Bicycle Mango Boat

Mango Bicycle Boat

Mega Oh-No!

So I've had this PC for more than 5 years at this point.  I bought an all singing all dancing computer for games because A: I like playing games and B: Half-assing a computer build means spending the remaining life of the PC upgrading here, changing there, and generally dicking around with it.  Something I wanted to avoid like the plague.

I have changed the motherboard once (the old one had dodgy hdd controllers, a flaw in the design that I was too slow to reclaim through the manufacturer), but that's the only modification I've made.  This PC has done me pretty well, all things considered.  I can't remember exactly how much I paid for it, way back when I was living in korea, but with the screen, speakers, mouse and keyboard, it was probably a little over 1,000 USD (stuff is a lot cheaper in korea, probably on account of half the stuff being made there or in Taiwan which is basically just up the road).

For the first time since I bought this PC, I came across a game that I can't play.  The new Doom game (yes they are still making them) won't run on this PC.  It'll boot to the menu, load into a game, but I can't do anything, it's too slow.  Too few frames.

So this year I'm going to buy a new PC.  There's no point 'upgrading,' the parts, because everything will have to go (it also makes it easier for compatibility purposes to do it this way).  I will keep the peripherals like the mouse and keyboard, screen and whatnot, but I'm thinking of getting a new case, and I'll definitely get a new power supply (this one has fits every now and again).

So, having said that, I'm torn.  I don't have nearly as much money as I did when I was in Korea, but once this thing is built, I want it to last another five years.

I managed to get in at the perfect time with this PC, because the old consoles held PC games back in the sense that there was almost zero software innovation, games in 2008 looked pretty much the same as they did in 2013, and until recently, this computer played games incredibly well.  Now, looking forwards, VR is going to completely change that.  The requirements for games in VR are astronomical, and for the first time in more than a decade there's going to be an arms race with regards to graphics hardware, which leaves the consumer back in the old annual or biannual upgrade grind.  This isn't set in stone of course, it's just my prediction, but Sony have recently announced that they're going to release a new PS4, one with upgraded innards - essentially a playstation 4.5.

That may not sound newsworthy to people who buy a new phone every year (which is the way of the world now, unfortunately), but to games people, it's enormous news.  It's the biggest news in gaming since the introduction of consoles.

Aside from being incredibly anti-consumer (in the footsteps of apple) it's a tacit admission that they can't afford to take a hit up-front on tech, and the recoup via other means.  In fact, inside sources have indicated that they broke even on every console sold from the get-go.  This is unheard of, every other console in recent memory has been a loss-leader, the companies making money up on software and more recently internet services.

What does this lengthy diversion have to do with me buying a new PC?  Well, firstly, it's the basis for my theory regarding the future of PC hardware.  CPU's will continue trudging along as they have done for decades.  Memory will, bar natural disaster, be cheap enough that you simply buy as much and as fast as is available, the overall percentage of your budget devoted to RAM will always be negligible even if you opt for top-of-the-line stuff.  Hard disks have stalled in a major way, and SSD's are still too unreliable for my needs (frankly, I find it worrying that so few resources online mention that they aren't reliable enough for use beyond a couple of years) so I'm going to buy a 4tb drive and just be done with it.

PSU's are slightly more efficient now than they were 5 years ago, but not the the point of being noteworthy.

So, as it always does, it comes down to graphics cards.  4K and VR are the new frontiers and the next wave of cards coming out around September won't be enough to see me through for another 3 years, let alone 5.  So do I buy a mid-range card, live with it for a couple of years, then upgrade when they've figured out the new architectures, or do I just go big now and live with it?

I still need to save up the money, which is going to take a long time, so at least I have the luxury of being able to wait and see how the early stakes pan out.

Vietnamore

 So I've decided to spread out the distribution of pictures from Vietnam.

Instead of dropping a ton at once, I'll drip feed them over the space of a few blog posts.

As we were walking around Hoi An (I think) there were tons of people taking wedding pictures, either on the river or next to the colourful lanterns.  This couple were sitting on a boat next to a famous bridge, away from all the tourists.  I waited until the lighting man (each photography group was three strong, camera dude, light dude, boat dude) lit them up, then snapped a few while they were busy doing whatever with their lanterns.

This last one was shot miles away, it's slightly cropped, slightly dark, slightly imperfect, but I like it anyway.  You really need to blow it up to fullscreen, otherwise you can barely see anything other than a red blob.  Regardless it's got an interesting feel to it.

That's it for now!

The Flowers of Vietnam

I didn't realise, but Vietnam supplies a large number of flowers to places around the world.  A lot of these blooms are ones I've seen before (not that I'd be able to name them) and are quite familiar around the UK.

One or two are not, however.  There's one particular plant in this list of pictures that I'd never seen before, and despite asking what the name was, have since forgotten.  I think it's a bird plant?  That's probably no the Latin name though.

The name that flower game begins here with one I've seen about the place in england.

There are a lot of pictures here so you'll just have to make do with a list of pictures and no writing.

...

Okay, you can have a tiny amount of writing.

These ones are quite popular in england too.

This one was taken in the grounds of an old presidential estate, just after watering.  Either that or it was so hot the flower's melting.  Probably the former.

The pinkest/purplest flower ever.

I think I turned up the colour too much on this picture.  Then again, the leaves look just as they did, so maybe it really was that colour.

What's this then?

The colours are definitely wrong in this one, the greens in the background look more like the colour of toy army men than plants.

I'm going to guess, marigold?

This one looks a bit better.  I could crop it to bring the flower closer, to make it larger, but then I'd lose detail.  A good close-up lens would help with tiny flowers like this one.

What a fantastic flower!

This is the bird looking thing.  I'm going to say, bird plant?

Looks good from both sides.

Bird flower?  Whatever it's called, it's a really interesting shape and colour.

It really is this pink.

This one, and most of the following flowers, were grown in a greenhouse we looked around.  I was surprised at how big the flower growing industry is in certain parts of Vietnam.  It's not something I thought of before, but I guess they have to come from somewhere.

An orange version of the pink one above.

These were slightly yellowing on the edges, giving a really nice graded finish.  The kind that looks fake and plastic.

It wasn't really that dark.  I don't know where the background went.

 I like the many colours of this one, even though it isn't really my taste.  Also, it looks like the picture was taken at the dead of night for some reason.

This is a real plant, honest.

 This one looks absolutely fake.  Faker than the moon landings even.

I assure you that it's real though, I even touched it with my hand.  (Don't tell the police)

I like this one because it's all deformed and kind of difficult to look at.  I mean, the middle is all stretched out and weird.  It's just not right maaaaaaaan.

Still bloody pink though.

Tokyo Weekender Magazine

So I got back from Vietnam yesterday, around midnight.  I've spent today doing work stuff, uploading/downloading/reloading/side-loading photographs, going to the gym (I lost 4 kg's!) and generally catching up on all the stuff I should have been doing instead of eating frogs.

When I got back I had this magazine on my doorstep:

I didn't take the pictures this time.

 It's an article I wrote for Tokyo Weekender magazine last month, you can check it out by clicking here.

I've not read it since I sent it in, nor have I looked too carefully at the pages in the book - if I look at it and find a phrase I don't like or a spelling mistake then there's no changing it.  It's better to have the image of what I've written in my head be my truth, there's just no way I won't find something wrong with it if I do have another look.  Ignorance is bliss.

On an unrelated note I'll get the photographs done and put on here soon.  The computer is working on archiving, resizing and converting about 80 gigs worth of pictures and videos, and that's going to a NAS over the world slowest network connection so it's taking a while.  The jpg's will be ready by tomorrow (I accidentally off-loaded all the storage to the NAS, so every picture has to be pulled back onto the PC, edited, then saved back to the NAS which is monumentally innefficient) at which point I'll have a look through and decide which ones I want to work on and which ones can be stored away, never to be seen again.

I think I'll probably used about 200gigs by the end, with video editing (video editing is a black hole of storage usage, the space is gone before you even realise you needed it) and image manipulation (I think that's what the cool kids call photoshop these days).

Anyway, the pics will come slow and steady over the coming days/weeks (read: months).