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leam1983 · 1 year

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Razer Blade 14 - Thoughts

Specs before anyone asks:

AMD Ryzen™ 9 6900HX Processor (8-Cores /16-Threads, 20MB Cache, Up to 4.9 GHz max boost) with Radeon™ 680M Graphics.

Windows 11 Home.

14-inch FHD 144Hz, 1920 x 1080. ...

NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 (6GB GDDR6 VRAM)

1TB SSD (M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4)

Actual thoughts below the cut. Send gamer hate at [email protected]

So. It, um, certainly is a laptop. At fourteen inches, it's just about comfortable enough to sit in someone's lap, assuming you're not looking to kill your cojones by sitting cross-legged through a maxed-out run on Cyberpunk 2077. Not that you could, it's only got 6 GB of VRAM and the onboard RTX 3060 draws a ton of juice. You'd be lucky to get an hour at 1080p Medium. Being a Ryzen lappy, it also doesn't support Thunderbolt, so you couldn't exactly turn it into a hybrid system by plugging in a docked GPU while at home. Your only other option is the humble 6900HX's onboard Radeon graphics, which are, well...

Calling them limited by today's standards would be fair.

So why the fuck did I buy that? Because I'm an adult, and I need something with a screen and a keyboard that can follow me. The Steam Deck's great for my Linux needs and it still is my contender for actual portable gaming, but I've increasingly found myself getting shipped around the city to deal with sales reps directly for the sake of my job, and dealing with a car dealership's Sales Director typically means waiting. Waiting quite a bit, at that. If I'm told to sit around a break room and wait above ninety minutes, I'm getting comfortable and getting some work done.

All that, and the fact that I already have a decent gaming PC. I don't need the new portable hotness, not when gaming at work would get me fired, and not when I'd be liable to wait for a hotel room or some other accommodation to consider loading up a Skyrim save away from home.

On the plus side, the USB-C ports are decently zippy and allowed me to tether to our single Windows server rack quite comfortably.

You're not here for Adult Shit, though, any old croaker can run some form of a word-processor or an office suite. In terms of performance, the onboard RTX 3060 outpaces my housebound RTX 2080 in terms of raytracing capabilities, but has less of a texture buffer. Warhammer 40K: Darktide runs with all its bells and whistles cranked to High on my main rig, and with ray-tracing turned off. On my laptop, my single Darktide run yielded a steady 60 FPS at low-to-medium details, with a few ray-tracing elements turned on. Considering the type of game this is, it's really an "apples or oranges" sort of deal. Crisper details you won't really slow down to look at, or deeper shadows? Take your pick.

The same goes for Cyberpunk 2077, with things improving if you step down a notch and consider older titles. FarCry 5 is amenable with the 3060's lean VRAM budget, as is Assassin's Creed Odyssey - everything gets cranked up with no complaints other than the cooling array's incessant whining.

Therein lies the one reason why I think even gaming laptops should be seen as a stopgap for when computers aren't available: heat transfer. If you're the type to pack a gamepad while on the go, odds are this won't concern you. If you're hoping to tackle an FPS or a Management game, however, odds are you'll quickly realize how toasty your hands and fingers can become. Over time, the resulting feeling can be quite uncomfortable. If you've gone for one of the pricier Blades or any other laptop with an Intel CPU, you've got access to Thunderbolt 3 and as such, could reliably dock the machine and use it as a hybrid rig, thereby negating any heating-related issues. As this is quite the commitment - and a pricey one at that - it's almost more worthwhile to do what I've done, and to invest into a mobile gap-filler.

Do I like it, though? I'll answer like a boring adult man nearing his forties and say that it does what I need it to, without looking like your typically cheap ASUS Aspire build. It's utterly quiet unless taxed, seeing as the 6900HX covers both processing and video display as long as low-effort jobs are presented. You can set it to consistently default to the snappier RTX 3060 if you absolutely must get that high-frequency Refresh Rate feel even while working on someone's Sales portfolio, but then this adds a consistent low hum to the overall use experience. I like the idea of knowing that my laptop's GPU is effectively turned completely off until taxed. In an office, not being known as the one guy with a jet engine of a notes-taker feels particularly good.

As you'd expect of Razer, however, very little is serviceable or upgradeable, with the onboard Wi-Fi suite and default audio and video drivers absolutely requiring the presence of a default, factory-flashed recovery partition. Delete that, and your custom Windows install is going to get unpleasant really, really quickly. I've also attempted to use one of my old Windows 11 serials to upgrade from the default Home Windows fork to the Pro, and it seems as though this particular Home license key is linked to the recovery partition. I can change OSes at will, but doing so will require that I invest in a USB-to-Ethernet adapter first, to work around my lack of an onboard Ethernet port.

Small ray of sunshine, though - remove six tri-wing screws as well as the backplate itself, and you get access to the one and only serviceable component, which is its SSD drive. The M.2 slot could theoretically accept any size of drive whatsoever, but the Blade 14's confines are so tight that tests show chipsets going above 2 GBs will bend slightly when screwed in. The one source I checked who tried it with an obscenely-priced 8 GB stick from Sabrent claims the laptop still works fine after several weeks, but I wouldn't expect them to maintain their optimism once a chip's solder pads pop off. The safest bet would be a simple 2 GB stick, with anything higher perhaps requiring a little bit of literal hacking to raise the stick while somehow making contact with the port's pins.

My thinking is that I could perhaps find an M.2 riser cable, if those do indeed exist, snip it down to barely an inch, solder its other connector end back on, using that to connect with a high-capacity double-sided NVME drive I'd have stuck to the backplate proper with a combination of thumb tack and electric tape. Problem solved, I think - only I'd be unable to touch my laptop's backplate without burning my fingers.

At that point, you have to question who really needs 8 GBs of storage on a laptop, of all things...

I'm more than satisfied, all things told - except perhaps with that dreaded Razer tax. It's almost worth it, seeing as a few gaming-related stickers got the office's Apple cultists to ask me if I'd just gotten a vintage MacBook. Cover up the three tangled snakes and it certainly passes a cursory inspection.

#IT post #tech review #razer blade 14 #thoughts #windows #linux #laptop #gaming #productivity

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mymelodyheart · 3 years

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Miles Between Us Chapter 1 ~Stories She Wrote~

PICTURE SOURCE

PART 2 OF WONDERWALL SERIES

Hey guys, I'm back and thrilled to give you part 2 of WONDERWALL series, Miles Between Us. It is a continuation from my holiday ficlet, All I Want For Christmas Is You. If you haven't read the first part, I suggest you do if you wish to get an insight into Jamie and Claire’s history (Here is the link) Otherwise, this ficlet can also be read as a stand-alone.

I know All I Want For Christmas Is You ending was bittersweet, but it had to be done. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a Part 2 in this series. I had to leave the story open to possibilities if it is to have a chance of growing. And besides, making this into a series allows me to take breaks from writing and refresh my brain in-between ficlets. So I hope this next part of the story will make up for leaving you hanging all these weeks.

Anyway, before you continue, I'd like to thank you for reading, commenting and giving feedback to my stories. They're all very appreciated even if I sometimes don't comment back. As a hobby writer, I always look forward to your response, and they spur me to continue writing. Without the readers, I wouldn't be here. So thank you for being part of my writing journey.

If you wish to read this on AO3, here is the link.

So now everything is said, without further ado, I wish you all happy reading. ❤️

Previously ...

Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp and James Fraser met and fell in love during the Holiday Seasons. Unfortunately for their budding relationship, after two weeks of a whirlwind romance, Claire has to return to London to finish some work commitment that could take a year to fulfil. It doesn't help matters that Jamie's PTSD condition prevents him from visiting her as loud city noises can trigger panic attacks. They are both in love with each other and are willing to find out where their relationship will head to. But can they find a compromise to bridge the gap of hundreds of miles to give their love a chance?

After sitting on her bed most of Saturday working on her laptop, Claire Beauchamp rolled her neck and stretched her back, her arms extending above her head. She flinched when her joints cracked.

Over the past few days, her boss, John Grey, forwarded manuscripts and drafts from the author she was working with. She hadn't eaten anything all day, and her stomach was beginning to grumble, and her eyes blurry from reading.

She'd read so much in the past hours, she was practically cross-eyed, and the bridge of her nose hurt where her specs rested. Words upon words had sifted through her brain, but now the lines were beginning to blur together.

She glanced back down on her laptop and opened a file in her document folder, her eyes scanning through lines she knew by heart. She'd been going through her own work lately wondering if she had what it takes to be a writer. Someone who would give her an honest opinion ought to read it before contemplating getting herself a literary agent if she was to start a new chapter of her life and take that leap of faith in her dream career.

A sudden urgency took over, and she needed Annalise to read her work, like right now. Which reminded Claire, her friend was away with Willie, shopping and sight-seeing. He was staying over their place for the weekend for the first time since she and Annalise left Lallybroch. After declining their invitation to join them earlier, the loved-up couple left her to her work with the promise of dinner when they returned.

She was about to reach out for her cold coffee from the bedside table when Raiders of the Lost Ark's theme song blared from her phone. At the same time, a picture of her uncle Lamb appeared on the screen. He was wearing a high-crowned, wide-brimmed, weather-beaten fedora hat and had a lopsided grin plastered to his thickly stubbled face. Rugged, she thought, just like her favourite pair of distressed leather boots, and very Indiana Jones.

Smiling, she tapped the answer button and put the phone on speaker. "Uncle Lamb! Long time no speak!"

"Sweetheart," he started in a deep familiar voice, "how are you?"

She frowned and pushed her laptop aside. Something was off. "Oh you know, same old ...just finishing work and ..."

"On a Saturday?" he asked, cutting her off.

"Look who's talking."

He chuckled. "You're young. You should be out. There are so many things to do in London ...especially on a Saturday. "

Claire rolled her eyes but opted to change the subject instead. She wasn't ready to give her reason for working overtime nor share her future plans nor talk about the handsome Scot she met during her holidays. Not just yet, anyway. "So ...to what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your voice, dear uncle?"

"What?" he said gruffly, pretending to sound offended. "Can't I call my favourite girl in the world and check up on her?"

She mentally sighed. Something must be up since her uncle never called. It was always she who usually phoned, and when he did call on a rare occasion, it was either because something had happened or he was in London. She dismissed the latter since she knew he was in Papua New Guinea. The next conclusion she landed on was his health but thought it absurd. Her uncle was strong as an ox, ate healthily, only smoked the occasional cigar and regularly went for doctor's check-up, a requirement in his job as an archaeologist travelling to remote places.

Unless. "You sound suspiciously chipper. Let me guess ...you met someone. There's a woman in your life."

He coughed like he was choking on a drink. "No! Why would you say that?"

Alright, he sounded repulsed by the idea enough. Or was that denial? "I don't know. You seem so ...how shall I say it ...unlike yourself. You normally skip the niceties and get to the point."

He lets out an impatient breath. "Claire, darling, am I really that awful?"

"No," she replied, ignoring the ache in her throat. She missed their time together but tried not to make it apparent in her tone. He was a busy man, and the last thing she wanted was her uncle worrying. "You don't seem like you're rushing off to anywhere. It's rare you sound this relax."

"It's way past my bedtime already," he sighed. "And besides, work is on stand-by at the moment until we get the license to start digging on site. People here are so damn laid back, and nobody seems to be in a hurry to process the paperwork. I'm not about to hand out cash to speed things along even if bribery is rampant here."

"I see. So you're in Port Moresby then?"

"Yes. As soon as we have the license sorted out, we'll be flying to Lae first thing tomorrow. Hopefully, anyway." He cleared his throat. "Speaking of paperwork, I received an email from my lawyer. Your trust fund has matured, dear. I'll send you the details where to go to and who to contact, and maybe you can start planning your life. Perhaps take a sabbatical and travel with me if you wish."

Ah yes, the trust fund.

After her parents died, everything they had owned was put into her trust fund by her uncle to secure her future. She'd already received a small lump sum when she turned eighteen, and the money had afforded her, though small and cramped, a decent rental two-bedroom apartment in London with high windows, which was premium in this expensive city. And Annalise, her best friend and roommate made enough money to help pay the ridiculous expensive utility bills. Her own wage just about covered the other expenses with almost nought left for savings, but she hadn't worried knowing there was money in place in her name. She was counting on it to support herself when she pursued her dreams of writing.

"About that, I think I'll let that sit in the bank for a while. It's not like I need the money right now, nor do I have the time to spend it."

"As you wish," her uncle replied. "And another thing I need to discuss with you ...South Lodge ..."

"What about South Lodge?" South Lodge should have been her family home if her parents hadn't died, and she knew it was a highly coveted property because of its historical significance. It was never put into the market for sale since her uncle thought it wasn't his place to decide. It was put on a twenty-year lease to a high profile politician, its payments going towards her trust fund.

"The lease is up, and the occupants will be moving out soon. Unfortunately for you, that information made it to the local news and you were mentioned as the legatee. So don't be surprised if you're bombarded with offers now that your name is out. I'm willing to bet, property investors and developers will be itching to get their hands on it."

Claire took off her specs and pinched the bridge of her nose. God, she hated adulting, paperwork and dealings with lawyers. Maybe she should just sell South Lodge and be done with it, so she could concentrate on her future plans. What do I need a five-bedroom house with one acre of garden in Oxford for? "I'll think about it, uncle. I just have a lot of things going on at the moment. I'm quite sure those things can wait."

"Of course dear."

"Thank you for letting me know." She thought of Jamie, and the Highlands and how much life was a lot simpler there. She really needed to double her effort to tie up loose ends in London and have a heart to heart talk with Annalise. Is her relationship with Willie serious? If not, her friend would have to eventually find a new roommate. After quickly glancing at her bedside clock, she realised they would be here soon and hopefully with a takeaway. Annalise did mention something about sorting dinner out tonight.

"And Claire?"

"Yes?"

"Your upbringing hasn't been the most ideal. Enjoy the money and treat yourself. Don't spend your life doing things that don't bring you joy."

She smiled. Her uncle must have had a rude awakening of some sort to sound so philosophical. Or probably, he did meet someone special. Either way, she wasn't going to push for any answers for now. She really needed to get out of bed, do a few stretches and have a shower before Annalise, and Willie arrived. "I'll try," she finally said.

"Good. I'll let you get back to whatever you're doing."

"Sadly, yes." She shut her laptop and got out of bed. "Take care of yourself, alright? And I'll phone you sometime next week after I've figured out our time differences."

"Absolutely, sweetheart. Talk soon."

"Love you, uncle Lamb."

"Love you, too."

She terminated the call with a swipe on her screen and rubbed her eyes. She'd been working for seven hours straight, and her eyeballs felt like they're made of sandpaper. Glancing at the corner table, she smiled when she saw Jamie's gifts. Willie had brought them with him when he arrived last night from Inverness. She knew Jamie was making up for his absence, but it couldn't be helped when there's the danger of his PTSD condition worsening in the city. To her delight and surprise, he'd sent her a leather-bound journal, a framed selfie photo of them together, driftwood bookends he made and a box of her favourite Lindt chocolate.

With a contented sigh, she made a mental note to call Jamie after dinner. And to ask her boss first thing Monday morning if she could take her work to Scotland the following weekend to surprise her boyfriend. After all, she was just taking her uncle's advice, and after the work, she'd put in the last couple of weeks, and the extra hours she planned to do the next few days, she deserved a little joy in her life.

..........

Claire leaned forward, and nervously examined her best friend's face. Annalise was hunched down, scrolling her laptop, tongue darting out as she read the paragraphs on the screen.

What's that look for? Doesn't she like it? She couldn't tell. It was the first time she's showing her work to anyone, one of the stories she had written during her spare time before embarking a career as an editorial assistant for Dreamcatcher Publishing Company. She needed to hear her friend's opinion to know if she even had a small chance of becoming a writer.

Annalise took her sweet time, and Claire wasn't sure if her inscrutable expression was a deliberate act to prolong the suspense, or if she genuinely had no reaction to what she's reading. If it was the latter, Claire would definitely kiss her dream of being a writer goodbye. If it's the former, she's going to strangle her friend for making her suffer.

She heard the door to the apartment open and close, followed by the sound of keys jangling and heavy footfalls, announcing the arrival of Willie. He'd stopped by to order some food at a local Indian takeaway while Annalise headed straight home to prepare the table for dinner. Instead of calling out to him, she held her breath for Annalise's response.

Just when Claire was starting to accept her hope of being a writer would never amount to anything other than a pipe dream, she saw the reaction she impatiently waited for. Annalise's mouth formed a comical O, followed by her eyes' widening and random shallow sighs.

Yessssssss!

This was massive. Despite Annalise having seen works from established authors Claire had edited for, she'd never witnessed her friend looked this excited. Annalise simply couldn't hide her gobsmacked expression, even if she tried.

"Oh, dear Lord," she whispered, her gaze flicking to Claire and then back to the screen. "Why didn't you tell me you had this? I knew you wanted to be a writer, but this ..."

"So?"

Annalise took a massive deep breath, her fingers almost shaking. "Oh my God, Claire."

"Oh my God, wot? Oh my God good or oh my God, bad?" Claire asked, even though she already knew deep in her bones, what the answer was. But she desperately needed to hear the words.

"This is bloody good," she said, as she went back to a previous page, and reread it all over again. After a couple of minutes more, a slow smile started to spread across her face, as she stole a few cheeky glances over at Claire.

Claire knew she could rely on her friend to tell her the truth. If her work had been bad, friend or not, Annalise would have been forthright and told her the hard facts. Nevertheless, she tamped down her own growing excitement. "The question is though ...is it good enough for the mass?"

Without hesitation, Annalise nodded vigorously, her blue eyes big as saucers. "Oh, Claire, are you kidding me? You really have no idea, have you? Of course, it is! I need to read the rest. Please tell me it's finished."

Claire relaxed for the first time and slumped back against the headboard of her bed, relief soothing her wild heartbeat. "It's finished."

Annalise let out a whoop as she gripped the laptop tightly. "Oh my God! Give me everything ...I won't be able to sleep tonight if I don't read at least one more chapter of this story."

"I've got ten more finished materials."

"Oh my God, oh my God! You're killing me. I want it all."

Willie poked his head by the frame of the doorway to her bedroom and eyed them suspiciously. She wasn't sure what he expected to find, but his eyes narrowed when he saw Annalise's flushed face.

"What are ye both up to?" he asked, frowning. "Ye sound like ye're looking at porn on the internet."

Annalise grinned and motioned him over. "Sort of."

Willie hesitantly entered the room. "Sorry?"

"In actual fact, much better than porn ..." Annalise announced, smirking at Claire.

"Annalise!" Claire wheezed when it dawned on her, her friend must have been reading the sex scene part.

Annalise reached out and reassuringly squeezed Claire's hand whilst looking at Willie. "Take a look at this. Claire wrote it."

Annalise handed the laptop to Willie, and both of them earnestly watched his face to gauge his reaction. As he sat down on the edge of the bed and read, Claire knew he would be the real test. Willie being a bloke, she didn't expect him to have the same reaction as Annalise, but she hoped he would appreciate the storyline and plot. Claire already understood, if her story was going to be good enough to be published, its success would be based on women's purchasing power. If he liked her style of writing even a smidgen, then she would be laughing.

Claire held her breath in anxious anticipation, and approximately a minute and a half later, she got her response.

His eyes bulged out, and then the tips of his ears glowed with red. In all sort of ways, he was so similar to Jamie but yet so different. But there's no mistaking how vibrantly their ears always lit up when they're embarrassed. Or moved.

"Kind of explicit," he commented hoarsely, before tucking a tongue into his cheek as if trying to find the right words to say. "But it is an intriguing story with great flow and interesting characters. It's no' the genre I would typically read, but the first few paragraphs of what I've seen so far are riveting. It makes me want to read more."

Annalise, enthusiastically nodded in agreement and waved a hand in the air. "There it is."

"Ye have a gift, Claire," Willie added, eyes still fixed on the screen and working overtime as his focus became more intense. "The dose of mystery ye've woven into the lines is remarkable and intelligent."

She felt herself beaming in vindication. "Thank you."

He briefly glanced up at her. "Now that I remember, Jamie did vaguely mention ye wanted to be a writer."

"That's the plan," she beamed.

"Good. Because if ye can produce something like this, then yer talent is wasted on editing other people's work."

"She's got ten more finished stories," Annalise piped in.

Willie arched an eyebrow at Claire and continued reading, and when he finished, he shook his head and let out a low whistle. "Is Jamie the inspiration for this story?"

Her face heated. "I ...ah ...wrote that years ago. And ...um, I've revised and edited it a million times in the past. I wanted Annalise to read it first and find out if it's good enough to be published."

Annalise grinned at Willie, still looking a little flush like she was having a physical reaction to the few lines she'd read earlier. "So what do you think?"

Willie didn't miss Annalise's excited reaction to the story. "It's verra good but I didnae realised graphic scenes affected ye so much. Ye're beet red!"

"Only when it's very well written," Annalise smirked, taking the laptop from his hands and moving towards him to sit on his lap.

Willie pulled Annalise closer and kissed her, and Claire sighed. It's both beautiful and terrible being in the presence of people, so in love. While she's ecstatic to see her best friend smitten and happy, it made her sad that Jamie couldn't be here with her. She missed him terribly, and it's only been a fortnight since she had last seen him.

After a few seconds of watching them unashamedly snogged in front of her, Claire clapped her hands, and they both immediately pulled away. "Right, that's enough you two. So, where's the dinner I was promised?"

Suddenly looking self-conscious, Willie promptly lifted Annalise from his lap, plonked her down onto the bed and jumped up, and Claire couldn't help but grin at him.

"Right on it," he muttered, before disappearing from her bedroom.

Annalise laughed and playfully shoved her shoulder. "Passion killer."

Claire ignored the jest. "So you really think I should publish my story?"

Her friend nodded excitedly. "Absolutely! You should have let me read it sooner. From what I've seen so far, you have good, solid material, and I'm convinced, when I read the rest, it will not disappoint." She stood up and smiled. "Come on, in as much as I'm all fired up after reading your story, I'm famished." She got up and left the room.

Instead of moving from her position, Claire stared at her work for a few seconds and just breathed. Although Willie and Annalise were sincere with their praises, she couldn't help but still feel nervous. This next step in her life could either turn out to be huge, or it could get her mocked out of a dream career she loved.

Pushing aside her doubts and thinking of Jamie, she quickly compressed a copy of her story's file and sent it to him via email to read, hoping he would like her written work too. Who knew, maybe, after reading it, he would be as fired up as Willie and Annalise.

After hearing the whoosh of the email sent, Claire launched herself off the bed to join her friends, looking forward to Jamie's reaction later and daydreaming of a future in Scotland with her love.

#melodyheart #wonderwall #milesbetweenus #Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser #claire beauchamp #jamie fraser #outlanderfanfic

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gascon-en-exil · 4 years

Note

Since Shadowlands is coming out in two months, what are you most looking forward to? And which zone looks the most interesting?

I am...pleasantly surprised to be getting an ask about WoW, because I almost never do. My impression is that the game doesn’t have much of an active Tumblr fanbase, and I’d be surprised if more than half a dozen of my followers play or used to play it.

The weird thing about Shadowlands is that I’m seriously contemplating getting a gaming-quality laptop specifically to play it. My current desktop is entirely serviceable for non-gaming purposes, but it’s over a decade old and really shows its age when trying to run something even as relatively undemanding on hardware as WoW. As much as I enjoyed much of the story and settings of BfA, particularly Kul Tiras, my enjoyment was severely hampered by having to run the game on the lowest settings and even then still being plagued with constant framerate issues. I also don’t have the greatest wifi setup at my house, and a laptop isn’t going to fix that, but at least if I got one I’d be able to download big patches somewhere with better wifi and then just deal with occasional lag spikes or disconnects while playing. So yeah...without making that investment I’d have to drop WoW entirely, but I still really like the game and have been playing it on and off for almost 14 years so I’m willing to drop some money into making it work.

And a bit part of that is that there’s a lot to love about Shadowlands from my perspective. I’m mostly a solo leveler with severe alt-itis, so obviously the level squish and redesigned structure for getting to max level are interesting to me. Death knights and demon hunters starting at level 1 now may encourage a bit more to stick with those classes as them starting at high levels always threw me off, although to be fair I’m also not big on the darker classes and am pickier about melee classes besides. As much as I loved the way Legion focused on giving specs distinctive flavors I’m a little ambivalent on some of the regression on that front to come even if it’s just little things (ex. holy priests* having no shadow spells at all...but now they’ll have Mind Blast again), but at the same time I like paladin auras and meaningful shaman totems and all that other good stuff so as is often the case with mechanical changes in expansions it’s some give and take. I’ve looked less into the new zones, but the idea of exploring different afterlives is an intriguing one and definitely something that WoW has never done before. I’m not going to go back and read up on them for this post and I haven’t looked into any of that in a while, but I can say that I’ll probably be most engaged by the shiny light one and possibly the vampire one. The hippie druid one...eh, I really want to like druids and balance in particular (if only they wouldn’t redesign the spec every other expansion), but something about the class aesthetic never quite clicked with me. I’m also really liking all the new customization options, which is another reason I should upgrade my hardware so as to properly appreciate them.

*Priests are, all things considered, my favorite class in the game, and as such I’ve had various opinions on them over the years. It’s little wonder that I would nitpick them the most.

#World of Warcraft #WoW

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nikatyler · 4 years

Photo

Felt like doing some replies the ~ old fashioned ~ way. I should be packing, but I don’t wanna. One good thing about this semester is that I don’t have classes on Monday morning, which means I don’t have to go to Prague on Sunday. But I’ll be once again going home late on Friday -_- Oh well. Maybe I could skip the lecture every once in a while to go home on Thursday afternoon.

I’m scared. Not really of what I’ll have to learn because I know that even if it’s difficult, I’ll probably get it in my brain in the end. Somehow. I’m more scared that once again, I’ll be left alone. I haven’t really found a stable friend group. I mean, I talk to some people sometimes, but I wouldn’t call it a friendship. One friend that I thought I could rely on doesn’t even bother saying hello to me anymore. I don’t know what I did to him, he just stopped talking to me. But maybe it’s for the best. Even when we still talked, I couldn’t believe how judgemental he was, and I often wondered if he talks about me like that too when I can’t hear it. He probably did. Oh well, I’ll see what I can do. I hope I’ll run into someone who is kinda like my best friend from high school.

As for sims stuff, I know I still owe some things to some people and I feel bad about it. You’ll get it eventually. I’m actually looking forward to doing it too. Makeovers are fun. I’d also like to release some more sims, I have one more sim dump and then some old legacy characters I want to share, plus some BC contestants that didn’t make it. They like to get eliminated in the first rounds.

Also, thanks for the comments on my mental health update post. I’ll see how this turns out and if it doesn’t get any better (I’m kinda hoping that better weather brings better mood, it worked before), I’ll start looking for a therapist or something. No offense to my parents but talking to them about this didn’t help in a slightest. They just don’t get it. And I swear I’m not reverting back to the “I’m an edgy misunderstood teenager” phase. Even though “edgy misunderstood teenager” is an aesthetic I still live for. Whatever that means.

And thanks for the tips on the laptop post. I’ll keep them in mind and I’ll probably ask again when the time comes and I actually buy a new one.

Ahh...I guess that’s it? Replies under the cut. As per usual, they’ll probably be the shorter part of this post, but oh well.

abysims replied to your photoset “Let’s find Lilith Vatore some love! In my game, I’ve had Lilith in a...”

Honestly Cassandra and Lilith would be amazing (... In my Glimmerbrook Academy story Cass is actually gonna have a huge crush on Lilith so I'm voting for that, yas!)

Ooooh that sounds great! Also, I’ll have a post announcing the results of the post coming up later, either today or tomorrow, but...spoiler alert: Cassandra might have won ;)

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your post “Simmer - Get to Know”

Lol this thing with Mermaids made me remember that when my friend and I were like 12 years old, a 6-year-old made her a "proposal" and we answered him that she'll marry him when he buys her a house by the sea in Prague

Omg sea in Prague sounds kinda cool, my faculty would be so close to the beach *-* Haha but at the same time it’s kinda terrifying, where would the sea come from? From the north? From the south? Would that mean my home doesn’t exist? Or, actually, considering my town was built on a big hill, would that mean I live on an island? And which part of Prague would be under the sea and which one would stay?

Sorry, I got distracted thinking of this AU where my country actually has access to the sea :D But we used to have it, back in like I think 12th or 13th century. We’re wayyyy smaller now.

amuhav replied to your post “Me, looking up some specs of my current laptop: you're...you're...”

If it's anything like me with my first 'gaming' laptop, the store clerk basically straight up lied to me about how good it was, and I was too young and naive to know better �� sims 3 almost burnt that thing to a crisp ��

Lmao I have a similar story with my first laptop, we were told that it has this super amazing graphic card...and it wasn’t amazing at all, as I later learned when my laptop broke.

amuhav replied to your photoset “Sims Moodboard Challenge I was tagged by @blurrypxls,...”

Oh no... don't make me want to go back to pinterest and do more of these �� They're ADDICTIVE

THEY ARE! I haven’t done much today, but I’ve spent a lot of time there all through this last week.

amuhav replied to your photo “I need to stop. This is more addictive than scrolling through memes....”

Pssst, not to enable or anything, but Picasa 3 has this nice feature where you can take a bunch of pics and it makes them into a nice collage. That's how I made mine, and then used them as my desktop backgrounds ��

I think I’ll use Photoshop, like I do for everything else, but thanks for giving me an idea for my new background! I used to have my sims or some other characters set as a background, but now that I take my laptop to school I feel a bit uncomfortable with that, so since October I’ve had this kinda boring background and I’ve been meaning to change it into something nicer, I just didn’t know what to put there. Now I do.

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Sunset: “How dare you pretend you’re Father Winter?” Father Winter:...”

Holy crap, Sunset is a lot more buff than I ever realized. Those arms! ��

Yup. That’s because she has to get her Athletic skill higher for work. I think her muscle slider might be at max, actually!

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Father Winter: “That’s it! You’re going on my Naughty List. Your...”

How could she not with with muscles like that?? Damn his Christmas magic!

Next time we should just call Caleb. I mean, he defeated Grim Reaper with no problem, surely Father Winter won’t be any more difficult for him!

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Sunset: “Okay, cool. You won’t give us gifts but I have a special one...”

Lmaoooooo, get him, Sunset! ��

He deserves it

asplashofsims replied to your photo “~ daylight”

Cute picture! ♡ I hope you feel better soon and omgg winx club, it's my guilty pleasure for sure hahah all the childhood memories��

I love Winx Club so much. It’s a little ridiculous and the plot holes are terrible (and don’t let me talk about anything after season 4, those are not my Winx D:), but I can’t let it go.

blubrich replied to your post “I forgot how traumatizing Toy Story 3 was ��”

Especially the ending! ��

YES. I remember the whole cinema was crying.

Also, Toy Story always unpacks this weird guilt in me haha. Because as a child, naturally I was like “I would NEVER abandon my toys, I’ll keep them forever!”. And now...they’re in boxes...under my bed and in the basement...some of them I gave away or to my younger sister, who then also gave some away because she’s fifteen now. I still have my plushies and teddy bears in my bed though, it would be too empty without them :D

silverspringsimmer replied to your audio post “(via...”

I love Within Temptation and they got me into heavier music later, too!

I don’t even remember how I found them. I was just bored of the music I was listening to all the time back then, so I clicked through playlists and stuff on Spotify and somehow I landed on their page, I guess. And I immediately fell in love.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your audio post “(via...”

Oh this song was the first song of this bad which I heard! It was also 5-6 years ago.though I do not listen to them often these days.

I think the first song I heard was What Have You Done, which I liked and still like very much, but then I heard this one and went kinda crazy because it just sounded so epic and exactly what my poor slightly depressed fifteen years old soul needed. In one day, I completely switched from pop to metal and it took me a few years to appreciate my old favourite music again. (I know that I say all the time that I’m a Taylor Swift stan, but actually I only really started LOVING her music again last year.)

I’ve always thought that it’s kinda funny that in my Music class, for the first semester I prepared a project about Taylor Swift. In the second semester, that changed, the old pop loving Ronnie was dead, and my new project was about Within Temptation :D But I remember that I was actually upset that day, I chose to show my classmates the video of What About Us and they didn’t appreciate it. And then after me, my other classmate had a project about some singer who had this weird song about getting high. They wanted to replay it. I was so bitter, in my head I was like “this song that I showed you has an interesting meaningful message and you’d rather listen to a song about drugs, how dare you?! You’re absolutely terrible!”

Yeah. I mean, I get it today, but I was so, so bitter.

amuhav replied to your audio post “(via...”

I recently found out they had a new album out (and Nightwish had a new single out too ��) and early 2000s emo teenage me immediately surfaced and threw money at my screen!

Ahhhh I’ve basically had Noise on repeat since it came out, I love it so much! And the video is cool too. I can’t wait to hear the whole album. Nightwish never disappoints, I hope I’ll one day get to see them live. I’ve had a few chances but then it never worked out.

#replies #abysims #tiny-tany-thaanos #amuhav #fataleromeo #asplashofsims #blubrich #silverspringsimmer

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thisisawesomeness1825 · 6 years

Text

oops, i (fake) love you, ch. 03

iii. Annabeth

Annabeth doesn't really know how she went from a nerdy, prepubescent girl to one of the popular, smart and athletic students at Goode High.

She reckons it has something to do with her being a transferee on her second year of high school from a private all-girls school in California to a passably decent school like Goode High. The mystery of the sudden transfer created quite an uproar in the school plus her outstanding academic achievements, caused her to rise on the ranks of the school's social ladder in a span of almost a night.

In all honesty, Annabeth doesn't really care about these ranks at all. All she wants to do is to attend a good class, learn from her teachers, ignore her annoying classmates, and forget about the fact that her dad is now building a new family of his own, excluding Annabeth.

But what she gets instead is an eyesore like Drew who has evidently swore to make Annabeth's life a living hell, an armful of annoying boys who can't get a hint that she doesn't want to date, and a top place in the social ladder that she really doesn't want to be a part of.

Plus Jackson. Of course, never forget Percy—let's-ignore-I-used-to-be-friends-with-Annabeth—Jackson, who went from an old childhood neighbor/best friend to a class enemy real quick.

All of these things, despite giving her constant headaches, are what gives her boring days quite a charm and lets her ignore the fact that she's now being replaced by Susan and the twins in her dad's life. It definitely hurts a little (okay, a lot), but she has learned how to manage her emotions and her pain; so every time it happens it only feels like a finger accidentally touching a hot kettle, and not a hand being doused in boiling water.

All in all, she thinks high school is treating her okay, up until she goes back to her house.

As soon as she opened the door to their house, Annabeth's ears are quickly met with booming cackles and heavy thumping of footsteps from her step-brothers. There's also Susan's voice shouting for the kids to lower their voices and a bunch of other random sounds that makes Annabeth's head pound. But before they can even see her, she quickly bolts up the stairs to her room. She passes by her dad's study room and knocks thrice before opening the door a little.

"Dad, I'm home," she says to him. He only grunts in acknowledgment, his eyes still focused on the papers in front of him.

Shrugging his lack of response, Annabeth walks towards her room and then—

"Aw, fuck," she grits out when she accidentally steps on a stray Lego piece. She scans the floor to see several Lego pieces scattered randomly near the door of her room.

It takes all of her patience to not scream bloody murder. The Lego piece actually feels like a fuc—fudging small knife stuck on her foot, and she briefly considers cussing out the twins, taking them into a deserted road and leaving them for good. But then she decides that they're not worth it. They can play pranks on her all they want but she won't give them the satisfaction of getting her angry over petty things.

Also, she doesn't need a murder and kidnapping case on top of her already growing stressors.

Remembering her lessons from her yoga class, Annabeth takes a deep breath, counts 1 to 10 and holds into the ring sitting on top of her collarbone. "Breathe," she whispers. "Breathe."

Then she enters her room and drowns herself into finishing a week's worth of homework.

It's already 30 minutes past 8 when Annabeth finally comes out of her room. She has only managed to tear herself away from her laptop when her stomach had finally grumbled out its demand for food. Glancing at the clock, she's surprised to see that it's already past dinner. That means she no longer has to see the little devils and suffer an hour of awkwardness with Susan and her dad.

When Annabeth goes down to eat her dinner quietly, she discovers that there's no food left on the fridge. She searches the cupboard and the oven but to no avail. Disgruntled, she turns to head back to her room to order herself some pizza when the front door creaks open. Her dad's and Susan's voices flit towards the dining room, together with the twins' boisterous laughter. They're all dressed up like they had just come home from a fancy dinner in a restaurant nearby. Which explains the lack of leftover food.

They had a family dinner. Without her, apparently.

Immediately, an immense sense of anguish fills her empty stomach. She feels like there's hand holding her throat; squeezing and choking until she's nothing but a quivering mess.

Standing in their kitchen, she feels like a stranger. She feels like an outsider looking over a picture of a perfect family. But insert her into the picture, the cracks start coming and the image of a perfect family shatters into fragments.

Just then, her father notices her standing awkwardly in the kitchen. He walks inside and fiddles with his glasses as he stands in front of her.

Fredrick has always been an eccentric man. He knows a lot of things about history and war planes, and can tell you the breakdown of the events during World War I and II, but has a bad habit of not paying enough attention to other things that matter more than books. As a young child, Annabeth thought of him as her mentor and protector, and a man with a brilliant mind ready to take over the world. But then he slowly slipped away from her grasp as he worked longer hours, failed to prepare food for them, and forgot how to be a father to Annabeth. He is a brilliant man, but he was not ready to be a father.

"I-uh. We thought you weren't home," Fredrick says. "We took the twins to dinner."

"I was doing homework in my room." She doesn't even tell him that she went to his study right after she got home. It's better not acknowledging the fact that he forgot about her.

"Oh, okay. Here, um," he reaches into his pocket for some cash. He hands her a couple bucks with a sheepish smile. "Buy yourself some food."

Then he awkwardly bids her good night and retreats back to his room. Susan and the twins go back into their rooms without so much a glance in her direction.

Annabeth doesn't bother to go out or order some food for her dinner. She figures she can't eat when there's pain choking and filling her chest anyway.

She isn't surprised to see Percy Jackson's face in the morning. They are, after all, part of the same mythology class that she attends every 8 in the morning. She's familiar with that smug grin he always has on his face, and his unruly black hair that begs to be brushed.

What she doesn't expect is him standing before her desk with that determined look on his face.

"What?" she barks. She doesn't really want to deal with his antics at this time of the day, and after what happened with her dad last night.

"Annabeth Chase," he begins. He adjusts the frame of his black specs. "I need your help."

"You're kidding, aren't you?"

"No. I really need your help."

Annabeth huffs and turns back into her book. She can get another chapter done for her book review if she'll start reading now. "You must be out of your mind if you think I'll help you."

Percy sits on the chair opposite hers. He normally sits somewhere near the back, but since they are the only students present at the moment, nobody dares to tell him off. "I need you to teach me how to charm a girl."

She drops Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Surely, she must have heard him wrong. "What?"

"I need you to teach me how to flirt," he says, straight-faced.

"If you're joking Jackson, I need you to stop right now."

"I'm not joking!" He then looks down and fiddles with his hands. "Okay, so yeah you're right that I do have a thing for Rachel. And I want her to be my girlfriend. But first, I'll need your help."

"That's sweet Jackson. But I don't think that I'm the right person you need for that."

"Uh, yeah you are."

She rolls her eyes and continues reading. "There's Drew," she suggests with clenched teeth.

"Um, I need a girlfriend, not STDs."

"You're very funny."

"I try," he says with a sheepish grin.

She resists the urge to smile. He's not very funny at all. "Okay. How about Silena?"

"You do realize that she has a boyfriend, right? Beckendorf would beat me up once I go near her!"

"Calm down, okay. Look, I'm sorry but I no longer have candidates in mind who can help you with your problem."

"That's because you're the perfect candidate!"

Annabeth sighs. He's very determined, she'll give him that, but she'll have to drown first before she'll say yes. "I'm very flattered that you think I'm perfect, but no, I can't help you, Percy."

"Not even when I say I'll let you trash talk me without retorts?"

"Tempting, but no."

He drops his hands in his lap and sighs heavily. "Fine. Thanks for hearing me out, at least."

Then he stands up, goes back into his seat and does not make any remarks until the class ends.

Lunch is much worse.

Annabeth has just ordered her lunch and is going back to her table when a body just appears out of nowhere and slams into her. Her food spirals into the ground, but she catches herself with an extreme amount of balance.

Drew stands near her, her hand placed near her chest. There's an apologetic look on her face, but her eyes tell a sarcastic remark. "Oops, I'm sorry. I didn't see you there."

"Oh, that's probably because of your fake eyelashes. You know, they kind of poke your eyes," Annabeth retorts.

The cafeteria stops. Everyone watches, their mouths hanging in anticipation for a cat fight.

Drew reaches into her pocket and throws a bill at Annabeth. "There, take it. You probably don't have enough to buy yourself another lunch."

"You're so generous, but I can buy myself another lunch, thank you very much," Annabeth says. She bends down to pick the bill and hands it over to Drew. "Here. I'd hate for you to lose your make up just because you don't have enough to pay for them. After all, they do the job of covering your hideous personality."

"Well, at least I didn't have to cover my messed up family," Drew taunts. Annabeth stiffens and glares as Drew realizes she struck a nerve.

"Oh, it seems I'm right. What is it? Mom and Dad paying not enough attention, or maybe—" Drew catches sight of the ring sitting on top of Annabeth's collarbone. She eyes it.

"What's this? A ring? Who's dumb enough to give you a ring?"

"That's none of your business," Annabeth says quietly.

"Yeah?" Drew smirks and yanks at the necklace. Then she pockets it. "But I can very well make it mine."

Annabeth clenches her teeth hard. She hates this bitch with all her being.

"Take it. See if I care," she lies. She cares for it so, so much. But she has to reign back her emotions, pretend that she doesn't care.

"Well, you said it. This is mine." With that, Drew struts off back to her table.

Shoot, shoot, shit.

Her mother's ring now is gone.

God, Annabeth really hates herself sometimes.

Water is something Annabeth can't understand. Most of the time, it is a beautiful sight to behold: calming and endlessly blue. And when the sun strikes the water just right, it gives it a strange, sparkling glow that gives the impression that precious diamonds are scattered all over its depths. During these times, Annabeth wants to wade in, to surround herself with water until she can no longer see past the blue waves. Until she can no longer hear the noise of the city.

But other times, it is a violent beast: raging and destroying things that come across its path. It destroys life and leaves no survivors behind.

The pool in the school premises right now looks like the former. The water is bluish but clear, and the refraction of light makes it seem shallower than it actually is. Even though Annabeth knows better, it doesn't really reassure the thundering of her heartbeat against her chest.

She peers through the water. There's no sign of the ring and she can barely make out the tiles at the bottom of the pool. She really hopes that what Piper said was right.

A girl with unevenly cut hair leans onto the locker next to her. "Drew threw it into the pool," the girl says.

"Excuse me?"

"Your ring. I saw Drew threw it into the pool."

Annabeth lets that information sink in. The pool. She can go there after school hours. She glances at the mysterious girl still hanging by her locker. "Why are you telling me this?"

The girl shrugs. "That ring looks important. And I also want to annoy her."

"Thanks," Annabeth says gratefully. "What's your name?"

"I'm Piper."

"Annabeth."

Hesitantly, Annabeth dips her toe on the pool. The water isn't that cold to give her hypothermia, but still cold enough to give her shivers. Then, she starts lowering her right leg on the pool ladder.

Slowly, she climbs down until the water is at level with her neck. By now, her heart is trying to jump out of her throat, and she just wants to forget her mother's stupid wedding ring and climb out of the pool.

'Climb out, climb out, climb out,' her mind says.

Just as she's retreating from her mission of finding her mother's ring, her right foot slips from the railing and her grip on the handle loosens. Then, she tumbles into the water.

Dumb, dumb, dumb! What are you thinking, going into the pool knowing that you can't swim?

Her hands flail out, and water quickly fills her lungs. "Help," she thinks she shouts. "Help!"

Her eyes burn—and something dark seeps into her vision until it all fades into nothingness.

A/N: So I really didn't like how this chapter turned out. There's a lot of line break and too many scenes for one chapter. There's supposed to be another scene right after this one, but I decided to move it into the next chapter. This was the reason why I took so long to update. But we do get Annabeth's POV, and with the turn of events, everything is now set in motion.

[NOTE: I updated the rating from a K+ to T, because there will be some swear words every now and then.]

Please don't forget to review because these push me to write more!

Also, school starts on Tuesday (Pacific Time) and that greatly reduces my writing time. I plan to write as much as possible, but please review to remind me to write!

#my fic #percabeth #fake dating au #annabeth chase #percy jackson #pjo #hoo #oops i (fake) love you

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marcuschan · 6 years

Link

(archive.org mirror)

People try to sell the weirdest shit on Craigslist. This is from 2006: it’s the upgraded model of the first laptop I ever owned. Somehow, this person managed to get Windows 10 running on it. And they’re asking $525 for it.

This is old enough hardware that I can barely give accurate performance comparison numbers to equivalently priced current hardware, since almost no one has done the same set of benchmarks on 2006 and 2018 devices. No one would even consider doing such a thing.

However, I cannot resist the call of making fun of ancient hardware (and, more usefully, trying to quantify the past 12 years of computer engineering). I cannot and I will not. It would be defying my nature.

The Acer Aspire 5 A517-51G-54GK is presently $500 on Newegg. Shipping is free. There is tax on top of that, but you are legally supposed to pay that tax if you buy something from Craigslist, so this arguably makes no difference. It is on sale, and in a few days this link may not say $500, but something similar will take its place. It’s just the way things work. Here’s how it stacks up:

Physical:

Battery: The Aspire 5, very broadly speaking, might net you 6 hours of light use on a charge. The M1710 lasted about 2 hours when it was brand-new... so I’m betting 12 years later it’ll die in a good 15 minutes.

Weight: The Aspire 5 weighs 6.6 pounds, three quarters the weight of the 8.8 pound M1710 (which, amusingly, “isn’t as bad as you might think” according to a review from when it launched). It’s also ~30% thinner, but neither is slim. Its power brick is also half the weight of the M1710’s, due to its much lower power requirements.

Trackpad: It’s about twice as large, by my estimation. Take my word for it, the Dell’s is absolutely tiny by 2018 standards. The physical buttons are nice, though.

Display: It’s not much different. The Aspire should have significantly better viewing angles, and I’m not sure how either’s color reproduction is, but the M1710 had a great display for its day.

Ports: The USB3 ports on the Aspire 5 are 10x faster than the USB2 ports on the M1710. The rest of the ports are, disappointingly, not much better than those of 12 years ago besides an SD card slot. And it has 0x the number of DVD burners, and no modem either.

Speed:

CPU: The most egregious shortcomings of the M1710 will be in the Core 2 Duo’s lack of hardware acceleration for specific tasks rather than raw performance. The one benchmark I could find, however, puts the Aspire’s i5 at just over double the performance of a 12-year-old (albeit top-of-the-line) chip: not that impressive. There’s a reason it’s relegated to super-budget devices. At least it draws less than half as much power.

GPU: The M1710’s lovingly-hand-installed Quadro FX 3500M was top-notch in its day, but it doesn’t support modern graphics APIs like DirectX 12. ...Or 11. ...Or 10. In the few relevant games it will play well, the Aspire 5’s last-year-vintage GT940MX probably outperforms it by 3-4x, but I couldn’t find anything apples-to-apples, or really even apples-to-a-fruit.

Storage: This one’s fun. The solid state drive in the Aspire 5 will do large file copies around 5x faster than a 2006-era spinning drive, but in random read/write scenarios like opening or installing programs, it’s a greater than 100x speedup. Obviously, that doesn’t make the system 100x faster, but it still removes the storage bottleneck in many common tasks.

Memory: The Aspire 5 ships with 2x the memory capacity of the upgraded-to-the-max M1710. I feel like memory capacity has stalled in the past decade, but I’d need to do more research to confirm that.

Wireless: Using naive theoretical comparisons, the Aspire’s 1x1 802.11AC solution is 8x faster and supports the much-less-congested 5GHz band.

So, conclusions?

First of all, >$500 is laughable for this ancient machine, 89% discount from the original MSRP notwithstanding. Even if we move down the price range of modern devices to roughly match it in speed and specs, there’s no compelling reason to buy a 9-pound completely unsupported device that’s barely capable of running a modern OS, let alone most programs.

But, honestly? I was expecting a bit more from 12 years of computer upgrades, somehow. Now, to be fair, we’re comparing a $4700 machine to a $500 one, and a modern $2500-$3000 device like the Aero 15X obliterates both of these devices in every possible respect.

Super rough M1210 / Aspire 5 / Aero 15X comparison:

Battery: 2 / 6 / 8.5 hours Weight: 8.8 / 6.6 / 4.6 pounds (note: the Aero 15X has a smaller display) Trackpad: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Display: 2 / 2 / 8 million pixels Ports: 0.48 / 5 / 10 gigabits per second CPU Singlethreaded: 1x / 2x / 3x relative perf CPU Multithreaded: 1x / 2x / 7x relative perf GPU: 1x / 4x / 25x Storage Sequential: 1x / 5x / 15x Storage Random: 1x / 100x / 700x Memory: 4GB / 8GB / 32GB Wireless: 1x / 8x / 16x relative perf

But... I don’t know! The idea that a 12-year-old device is useable at all caught me off guard. In some ways, that’s disappointing, but in other ways, it’s a good thing: the idea that society ought to be throwing out all of our not-particularly-recyclable electronics every couple of years isn’t a sustainable one.

In a way, I’m making fun of this seller, mostly for their asking price, but in another way I admire them: they kept a machine working and useable for 12 years. We need more of that.

Besides, the red is pretty unique, I guess.

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ewkytpmv · 6 years

Text

ewk’s Guide to Windows 98 Retrocomputing

hello all, i’ve created this post to help people that are interested in using windows 9x in the current year (i’ll be focusing mainly on windows 98 here since i have the most experience with it). my goal is to build a community of people that share the same hobby of using 90s/early 00s computers and want to help bring back the old web in a small way by making personal homepages and communicating with each other via old chat services such as aim or msn messenger. so, without further ado, here is my guide.

step 1: finding a pc

the first thing you’re gonna need to do is find an old pc (obviously). start by checking craigslist. if you can’t find anything on there try checking your local thrift stores once or twice a week for a few months before looking on ebay because their prices suck. i’ve gotten old systems that would’ve gone for hundreds on ebay for as little as $8 at thrift stores.

look for a pc from around 1998 to 2000 (identifiable by a windows 98 sticker on laptops and prebuilt desktops), these will typically run pretty fast but any pc from 1996-2000 should work. if you find one at a thrift store be sure to check to make sure it works. try to check the bios for specs.

the minimum specs of a system i would buy for windows 98 would be a cpu with a speed of around 300mhz and 32mb ram (i would recommend a 350mhz cpu and 64mb ram or better). note that you can use a system with specs lower than the minimum i gave but it won’t be fast.

if you can’t find an old system locally and you don’t want to spend tons of money on ebay you can build your own windows 98 computer using old and new parts. i honestly have no experience with building old systems though so don’t ask me about it. lol

if the pc you’re buying is a laptop be sure it has pcmcia slots. they look like this:

this slot is required in order to install a wifi card. if your laptop doesn’t have this check to see if it has an ethernet port (not to be confused with a phone jack):

you will need either a pcmcia card slot or an ethernet port in order to connect to the internet.

desktop pcs are easy because they have pci slots that you can easily install an ethernet card into

be sure to find an network card that windows 9x supports. for desktops an easy find is a 3com etherlink tx card (drivers are here). and for laptops the linksys wpc54g is cheap and easy to find as well (drivers here).

step 2: installing windows

if your pc already came with windows you can skip this step but let’s say you built your own system or upgraded the hard drive and you need to do a fresh install. in this case the first thing to do would be to grab an install disk image which you can from winworld. serial numbers are also there. i picked windows 98 second edition for you because it’s better supported and more stable.

then burn the image to a blank cd and yada yada yada, i’m sure you know how to do this. (if you don’t, here’s a tutorial)

you can chose a “typical” installation or go with a “custom” installation to select what components to install. i personally check most of the boxes except accessibility options and webtv (which sounds cool but doesn’t work anymore iirc). put in the serial number, enter the date and time and you’re done installing windows.

step 3: installing drivers

assuming you need drivers for your system, driversguide has a large archive of drivers and i personally use it. to get the drivers onto the new pc without internet you can burn them to a cd as well. make sure to set the disc “for use in a cd/dvd player” when prompted by newer versions of windows. if your driver is a .inf file instead of a .exe just right-click it, select “install” and restart.

step 4: software and services

congratulations, you have a working 90s pc! but what do you do with it? here’s a list of software to improve your experience:

updates and tweaks

Windows 98SE Service Pack 3.61 - unofficial pack of microsoft hotfixes and system software, has been updated in 2018

KernelEx 4.5.2 - system tweak that allows you to run software designed for newer versions of windows

classic internet browsers

Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2 - the last good version of internet explorer. full installation package comes with additional software (other versions available on this page as well)

Netscape Communicator 4.5 - good version of netscape i use

modern internet browsers

K-Meleon 1.5.4 - the fastest modern browser for win9x around, sadly the last version supported by windows 98 was made in 2010

SeaMonkey 2.0.14 - slower than k-meleon but slightly newer and runs under kernelex

communication

AOL Instant Messenger 5.1 (via Phoenix server) - aim lives on unofficially thanks to iwarg’s replacement server

MSN Messenger 3.0 (via Escargot server) - you can also connect to msn messenger in a similar way to the aim server. i believe version 5 also works but it requires hex editing and i haven’t tested it yet.

mo-footer 0.9.6r - mo-footer is a twitter client written for win9x/win2k by japanese programmer blackwingcat. it hasn’t been updated since 2011 but still works for basic use. setup can be a bit of a hassle if you don’t know what you’re doing so use google translate on the page

NetMeeting 3.01 - similar to skype or later versions of msn but older and uses ip adresses (please note that your ip address is visible to your contacts when using this software)

mIRC 5.41 - popular irc client

multimedia

Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1 - last version of mpc for win98, requires directx 9 (included in the service pack i linked earlier) and ffdshow (ffdshow requires windows 98 and an x686 cpu or better)

RealProducer G2 6.1 - great for making very compressed audio and video files for your webpages

Winamp 2.5e - very cool and sexy audio player

plugins here (be sure to get the flac one)

imaging

IrfanView 4.30 - image viewer since windows 9x doesn’t come with one by default

Adobe Photoshop 5.5 - it’s photoshop, need i say more?

file sharing

RFtp 0.9.7.5 - very lightweight, portable ftp client

WinMX 3.54b4 - p2p service similar to napster (be sure to run the patch in the install directory)

TinyUpload - not software but rather a file sharing site that supports files up to 50mb and loads in almost any browser

webpage stuff + good hosting sites

Arachnophilia 2.1 - good html editor, please read the very touching about section

Microsoft FrontPage Express 2.0.2 - microsoft’s own visual webpage editor.

GEOCITIES.WS - mirror of geocities that accepts new accounts. doesn’t use ssl so pages will load in old browsers.

Yahoo! Japan Geocities - the official japanese geocities is still up but you need to make an account which involves verifying a japanese captcha. microsoft character map is your friend. (registration page is here)

Tripod - an old webspace provider similar to geocities but still exists

AngelFire - another old webpage host owned by lycos just like tripod

Neocities - a very well done reincarnation of geocities. uses ssl so old browsers will not be able to load pages. pages will load in k-meleon but the “browse” and “activity” pages will load infinitely so be sure to stop loading the page (esc key) shortly after clicking the link

helpful links

ECSIS List of Software For Windows 95

DON'S WINDOWS 98SE SOFTWARE PICKS

Completely Free Software - hosts many pieces of software for windows 9x

WinWorldPC - archive of a bunch of old software and operating systems

that’s about it for now, i’ll be updating this post from time to time. please message me if you have any questions!

#Windows 98 #retrocomputing #webpunk #vaporwave #90s #Windows 95 #Old Web #geocities #early 2000s

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akaluan · 6 years

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oceanshimmerspirit-blog replied to your post: I like this idea of war-mages and war-magecraft...

This makes a lot of sense, really like how you filled in this little potential plot hole with merging the two cannon story lines. :)

I just... that’s how war works? Something rises to dominance that completely tilts the balance of power in favor of one country or another -- in Tanya’s WW1, it was scientific magecraft more than aircraft -- and then in the process of meeting and rebalancing that equation, something NEW rises to prominence.

Already in Tanya’s era, aircraft and heavy artillery with airburst shells were dangerous to a mage. WW2 sees aircraft and artillery becoming more powerful and reliable. Mages would be Important in WW2, but their prominence wouldn’t be as high, and soon after that technology completely outstrips raw human potential and makes mages useful but no longer the gamechanging powerhouses that held dominance in WW1.

(cut because apparently I ramble a lot)

Because that’s something you need to keep in mind. Even with a computation orb, a mage is just /raw human potential/. Humans are... you can’t just ‘upgrade’ humans the way you can technology.

Think of it, like...

A computation orb is a computer, and the human is the battery. Different humans have different levels of mana capability, but on an individual level you can’t really drastically increase what they have available. Training and age can expand it to some extent, but just like with strength training or how fast someone can run, there are limits to the potential for growth.

Early orbs are wasteful, just like early computers. A significant amount of mana that a mage pours into one is lost, producing ‘waste effects’ like heat--

(which is why computers get hot, if you didn’t know! we can’t produce a 100% efficient system, and the resistance of the wires that electricity flows through produces waste heat, like dragging your hands along a rough surface and feeling your skin heat up. The more we were able to miniaturize the computer components, even if everything else stays approximately the same, the less waste heat we can produce because the electricity has less distance to travel over a poor medium. There’s a lot more to it, of course, but that’s some basics!)

--and also draining the mage in the process. As magic science advances, they find more conductive materials (so less resistance to channeling mana), manage to miniaturize the components (so less distance traveled), manage to make the components more efficient (reducing the AMOUNT of mana required), find ways to conserve mana (further reducing the amount of mana required), and so on.

But in the end, your battery is still the same battery you were using back in WW1. We CAN’T advance that. Not without... questionable tactics, and even then a human generation is absolutely ridiculously long in comparison to technology generations.

(When my father was in college, computers took up entire rooms and were so expensive only universities had them. By the time I was born, 15-ish years later, he had a desktop computer in his home that ran a simple OS (MS-DOS) and was capable of word processing and a few other simple tricks. By the time I was in highschool, he gave me a 15lb, fully mobile computer that ran a complex OS (Windows ME) capable of simple games and able to go anywhere so long as I could carry it. By the time I reached college, I had a laptop that weighed half that, able to play more advanced games, AND I had a tiny computer the size of my palm with a complex display and able to play music and simple games anywhere I wanted. A decade later, and my phone, which is frankly OLD (It’s a Galaxy S4), is the size of my hand and completely, utterly blows my first laptop out of the water in terms of specs.)

(THIS is the tech cycle of our modern era. An ever increasing, rapid process where the face of technology changes on an almost month to month basis. Human potential just... can’t keep up with that. It’s WHY our technology is so important to our survival as a species.)

So you have better equipment, but you haven’t -- and can’t -- upgrade your battery. I’m going to ASSUME that humans haven’t managed to figure out how to store mana, because THAT is the only way that mages are going to be able to actively compete vs modern day war tech. But what I’ve read so far makes that sound like a very difficult goal, and so even if it does exist, it’s likely still just a theory or capable on only minuscule levels, like how labs can get small items to levitate these days, but we still can’t expand that technology beyond... I think they’re at approximately pingpong ball these days, and THAT was a giant leap up from the previous largest object they could levitate successfully.

Aaaanyway I should stop rambling, whoops...

#oceanshimmerspirit-blog #replies #bleach #bleach/tanya #tanya the evil

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tech-battery · 4 years

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HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 review: A good laptop with better competition

The HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 (dw0097nr) is a competent convertible laptop for handling the day-to-day workload of a work-from-home or distance-learning experience. It also offers some unique features, including a rare cellular option and a full-sized SD card slot. The USB-C and HDMI ports allow for two additional displays, including 4K support. While these attributes work in the Pavilion x360’s favor, its middling performance and underwhelming battery life make other laptops we’ve tested in its price range seem like a better deal.

This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best laptops. Go there for information on competing products and how we tested them.

As a convertible, HP’s Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 rotates easily into tent mode. The hinge is engineered well, preventing the laptop from sagging, even as it approaches a 180-degree angle.

HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 basic features

HP’s Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 hasn’t been on the market for long, but you may find that you’ll have a difficult time buying one—evidence of the buying spree brought on by the need to work/study from home during the pandemic. The laptop is currently available for $700 on HP.com, but in the course of the review it was sometimes sold out.

In case you can’t find it, HP representatives recommended some virtually identical alternatives. The $650 HP Pavilion x360 Laptop 14t-dw000 lacks the Optane memory option and LTE WWAN. The $586.95 HP Pavilion x360 14t-dh200 is even more similar, though it also lacks WWAN options and you’ll need to pay a bit more for the 1080p display option. Both the 14t-dw000 and 14t-dh200 were in stock at press time, however, and should offer comparable performance.

Keep in mind that in all these machines, the processor’s “G1” suffix denotes the minimal amount of graphics capability provided. Higher-end members of Intel’s 10th-gen Ice Lake family offer more visual horsepower.

Here are the specs for the unit we tested:

Display: 14-inch (1920x1080, WLED) multitouch, 250 nits (rated)

Processor: Intel Core i5-1035G1

Graphics: UHD 620

Memory: 8GB DDR4-3200 SDRAM (1 x 8 GB)

Storage: 256GB SSD+16GB Optane

Ports: 1 USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps, charging, display), 2 USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 (formerly USB 3.1, 5Gbps), 1 HDMI 2.0, SD card slot, 3.5mm jack, SIM slot (as reviewed)

Camera: 720p (user-facing)

Battery: 41.3Wh (reported), 43Wh (rated)

Wireless: WiFi 6 (Intel Wireless-AC 9461 802.11ac) and Bluetooth 5, with Connected Modern Standby; Intel LTE (XMM 7360) SIM slot (as reviewed)

Operating system: Windows 10 Home

Dimensions (inches): 12.76 x 8.70 x 0.74 inches

Weight: 3.55 pounds

Color: Natural Silver (Exterior)/ Ash Silver (Interior)

Price: $700

Overall build quality and display

HP’s Pavilion x360 14 emerges from its box a bit on the heavy side, though that’d only be an issue if you actually traveled with it. Our review unit boasts the rather generic Natural Silver exterior. A narrow band of silver runs around the edge of the Dark Ash Silver keyboard deck.

Because the Pavilion is a 360-degree convertible, it flips smoothly from clamshell back into tent mode, supporting its own weight. During a year when we’ve been stuck inside most of the time, I’ve grown to appreciate laptops that can serve as portable entertainment centers during off hours.

Above the keyboard lies an unobtrusive grille from which the Pavilion x360 14 vents its warm air. The laptop puts out a steady whoosh of fan noise, even occasionally during routine tasks such as typing this review. It’s both soft and fairly constant enough, however, to fade into the background as white noise.

HP’s display is passable, a common quality level among lower-priced laptops. Its backlight has a top brightness of about 250 nits, the bare minimum for what we consider to be sufficient for indoor work. My downstairs office gets minimal outside light, and I found the display to be just slightly on the dim side. Color fidelity seemed adequate, however, with sufficient viewing angles from either side. Just don’t expect to use it outdoors.

At this price point, a laptop’s aesthetics should be a bonus, not part and parcel of the experience. No one can help but notice, though, the wide lower display bezel of about an inch and a half. Though the side (quarter-inch) and the top (three-eights of an inch) bezels are slimmer, the overall effect is that the display feels a bit cramped.

Fortunately, the available ports adorning the HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 make it easy to expand beyond the built-in display. HP includes both an HDMI 2.0 as well as SuperSpeed 10Gbps (formerly known as USB-C 3.2 Gen 2).

Unfortunately, though the HDMI 2.0 cable supports a single 4K monitor at up to 60Hz, the Core i5-1035G1 couldn’t manage to push my external 4K display beyond 30Hz. For those with sensitive eyes, the slow refresh rate can look jarring. Anything with motion—video, for example—can look jerky and, over time, can fatigue your eyes. Even typing on an otherwise static screen can be wearing. This problem, however, completely goes away if you have an external 1080p monitor, which the Pavilion x360 14 powers at a comfortable 60Hz.

HP supplies a 45W power supply inside of the box, which uses a round “barrel” connector to charge the laptop. Alternatively, you can use a third-party charger to charge the laptop via the USB-C port.

Typing, audio and camera

I tend to prefer keyboards with more pronounced key travel, so the shallow keyboard on the HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 wasn’t especially comfortable over prolonged use. I almost always write a laptop review on the keyboard of the device that I’m reviewing, and I’ll be happy to go back to something which allows my fingers more flexibility.

My only other complaint is that the individual keys aren’t especially large. Otherwise, the Pavilion’s keyboard provides a comfortable typing experience. Its only other quirk is the column of Home, Pg Up, and related keys that runs along the right side of the keyboard, rather than the lower right-hand corner (as is more common).

Laptop audio is rarely good, and the Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 failed to convince us otherwise. Its speakers are thin, tinny, and generally unpleasant for listening to music or other audio, possibly because of the lack of low-end boost. Mid- to high-pitched music, like Molly Sandén’s “Husavik (My Hometown),” for example, sounded pretty good.

Normally, audio enhancement technologies help somewhat. Bang & Olufsen tuned the speakers and provided an audio utility conveniently designed with an equalizer and noise cancellation for the available microphone. But even headphones can’t really help; your best bet is to boost the bass as much as possible.

The same utility manages the microphone’s noise cancellation, which I found to be somewhat hit-and-miss. The B&O utility can be configured to filter out everything but your voice. It did a superb job at filtering out the back-and-forth of baseball announcers calling the game while I recorded my voice. One consequence, though, is that my voice’s volume levels fluctuated unexpectedly, which would be noticeable on a Zoom call. Using a headset should bypass all these limitations.

The HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 uses a 720p camera (as most laptops do), and I was pleased with its color fidelity. Unfortunately, there’s no Windows Hello capability at all—no depth camera, and no fingerprint reader either.

You may notice that this laptop includes an SSD plus Intel’s Optane Memory technology, which Intel designed as a sort of cache to improve app loading times. In general, the quick access to data that any SSD offers, relative to an old laptop with a spinning hard drive, will be noticeable. Don’t buy this laptop for the additional Optane capabilities, however, as it doesn’t make a meaningful difference.

A mix of bloatware and useful utilities

HP’s consumer laptops tend to ship with a hefty serving of bloatware, extra apps that HP preloads in hopes you’ll try them. HP JumpStarts, an app that lives on the Taskbar, serves as a gateway to the HP Support Assistant plus other offers: a one-month trial of Microsoft 365 for new customers, free games from WildTangent, and more. Amazon and Dropbox have shortcuts in the Taskbar. Separate apps in the Start menu offer 25GB of Dropbox storage free for a year, and there are shortcuts to ExpressVPN, Spotify, Netflix, and more. The Pavilion also ships with a three-month subscription to McAfee Personal Security.

HP offers a wealth of its own utility software, most of which serves a useful purpose—but there’s just so darn many of them! The HP Support Assistant, for example, includes useful driver updates for various components within the system, but it’s separate from Windows Update, and that’s distinct from the app-specific Microsoft Store. Dig though and you’ll be rewarded, as there’s a terrific amount of information and diagnostics available.

We didn’t test one aspect of the HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14: its cellular capabilities. I normally plug in a SIM and drive around my Bay Area town, testing throughput and coverage. Unfortunately, wildfire smoke levels were at unhealthy to toxic levels during my testing period, making drive tests inadvisable. I live at the periphery of a cell-phone tower’s range, which also wouldn’t be a fair test of the Pavilion x360’s abilities.

Performance is merely average

Our performance assessments takes into account repeatable benchmarks as well as direct experience. As part of the review process, I used the HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 for about a week, running it with dozens of Edge tabs open, alongside apps like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. With fifty or so tabs open, including streaming video from a MLB playoff game, I noticed a bit of input lag in how the Pavilion responded. Under the same conditions, but with an additional Zoom call running, I noticed that the laptop’s display fuzzed slightly, and briefly, as if the GPU couldn’t quite handle the load. That’s my everyday, work-at-home environment, though, and overall the Pavilion handled it very well. Streamed videos from YouTube and Netflix worked fine on the Pavilion’s own display.

Attaching an external 4K monitor created a few hiccups, and not just with YouTube streaming (where downsampling and upsampling resolutions sometimes resulted in choppy video). The Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 actually crashed twice when I was playing back YouTube videos in Edge, switching playback resolutions, and dragging videos back and forth to an external monitor. The bug wasn’t completely repeatable, but I also experienced it while highlighting fields in Excel, after I had updated the graphics driver. HP didn’t have any advice for us by press time, but to be fair, secondary displays can introduce complexities.

What follows are results from our suite of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. We compared the HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 to its competition within the budget and mid-range laptop PC category. Its results are highlighted in red, below.

PCMark 8 Work/Creative: Everyday tasks

UL’s PCMark 8 Work test measures how well the laptop handles office tasks, from spreadsheets, word processing, and VoIP calls. Most laptops perform competently here, and any score over 2,000 is a good thing.

The PCMark 8 Creative benchmark assesses the laptop’s ability to perform more intensive tasks like video editing and photo manipulation, leaning more heavily on the integrated GPU for some light gaming. You shouldn’t expect to do much of the latter with the Pavilion x360 Convertible 14, though we’ll look at this more closely with the 3DMark test a bit later.

Cinebench: CPU performance

We use Maxon’s Cinebench test to look at the raw output of the CPU. The R15 test is older, meaning we have a broader base of laptops for comparison. It’s also a fast test, providing a snapshot of how the PC manages a “sprint” of processing demand. We use the multi-thread benchmark to evaluate how well the laptop does with all cores enabled. The single-threaded test, while applicable to most mainstream tasks, tends to yield pretty much the same result regardless of CPU.

The Core i5-1035G1 inside is a quad-core processor, with eight processing threads. While its score is acceptable, it’s the slowest of all the compared laptops with the same CPU.

HandBrake: Sustained CPU workload

Where Cinebench is a sprint, HandBrake is a prolonged CPU test, where we transcode a movie into a format appropriate for an Android tablet. It’s useful as a measure of how well the laptop is thermally managed: An overheated laptop will have to clock down to avoid exceeding its thermal limits. Conversely, a well-cooled laptop will be able to run in an elevated turbo mode for longer, completing the job faster. It’s here that a well-designed laptop with a slower CPU can compete with a faster processor in a poorly-designed notebook PC. The Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 again posted a lower score against the competition.

3DMark Sky Diver: Graphics performance

The 3DMark Sky Diver test is where we can examine the laptop for its gaming abilities. Let’s be clear: The “G1” designation is Intel’s signal that its graphics capabilities represent the least of Intel’s Ice Lake offerings, so we’re not expecting too much here. This is clearly not a gaming PC, and its mediocre score attests to that.

Battery life (video rundown test)

We end with battery life, an ordinarily critical aspect of a laptop that doesn’t mean quite as much with a global pandemic keeping us close to home. Nevertheless, it’s good to know whether you’d have the battery life to work outside, stop at a sidewalk cafe, or just crash on the couch for a change of scenery.

The Pavilion x360 Convertible 14’s 43Wh battery is on the small side for a laptop of its size, and that hurts it here. The laptop’s lackluster seven-plus hours of life might have been par for the course 18 months ago, but many laptops we see nowadays easily exceed 10 or more hours.

Conclusion: Good but not great

The HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 should suffice for working or learning from home. In our real-world use, it never felt especially poky. However, the numbers don’t lie: You can do better. From a performance standpoint, this is really the moment for AMD-powered laptops, such as the $655 Acer Swift 3. Acer’s recent $650 Spin 3 also compares favorably. If performance isn’t your priority, you might still have regrets about the battery life or the dim display.

There are always going to be trade-offs in low-priced laptops. The HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 just toes that line between acceptable and unacceptable compromise.

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jxxhyuk-blog · 6 years

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( JEON WONWOO | CISMALE | HE/HIM ) you’ve heard of matthew kim, right ?? wait, really ? they’re the friendly writer who’s way too obsessed with music, geek culture, & web toons. somehow, they managed to major in english in college. i think they’re twenty-one. they’re the kind of boy next door that enjoys doodling all over his notebooks or any papers around him, staying home to read a good book or watch a tv show instead of going out, & writing song lyrics. some people told me they’re supposedly pretty imaginative, supportive, & considerate. but i think they’re just blinded by a pretty face. they’re clearly laid-back, forgetful, & compulsive. their favorite thing about buzzfeed is the quizzes.

‘SUP KIDS! this is your friendly neighborhood spider-man hels, the mid-20s old ass woman girl who typed an app in record time and almost hurt herself (the problems of being old, istg). you know what else is a record? me, having a 21 year old muse. IT’S BEEN MONTHS, ISTG, I’M THE GRANDMA FRIEND™ (please refer to this post) I CAN’T KEEP UP WITH YOU YOUNGSTERS. but here i am, SO LOVE MY BABY GEEK LAZY BOY. he’s very Relatable as you all might notice in this post and in future interactions djaskld. ALSO!! i didn’t forget the people in my ims, ok, i will get there in a bit. but if we ain’t talking yet and you’d like to plot with matthew, like this post and i will message you! enough about ooc bs, let’s go to the interesting (and actual helpful to plot) part, shall we!?

everyone knows him by matthew, but that’s his “adopted” english name. his real name is kim joohyuk. he’s too used to matthew (or matt), though!! his mother (and me) is the only one who still calls him joohyuk or hyukie.

talking about his mother: she is his only family. she got pregnant during high school, the child was obviously her boyfriend’s, but he couldn’t accept the situation (it would ruin his future, the college applications he had already sent, would make his parents drop him, for sure). on another hand, she never thought on not having the child, as she grew up in a christian, catholic family. telling her parents was a pain, though―they said how disappointed they were and how they would not help her, that she would have to take full responsibility for her doings. and so she did: through struggles of moving far away from her family and past for her own sake, she gave birth to matthew in new jersey.

the age difference between he and his mom is 17, almost 18. that being said, it comes with no surprise that she is his best friend. she raised him, making sure he would never think she didn’t support him, and basically put all her future on him. he knows her story and she is the person he admires the most and never stops trying to make her even more proud of him.

truth be told, he had a pretty normal childhood. he was a happy, intelligent kid, very accepting of others, had a lot of friends and played with them a lot. he also played soccer growing up and, tbh, he’s pretty good? though he became kind lazy the older he got...

although bullied in middle and high school, he managed to keep himself together. of course, though, that made him grow a bit more introverted and insecure, more into trying to enjoy his own person and not putting much expectation on other people (or even himself).

he was always a year ahead, thus, he got into college earlier and recently graduated in nyu. he was an intern in buzzfeed new york, but after graduation, he got transfered to atlanta as a writer (he couldn’t be happier, tbh).

although his mother doesn’t live with him, she did move to atlanta too. talk about the best mom and hype woman in the world.

i wouldn’t say he is new around here, because, you know, he’s been in atlanta for months now so...

EXTRA STUFF...

“has he ever been to sdcc?” you can bet he saved money just to go literally to the other side of the country (as he lived in new york) just to go to sdcc (he went at least three years in a roll during college). “but there’s a comic con in new york!” he doesn’t care, he wanted SAN DIEGO’s.

“what kind of tv shows he likes?” sci-fi, anything that doesn’t make any sense, comedy shows, anything that makes him think too hard.

though his taste for books follow this same thing, he doesn’t deny “classics”... he’s a bookworm... he reads anything, truly.

“marvel or dc?” he prefers to die than to choose (but he is trash for xmen, so... you see the problem...)

as for music... he listens pretty much anything? it really depends on his mood.

which brings me to: he will sing disney movies songs, he might even sing high school musical (rip son), and he will quote animation movies and expect you to get it (and if you don’t, he will shake his head with a tsk)

ngl, he’s kind of a hopeless romantic. you know those people who believe in fate and “things happen for a reason”? so... matthew.

he’s always writing something... either for work or for himself. from song lyrics to actual stories, either messy organized on his desk or on his laptop’s folders.

ALSO! his specs are for real... he has eyestrain and little astigmatism. but no, he doesn’t use them all the time, but at work? while writing? definitely!

so, that all being said, let’s talk about PLOTS: anything is very wanted, so bring it on, fAM!! a best friend, close friends, ex fling (i am saying fling bc??? “has matthew ever dated for real?” idk man???), other writers!!!!!, people who try to drag him out and he gets all “my tv shows won’t be watched by themselves”, people to complain about his mess at work, people to press him to do his stuff on time, people from the tasty team that has to kick him out before he gets the food, neighbors!!!!!....... seriously, anything, just come @ me and let’s brainstorm

#buzz:intro #AM I THE LATEST YET? IDK...#this is a mess but pls love my kid?#* generation why .#* your friendly neighboorhood .

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abangtech · 4 years

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Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch review – TechCrunch

With the new MacBook, Apple closes one of the more unfortunate product chapters in its history. The upgraded 13-inch mercifully marks the end of the failed five-year experiment that was the butterfly switch.

I won’t go into too much detail here. If you’ve purchased a MacBook in the past several years, you almost certainly know what I’m talking about — the keys that stuck, the others that seemed to fire at random. I had at least one compressed air emergency myself, while setting up to liveblog at a competitor’s press event.

After a few attempts to salvage the technology, Apple finally scrapped it, going back to basics and returning to the trusty old scissor switch. I’m typing on it now, and it’s seriously making me reconsider upgrading my four-year-old machine. Honestly, the laptop is in perfect shape otherwise, but man, those keys. It always felt too much like typing on a flat surface.

With this week’s news, the 13-inch becomes the third and final member of the MacBook family to get the new keyboard. It’s not “Magic” as the name implies (Apple really does love the M-word), but improvements are immediate and vast. The experience is considerably softer to the touch and quieter than previous versions, and the one millimeter of key travel is much easier on the hands.

There are other nice touches, here, including the addition of a dedicated Escape key. It’s a small but welcome consolation that the Touch Bar can’t do everything.

I realize I’ve just spent the first several paragraphs focusing on the keyboard. Silly, I know, but why bury the lede? After all, without it, the new MacBook would be a fairly standard MacBook upgrade (nothing wrong with that, but that’s just how these things work). With it, it’s a far more compelling invite for those who have been on the fence about an upgrade.

The system is visually identical to earlier models. Same familiar unibody metal design in silver or space gray. Same 13.3-inch, 2560 x 1600 Retina display. It’s also, for that matter, same as you’ll find on the Air, though the 13-inch’s is 500 nits vs. the Air’s 400. It’s brighter and easier on the eyes, if a bit tougher on battery life. Rumors had the company upgrading the device to a 14-inch, inline with the larger 16-inch model and further distinguishing it from the Air, but that was not to be this generation.

Same ports (4x Thunderbolt 3/USB and headphone jack). It’s a solid laptop that’s become a daily driver for so many of us. Really, the only complaint I would level against it is that the company hasn’t done a lot to distinguish the outside of the machine from the $300 cheaper Air (the Air starts at $999, the Pro at $1,299), beyond port count.

Of course, it’s what’s inside that counts. That’s what my mom tells me, at least. Curiously, the Air ships with a 10th-gen Core i7, which the entry-level pro has an 8th gen, upgradable to 10th gen. Of course, the Pro’s processor is quad-core by default (versus the Air’s dual) and 1.7GHz (to the Air’s 1.2). Our system as configured sported the 2 GHz 10th-gen quad-core i5.

That’s $500 more than the entry-level model, at $1,799. For another $200, you can bump that up to 2.3GHz. Our system clocked 5520 and 18228 on GeekBench 4’s single and double-core tests. That’s a nice bump over the Air’s 5244 and 14672.

The system also sports 16GB of RAM and 500GB of storage. The lines are a bit more blurred between the Air and the 13-inch Pro on this front, with both systems starting at 8GB and 256GB. The Pro, however, goes all the way up to 32GB and 4TB, while the Air stalls out at 16GB and 2TB.

In a lot of ways, the systems start from a similar place, but the the Pro can be specced out for better performance more befitting the Pro moniker. If you’re opting for the Pro over the Air, it’s likely you need more processing power for things like video editing or perhaps some gaming, so you’ll want to upgrade over the base-level to make sure you’re covered. The Pro’s battery life is rated at up to 10 hours, to the Air’s 11. Out of the box, I got several hours of life, doing work and listening to music, but like the Air’s claims, 10 hours is definitely a stretch here with everyday usage.

Again, the biggest drawback of the 13-inch Pro is that the improved Air blurs the product lines in a number of ways. But that device is thinner, lighter and $300 cheaper. The case for choosing the pricier device isn’t as clear as, say, the decision between the 13-inch and 16-inch models.

For most users, the Air should be plenty for most tasks. For those who need more power without breaking their backs or banks, however, the 13-inch model is still a strong and safe bet that’s now much easier on the fingers.

Source

The post Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch review – TechCrunch appeared first on abangtech.

from abangtech https://abangtech.com/apple-macbook-pro-13-inch-review-techcrunch/

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un-enfant-immature · 4 years

Text

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch review

The 13-inch MacBook Pro gets Apple’s much-improved keyboard

There are other nice touches, here, including the addition of a dedicated Escape key. It’s a small but welcome consolation that the Touch Bar can’t do everything.

MacBook Pro 16” first impressions: Return of the Mack

Apple MacBook Air review

#TechCrunch

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friendliest-place-on-earth · 7 years

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those days (pt 1)

hey guys! mod rose here, and i’m finally posting a follow-up to brave enough. this is gonna have another part as you can see from the title, because i’m still working on the ending and it’s incredibly long altogether because of the lyrics i pulled. this song is also by lindsey stirling and it’s off the same album brave enough is from. again, the lyrics are in italics. i’ll be camping all weekend, so i might come back with some new things maybe? we’ll just have to see. hope you guys like it! -mod rose 💜

i remember those days.

Davey rolled out of bed, ignoring his roommate, who was way too chipper for the first day of classes at eight in the morning. Specs was, as his boyfriend Romeo said, a morning person. Davey was sure nobody else was this excited to wake up on a daily basis. He took the last packet of Pop-Tarts out of the box and placing them on his desk before quickly changing and shoving his books in his backpack.

“I’m going, but I should be back with lunch,” Davey said before dashing out the door, and Specs nodded.

Davey all but ran across campus and into the lecture hall. He slid into a seat in the back just as the professor came out and started class. The boy next to him smirked.

“You a freshman?” he asked.

“No, junior. And I overslept,” Davey groaned. He took the Pop-Tarts, now mostly crushed, and started eating.

The boy opened his laptop and put in earbuds while turning on his phone to record the lecture.

“What are you doing?” Davey asked, slightly accusatory but also curious.

“It's easier for me to go back and take notes that way,” the boy replied, and suddenly it hit him. It was Jack. How it took Davey so long to recognize him he didn't know, but it would have to wait until after class if Jack didn't leave super soon.

laughing out loud, staying up too late.

In all of college, Davey had never been sexiled before. So when he came back to a sock on his doorknob, he was confused. Then he realized the door was locked, and everything made sense.

“God, Specs. Thanks for leaving me to the common area,” Davey muttered, walking to the room. The TV apparently went out at the end of last year, and nobody had done anything yet. But at least the couches were fairly comfortable. He shot a quick text to Specs to tell him when it was safe to come back in, but he figured he wouldn't get a reply until early the next morning before Specs went out on a run like he usually did.

“Might as well settle in.” Davey pulled out his laptop and plugged it in before setting it on a nearby couch, hoping nobody came over and tripped on it. He worked on a reading for almost a half hour, undisturbed, until somebody else came out into the common area. Davey looked up from the textbook, hoping it was Specs telling him that he could actually sleep in his bed, but no such luck. It was Jack.

“Twice in one day? Did you get kicked out, too?”

“Yep. I’m hoping my roommate texts me when he’s done,” Davey sighed, closing his book.

“No need to put your stuff away. I’m probably just gonna sleep, if that's okay with you.” Jack revealed a blanket in his bag with a grin. “I had some time to prepare. Better than nothing, I guess.”

“That's true. Yeah, go ahead, do whatever. You won't bother me.”

“One more thing: I figure I should probably introduce myself: I’m Jack.”

“I’m Davey.”

“I knew it was you. Nobody else gives off the same vibe as you do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It's like, kind of nervous, but also pretty chill, which somehow makes sense. Oh, and gay,” Jack finished, which almost made Davey choke on his water.

“That about nails it, yeah,” he replied, setting the water bottle down.

“Good to know I finally know somebody, even if we haven't talked in awhile,” Jack said.

“Yeah.”

The rest of the night was spent recounting the past four years, because Jack was terrible at replying to texts.

“So you really remember watching that in my old basement?” Davey asked, laughing.

“Oh yeah. We could quote that movie like nobody’s business. How could I forget it?” Jack asked, and Davey’s phone buzzed.

“Well, now that it's two in the morning and I’ve got a class at nine, my lovely friend has decided he's had enough sex for one night,” Davey said as he packed up his stuff.

“How polite,” Jack said.

“You know, if you want, I bet you could just sleep on the floor in my room. Specs wouldn't care. Or at least he’s not allowed to now.”

“No, it’s fine. I just need to make sure I’m not around when the RA shows up.”

“All the more reason to stay in my room. Jack, come on, please?” Davey realized he sounded somewhat whiney, but he would feel bad if he knew Jack was sleeping on the couch alone because his roommate was an asshole.

“If you insist.” Jack got up and gave him a wry smile.

staring out the window, whilst i see your face.

Davey was spaced out in the student union, long having given up on his studying and opting to look through Twitter instead, when there was a knocking on the window. He jumped, nearly dropping his phone. As Davey picked up his earbuds, which had fallen out, he looked up to see Jack grinning at him like an idiot. Davey rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help but laugh. Jack quickly ran to the door and came inside.

“What the hell are you doing?” Davey asked, still chuckling.

“Just thought I’d come by with a surprise.” Jack pulled a small bag of powdered donuts out from behind him.

“Thank God. I forgot my wallet in my room, so I’ve been starving for the past hour,” Davey said as Jack opened up the bag.

“So, what were you up to?” Jack asked conversationally as he took a bite.

“I was studying for a while, but then I nearly fell asleep over my notes and gave up,” Davey replied.

“Get some actual sleep! You need it for your smart person classes!” Jack said through a mouthful of donut, and Davey laughed.

“Says the guy who falls asleep after midnight with an eight A.M. class every day,” Davey shot back, grinning, and Jack tried to swat him.

“Shhh, I know I’m a hypocrite. I’m sure half the hall knows I never sleep at this rate,” Jack whispered as if letting Davey in on an important secret.

“Okay, I appreciate the donuts, but I need to know why you actually dropped by. It’s not like you to show up spontaneously,” Davey said. “What’s up?”

“I have a date tonight!” Jack said with excitement, and Davey felt a little like somebody had punched him. He just hoped Jack didn’t notice.

“Oh, that’s great! Do I know them?” he replied instead.

“She’s in my Psych class, and she’s been helping me out with some of the stuff I don’t get. And the other night when we were studying, she just kind of asked me out. So I said yes!’

“What’s her name, Jack?” Davey asked, mocking exasperation, and Jack stopped before laughing a bit and replying.

“That might have been useful information, yeah. Her name’s Eliza. If things go well, maybe she could come by with me at some point.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice.” Davey checked his watch, and even though the only thing he had going on that night was a Netflix binge marathon, he started to pack up. “I have to head out soon. My roommate and I were going to work more on getting things organized.” Davey didn’t want to be sitting in that building any longer than he had to anymore.

“Alright. Hey, take the donuts.” Jack pushed the half-full bag towards him.

“Are you sure?”

“Do I look like the kind of person that really needs more donuts?” Jack asked, and davey conceded with a smile, pulling his backpack on and picking up the bag as he walked out.

“Of course Jack would have a date. I’m surprised he wasn’t dating anybody before now,” Davey muttered as he shoved his earbuds back in. But what did surprise him a bit was the sudden discomfort forming in his stomach.

i remember those days.

#newsies #davey jacobs #jack kelly #javid #mod rose

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banggoodblog · 7 years

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Can You Justify Buying a Flagship Anymore? [Long Read]

High-end smartphone manufacturers aren’t selling their flagship phones like they did three years ago. HTC and Sony are almost on the verge of shutting down their mobile phone business. LG and Motorola are hardly making profits. And the top two dogs, Apple and Samsung, are seeing a slowing increase in sales. Meanwhile, Chinese brands are rising up and selling more than ever. Here is my breakdown of what is causing this shift in the smartphone industry.

Increased smartphone retention rates

The smartphone market wasn’t as saturated 3 or 4 years ago as it is now. Back then, the majority were still hanging on to their feature or “dumb” phones. Today, almost everyone’s upgraded to a smartphone. And most of them are willing to stick with their phones for at least a couple of years.

Why don’t we need to upgrade so often anymore?

Smaller leaps in performance: In the early days of smartphones, each new model offered a considerable upgrade in features and performance, you could quickly be left behind. The leaps in the last few years cannot be compared to the jumps when WiFi, GPS, 3G or cameras were first released, you needed those technologies, or you became outdated.

Flagships move away from performance

The shift in how phones are marketed has moved away from hardware-based aspects, where RAM, CPU, WiFi, and GPS used to be critical points of competition, larger/smaller/curved screens, ultra slim, gorilla glass, longer battery life, and metal frames have now become key points of difference. Aesthetics and size changes have taken the lead in how brands communicate their phones. Even the push for 2K screens is just hype as your eye cant detect the difference. Cameras are one area that is still a drawcard, but even then for online use an old phone can take a good selfie and make a good snapshot.

All of these things are improvements, but as you are not missing out on any significant change in technology, it is not a strong reason to ditch a phone that already performs well.

Just look at your desktop PC

Laptops and PCs followed a similar cycle, specs from even 5 years ago are still good enough for everything you do today, but if you contrast back to Windows 95-XP days, you often needed a hardware upgrade to enjoy the latest features or connectivity. Now Windows 7 and 10 will happily operate on the same machine without the need for a physical upgrade. Why? Because the performance needed to run an operating system and run regular tasks has been surpassed, you don’t get a vastly improved day to day performance with a new computer, the bottleneck now is internet speed, not your hardware. If your computer is a few years old, chuck in an SSD for a vastly faster startup and load time.

Smartphones are entering this stage too where an upgrade might be faster, but it is not going to change your use of the device or unlock something new.

Peaked mobile performance requirements

Look at what you do with your phone today, and compare to last year, the web, software, and entertainment have changed a lot, but the actual performance you require from your phone has not dramatically changed. Web browsing, Facebook, Reddit, watching videos opening a few apps and using a GPS has already been catered for, the latest smartphones offer more speed or ability to open more apps at once but nothing revolutionary.

Again you can look at computers…

In the last 5 years, software and the web have not needed any physical hardware upgrade. So you have not been pushed to change your setup just to keep current software or your online social life and entertainment accessible.

Everyone loves a new phone (or a new PC), but unlike the early smartphone days, you are not so quickly pushed to upgrade anymore, as the older model might be slower but will still update, run and operate the same programs.

Things have also been optimized

The push to optimize applications has also made them smaller and lighter so newer apps can actually be less resource heavy than their earlier versions.

The same can be said with the web, the focus on optimizing a page is based on making it smaller, making the server faster and only loading what is necessary. Gone are the days of bloated Java heavy sites with awesome animation and buttons. Pages might be increasing in overall size (mostly due to more pictures), but the actual performance needed to web browse has not considerably changed since the beginning of the YouTube video era.

New Media Needs New Hardware

Throughout history our media consumption has had a few epic developments, printed media, radio and TV were all huge shifts in the way we consume media. All these changes also required new physical hardware both to produce and consume. Video has been the latest for a long time, but now a huge shift is coming. VR, AI, and ultra-high resolution will develop into a new interactive medium of entertainment and commerce. This will bring a new horizon to hardware performance and new features.

Until VR or another big hardware development comes, we can expect to see people upgrading their phone less often.

Chinese Smartphone Adoption Hitting Big Brands

The flagships are also facing an increase in competition from imported smartphone brands. Besides Korea and Japan, there’s another Asian country that’s making a name for itself with its smartphones – China. Smartphone users who are willing to upgrade no longer have only a handful of OEMs to look up to. The options at their disposal have multiplied, thanks to Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Vivo, Meizu, and Oppo. They offer top-notch, flagship hardware for a mid-range price. For example, the recently introduced Xiaomi Mi5 does almost everything a Samsung Galaxy S7 can do. It packs in the same hardware as the S7, and it also doesn’t skimp on build quality. Despite such identical traits, Xiaomi sells its flagship for less than $400. The Samsung equivalent retails for almost $700.

The Top Dogs are Not Going Anywhere, Yet

With Xiaomi, Oneplus, Oppo and others making a mark in the smartphone industry within a relatively short period, seasoned players may have seen a hit in their bottom line, but they are not anywhere close to incurring losses. Samsung, Apple, LG phones are still seeing a good number of buyers. There are reasons why people buy the much more expensive Samsung and Apple phones when there are equivalent, less costly alternatives.

First, these companies have created a brand loyalty or fan base that’s hard to wipe off within a couple of years, especially the Apple fans are hard to convert. Moreover, the more prominent brands have a wider distribution network. Their phones are accessible in almost every part of the world. It’s nearly impossible to find a mobile phone store that doesn’t have Samsung or Apple phones on display. Chinese brands are yet to spread their wings outside China and India, although available online, the physical presence of these names has not spread so quickly. From a service perspective, Apple, Samsung, and even LG, for that matter, have an established customer service network.

Shopping online and ordering from China has also become much faster and safer. With the rise in local warehouses and protection offered by PayPal and Credit card companies getting your phone from overseas is hasslefree.

Chinese phones are now hard to resist

The dedication of these brands to imitate Apple and Samsung, not in just looks, but also performance and quality have resulted in not only cheap alternatives but in fact robust alternatives to big brands. These Chinese flagships have proven they can mix function and price and in doing so have greatly threatened the overpriced flagship brands.

Conclusions

People are not replacing their phones so frequently, and the market is slowing.

It is slowing because the performance we need for regular use has not changed, we don’t need faster / higher specs to keep software updated.

The trend can be easily seen in the development of the laptop and PC industries.

A new shift in how we use our phones will energize the market again, VR/AI has this potential.

Chinese brands have shifted from producing knockoffs to creating their own flagships.

The winners in this lull are smartphones brands from China who are rapidly gaining market share, they offer top specs with unbeatable value for money.

Running some old brick of a thing and looking to upgrade?

Experience the value of Chinese smartphones, you’ll be amazed what even $150 can get regarding performance.

Popular Chinese Smartphones

What do you think? Can you still justify buying a Samsung or Apple?

Can You Justify Buying a Flagship Anymore? [Long Read] was originally published on Banggood.com Official Gadget Blog And Latest News Reel

#Android #apple #educational #smartphone

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