering that i have made a mistake .. a grevious mistake, in my build, 3 years ago (!!!) that i just only discovered.
Yes, i somehow had a SATA power connector taking electricity from a fan cable - don't ask me how, i must have been really tired when i was setting up, because i missed that in PC building, a cable can take power as well as send it - ie, a connector isn't exclusively male or female, and after all these years i understand that this was the source of all my stability problems.
Well, just so that you should know, i can now excuse the drives - Western Digital is back at the top of the list - though, Seagate might just be as good, as they price everything lower.
I am such a n00b ..
Yes, i somehow had a SATA power connector taking electricity from a fan cable - don't ask me how, i must have been really tired when i was setting up, because i missed that in PC building, a cable can take power as well as send it - ie, a connector isn't exclusively male or female, and after all these years i understand that this was the source of all my stability problems.
Well, just so that you should know, i can now excuse the drives - Western Digital is back at the top of the list - though, Seagate might just be as good, as they price everything lower.
I am such a n00b ..
Saturday 16 April 2011
Bokken at it again.
I need to get back to training.
It's been a few days since i realized i need to get back in shape, and by that i don't mean running in East Ham Central Park, but lifting weights and dieting. Today, for example, i have steamed broccoli florets (from Iceland, £1 a bag, two meals out of each bag) and plain boiled rice.
I guess the point of diet is mostly psychological, not trying to make your food tasty yet light, but to actually do without the taste aspect - otherwise, you are always craving for more.
So back to my crash diet, plain carbohydrates, zero fat, zero sugars, steamed vegetables, minute amounts of calories (except for rice), and mad static exercise. Coffee, taurine if you will (man that stuff is sooo harmful to health), creatine to power up during exercise, sleep on empty stomach, no breakfast, etc.. brutal.
One thing i learned during my last diet - besides the fact that i was right on everything i thought i knew - is that my body should consume, and spend, at least five-thousand calories a day to be on the healthy side, not feeling hungry and miserable but also being fit, but as you can immagine, that is truly impossible; you see, it's assumed in that statement that you get there by doing something fun, and since i'm not wrestling or swimming anymore, i have no way to get that much sport in my life. Also - i should mention - i have no money to even buy, 5K calories of good food.
I wish this blog was so much more .. than just whining. I'm listening to BBC news, now, open in iPlayer in another tab in Chrome, and they are talking about the purchase of the Typhoon (the "Eurofighter"), and of course i have something to say about that as well - as i have opinions, strong ones to boot, on just about everything i see, read about, and hear - but have no energy to write about all of it.. two things then i think i should do.
1) I'm not really enamored with blogging, but it's not bad - just an activity, nice but not really that productive.
I'm absolutely sure that better results would come if i stuck with one subject instead of making it a random whine blog, as people who chance upon it might keep coming back to it if they find stuff that they find useful;
However the reason i never did something like that, is because i have always found some better website than anything i could do, no matter what the subject.
For example, HERE is a brilliant website (all free, of course) that deals with - amongst other things - audio, and this guy is not only a qualified technician (or scientist, should i say, for it is science he deals with, even though we assume "scientist" means "researcher"), but he obviously has some real hands-on experience, amking him quite the authority on the subject. This i have seen in all subjects that i have any knowledge of, or that i enjoy and/or find myself good at, and should anyone need information on the subject, i would address them to that website or the other - one thing i would *not* do, is try to water down the web by setting up a not-quite-as-good website just to get attention, or "traffic". Example n.2 : my Advisor at Ingeus is a person very active in business, as in he "owns dating websites" and "sells ebooks" and "wrote a book about DJ'ing", and kudos to him, but.. his websites are crappy, and they are more of a ripoff than anything; eBooks are something you should give away, not sell, and finally he isn't really the authority on DJ'ing, so .. honesty, and being concerned with the wellbeing of my fellow men prevents me from trying to push my inferior products when better stuff/info is out there, expecially when the better stuff is free.
Sure, i know a thing or two about audio, but i'm far from the biggest guru on the web - and the same goes for all the people who post on YouTube their great efforts and pass themselves as kings of their trade when they are in fact buffoons who know jack shit. like THIS GUY - he thinks he's the shit, but i'v seen him do things downright abysmal - some even dangerous, and not only i don't think he is great, i feel he should be punished in some way for what he does.
If there is one thing i do well, it's .. well, that's hard to explain. But writing it down n a comprehensible form is even harder, and it's not something i could sell anyway. So, this blog will either get shut down or it will be reformatted to fulfill one of two purposes - make me look good in the face of possible employers, say, an audio blog, mostly filled with lies, or purpose two, to draw some traffic, strictly one subject, even if i don;t know shit about it - and if someone dies trying to follow my diet, fuck them.
2) Why not take a picture of my big fat belly and post it, then a new picture every day, and - since i know i can easily lose 60 pounds - make it into another wonder story.
Have just finished reading Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre, and .. i lost my train of thought. Bollocks.
Last books i read - in the last two months - Ubik, Bad Science, Franny and Zoey (salinger), Great Gatsby .. again, The Virgin and The Gipsy (dh lawrence), a Science Fiction Omnibus, The Siege of Nanking (history of the boxer rebellion .. tedious to say the least), a really bad book by Iain M. Banks (yep, The Business was great, but this one ... meh), and am still trying to read the Ulysses - but i will probably give up, since i'm still on chapter two.
So, maybe i will just get back into training and make a big fuss of it, forget all my principles, try to score some femaley attention, and make money i don;t deserve. And might just be better for it. Who knows.
uncertain future, here is london, 2011, BokkenUK.
It's been a few days since i realized i need to get back in shape, and by that i don't mean running in East Ham Central Park, but lifting weights and dieting. Today, for example, i have steamed broccoli florets (from Iceland, £1 a bag, two meals out of each bag) and plain boiled rice.
I guess the point of diet is mostly psychological, not trying to make your food tasty yet light, but to actually do without the taste aspect - otherwise, you are always craving for more.
So back to my crash diet, plain carbohydrates, zero fat, zero sugars, steamed vegetables, minute amounts of calories (except for rice), and mad static exercise. Coffee, taurine if you will (man that stuff is sooo harmful to health), creatine to power up during exercise, sleep on empty stomach, no breakfast, etc.. brutal.
One thing i learned during my last diet - besides the fact that i was right on everything i thought i knew - is that my body should consume, and spend, at least five-thousand calories a day to be on the healthy side, not feeling hungry and miserable but also being fit, but as you can immagine, that is truly impossible; you see, it's assumed in that statement that you get there by doing something fun, and since i'm not wrestling or swimming anymore, i have no way to get that much sport in my life. Also - i should mention - i have no money to even buy, 5K calories of good food.
I wish this blog was so much more .. than just whining. I'm listening to BBC news, now, open in iPlayer in another tab in Chrome, and they are talking about the purchase of the Typhoon (the "Eurofighter"), and of course i have something to say about that as well - as i have opinions, strong ones to boot, on just about everything i see, read about, and hear - but have no energy to write about all of it.. two things then i think i should do.
1) I'm not really enamored with blogging, but it's not bad - just an activity, nice but not really that productive.
I'm absolutely sure that better results would come if i stuck with one subject instead of making it a random whine blog, as people who chance upon it might keep coming back to it if they find stuff that they find useful;
However the reason i never did something like that, is because i have always found some better website than anything i could do, no matter what the subject.
For example, HERE is a brilliant website (all free, of course) that deals with - amongst other things - audio, and this guy is not only a qualified technician (or scientist, should i say, for it is science he deals with, even though we assume "scientist" means "researcher"), but he obviously has some real hands-on experience, amking him quite the authority on the subject. This i have seen in all subjects that i have any knowledge of, or that i enjoy and/or find myself good at, and should anyone need information on the subject, i would address them to that website or the other - one thing i would *not* do, is try to water down the web by setting up a not-quite-as-good website just to get attention, or "traffic". Example n.2 : my Advisor at Ingeus is a person very active in business, as in he "owns dating websites" and "sells ebooks" and "wrote a book about DJ'ing", and kudos to him, but.. his websites are crappy, and they are more of a ripoff than anything; eBooks are something you should give away, not sell, and finally he isn't really the authority on DJ'ing, so .. honesty, and being concerned with the wellbeing of my fellow men prevents me from trying to push my inferior products when better stuff/info is out there, expecially when the better stuff is free.
Sure, i know a thing or two about audio, but i'm far from the biggest guru on the web - and the same goes for all the people who post on YouTube their great efforts and pass themselves as kings of their trade when they are in fact buffoons who know jack shit. like THIS GUY - he thinks he's the shit, but i'v seen him do things downright abysmal - some even dangerous, and not only i don't think he is great, i feel he should be punished in some way for what he does.
If there is one thing i do well, it's .. well, that's hard to explain. But writing it down n a comprehensible form is even harder, and it's not something i could sell anyway. So, this blog will either get shut down or it will be reformatted to fulfill one of two purposes - make me look good in the face of possible employers, say, an audio blog, mostly filled with lies, or purpose two, to draw some traffic, strictly one subject, even if i don;t know shit about it - and if someone dies trying to follow my diet, fuck them.
2) Why not take a picture of my big fat belly and post it, then a new picture every day, and - since i know i can easily lose 60 pounds - make it into another wonder story.
Have just finished reading Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre, and .. i lost my train of thought. Bollocks.
Last books i read - in the last two months - Ubik, Bad Science, Franny and Zoey (salinger), Great Gatsby .. again, The Virgin and The Gipsy (dh lawrence), a Science Fiction Omnibus, The Siege of Nanking (history of the boxer rebellion .. tedious to say the least), a really bad book by Iain M. Banks (yep, The Business was great, but this one ... meh), and am still trying to read the Ulysses - but i will probably give up, since i'm still on chapter two.
So, maybe i will just get back into training and make a big fuss of it, forget all my principles, try to score some femaley attention, and make money i don;t deserve. And might just be better for it. Who knows.
uncertain future, here is london, 2011, BokkenUK.
Wednesday 13 April 2011
not getting hired in London, again :/
Monday "night", around six~ish, i get a call from Lousie at A4e (a per-profit organization that works trying to get Jobseekers in employment), telling me verbatim "there is a wonderful catering opportunity that would suit you perfectly come along tomorrow morning and bring along - among other things - your ID and a proof of address", to which i replied i had no ID, as it's still being made in the chasm of Mount Doom (the italian consulate, bless their souls, 1-month wait for a paper i get done in a day back in italy), and i won't have it until early next month.
She said "bring along the rest of the paperwork, and be here tomorrow".
Now, i showed up as planned, and got put in a room with other ten people, we filled a form and wrote how really good we are at catering and how that particular company would immensely benefit from hiring us; i was done before the rest, so had my interview first. The whole process took maybe five minutes.
Immediately, i was told that A) a letter from the DWP with my address on it did not constitute proof of address (it does, according to the UK government, but not according to A4e - or this one guy at A4e, at least), and B)without my ID there was no way i could be put forward for the job.
To which i replied that the person who asked me to come there that day knew i did not have one.. omitting the "why the fuck did you make me come here then", with an understanding that the fault lies with A4e and not me, and they should be ashamed and i am pissed off - it's my time, and my money to ride the Tube from East Ham to Brixton, after all.
But not only no, then the interviewer proceeded to interview me for a position he had already told me i could not be put forward for.
And when he came to the fateful question "why do you want to get back in catering", which is essentially what my CV is full of since 2005 (i hate catering, but it has become my job), i really did not know what to answer.
And so the next day, i get a negative feedback and the assignment to undergo "interview technique training". I wish that i could assign them "don't make people come if you are going to turn them away" training, it would only seem fair.
I do recognize that interviews can be my weak point - after all, they are everyone's weak point - and i can benefit from training, at least i have been trained to say that, but seriously, i can't fault my answer on that day:
"i can't find work in Audio, so i work in catering".
Hey, this IS what is happening; under the circumstance, i see "interview training" as "lie your way into a job", if they are going to teach me to say anything which is not what i actually want to say.
Last weekend i got a call from two, not one, business owners, and both wanted to see me the next day; the second was a man who had just opened a takeaway pizza shop, not the most glamourous of jobs you might think, but new, small businesses located in posh areas are the best sort of employment you can get, take my word on this one. Having me already an appointment in the morning i offered to call him ASAP after i was done, and so i did.
Next day, at 11am, i phoned him back and told him i was ready to come to the interview, anywhere and anytime, and he told me he was first busy with his accountant, then the family was going on a break, and he'd call me monday~tuesday.
Of course by tuesday morning he had already "hired someone else".
She said "bring along the rest of the paperwork, and be here tomorrow".
Now, i showed up as planned, and got put in a room with other ten people, we filled a form and wrote how really good we are at catering and how that particular company would immensely benefit from hiring us; i was done before the rest, so had my interview first. The whole process took maybe five minutes.
Immediately, i was told that A) a letter from the DWP with my address on it did not constitute proof of address (it does, according to the UK government, but not according to A4e - or this one guy at A4e, at least), and B)without my ID there was no way i could be put forward for the job.
To which i replied that the person who asked me to come there that day knew i did not have one.. omitting the "why the fuck did you make me come here then", with an understanding that the fault lies with A4e and not me, and they should be ashamed and i am pissed off - it's my time, and my money to ride the Tube from East Ham to Brixton, after all.
But not only no, then the interviewer proceeded to interview me for a position he had already told me i could not be put forward for.
And when he came to the fateful question "why do you want to get back in catering", which is essentially what my CV is full of since 2005 (i hate catering, but it has become my job), i really did not know what to answer.
And so the next day, i get a negative feedback and the assignment to undergo "interview technique training". I wish that i could assign them "don't make people come if you are going to turn them away" training, it would only seem fair.
I do recognize that interviews can be my weak point - after all, they are everyone's weak point - and i can benefit from training, at least i have been trained to say that, but seriously, i can't fault my answer on that day:
"i can't find work in Audio, so i work in catering".
Hey, this IS what is happening; under the circumstance, i see "interview training" as "lie your way into a job", if they are going to teach me to say anything which is not what i actually want to say.
Last weekend i got a call from two, not one, business owners, and both wanted to see me the next day; the second was a man who had just opened a takeaway pizza shop, not the most glamourous of jobs you might think, but new, small businesses located in posh areas are the best sort of employment you can get, take my word on this one. Having me already an appointment in the morning i offered to call him ASAP after i was done, and so i did.
Next day, at 11am, i phoned him back and told him i was ready to come to the interview, anywhere and anytime, and he told me he was first busy with his accountant, then the family was going on a break, and he'd call me monday~tuesday.
Of course by tuesday morning he had already "hired someone else".
Monday 11 April 2011
SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS !!
I made a mistake in the earlier post and forgot to mention that, out of £1200 pounds my PC cost to build, i actually get to keep some other parts now that upgrading is due; twelve-hundred quid, and i keep my Viewsonic 22" monitor, two hard disks at 250 GB each, the power supply, and the case.
I *do not* get to keep my CPU, CPUfan, RAM, motherboard or VGA.
Well, i get to "keep them", but not "in my build"; so, i'll just eBay them or something. CPU is obviously going out (in place of a 2500k, or whatever is coming in Ivy Bridge if it's really amazing), and with the new socket (1156? 1136? 2111? who knows) the old mobo and even the CPUfan will not work anymore.
And 4gigs of Corsair 4/4/4/12 ram (runs at 4/9, or even 3/10 if underclocked) would have been fantastic a couple years back, but it's all DDR3 now.
Oh, i can't tell you vehemently enough how happy i am that DDR3 has run into the wall and that 1333Mhz is ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to 1600Mhz.. hopefully, no more minute upgrade steps every other week.. for a while. Not that *I* would.. but you know; fanboys.
Things that broke:
1)Samsung DVD writer :/ was a disappointment, hated the cheap DVDs i bought from Poundshop, didn't actually have Lightscribe even though it was sold as having it, and well, it broke.
Replaced at £18.
2)Artic Cooling Pro7, the CPU fan, the little plastic pegs broke on one of the legs, well, half a peg on one leg, and i *did* uninstall it and then install it back again about 8 times, so i guess it's mostly my fault. Great fan, worth every penny of £17, now replaced with a £15 fan from some never-made-fans-before-but-made-other-PC-stuff company, works just as well (but the removable metal brackets that hold the fan in place are really, really bad).
3)the perennially failing-no-not-really-failing HD from Western Digital, one of two i have, i should have taken the hint when i saw it came new with a horrible soldering mark while its twin brother didn't. WD are possibly still the best brand of HD - reliability being funny enough, one of their strong points.
It's a shame they went for this "low energy" 5400rpm shit on their best models, i really want the extra 1% speed i get from a full 7200rpm model(irony.. sorta).
4)one of the two sets of RAM was somewhat faulty, and got replaced for free (and rather speedily) by Corsair.
Now, rather than say "Corsair make the best RAM", i will say "Corsair always price their RAM so well that there isn't any reason to buy anything else, ever". They do always hit that sweet spot, with the proper voltage, timings, speed, and the package (say, 2x4Gb instead of 2x2 or 4x2, plus the sweet heat dissipators), and in general they have consistently, for the past 3 years, offered this "package" of getting everything EXCEPT THE REALLY FANCY BESTEST for maybe two quid more than the competition.
And plus, if you want "the bestest", well, they do that as well.
5)Asus was a really big disappointment. They robbed me of a legit return, with my 8800GTS failing well within the limits of their loudly trumpeted 3-year warranty, and the card making twice the trip to their repair centre (expenses on me, mostly), and twice coming back as broken as before. Third time in, i just threw it in the garbage.
This is of course after a real Odyssey in trying to get a RMA in the first place.
And of course, the Asus mobo i bought was partly faulty as well, with the hi-def sound making a horrid white noise whine, and therefore i simply chucked it in the bin, not wanting to go through the same shit again.
I should point out that as of today, two companies make the "best" motherboards, and these are Gigabyte, and unfortunately, Asus. Asus also unfortunately makes the best VGA, as they always price down some truly sweet models, but as now i know how horrid their support is, i can easily say "stay away .. if you can".
6)My 4350 is also "half dead", and i replaced it before it died completely, with a really weak 5450, essentially the same thing, different name. Just an impression, i thought the 4350 actually did better, but meh.
I guess, if i had been less careless with my receipts, i would still have most of these parts, or even better a new one to replace the faulty, without having to pay.
SO THERE'S A LESSON, SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS !!
Of course all this is dependant on getting properly hired (and not just a "timewaste", £5'hour job), and fortunately i have just been contacted by a business owner looking for a manager ;/ shame how he was supposed to call me today, and hasn't. I'll ring him 2morrow, anyway.
My next build - if everything goes properly - will be like thus:
a 2500k, but not before i go to [H]ardforums and really read up on how soon the new stuff from Intel is coming out, and really *what* are we looking at.
If nothing magic is coming out, then a 2500k it is, simply because it's absolutely identical to the 2600k (IN REALITY, EVEN THOUGH on paper they look different), costs less, and can perhaps work even a little better.
a Gigabyte mobo, priced at around £105~110.
but i might try a MSI since everyone on [H] says they are awesome and cheap - more than risking it, i just see this as an opportunity to handle some new hardware and get an informed perspective at this company.
in case you haven't noticed, i see http://hardforum.com/ as the holy bible, torah and quar'an all rolled into one (and covered with whipped cream).
a whole, £130+ pack of 4x4Gb of Corsair DDR3 1.5v 1333Mhz RAM (or even 1600Mhz if they cost the same, which sometimes they do; as long as they are both 1.5v, they give me more overhead to OC).
Yes, i know it's not sensible, as i will probably not need 16Gb of ram, but the catch is, i want to buy the RAM *in one package*, and not risk buying a second set later and having it perform *better* than the first, it might sound like thats good, but you risk stability issues. Rather have four worse sticks, but tested to run in parallel.
A new VGA - did you really thing i was going to spend so much and not buy a new graphics card ??
Probably, something in the range of £110-130. Whatever that is, i don't care.
£40 is too little to get anything good, and the sweet spot (where the card runs everything, for around two years, by which time you just buy a new one) hovers between £60 (the 5670, if you can find it when the discounts are flying) and £100 (the 5750), with the market going up and down in a really irritating way.
Of course whether this is an ATI or a Nvidia is totally irrelevant.
A third HD, from NOT WD, not because now i think WD are bad, but because my motherboard's BIOS shows me two hard disks, one from WD, and another from WD, both same manufacturer's code (identical models), and it's fucking irritating having to restart several times, and unplug one then the other, to find out which one is C: . so, from ANOTHER BRAND. Probably a 1TB model, 7200rpm, nice big cache, but nothing expensive. I can get one from £43 new.
EDIT: did i say £43?? my bad. i meant £38. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-hitachi-deskstar-0f10383-7k2000c-sata-3gb-s-7200rpm-32mb-cache-89-ms-ncq-oem
I'd love a SSD, but then again, i don't see the point of a superfast HD if it's that expensive. Hey, i can wait five seconds more to load up a game, and i'd rather spend the extra money on more storage space, or better VGA, or what not. A normal HD does the same stuff as a SSD, just takes a little while longer. And data is practically *never* going to be a bottleneck in any real world application.
Plus, do not underestimate the advantage of getting five-ten times the storage space for the price :/ my case can easily hold 5 HD, and if you want to push it, that's 10TB for £300. A good SSD will have maybe 80Gb, so you would be constantly deleting the old game to make room for the new.
Well, thats it. My Viewsonic stays, no reason to change it, i'll upgrade to a 26" when and if they ever get made. Which is *already*, since i just looked and Ilyiama makes a 27" for the same money i paid for my 22" three years ago, silly me. Of course.
Ok, so then, i'll upgrade to a new technology, like LED LCD, but then again, no, or at least not until i have read everything there is to read about them and understand exactly how that technology is performing at that time :/
unless you really want to be a twat, and then here http://www.scan.co.uk/products/23-samsung-md230x6-widescreen-eyefinity-six-screen-setup-! is a 6-monitor setup for two and a half grand, plus the cost of the videocards to run anything in that definition, which is - if my basic math training doesn't fail me - 5760x2160
Let me write that again
5760x2160
What sort of ludicrous triple-SLI do you have to run to get anything running at that definition??
Anyway..
As of today, the total (set to come down, even though we are at a low in the market) is £470. with the most expensive thing being the RAM, (all sixteen gigs of it), and that could be cut down by a meaty £80 if one wanted to just get the system running *almost to the top*, and while it doesnt include the price of the CPUfan, say another £20, it's bound to get cheaper as ram and other stuff comes down.
For someone (not me) who actually works with their PC, a £500 upgrade is a no brainer - for the price, you get a £1000+ PC that performs twice as well as a C2D base. Keep in mind that a P67 mobo will gladly and cheerfully whip your 2500k to 4~5Ghz.
Yep.
New architecture AND 4.5Ghz speed, thats a serious improvement on anything thats as old as mine, and mind you, my PC is still tons better than what you get in any Internet Cafe'.
So..
I really shouldn't try to end this post with anything like "a revelation" or "a wise advice".. if the stats from what i posted above don't convince you, i guess you don't love computers. But i can make again the point for watching what actually you get to keep from your old PC, and if nothing else, at least you get to keep the case - a good, solid case will last forever, and i find it comforting to know that the pieces i buy have somewhere to go once i take them home. My Ammo533 is not on the list of what needs to be upgraded, and probably will not be for another ten years; The HD i plan to buy is also going to stay in for at least another 5 years, as technology might make speedier HDs, but one terabyte of storage is still a fuckfull of data - oops, there is go again with bad words. Bad Me, bad, bad Me.
Wish me luck everyone. I am going to call mr. Epping (i name the people in my phone with where they live) and if things go as planned (HE said we were meeting mon-tue for a business proposal, after all - i didn't imagine it), i will soon be the proud manager of a pizza restaurant - mo' money, more possibilities.
Maybe some P***y, too.
I *do not* get to keep my CPU, CPUfan, RAM, motherboard or VGA.
Well, i get to "keep them", but not "in my build"; so, i'll just eBay them or something. CPU is obviously going out (in place of a 2500k, or whatever is coming in Ivy Bridge if it's really amazing), and with the new socket (1156? 1136? 2111? who knows) the old mobo and even the CPUfan will not work anymore.
And 4gigs of Corsair 4/4/4/12 ram (runs at 4/9, or even 3/10 if underclocked) would have been fantastic a couple years back, but it's all DDR3 now.
Oh, i can't tell you vehemently enough how happy i am that DDR3 has run into the wall and that 1333Mhz is ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL to 1600Mhz.. hopefully, no more minute upgrade steps every other week.. for a while. Not that *I* would.. but you know; fanboys.
Things that broke:
1)Samsung DVD writer :/ was a disappointment, hated the cheap DVDs i bought from Poundshop, didn't actually have Lightscribe even though it was sold as having it, and well, it broke.
Replaced at £18.
2)Artic Cooling Pro7, the CPU fan, the little plastic pegs broke on one of the legs, well, half a peg on one leg, and i *did* uninstall it and then install it back again about 8 times, so i guess it's mostly my fault. Great fan, worth every penny of £17, now replaced with a £15 fan from some never-made-fans-before-but-made-other-PC-stuff company, works just as well (but the removable metal brackets that hold the fan in place are really, really bad).
3)the perennially failing-no-not-really-failing HD from Western Digital, one of two i have, i should have taken the hint when i saw it came new with a horrible soldering mark while its twin brother didn't. WD are possibly still the best brand of HD - reliability being funny enough, one of their strong points.
It's a shame they went for this "low energy" 5400rpm shit on their best models, i really want the extra 1% speed i get from a full 7200rpm model(irony.. sorta).
4)one of the two sets of RAM was somewhat faulty, and got replaced for free (and rather speedily) by Corsair.
Now, rather than say "Corsair make the best RAM", i will say "Corsair always price their RAM so well that there isn't any reason to buy anything else, ever". They do always hit that sweet spot, with the proper voltage, timings, speed, and the package (say, 2x4Gb instead of 2x2 or 4x2, plus the sweet heat dissipators), and in general they have consistently, for the past 3 years, offered this "package" of getting everything EXCEPT THE REALLY FANCY BESTEST for maybe two quid more than the competition.
And plus, if you want "the bestest", well, they do that as well.
5)Asus was a really big disappointment. They robbed me of a legit return, with my 8800GTS failing well within the limits of their loudly trumpeted 3-year warranty, and the card making twice the trip to their repair centre (expenses on me, mostly), and twice coming back as broken as before. Third time in, i just threw it in the garbage.
This is of course after a real Odyssey in trying to get a RMA in the first place.
And of course, the Asus mobo i bought was partly faulty as well, with the hi-def sound making a horrid white noise whine, and therefore i simply chucked it in the bin, not wanting to go through the same shit again.
I should point out that as of today, two companies make the "best" motherboards, and these are Gigabyte, and unfortunately, Asus. Asus also unfortunately makes the best VGA, as they always price down some truly sweet models, but as now i know how horrid their support is, i can easily say "stay away .. if you can".
6)My 4350 is also "half dead", and i replaced it before it died completely, with a really weak 5450, essentially the same thing, different name. Just an impression, i thought the 4350 actually did better, but meh.
I guess, if i had been less careless with my receipts, i would still have most of these parts, or even better a new one to replace the faulty, without having to pay.
SO THERE'S A LESSON, SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS !!
Of course all this is dependant on getting properly hired (and not just a "timewaste", £5'hour job), and fortunately i have just been contacted by a business owner looking for a manager ;/ shame how he was supposed to call me today, and hasn't. I'll ring him 2morrow, anyway.
My next build - if everything goes properly - will be like thus:
a 2500k, but not before i go to [H]ardforums and really read up on how soon the new stuff from Intel is coming out, and really *what* are we looking at.
If nothing magic is coming out, then a 2500k it is, simply because it's absolutely identical to the 2600k (IN REALITY, EVEN THOUGH on paper they look different), costs less, and can perhaps work even a little better.
a Gigabyte mobo, priced at around £105~110.
but i might try a MSI since everyone on [H] says they are awesome and cheap - more than risking it, i just see this as an opportunity to handle some new hardware and get an informed perspective at this company.
in case you haven't noticed, i see http://hardforum.com/ as the holy bible, torah and quar'an all rolled into one (and covered with whipped cream).
a whole, £130+ pack of 4x4Gb of Corsair DDR3 1.5v 1333Mhz RAM (or even 1600Mhz if they cost the same, which sometimes they do; as long as they are both 1.5v, they give me more overhead to OC).
Yes, i know it's not sensible, as i will probably not need 16Gb of ram, but the catch is, i want to buy the RAM *in one package*, and not risk buying a second set later and having it perform *better* than the first, it might sound like thats good, but you risk stability issues. Rather have four worse sticks, but tested to run in parallel.
A new VGA - did you really thing i was going to spend so much and not buy a new graphics card ??
Probably, something in the range of £110-130. Whatever that is, i don't care.
£40 is too little to get anything good, and the sweet spot (where the card runs everything, for around two years, by which time you just buy a new one) hovers between £60 (the 5670, if you can find it when the discounts are flying) and £100 (the 5750), with the market going up and down in a really irritating way.
Of course whether this is an ATI or a Nvidia is totally irrelevant.
A third HD, from NOT WD, not because now i think WD are bad, but because my motherboard's BIOS shows me two hard disks, one from WD, and another from WD, both same manufacturer's code (identical models), and it's fucking irritating having to restart several times, and unplug one then the other, to find out which one is C: . so, from ANOTHER BRAND. Probably a 1TB model, 7200rpm, nice big cache, but nothing expensive. I can get one from £43 new.
EDIT: did i say £43?? my bad. i meant £38. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-hitachi-deskstar-0f10383-7k2000c-sata-3gb-s-7200rpm-32mb-cache-89-ms-ncq-oem
I'd love a SSD, but then again, i don't see the point of a superfast HD if it's that expensive. Hey, i can wait five seconds more to load up a game, and i'd rather spend the extra money on more storage space, or better VGA, or what not. A normal HD does the same stuff as a SSD, just takes a little while longer. And data is practically *never* going to be a bottleneck in any real world application.
Plus, do not underestimate the advantage of getting five-ten times the storage space for the price :/ my case can easily hold 5 HD, and if you want to push it, that's 10TB for £300. A good SSD will have maybe 80Gb, so you would be constantly deleting the old game to make room for the new.
Well, thats it. My Viewsonic stays, no reason to change it, i'll upgrade to a 26" when and if they ever get made. Which is *already*, since i just looked and Ilyiama makes a 27" for the same money i paid for my 22" three years ago, silly me. Of course.
Ok, so then, i'll upgrade to a new technology, like LED LCD, but then again, no, or at least not until i have read everything there is to read about them and understand exactly how that technology is performing at that time :/
unless you really want to be a twat, and then here http://www.scan.co.uk/products/23-samsung-md230x6-widescreen-eyefinity-six-screen-setup-! is a 6-monitor setup for two and a half grand, plus the cost of the videocards to run anything in that definition, which is - if my basic math training doesn't fail me - 5760x2160
Let me write that again
5760x2160
What sort of ludicrous triple-SLI do you have to run to get anything running at that definition??
Anyway..
As of today, the total (set to come down, even though we are at a low in the market) is £470. with the most expensive thing being the RAM, (all sixteen gigs of it), and that could be cut down by a meaty £80 if one wanted to just get the system running *almost to the top*, and while it doesnt include the price of the CPUfan, say another £20, it's bound to get cheaper as ram and other stuff comes down.
For someone (not me) who actually works with their PC, a £500 upgrade is a no brainer - for the price, you get a £1000+ PC that performs twice as well as a C2D base. Keep in mind that a P67 mobo will gladly and cheerfully whip your 2500k to 4~5Ghz.
Yep.
New architecture AND 4.5Ghz speed, thats a serious improvement on anything thats as old as mine, and mind you, my PC is still tons better than what you get in any Internet Cafe'.
So..
I really shouldn't try to end this post with anything like "a revelation" or "a wise advice".. if the stats from what i posted above don't convince you, i guess you don't love computers. But i can make again the point for watching what actually you get to keep from your old PC, and if nothing else, at least you get to keep the case - a good, solid case will last forever, and i find it comforting to know that the pieces i buy have somewhere to go once i take them home. My Ammo533 is not on the list of what needs to be upgraded, and probably will not be for another ten years; The HD i plan to buy is also going to stay in for at least another 5 years, as technology might make speedier HDs, but one terabyte of storage is still a fuckfull of data - oops, there is go again with bad words. Bad Me, bad, bad Me.
Wish me luck everyone. I am going to call mr. Epping (i name the people in my phone with where they live) and if things go as planned (HE said we were meeting mon-tue for a business proposal, after all - i didn't imagine it), i will soon be the proud manager of a pizza restaurant - mo' money, more possibilities.
Maybe some P***y, too.
Sunday 3 April 2011
funny stuff about reverb
wet/dry.
when you send a sound to a reverb machine, one "knob" lets you adjust the percentage of original signal versus "with reverb" signal, or simply "How much reverb" you want added to the end signal, the "finished product" of the reverb machine. in most cases, these are called DRY (no reverb at all)and WET(only the reverb sound). whatever machine you own, there has to be a control that does this or something very close.
also note that "reverb" refers only about the sound that comes back to the source from bouncing off the walls - not the original signal. most applications call for a mix of the two.
difficult-to understand differences between artificial reverb and real reverb.
first of all, obviously real reverb (RR) originates from sound bouncing off surfaces, and in a plain square room these might nto be exactly as parallel as you would imagine; you ought to know that stuff that is *exactly parallel* tends to do weird stuff in the amazing world of audio physics (phase cancellation, anyone ?), while minor deviations affect these maths drastically.
However this is a minor point, granted, as in most modern habitat situations walls do indeed tend to be fairly parallel, and the reverb that reverb machines simulate is based on parallel walls; mind you, i am not talking about walls that cause standing waves, but rather a room constructed with the wall shape specular on both sides, so, if the left wall is twenty degrees bent to the left, the right wall is bent twenty degrees to the right. Most homes, offices and other non- audio related buildings are rectangular in shape, after all. It's entirely possible to have digital reverb units emulating a cavern, or a church, with large spaces and indistinctive shape; similarly, it is possible to have simulations of trully horrid spaces, such as pipes, tunnels and .. well, even most basic "club" settings are horrid, to my ears.
Artificial Reverb (AR) machines are quite stupid: whatever the room characteristics, the "walls" involved are matematically flat - the formulas around the parameters do what they are asked to do - modify the sound as if it bounced back from that surface.
I'm not saying that digital reverb units are bad, I'm saying that there are other things that natural ambients do to sound, that a AR unit just do not do; Absorption, for one. And refraction.
AR units create spaces. They go as far as deciding how reflective the "walls" are, but the other two elements are simply not there; they *could* be, in the future, if someone begins working them in to the machines, but as of today ( as far as i know, that is) if you want realistic reverbs from a machine, you have to cheat.
Absorption is a portion of the spectrum disappearing inside a substance - the spectrum of RR is never going to be equal to that of the originating sound; also, different densities and hardness of materials reflect different portions of the spectrum differently, with those few millimetres of plaster on your cellar wall reflecting differently (and at a different time) than the underlying brick. Wave amplitude per frequency is also a factor, granting different wavelenghts different penetration and thus, different reverb times. Low rumbling sounds do not bounce back the instant they hit a surface, they bounce when they encounter sufficient resistance. Shrill reverb sound is typical of digital reverb units, making your bass sound like it's a high hat in a glass room, but sped down. Also, harder materials such as steel beams, concrete and the likes set in motion when stimulated, at different speeds (we're talking both molecular vibration and actual physical vibration), and stuff that vibates reflects energy differently than stuff that doesn't.
Refraction is essentially what happens when your surface isn't flat down to molecular level, that is, always. Anechoic chambers are, afer all, walls covered with a bunch of spikes. Big spikes granted, but microscopic spikes (such as bad plaster) can cause their own refraction, expecially in ultrahigh frequencies; which do exist, and do modulate other frequencies, wheter we hear it or not. Air pockets, cavities, and other proprieties of the reflecting materials collaborate to create the big differencebetween RR and AR.
So how do we get a good AR sound in a small studio ?
Well, "real" reverb machines, such as plate reverb, or tunnel, do get "real reverb", even though it does not sound like a hall, but they do have some physical components which have their own mechanical acoustic proprieties; if you can use one of those, you are almost there. But if you are broke/have a DSP, then you need to cheat.
First, you should always process your reverb separately. Send the feed to the machine, then have it bounce back a 100% wet mix on a separate channel. Do not record the reverb on the main track (you know this), and also do not record your master with the reverb unedited.
You will need to make some changes to your rever sound to account for real world coloration.
Now, i can suggest some way to make your wet AR sound a little more real, but in the end, it's up to you what sort of coloration you want to add; i doubt that even with a lot of effort and money you will ever be able to recreate the acoustics of a granite castle, or marble church.
Equalizier on the wet :
if you have a good listening room, less reverb and more low frequencies makes for a better sound, as long as you are prepared to painfully tweak your EQ to get a great response over the whole song; natural reflections change their equalizing with their natural resonance, and although it *is* possible in a MIDI application to select every individual pitch and give it its own EQ, i realize this is impossibly complicated for anyone but the insane.. simply set multiple EQs each to a different frequency, and have each lower one boost more the signal - a lot more, if you take in consideration the F/M curves; make sure that the boosted frequencies do not overlap. If you want to make this perfect, also have multiple wets to feed to each different EQ; i know this sounds like a million tracks, but after all we have ProTools, right ?
Cutting high frequencies from the reverb is also a nice trick; you could always add a resonant shrillness by boosting a frequency in the wet and dampening it in the dry, such as a room with windows, or vice versa a natural environment (moss, trees) would absorb in the wet and boost in the dry. You can chose multiple frequencies to boost and cut, and though this might seem random on paper, you are simulating a very complex event in nature - as i have said before, great natural reverbs are a matter of drastic coloration. It's entirely possible to drastically cut high frequencies from a reverb wet while keeping them untouched in the dry - you might think that it's going to sound muffled and boomy, but it's what real reverb does. When we are en situ, we have a almost "magical" talent for picking up reverb from our surroundings, something that disappears when listening to "2D" sound. Of course, altering reverb thus means having less of it on the track; if the end product is not what you want, simply have less EQ boost/cut, and more reverb overall.
You can also create unusual ambients by filtering a copy of the dry and feeding the result to your reverb unit, which again you record separate. For example, track 1 dry, track 2 dry with filter cutting all but 200-300Hz low mids and hi-pass everything above 3k, feed track 2 into the reverb and get a 100% wet track 3; record tracks 1 and 3. This will sound like a empty ambient, that only refelects those particulair frequencies. For example, a basketball court next to a glass-walled building.
You could also make that glass building sound further away from the court pavement ..
Find the number of reflective objects you want; then, EQ out all the frequencies you do not want bounced by that object, and feed each EQ to a delay unit. Send both to the reverb unit, and you have your ambient with different distances. And for absorbition ..
Multiple copies of the same reverb, with dramatic EQ cuts, and delays to slow the return of the lower frequencies (they bounce off solid substances after penetrating them, thus their impact point is further and therefore their travel path longer). The lower the frequency, the higher the delay. The effect can be exaggerated to create a vivid impression of massive reflecting structures, and all your friends will think you are awesome when they hear that great RR sound. Again, having at least five wets with different delays is ideal; should you experience something horrid like cancellation, simply skew the delay parameters of one a bit until it disappears. Start with 2ms, and going up - depending on what settings your delay allows you - try to avoid multiple increments.. the Fibonacci series works perfect. That's (1/1)2/3/5/8/15/23/48 etc..
Delay can center a sound anywhere in a room - split the signal, feed it to the reverb twice, give each reverb a different delay time - the higher the delay, the lower the wet mix. then, assign each to Left Pan or Right Pan.
There are no "good" ways to simulate the other acoustical proprieties of reverb-creating reflecting materials, such as air pockets, but in the end, the approach is always the same - send to the AR a copy of the track you want to have reverb, and put your processors on it, then mix the result, 100% wet, with the original dry. Exciters, choruses, distortors and flangers (sheet metal room??), whatever effects you can think of, just make sure you do not abuse them - if you find the result is too dramatic, diminish it and couple it with yet another copy of the reverb track, but without the effect; unfortunately, reverb is just like a compressor - it works best when you can't hear it working. High-volume listening helps immensly in getting a really pure sound.
You might be wondering why on earth someone would want to go through all this effort to get a reverb sound, when there are excellent machines from Lexicon that do it for you .. well here is my answer:
Reverb bores me to death. I hate to listen to a song with reverb, after a few listenings i get really tired, the artificialness really begins to stand out. I have always hated that, and too much reverb (which for me is any reverb at all) means i can't listen to that song, ever again.
Older AR units tend to have better sounding reverb, mostly because they were mechanical in nature, and their plates, or tunnels, had their own micro-audio proprieties, and i can tolerate them more. But artificial reverb units, even a 'Lex, is something i positively do not want in my mix.
Having fought over the years on this and now having accepted that people simply will not live without reverb, if you are like me, try these tricks and you might get an all together better result; failing that, at least you put some effort in, and that's it own satisfaction.
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