Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

Delays and Agathaes.

Those birds train you...

Unscheduled Delays.

Well, I got sick once again. That caused me to put the blog off for that week. And then another one of my sites ran out of storage on its disk, causing me to have to replace it. I ended up upgrading the server to the latest OS and all that fun stuff that comes with that, also causing me to keep putting off the blog since I was busy.

“Give me that food” – Agathae-Hen.

I quite often eat my lunch in my office. And right outside the door, usually a couple meters away under a tree, are my free-range, lazy, and selectively polite chickens. Especially Agathae.

This is Agathae:

She is a Cream Legbar with a crest, and was In Albis’ best friend on food heists. In Albis used to always be on the lookout for food. She would react to the slightest sound of a spoon or forking scraping on a plate or bowl, or being set down, and she would also react to the sound of a dish being set on my desk. Ever since In Albis died, I haven’t had my food stolen by force.

But that’s because of Agathae. Agathae is “proper”. She believes in manners and leaving a circle of dust on the floor after a dust bath. She also believes asking politely for food while looking at you in a manner that is very cute and very demanding at the same time. She knows I will give her a tiny chunk of my food. So as of the last couple weeks, I have had that bird walk into my office believing I am going to give her a chunk of food. If I do that, she will sometimes ensure her fellow hens see it, and as a result I will have to give up some of my food to them since otherwise they will think I am some kind of monster.

Oh well. So much for thinking Agathae would be the only food-monster brave enough to set foot in my office.

Linux Project That I Haven't Done Yet

I have a large collection of over 20 different computers (I’ve got duplicates of some). Well, I figured that I would like to see how Linux will work on each of them, and get a idea of how much installing Linux will really help, especially on older devices. My theory as of right now is that anything with a Nvidia GPU/chipset from a long time ago will run into issues, as I have attempted to run Linux on some of my older PCs with old GPUs and even Nvidia chipsets, and drivers always prove to be a problem, whereas all of my Intel based PCs never seem to run into such issues. Besides actual computers with a keyboard and mouse, it’d be interesting to see how it will run on some of the Intel Atom-based Windows 8.1 tablets I’ve got around here.

It's Fun to Watch Them Struggle.

No, not chickens or humans. Computers. Especially older computers.

There are two ways I like to see how far I can push them. The first is a video playback test. I have a video file with multiples of the same video ranging from around 480p up to 4k. Quite often, what I will do is load up VLC on some XP-era machine and a ancient graphics card, and play back the files, usually starting from 720p and going up or down depending on how well it plays back that file. Most old laptops with a single-core CPU and no GPU other than the Intel-grated pile of Intel manage to pull 720p, while some desktops with a fancy Nvidia 5200 can barely pull 1080p but decide to lock up on 1440p. It’s real fun to see what the limits of such hardware is, especially when 1080p as a everyday standard wasn’t a thing.

The second one is Cinebench 2003, which is a CPU test, unlike the video test, which is a GPU test (even though it is a CPU one to some degree). I know 2003 isn’t the latest and greatest. I’ve used R15 and R20 before, but 2003 has the widest compatibility with my computer, since it works on devices running Windows 98 and newer, whereas R15 and the such won’t run on things that old.

I’ve ran it on devices as weak as a Intel Celeron and as strong as my i7 930-based desktop. Unsurprisingly, my desktop came out as Number One, and the Celery got last place. Note the fact that every single XP device save one is closer to the bottom.

I’ve still got a whole load of devices just waiting to be put under load. I do plan to put these results files up here so that others can use them for comparison of their systems if they so desire. I usually try to run the benchmarks on the original operating system for the device (as in, if the device came with Windows XP, I will use that system, if it came with 10, I will use 10, as opposed to using 7 on a XP device, which will probably skew the results a bit).

One more thing…

I also got another keyboard. Previously I was using some kind of cheap-o mechanical keyboard with blue switches on it. It worked well and felt alright. Until the “e” key decided to start being picky about when I press it, and the “shift” key needed to be pushed hard in order to actually shift.

Well, I got sick of it, and went ahead and bought myself yet another keyboard, this time with brown switches since I figured they’d be better for typing (and they are). It’s a Keychron C3 Pro. I ensured I got the model with RGB on it since plain red lights are a bit boring. Turning them to plain green lights is a lot better. I'll also add a photo of the cheap-o Chineseium board with its rounded keycaps at the bottom.