All Entries (Page 2)

Entry created on 2024-10-02 Authors: steeph (337) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Books (1) Menschenangst (1) Languages used: de (79)

Also, ich mach' ja keine Buchempfehlungen. Also, eigentlich. Dazu hab' ich auch gar nich' genug Ahnung von Büchern. Oder von Literatur und so. Und ich les' ja auch fast nie ein Buch. Deswegen will ich eigentlich immer gleich empfehlen, was ich gelesen habe, weil es immer was besonderes für mich is'. Aber mach' ich dann halt nie, weil das wäre einfach nur eine Liste von Büchern, die ich mal gelesen habe, was nicht von Qualität oder anderen guten Eigenschaften des Buchs zeugt, sondern nur der Tatsache, dass es mir mal unter kam und sich mir nicht in einer abstoßenden Art präsentierte. Für dieses hier mach' ich jetz' aber mal 'ne Ausnahme, weil es mir so vor kommt, als sei dieser Humor irgendwie so kleinnieschen-füllend, dass es wahrscheinlich nicht groß durch alle Blogs und Fediverse-Teilnehmer rum-empfohglen wird. Das wurde es bestimmt als es 2011 raus kam (bei Dumont), als sein Autor auf Twitter eine recht große Folgschaft hatte. Da hab' ich auch beschlossen, es zu kaufen. Ca. 6,7 Jahre später kam ich dann auch endlich mal dazu. Noch mal ca. 6,7 Jahre später kam ich dann auch endlich mal dazu, es zu lesen. Und ich wurde nicht enttäuscht. Das Buch ist tatsächlich so verrückt und lustig, wie sich sein Autor damals auf Twitter gab.

Ach, ich sollte mal sagen, wovon ich rede. Entschuldogen Sie meine Störung von Jan-Uwe Fitz (Ich weiß bis heute nicht, wozu er einen Doppelname hat. Aber muss er ja wissen.) trägt den Untertitel "Ein Wahnsinssroman", vermutlich um darauf hinzuweisen, dass der Autor wahnsinnig ist, oder der Protagonist. Wobei nahegelegt wird, dass zwischen den beiden so absolut gar kein Unterschied besteht. Der Protagonist referenziert im Buch selbst, eben dieses gerade zu schreiben. Also muss ich doch davon ausgehen, dass an keiner Stelle darin irgendwelche Übertreibungen oder rein dem Witz oder der Absurditätssteigerung dienenden Falschbehauptungen vorkommen. Das beides doch tatsächlich der Fall ist macht einen Teil des Reizes aus. Etwa wenn er von Misshandlunegn durch seine Eltern in seiner Kindheit erzählt, ist es vorstellbar, dass derartige Dinge in manchen Haushalten wirklich passieren oder so erinnert werden. Mit Humor darüber sowohl zu schreiben als auch zu stehen ist auch eine Möglichkeit, die ich niemandem absprechen möchte. Absurd-extreme Reaktionen und Geschichten sind aber so häufig, dass selbst ich mit meiner Nativität annehmen muss, dass ein nicht gerade kleine Portion Fiktion in die Geschichten eingeflossen sein muss, um mein Menschenbild aufrecht erhalten zu können. Ich kann nur vermuten, dass vieles auf wahren Begebenheiten beruht und echte Erlebnisse in Geschichten ein- oder zu solchen verarbeitet wurden. Da ich als Leser den Unterschied nicht ausmachen kann, habe ich das ganze Buch als einen Roman betrachtet, der der Unterhaltung dienen soll. Ich finde, so präsentiert er sich auch.

Wenn die Förster ein Einsehen mit uns Paranoikern hätten, würden sie mehr Spiegel in deutschen Wäldern anbringen. Solche Spiegel, wie sie im deutschen Straßenverkehr an Schwer einzusehenden Kreuzungen un Einfahrten hängen. Dann könnten wir früh genug hinter die Bäume blicken und würden, falls wir dort einen Räuber erspäten, entweder einen anderen Weg einschlagen oder, falls die Luft rein ist, beruhigt weiter unserer Wege gehen. Aber wir Paranoiker haben keine so starke Lobby wie die Autofahrer.

Jan-Uwe Fitz, im Netz auch bekannt als Der Taubenvergrämer (@vergraemer@twitter.com) gehtz sehr offen damit um, dass er selbst mit einer Menschenangst ausgestattet ist, die sein ganzes Leben und seinen Alltag stark beeinflusst. Sicherlich ist vieles in dem Buch auch eine Art Aufarbeitung von Erlebtem und fantasiertem. Die kompromisslos absurde Fantasie, der augenscheinlich in keiner Situation Einhalt geboten wird, prägt jede Geschichte des Buchs. Konversationen, die an britische Sketch-Shows aus den 80ern (Jaja, ich meine Monthy Python, weniger das, was versucht hat, deren Erfolg nachzubilden.) oder den frühen 90er erinnern, aber auf deutsch halt und mit einer Prise Wahnsinn, die der Protagonist doch oft sehr offensiv anspricht.

Ausschnitt aus einem längeren Dialog:

»Sie klingen sehr erfahren. Sind Sie schon häufiger Amok gelaufen?«

»Nein, zum ersten Mal. Finden Sie, ich mache das gut?«

»Ja, aber was mich noch interessieren würde: Man hat ja nicht immer die Chance, einen Amokläufer nach seinen Motiven zu befragen. Also: Spielen Sie viele Computerspiele?«

»Gar nicht.«

»Dann kann das nicht der Grund sein.«

»Nein, ich gebe der Gesellschaft die Schuld. Zu viele Menschen, die in meiner Gegenwart laut telefonieren zum Beispiel.«

»Das ist ein Motiv. Aber sagen Sie: Müssten Sie nicht vielleicht etwas fester zudrücken? Damit ich keine Luft mehr bekomme?«

»Sie bekommen noch Luft?«

»O ja. Hören Sie mal.«

Ich atme tief ein und aus wie ein Patient, der von seinem Arzt mit dem Stethoskop abgehört wird.

»Sie erstaunen mich. Sie zäher Hund. Dann sollte ich tatsächlich noch stärker zudrücken.« Herr Menke wirkt leicht verunsichert. »Wenn Sie am Ende nicht tot sind, ist so ein Amoklauf ja auch blöd.«

Er drückt nun tatsächlich etwas fester zu.

»Und? Jetzt besser?«

»Joh, etwas«, presse ich angestrengt hervor, weil er tatsächlich stärker zudrückt. »Aber sagen Sie mal: Darf ich mich als Opfer eigentlich wehren, oder gibt es Amoklaufkonvbentionen, die ich zu beachten habe?«

»Nein, das hängt vom Be-Amokten ab. Das muss jeder für sich entscheiden.«

Der erste Teil des Buchs ist eine gut sortierte Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten. Richtig kurz manchmal. Für eine Sketch-Show ohne Regeln genau das richtige. Interessante Momente und abstruse Gedanken, die vermutlich mal raus mussten. Der gemeinsame Kontext ist das Leben des Protagonisten, aus dem die Geschichten stammen. Der zweite Teil ist eine längere, zusammenhängende Geschichte über das Bestreben einen guten Therapieplatz zu bekommen/in eine Nervenheilanstalt einzubrechen und sich einen freien Platz zu ermorden. Der dritte Teil ist kurz. /p>

Oft nahm mich mein Vater zur Seite und sagte »Sohn, du hast so viele Ängste. Mach etwas aus ihnen.« Dann zuckte er zusammen, weil er durch mein Kinderzimmerfenster die Birke im Vorgarten sah. »Siehst du«, sagte er traurig. »Ich habe nur meine Angst vor Bäumen. Aber in dir steckt so viel mehr. Du bist voller so wunderbarer Phobien. Ich werde dich moren in der Störungsstelle anmelden, damit deine Talente gefördert werden.«

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Today I've learned slow progress is still progress.

Entry created on 2024-09-30 Authors: steeph (337) Categories: ADHD (3) TIL (1)

I haven't only learned that today. But I'm starting a "Today I've learned…" series of entries, in which I won't be picky about actually having learned something that day for the first time.

I've learned that tiny steps towards a goal may only seem tiny compared to the size of the steps you were or are imagining taking. The are always infinitely larger than no step at all. If you think you should be able to do/finish a task today, you may not. But if you try and only finish it by 50%, you've done what was possible and learned that this task can take longer than you thought. That's two good things. If you image you can do 10% of a task today, but you end up only finishing 1% of it, that's not as tiny of a progress than it may feel. It is only small in comparison of what you imagined before starting. If the task doesn't go as well as imagined, including not as fast, it runs the risk of getting put of because it's no fun, frustrating or doesn't seem worth the effort. That is not making progress. Doing 0.1% of a task today is progress. And still infinitely more progress than planning to do it tomorrow or next week.

There are probably sayings about this "wisdom". It can seem banal. But sometimes it can be very relevant ro be reminded of this fact. Doing the next step is the way to start to do something. If the next step is not clear, thinking or inquiring about the next step is the next step. If it's complicated/many unclear steps are involved, written and drawn plan can help. The next step is the single one thing that you have to do. All the complicated stuff comes after. If that is taking a tool out of a box, that's it. Then you can still think about the next step. If a task seems overwhelming or you're acting as if it does, do just one or two things, then see what comes next. Or do it for only one minute even though you know it'll take fifty times as long. Once you've started, you'll probably do it for more than a minute. If not: Fine, that was the plan. That was still progress.

It is easy to forget about this perspectve. There are ways of reminding oneself of them. But this entry is not about them. Although I didn't intend to go the entry in that direction, I'm going ahead and add an ADHD tag to this to make it clear that I noticed in what direction it went.

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Telling Old Stories For No Important Reason

Entry created on 2024-09-28 Authors: steeph (337) Categories: Memories (2) Stories (1) Writing (4)

I think I'm prone to telling stories from my past when I'm left with the choice of topic but there is no obvious topic right now that has to be discussed. So at moments at which I want to write something on here but not because there is a specific thing that I want to say or explore, I may fall back to telling about things that I did or made or remember from 20 years or so ago. That might seem nostalgic at (many) times. BNut I don't think that that's a bad thing at all. When I write about things I remember fondly, I welcome the feelings such memries evoke. Yearning or unfulfillable longing something from the past that can't be brought back isn't usually part of this. I like sharing some memories, like how my PC hobby was like decades ago were the industry and especially the tech itself was different. And on here, I decide what's worth talking about. Yes, this is a bit of an apologetical entry. Whatever.

I'd love to read from you if you either had different or the same experiences of things that I write about. There's a link for e-mail comments beneath each entry.

When somebody says they're reprocessing old memories it's expected to mean that they're looking back and coming to terms with their past. I think can also be meant in a good way. I'm remembering something and decide to explore my memories of it further; maybe because I'm inmdtrigued of the feeling of remembering something that I had completely forgotton about for 20 years, or simply because it's a nice memory. Maybe I'm looking at old photos of things that made, people I've met, places I've travelled to; and while more and more memories from that time come back, I eventually put them into my new perspective. I know I'm also changing my memories when I do this. The psychology of how memories are formed, saved, remembered and altered (and sometimes faked entirely) is very interesting. There are so many papers to read about memory-related researtch that suggest that most people most of the time assume that (at least their own) memory function differently from what it actually does and is granted much more credibility than it deserves. But anyway, it can be vbery interesting to bring memories from way back into connection with what you've experienced since then and your reality today.

What I'm doing here when I wriote about an idea for something that I had 20 years ago or something that I made back then, I'm slowly catching up with my desire to document certain things from my head. Text is the medium that feels right for that. A few years ago I've accepted that I will never have the perfect website which contains everything that I want it to, complete and structured and nothing boring. Because I never got anywhere when that was my goal. Now I'm just putting thing in entries and that's that. That also includes things that even 20 years ago I wanted to publish on the web but never did properly. I'm not doing it in the way that I decided then was the proper way. I'm just writing down thoughts and memories so that these memories don't belong in the "Oh, I never ended up deing this. Maybe I should at some point." category in my mind. Sometimes it feels like I have accomplished something that I had in the back of my head for 20 years simply because I write here that I once had this idea and still think it's a kind of neat idea but never did anything with it. And sometimes I delete it again right away because it really wasn't interesting in any way.

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Case Modding

Entry created on 2024-09-22 (edited 2024-09-28) Authors: steeph (337) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Case Modding (11) Computer Noises (1) DIY (15) Retro Computing (6) Scrap (1) incompelte (1)

I used to be somewhat of a casemodde in the early to mid 2000s. That's kind of the style of casemodding that I still like today. We used to shun people who buy ready parts or cases instead of building parts and modding cases themselves. I especially was an advocat of building things from materials that could be found on the street or in scrap containers or were otherwise free to aquire. Maybe just because i didn't have any money, didn't know many people who had enough money to simply buy materials and tools and didn't foresee a future where I was able to simply buy anything I needed to build something. To this day I like using leftovers, scrap and otherwise free materials to build things. I think I wasn't aware of that in the 2000s; but which case mods I like how much is to a large degree determined by how scrappy the building materials were and how simple the tools were. I wasn't usuially trying to build something that looks slick and exactly like planned, but something that looks unique and cool, and maybe extraordinary.

Here are a few examples of things that I did to cases of mine that I liked.

(I'll pick out photos of these examples at some point, maybe. I haven't yet.)

Coloured foil window

Making a whole in the left wall of a tower case is probably the most common case mod. There were various window kits to make it easy to get to a clean-looking result. I didn't care for those for a long time. Instead of bying any material to create a window in my case, I used what I had: a dremel-like tool with a cutting disk and some red polymere foil an old text book used to be covered with. If I remember correctly, my mother bought this book used one year for my new school year instead of getting the current version. The previous owner had a red protectie cover around it. Eventually one of the seams ripped and the cover slid off every day. So I left the cover off. It was translucent. A unique material, I thought. So I kkept it in case I wanted to build something with it some day. The case I used it for used to house a generic 286. I put a 586 in it, I think. In the early 2000s that was just an old, very slow computer, not a #RetroComputing statement. I glued the sheet to the steel case from the inside after removing the burr and abraded the edges with a used corner of some sand paper. With bright cold lights inside you could sort of look inside the case. But it was mainly for style. The rest of the case was covered in some tape that I found at some building site once. That way the cut edges didn't look too rough. It certainly was a unique look. I still like the style of that case.

Plastic hose IDE and floppy cables

Ribbon cables, such as they were used for IDE, floppy drives and SCSI, used to be impossible to tuck away nicely. Round cables, such as pretty much all cables that are connected externally, can be clipped almost anywere. Wide ribbon cables need to be folded to wire them cleanly. That doesn't even work well if the case and all parts are designed for it, which they never are. In most PCs those cables used to be just left hanging around, blocking airflow and view. Some PC manufacturers used to cut the ribbons into five or six parts and fixed them with a stacked position with cable ties. That looked much cleaner. And suddenly round IDE and floppy cables became a thing. The connectors were the same. But inbetween they weren't ribbon cables anymore because the individual wires were split up and shrouded in a plastic tube. Those cables were more flexible and usually more colourful than conventional IDE cables. Again, you could buy them. But until the day I got a set with a motherboard that I bought, I didn't want "factory made" round IDE and floppy cables. I made my own by splitting up ribbon cables and stuffing them through an old shower hose or a piece of a garden hose. Not as flexible, but just as practical as bought ones.

Aluminium tape wrap

I don't know where I got it. But I had enough wide aluminium tape to cover an entire mini tower on the sides and the top. To cover up the imperfect edges I used red electric tape. So almost the entire case was striped red and silver at an unusual. Simple, no cost for me in that case, and quickly giving a nice, retrofuturistic look to a before boring, grey mini tower.

IC exterior

Another idea that I once had was to use all the ICs (at least those that were at least 1 cm wide) from all those defective motherboards and extension cards that accumulated over the years. People would bring and I would pick up so much old PC hardware that others didn't need anymore. Often the reason was that at least some part had a hardware defect, in which case I usually gave up my hopes to get it working again. I had an entire wall covered in old motherboards at one point. Much of this stuff was from the mid-90s or older and therefore not worth keeping intact even if it was in a great condition when I got it. Eventually there were just too many unused and defective cards and other boards and I decided to recycle their ICs before I got rid of what I thought I'd never want to even look at again. I cut off all those ICs with a knife (only SMD chips), covered the right side of a big tower in double-sided adhesive tape and neatly placed one next to another. Sometimes I used chips smaller than a cm to fill gaps. Not even half of the side got covered. I tried to get more from other people who wanted to throw stuff away. But what I got didn't bring me close to covering even the one side. My idea was to cover all the sides. I realised I had to pay money to get enough even broken electronics to finish the case. That wasn't beside the idea. Also it didn't feel right to use just any old ICs. It was supposed to be a PC chip case. I never finished the case. Unfortunately I didn't have the idea to make the IC field transition into something else, like a solid colour, even just the gray the case was before. Or maybe I didn't want to dso that. Nowadays I have some ideas where I could possibly get trunkloads full of ICs that I assume aren't recyclable otherwise. Maybe I wouldn't use a big tower if I'd ever started this again.

Sofa PC

I had a sofa in my room. I don't remember where I got it. I probably picket it up from the street after somebody got rid of it. At the time I was thinking about andd experimenting with getting a PC very quiet, if not silent, without compromising on performance. This was a much more prevalent topic at the time, because CPUs used more and more power with every new model (peaking in the Pentium 4, which is famous for needing much more than 100 W at the clock speeds it was marketed for being able to run at). CPUs power consumption wasn't throttled in as many ways as they are today. Coltage was usually fix, so it needed to be as high as you needed it to be at peak performance moments. Clock usually couldn't be changed dynamically. The CPU couldn't switch parts of itself off when it didn't need them. And the power it consumed it needed for its single core; so there was no core to shut down, either, in idle moments. Other components usualy also used more power than they do today. Motherboards were built by more individual ICs, chipsets didn't idle well either, voltage regulation wasn't as efficient for performance CPUs, hard disks needed more power than even today's spinniung hard disks. Automatic, temperature-based fan control wasn't as advanced either when you wanted to regulate it for a chip's temeperature, and you had to place the sensor not only outside of the chip, but usually outside of the cooler. And I wanted to have a surver run 24/7. I was actually running a few services on the internet from my bedroom at the time, of which one was used and relied on at a daily basis. So, what I came up with was to build a PC into my Sofa. It had thick foam padding and a cotton filling, which made it sound proof at least to lover frequencies. I removed enough of the cotton to give it a large room with wich to interchange air. And it sort of worked. It got hotter in there than I hoped. But it was pretty quiet. Now that I'm thining of it again, I could've done some things to improve aitflow to the outside withou opening the sofa up too much to leak sound. There were no frequencies, apparently, at a multipe of the resonance frequencies of any of the wood panels of the sofa. Sitting on it wasn't affected in any way. And the whole thing was easily accessable from the front. There was a cut-put right above the floor with a handle, with which you coulde pull out a board, that slid out on small wheel. On the board all the components were mounted. I used parts from a relatively cheap ATX case to make the motherboard and drives mount easily. I never got it down to the temperature I set out to get. And I couldn't use high-rpm hard disks because then that was the only noise in the room and it was very annoying. But it worked, and the sliding mechanism was fancy, even though it was so simple to build. The cutout and handle were actually easy to overlook in the pattern of the fabric that the sofa already had. I got the ideaa for the sofa mod after I ran the server inside my wooden desk for a while. That is another story. The sofa mod was kind of the enhanced version of the desk PC.

I wonder why I don't make things like these anymore. Because making something in a unique style that you like feels extra good on top of the feeling of making something yourself.

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Topics I Could Write About But Won't

Entry created on 2024-09-19 (edited 2024-09-20) Authors: steeph (337) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Beliefs (2) Humanity (1) Ideas (5) Philosophy (4) Religion (1) Thinking (3) Writing (4)

When I made the resolution to write blog entries more often I thought tzopics to write about would come up and suggest themselves from everyday life, thoughts and things I hear and read about. Especially because I don't impose any rules on what is worth publishing and what isn't. I was right. Topics to write about come up all the time. But I didn't expect my idea of what I deem worth writing about to change so much that I feel shy about writing about anything. It is something I should have expected because it happens over and over. I've published shitposts with a sentence or less, then tried to only write interesting things for a while, then nothing for a long time - over and over. I think it's like a cycle I go through with varying speed. But I don't always intuitively know at what point of the cycle I am. But now that I try to write here regularly, I notice the periods where I don't write anything because nothing feels interesting enough. I intend to not care about whether what I write about is interesting. But I keep forgetting that I intend to not care.

Sometimes I think about a topic that can not be explored in a simple blog enty; or a single book; or by thinking about it for a year or five. Whenever I get into a conversation related to such a (often philosophical topic or one essential to human coexistance) I get a boost from new input, other view points, relativisations or new idea. I might feel intrigues, challanged, disrupted, supported or something else; and from the new input and the thoughts they lead me to in the following days and weeks I get a little bit closer to being able to write a book about such topics. But I would never.

The more I advance into society acting as a normal human being the more people talk freely to me about their beliefs, fears and ideas. And the more I get exposed to ideas that could be described as outside of my world view. And the more thoughts that I categorise as philosophical get fueled by foreign ideas. It's not often that I genuinely think about such topics deeply enough to get to have new thoughts, ideas or even beliefs. But most of those times has been in the last couple of years. Second most times were when I was around 16, 18, maybe 20 years old and talked to friends about pretty much anything freely and naively. I wasn't afraid to to weird out others. If they took offense by my thoughts and ideas (I didn't practicve having beliefs until much later, I believe.) I'm sure they henceforth avoided me or something. (I wouldn't have consciously noticved at the time.) Nowadays it takes the exact right situation plus a fairly large pile of motivation to steer a conversation to a point where fundamental political or societal topics (such as radical or controversial ideas) are accepted as a topic. What the motivation is may differ. I think it's good when convincing somebody of something is not part of it. But when you have ideas, that wish is hard to suppress. It usually at least peaks to the surface, be it only in the form of somebody saying that convincing somebody of something is not their intend.

This entry probably could do with a lot more structuring. It's one of those where I know that there's something that I want to say. But I don't exactly know what it is until I've built dozens of sentences. I think I'm going to just not re-write this entry and see if it makes sense anyway. I bet it will, to me.

One of my greatest desires (Good thing that "one of" can mean almost any number of desires as long as the total number of existing desires is not defined.) has always been to understand those world views that clash with my own. Experiences and beliefs that contradict what I perceive as reality, thought processes that are clearly not rational, beliefs that seem like they must have come from incomplete or wrong information and societal goals that don't line up with what I always come back to assuming to be what's best for society intrigue me. There is a lot of room in the latter, of course. And I'm not one who reads books to get the complete picture oif everybody's world view. I don't know what Nietsche really went on about for so many pages that those that made me loose my interest in reading what he had to say. I don't tend to read what religious fundamentalists on a mission tell me to read. But I peek into all sorts of stuff. I've listened to long lectures/monologues and conversations with Jordan Perersen on YouTube (before he got onto his current, rather close-minded, path of publicity work). I've listened to recordings from a weirdly praised guru (what people call a guru nowadays) and, and I give weird film, music and writings several chances before I really file them under "not for me" or "too weird for me" or "well, I'm a data hoardewr, so I'm not going to delete this, but it doesn't feel great that this is on my hard drive". Mein Kampf is much much more abstruse that most people who haven't read it believe. But it is in good company in my collection of bits. But most importantly - in my current belief - I use chances to talk to people who say things that are "out there" or contradict basics of my world view. When a clearly clinically ill paranoiac came to the hackerspace asking for help in securing his system, I was the one that bought up the patience to show a Windows user how to set up his firewall in BSD. (BTW, I really believe that I'm not trying to boast here, or something. This is just context for the next paragraph, I think.) I've spent many hours discussing spiritual topics with a person who confidently states that she does not want to trhink rationally, because rational thinking is against what she feels to be true. More than once I've ended up discussing politics with a right-wing skin head when I came for a anti-fascist counterprotest. I'm the one who stays when a (watch out, pigeonholing ahead) smelly drug addict asks everybody at the bus stop if they can do a web search for them because they wonder what colour snow is in Australia. I feel solicited when a magazine titles with "Psychology of the Evil". Because I want to understand: How other people think, how basic assumptions can be the opposite in another person's world view, why their normal is so different from mine, what information they base their beliefs on and - if it's the same information I have been exposed to - especiually how they can come to a different conclusion.

Recently I had a talk with somebody who I know also tends to explore different various extremes when pondering over questions of humanity, the coexistance of different types of beings (brains, humans, species, things). To my surprise they drove the converation to question many things that I assumed as given necessities of human wellbeing. Without being specific (for reasons the beginning of this entry may or may not have explained well), I was presented with reasoning and detailed explanations of thought preocesses that lead to conclusions that contradict several of my core beliefs including the assumption that humans generally consider well-being (happyness, satisfaction) as something that is desireable, if not the main goal of the human existance. I like to believe that many things were said against the sayer's belief in order to breaden the listener's horizon or field of thinking. But the fact that I don't know what ideas were shared out of a liking for open-mindedness and free thinking and what parts were shared out of conviction powers many of my late-night trains of thought since then.

Maybe (very probably) I'm interacting with people who would fierely disagree with me, if not hate me, if they knew my political opinions. I'm in contact with so many different people for work. The fact that we get along on a professional level despitze our differences could be food for thought in itself. I am glad that I don't know their political views because it would distract me way too much to try to understand where they're coming from or why they're so wrong while believing the opposite to be true. But I cherrish those moments in which I'm led to undertand parts of the reasoning behind world views that are very different from mine withoput feeling like I'm being guided or steered to such an understanding. I don't want to risk being manipulated into a realisation without taking all the necessary considerations into account.

I think the main reason why I wanted to write this entry is because my mind is still blown over the fact that I could now probably (in principle) rationally advocate for a genocide for the benefit of humanity.

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Beautiful Heatsinks

Entry created on 2024-09-20 Authors: steeph (337) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) CPU Cooler (2) CPUs (5) Computers (14) Coolers (1) Cooling (2) Flowers (3) Heatsinks (2)

(I can't find many free photos of what I want to show here. Maybe I could buy some.) See the links behind the model names for nice pictures.

Heatsinks are a mostly practical thing. They usually aren't seen, so visual design is not very important. Exceptions are where part of a device's case is acting as a heatsink and devices assembled by enthusiasts who care how their internals look (including devices that show off their components, like open PC builds and PCs with windows in their case). This post in about the latter: heatsinks for PC components for people who care how their coolers look like.

To be frank, this entry is specifically abnout Zalman heatsinks. I don't know much about the company. Apparently they are Korean with a name that sounds so un-asian that I doubt that the beginnings really were in Korea. But I know that they made several CPU coolers that I like visually. A heatsink needs to fulfil the task of transporting heat from a small surface to a larger surface where other mechanisms then may exchange heated melecules with molecules from even farther evay. Heatsinks can store more heat energy if they have a larger mass. They transport the heat quicker if they are made of materials that are good at that sort of thing, like copper. And they are better at exchanging heat with their envirement if their surface area is larger. If a chip needs to be cooled better, what's mostly done is put a larger heatsink onto it (can take in more energy) or blow more air through it (larger/faster fans). It's relatively cheap to just increase the amount of aluminium and/or plastic and call it a cooler. But making the heatsink larger mainly increases the capacity for how much heat energy it can take in from the die quickly, which is good for eneryg bursts, but not for constant heat absorbtion. And blowing more air through it makes the cooler louder. Zalman took a different applroach around 2000 and was very successful with it in the early 2000s, as it appears to me. They used mainly copper for their heatsinks (even just a copper core used to be a sign for a higher value PC heatsinks before) and they drastically increased the surface area. I don't knwo who invented the style or manufacturing principle of copper sheets intertwined with a copper base to form a fan-like (as in paper fan) structure. But Zalman did this with the most sense for beauty and with a target market of enthusiast PC builders. I couldn't afford any of their products at the time. But I was a fan from the moment I saw a Zalman Flower for the first time.

Under the name flower they released a number of very different, round CPU coolers as well as at least one chipset cooler. The name started in the 90s, where it was used for a ciurcular aluminium CPU cooler for socket 370 (Pentium III, Celeron). I like those, too. But they are impossible to find and I'm not aware of anybody making anything similar with that much metal around the fan. In my perception the copper goodness started with the CNPS 3000 series, a passive CPU cooler. Right there we have a unique design that hasn't been matched by any other manufacturer. If I would find one of these and I could buy it for < 30 €, I would get it for a future retro build. It got a makeover with the CNPS 6000 series later for socket A.

The CNPS 5000 is hardly worth mentioning. It follows the design of the Intel Standard LGA 775 coolers, but without the goal of being cheap. The CNPS 7000 series has a layout simialr to the original Flower, round with fins surrounding the fan blades from all sides except the top. Not a new design, but again, now it was available in beautiful and with a lot of copper (optionally, as it usually was from the CNMPS 5000 onwards) fins.

The CNPS 8000 has less roundness and more boringness and shall be skipped here. Now we're already in a time were CPU cooler mounts were designed similar to the way they are today and so some of these coolers are still usable with modern CPUs without making a custom bracket, for some you would need to make your own or adapt a bracket. But it's a realistic undertaking. In the CNPS 9000 series there are two beautiful models. The CNPS 9500 and the CNPS 9900.

Another unique design (as far as I've seen) is the fanless external water cooler Reserator 1, of which several version exits but all are called Reserator 1. CPU coolers aside, most of Zalman's coolers are designed for PC GPUs, understandably. There is one design that I'd like to point out here. And that's the ZM-80. Here are reviews of the ZM-80C and the ZM-80D. I bought an early version of the ZM-80 (without a fan) because it was the best way to passively cool my GPU back then. I'm not a gamer. But I still believed that I could use a powerful graphics card. And those had started to require active cooling. The two giant and massive metal plates of the ZM-80, connected with a heat pipe, made the graphics card an uncommonly large part. It was the first time that I've seen an extension card block its neighbor slot. There are similar coolers. Thermaltake < a href="https://www.techpowerup.com/review/thermaltake-schooner/">took this design to the extreme (although nowadays there are larger GPU heatsinks).

The more time advances, the more boring Zalman's product range becomes.

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A Really Good Laptop

Entry created on 2024-08-18 (edited 2024-09-04) Authors: steeph (337) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computers (14) Laptops (2) ThinkPads (2)

This entry is referencing the entry 'A Really Very Good Laptop'.

What makes a good laptop? Unknowingly I've been asking myself that question for years. I wasn't looking for a definitive answer; I wasn't making notes; But I was trying out different laptops in the hopes to find the one that is right for me. The bost one. I think I've found an answer. And a surprisingly specific one.

Of course a good battery, a good screen, good speakers, and almost every detail about a laptop can be considered important in some situation or another. But when it comes down to it, what I've made out to be most important to me is: A good keyboard (whatever that means), reliability, endurance (also when in a dirty or dusty envirement) and repairability. Although I'm not sure whether the last one should be on that list. When a laptop of mine becomes unusable because something breaks, I tend to replace it because I want to try somethin new, anyway. I've tried an ultrabook for a while. It's fancy, but not important to me. I've tried a powerful one in the style of a Macbook Pro and didn't like that any more than the original. I had a fable for small netbooks for a while, subnotebooks and mini notebooks as well as some modern PDAs, and still think they're all great for certain use cases. But that's not what I want as an everyday laptop. I didn't seriously try gaming notebooks or those cheap, sleek discounter laptops (because why would I?) or a workstation laptop. I don't need that power on the go. When I need that power, I use a stationary machine. After a while, I stopped looking at new laptops or ones that were released in the last 10 years when I had the intention to buy one.

15 Years Or Older

One reason why I focus on older laptops is the keyboard. No new laptop has a keyboard with a good typing experience, keys with 1.5 mm of travel space or more. Newer laptops seem to be designed to be as thin as possible above all. That is a feature with almost no use. But what I consider a good keyboard is sacrificed to design guidelines. There are good business laptops from the 2010s with a Core2 Duo CPU or newer, with 4 or 8 GB of RAM, that are still fast enough for most everyday tasks. That's what I'm using right now and what I've used for a while. The displays are at best what I consider the minimum that allows me to use it for hours from different angles without getting annoyed. But that's good enough. No 4k screen. No reason to play h365 4k video files. So I don't usually notice that that's something that isn't possible with a Core2 Duo and old intel graphics chip anyway. Speakers also tend to be worse in older laptops. But even with modern ones with good speakers, if I want to enjoy the sound or want good bass or mix the profile myself or need volume, I rely on external speakers or headphones anyway. So there's not much of a difference. Batteries don't last as long on older laptops. But they are replacable in seconds and cheap to buy. So that's a plus for older laptops in my view. 15 to 18 year old laptops are thick and heavy compared to what's become normal. But not so much that it would be a problem to cary them all day, fit them in a bag or handle them with two hands and no table.

ThinkPad Legend

So, after hearing so many good things from so many people and having experienced something from every category I've decided to try ThinkPads for myself. Two T400s with different configuration, a T420, then an X201 that I got for free from a nice person who wanted to throw it away simply because of its age. I must admit I got hooked on the ThinkPad fan train for a bit. Those are very very good machines after all. I enjoy the price (used ThinkPads are everywhere and everybody wants to sell loads of them), the build quality, design and that's it. T4xx are good business laptops among quality good business laptops from other manufacturers. There are many, many small things that make uo the ThinkPad experience of the 2010s and earlier. I appreciate the status lights, middle mouse key, track point, separate function and multimedia keys, sleek docking station and easy to open screen cover lock. But they haven't become too important to my daily life. Those details were even more plenty in even older ThinkPads (and comparible laptops, I want to say. But there weren't really many comparible machines.). IBM ThinkPads were also definitely among those with really good keyboards. I like the clickery keys in old laptops better than more modern ones. But I don't consider laptops with CPUs older than Core2 Duos as viable options for everyday machines anymore. Everyday tasks for me include playing videos embedded in web pages and editing raster images as well as vector graphics. Core2 Duos with 4 GB or more RAM work fine. Everything older than that is for retro computing tinkering tasks.

Business Machines With Good Reputation

There are other laptops from the same time to be considered. Those in the business line of HP and Dell. In my experience and personal opinion, HP EliteBooks (as well as some HP Compaq laptops) provide a superior keyboard to those of T400s, but lack some other desireable features that you can trust to find in any old ThinkPad. And Dell Latitudes tend to be reliable and withstand my lifestyle better than ThinkPads from the same period but the keyboard experience varies. Dells come in rugged variants, but more important is that they, according to my experience, handle dust and other dirt better than their competitors. EliteBook keyboards make better use of the available surface area that a 14 or 15 inch screen gives the lower half of the device. The keys are spread out more, arrow keys aren't burried in the rest, insert, home, end and paging keys get their own row to the right. A unique layout, but not stranger than that of other laptop keyboards. A new Latitude keyboard feels much nicer than an EliteBook or ThinkPad keyboard. The keys are springy. When abused for years, they become as good as their competitors, then whimpy and stale. ThinkPad and keys stop working when they meet dust and keys break when cuttings or hard dirt gets under the caps. EliteBook keys just watch and wait to be cleaned. Either are good devices. But considering that both Latitudes and EliteBooks cost 50~70% more than comparible Thinkpads, it's easy to let the choice fall back to the brand with the best reputation: ThinkPad. Surprisingly (to me) that is, in the end, ThinkPads biggest advantage.

To be continued in another entry…

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A Really Very Good Laptop

Entry created on 2024-09-04 Authors: steeph (337) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computers (14) Laptops (2) ThinkPads (2) incomplete (32)

This is a continuation of my recent entry about what I think makes a good laptop.

Display And Keyboard Size

I used to think a larger screen would be better, because you could see things better. But when sitting directly in front of the thing, it doesn't really make a difference whether the screen is 12 or 15 inches across. Larger screens tend to be available with higher resolutions. I think my preference for 15 inch laptops come from a time where there was a notable difference in price between laptops with screens with hardly acceptable and good resolution. But I've come to accept smaller-than-HD resolutions even though there are tasks where it really makes a difference. But with 15 year-old laptops, an HD screen doesn't have to make the thing much more expensive. So there are options, even with 12 inch devices.

The other thing is the keyboard (again). A larger device has more room for a more comfortable keyboard. HP makes use of the extra room. Dell didn't, at the time the laptops I'm interested in were made. In mobile workstations with a 15.6 inch screen can have a numblock, a 14 inch one can be less crowded (no half-size keys, spaced out special keys, extra rows). EliteBooks used to do a good job at that up until the 3rd generation. 12.1 inch Thinkpads (or the newer 12.5 inch ones) are a good example for crowded laptop keyboards. Not a bad keyboard. But there just isn't enough space to include and position all the keys one might want to have where one might want to ghave them. The thing is: 14 and 15 inch ThinkPads and Latitudes use the same keyboard layouts as their 12 inch counterparts. That's another plus for EliteBooks if you want a larger than 12 inch device.

So, since I'm on the ThinkPad bandwagon right now, and somebody gave me a ThinkPad X201 from their scrap box, I think that might be what I'm going to use next. I wouldn't have considered a 12 inch device. But, internals aside, it's just as nice to use as a T400, but ligher and taking up less space. I think if I had been introduced to ThinkPads through an X201, X200 or similar, I would have understood the hype much quicker. I will not go much into other manufacturer's counterparts to the ThinkPad X2xx series. But it is worth mentioning that both HP and Dell had similar devices to the X200/X201 both in clamshell and convertable/talet versions and their keyboards aren't worse. The Dell XP2 has a little fan in me. But those might be a topics for another entry.

Old Case With New Oragns, Frankenpads

I don't have anything agains newer hardware. I'm just not ready to give up on laptop keyboards that feel nice to use. The trend of thinner laptops with larger batteries in recent years has been made possible by smaller mainboards with highly integrated CPUs or SoCs. I imagine that the size of modern laptop keyboards is very helpful if one would decide to build a newer PC into an old laptop case. The X201 doesn't seem to be popular for this anymore. Most people seem to preferr newer models for some reason. I would have thought that is one of the most popular devices for Frankenpads, even if it's a bit more work. The keyboard is of the old style, small case still with a lid latch, but there already was an option for a track pad. I have not gathered too much information about doing this myself. But there seems to be enough resources and support in forums to make it a doable project. But you don't even have to. There is a commercial offer for X201s with 10th generation Core i CPU.

I did think about getting a 486 laptop with a really nice keyboard and mod a newer board into that. It would be a nice project. But not as practical as an X201 or similar. After all, the case would be much thicker. Most 486 laptops were about twice as thick. That would make it easier to fit a different board into it and position connectors in the right spots. Most designs wouldn't have room for a trackpad. The availability of replacement parts for ThinkPads is also a good reason to use a ThinkPad for this. But it would be a nice project. Maybe even with an ultraportable electronic typewriter. But for a laptop to buy, the X2100 si the best compromise for many reasons; and you can get it readily built by someone with experience in doing exactly that.

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