DJS blog

http://lambdan.se/blog OR http://blog.lambdan.se

Done with tumblr.

Before you start reading: This posts formatting looked alot better in Atom's Markdown preview. Tumblr messed it up badly. I don't like Tumblr anymore as a result.

I feel like writing right now (love clicking and clacking on my IBM Model M), so here is a grab bag of random things I want to write about right now.

Grab Bag

The title for this post is from Hypercritical episode 82. They were discussing John Siracusa's OSX Mountain Lion Review, in which he had a section called Grab Bag where he put stuff that wouldn't fit anywhere else in his review. I listened to this episode today at work [1].

Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello

Whenever something isn't right at my computer, a application freezes or a folder shows up empty, I start singing the "Hello, hello, hello, hello" part from Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit in my head. It happened just now because the files from my NAS Dump folder (basically where all Downloads go before they are sorted) don't show up in the Windows Explorer

The S cycle

The iPhone 6S seems nice. I read John Gruber's review of it and it seems like a really cool phone. Sadly, I don't really have any good reasons to get one as my iPhone 6 Plus is perfectly fine and I have it on a 2 year contract (only another year to go!) This does impose a problem on me though. The next year, when my contract expires I'm probably gonna get a new phone, and the new iPhone then is gonna be the iPhone 7. As Gruber mentions in his review, the non-S phones show the new design, while the S-phones improve everything about the internals. I have always known this, but I now regret getting my 6 Plus when I did (when it was brand new). I got it then because the iPhone 5 I had at the time had terrible battery life and I had worked (at the same place as above), so I figured I'd treat myself a little something.

So I'm gonna have to either:

a) Get the iPhone 7

b) Sell my 6 Plus and get the 6S [2] as soon as possible

c) Use my 6 Plus for another 2 years and get the 7S

Music Situation

While writing this I'm listening to music on my own initiative (what I mean by that is that I selected a song and hit Play) and it's been 15 days since last time according to my Last.fm.

This means that I really shouldn't subscribe to Apple Music or Spotify. I don't listen to music enough. I find podcasts alot more suitable to listen to while working. I'm gonna have to figure something out, because I really like being able to think of any song and just being a few taps away from playing it in Spotify (or a few words if I'm using Apple Music + Siri.)

Two and a Half Men

Rewatching this show currently (the Charlie seasons only ofcourse [3]). This is probably somewhere between the 10 and 20th time I'm rewatching this show. Before I got into bulking TV shows digitally, all I had was these burned DVD discs of this show and I watched them in my Xbox 360, over and over and over. From that I know pretty much every episode inside out and I know what each character is about to say. But that's fine, I still love it.

I should sometime write about me and rewatching TV shows. I pretty much only watch TV shows (and movies) that I have already seen.

IBM Model M review

Pros: + Solid + Typing feels terrific + Old and cool

Neutral: - No Windows key. When gaming this is a pro. When I want to open the Start Menu to search it's a con.

Cons: - PS/2 connector (complicates when Hackintoshing) - Loud. It sounds better than MX Blue's though. - Limited KRO. I haven't ran into this yet, but I know that I sometime will and it's gonna bug me.

Footnotes

Not comfortable with the word work as I'm not officially employed. I just work whenever they are short staffed and I don't have anything else to do. I enjoy it though.

I would probably get the regular sized 6S this time. The Plus is big and nice, but sometimes its too big and not nice because of it.

Late at night I got this idea in my head and had some fun with it. I tweeted most of my thoughts out, but I'm gonna rewrite them and explain them better in this post.

Background

Apple seems to be liking games more and more as of recently. They opened up a @AppStoreGames account on Twitter, and the potential new Apple TV is rumored to play games. So assuming Apple really likes games and want's to get into the business, what would happen if they sponsored a esports team? Their products would get publicity (not that they need any more), and they could promote new products.

Here's another thing: Every major competitive esports game runs on OSX: League of Legends, Counter-Strike Global Offensive, Dota 2, Starcraft 2 (do people still play that?), Hearthstone, World of Warcraft. Even if they don't run on OSX, they could use VMs or bootcamp to run them in Windows (even Apple uses Windows in production so it's not unthinkable.) OS X 10.11 El Capitan is getting Metal, which is basically a replacement for OpenGL which should increase game performance under OSX.

Gear

Below are my ideas of which products they would make the players use. Let's pretend they would sponsor a CSGO team.

Computers: Mac Pros with Thunderbolt Displays or 5K iMacs The Mac Pro with it's dual AMD cards would probably make the most sense for gaming, combined with a Thunderbolt Display with 2560x1440 resolution and IPS panel. The 5k iMac would also be interesting as it would be very portable (1 device + keyboard & mouse), and they could probably brag about the resolution.

Keyboards: TBA Apple Wireless or Wired keyboard with butterfly switches They would need to make a new keyboard with these switches (the ones that are in the Macbook One), so they could market the extremely short key travel on them for superior response time. Not sure if wired or wireless.

Mice: Magic Mouse or some TBA Force Touch mouse Seeing professional CSGO players with a Magic Mouse would be interesting. I don't think they would use the old wired mouse. I do also see a possibility for a new mouse using Force Touch which they can market in some weird way. Players using pinch-to-zoom on the Magic Mouse for scoping with a sniper rifle would be fun to see.

Headphones: Beats Apple bought Beats, so they have a variety of headphones at their disposal. They also have a very iconic look, so they would be easily recognizable. If the players need to use external ear protection, Apple always has their white earbuds.

Mousepads: None

Closing

The odds of Apple entering the esports business are very slim to none. But it is a fun thought experiment.

Before you continue reading this, you should read my previous post about this topic first: here

So I did get a new display. I did not get the 15" rMBP as I initially intended to.

You're probably wondering what happened. Basically I decided that I wasn't gonna get a 15" rMBP - it's too expensive. I started researching monitors and ran into this thing called adaptive sync, more commonly known as Nvidia GSync or AMD Freesync. These are technologies that makes your screen have the same refresh rate as your framerate that your graphics card is putting out.

So I decided I wanted this technology as it eliminates tearing in PC Gaming, and makes it smoother.

Then I decided I wanted something better than 1920x1080, and there aren't many choices, there is basically 2560x1440 or 4K. 4K is not mature yet to play games in, so I voted in favor of 2560x1440.

Then I had to decide between TN or IPS. I've always used TN-panels for my computer monitors, so initally I went with another TN-panel monitor: Acer XG270HU. This was a monitor with AMD Freesync. I ordered it, and started to read more about it and discovered that it had a firmware issue where ghosting would occur when AMD Freesync is enabled, and to update the firmware you would have to send in the monitor to Acer for them to do it. Yuck, that's too much work, so I cancelled the order.

I continued on researching, and basically came to the conclusion that all AMD Freesync monitors I could find reliable reviews of had some kind of issue. It was either ghosting, or only capable to use Freesync in a limited range of refresh rates so I decided to not get AMD Freesync, as it didn't seem ready.

So now I'm down to two things: 2560x1440 and GSync. Inputting this into Prisjakt, a Swedish site where you basically put in what you want and it will find you which store sells you that thing for the least money. I was down to 2 monitors: Asus Swift PG278Q or Acer XB270HU. Differences between these are: one is IPS, and one is TN. One is ~$150 cheaper than the other. And I went for the more expensive XB270HU, thinking that I would appreciate IPS more since it has better viewing angles (doesn't matter for me though really as I sit in front of my computer), and better colors.

So this is what I ended up with: - Acer XB270HU - 2560x1440 - IPS - 144 Hz - Nvidia GSync

And it's great. 2560x1440 is lovely. I can see pixels if I go up real close to it, but the amount of windows I can fit in Windows is great. The colors are awesome. I tried playing some on my old monitor and it looked super grey and boring, not as lively as IPS colors. 144 Hz is meh. I don't feel a huge difference, other than seeing alot more cursors in Windows when moving my mouse around fast.

GSync is what kills it though, this is a awesome technology. Since I was using a AMD card, a R9 280, I had to get a Nvidia card to take advantage of it. So I traded with my friend, my R9 280 for his GTX 660 Ti. A downgrade in me in terms of performance, but an upgrade for me since I can use Gsync. Basically, with the same settings as I used with my R9 280, this GTX 660 Ti loses about 10 FPS, what used to be 63 FPS, is 53 FPS and so on. But the great thing is, I don't feel it. GSync smoothes it out so it feels like 60 FPS.

I wanna get into the high resolution display market - what Apple calls "Retina" and what most of you know as 4k.

So, should I go for a 4k monitor or a 15" Retina Macbook Pro, or maybe a 5k iMac?

Well, I'm pretty decided on a 15" rMBP, here's why:

The 5k iMac is too expensive. The setup I would want would run at about 30 000 SEK

My Macbook Air (2014) doesn't support external 4K display as it doesn't have the correct Thunderbolt/Displayport version

I only game in 1080p on my PC, no reason for 4K there

15" rMBP would also have a bunch of other advantages over my MBA, here's some of them:

16 GB of RAM instead of 8 GB

256 GB storage instead of 128 GB

Quad-core i7 instead of Dual-core i5

As much as I like my 11" Air, it's not for me currently. I loved it when I was going to school daily, it was really convenient to carry around. But now I'm gonna be home for a while, so I have no need for portability. Sitting with a 11" computer at my desk is just silly.

There are some downsides though. I would have to sell my current Air (which isn't to bad per say, I have buyers) which is annoying. I would have to spend money, a lot. Roughly 20 000 SEK. Even if I sell my Air for roughly 4000 SEK, I would have to put out 16 000 SEK which I don't want to.

Run bash commands from a Menu Bar icon

Been working on this these past couple of days. This is the first Mac utility I have written from scratch.

I'm releasing it as it is now. It works "good enough" in my testing and I want to move on to other projects. I will probably update it when I figure out a new cool feature (for example: remove individual scripts, I haven't figured a good GUI for that yet).

It's written in Swift (compiled in Swift 1.2, Xcode 6.4), and tested on a 11" Macbook Air running OSX Yosemite 10.10.4.

What It Does

Lets you launch bash commands from the Menu Bar item

Yeah, that's all. But since you can do pretty much everything from bash, you can do pretty much anything in this. You can launch Apple scripts which opens up a bunch of possibilities, more info below.

It also has a option to remove all your settings/scripts and a Donate button which will open a page where you can donate to me.

Apple Scripts

Thanks to the command osascript, you can use Apple Scripts with this thing. Simply use this as your command: osascript /path/to/script.scpt or osascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to pause'

If your path is in a folder with spaces, for example: /Users/djs/Documents/Apple Scripts/My Apple Script.scpt, make sure to put the path in quotes: osascript "/Users/djs/Documents/Apple Scripts/My Apple Script.scpt" - this also applies to any script you want to run which uses a path with spaces.

Known Issues

No retina icons. While icons8 is great, they don't provide retina icons for the free tier.

Unfocused window. 'Add New Script' and 'About UsefulMenubar' windows will sometimes not be focused when they open (You can see them in Mission Control if this happens)

Download

Been working on my brand new webpage now for 6 hours or so, so I need to take a break. So let's write a post here!

Let's talk about podcasts.

My History With Podcasts

Prior to summer 2014 I didn't give two shits about podcasts. Then I got a pretty boring, brain dead, job during that summer so I needed something to listen to. I could just have listened to music but at the time I couldn't think of any good music and most music is bad, there's only a couple of songs that I like which I would quickly exhaust.

So I gave this podcast thing a try. I went to the App Store on my iPhone and downloaded Apples official Podcast app. I think the first podcast I subscribed to was WTF! with that Mark guy, just because it was most popular. I also subscribed to 99% Invisible and Stuff You Should Know. So the very first episode I listened to was the WTF! with the comedian Fluffy, which can be found here (it was posted 7th July 2014 so it fits in my description.)

Anyway, I remember not liking this show. To date, this is the only WTF! episode I have listened to. I remember thinking some parts of it was interesting but for the most part I didn't like it. But as I liked some parts of it, I then listened to 99% Invisible. I think the first episode I listened to there was about barcodes. This show was a little better. It stil felt quite slow for my liking, but I ended up listening to some more of them.

Then I tried the third podcast I had subscribed to, Stuff You Should Know, and I believe the first episode I listened to was about sushi, and I fell in love. These guys are so interesting to listen to. I can listen to infinite amounts of episodes in a row without getting bored of them (mind you, I'm doing brain dead and monotonous work while doing so) and they keep me company and entertained.

Evolving

Now that I had ~~seen~~ heard that a podcast could be entertaining, I started looking into more. I found iDownloadBlog's Let's Talk iOS and Let's Talk Jailbreak. I found those interesting and entertaining, especially around the time the iPhone 6 came out as I wanted to hear their opinions.

Somewhere around here, I got the podcasting app Overcast for iOS. I paid to get the full version of it ($6 or something), but I haven't regretted that one bit. I love this podcast player. It's UI is simple and gets to the point, and it has unique features like Smart Speed and Voice EQ Boost. I have both of those enabled (Smart Speed removes silences which is pretty neat to save time.) It's made by Marco Arment, an independent developer, and I love supporting those guys.

Anyway, with Overcast I found alot more podcasts that I wanted to listen to, thanks to it great "Discovery" section. I'm currently subscribed to a ton, of podcasts and I will cover my favorites at the end of this post.

Having Time For Podcasts

The downside of podcasts, is that you can't really listen to them whenever you want. Well, I guess you could, but I can't recommend it. For example, if I'm writing something (like this) or if I did something in school I couldn't listen to them. Not even on the bus ride I took to school back and forth was a suitable place for them, as I couldn't turn off my ears and fall asleep (with Music this is alot easier, you don't pay as much attention to music). The only place podcasts really fit into my life, is during monotonous workdays or when I'm out walking the dog. Because of that, between October 2014 and June 2015 I had a long hiatus of podcasts. I listened to some occasionally (if I was out walking dog for example), but it wasn't often. I listened to maybe 3 episodes during this whole period.

Now, with a monotonous summer job I have all the time in the world for them, so all is good.

My favorites

So now I'm gonna list my favorite podcasts, and describe them a bit. Keep in mind, I am into Apple (the company) so quite a few of them usually have something to do with Apple, whether its Apple News or Apple Development.

Stuff You Should Know - this is my favorite podcast, and is one I can recommend to anyone who can listen to English. Each episode they cover a different subject or object. Some of them might seem boring, like How Tupperware Works but that actually turned out to be one of my favorite episodes, because they tell you facts you didn't know and can crack a good laugh here and there. If you want to try podcasts, I recommend trying these guys first, Josh and Chuck are a great duo.

Serial - I binge listened to all of these episodes in one weekend. It's a bit of a weird podcast, because it comes out in seasons. One story per season as I understand it. The first season was about the Murder of Hae Min Lee, which I had never heard of, but turned to be extremely interesting. If you like crime and detective work, this is a very good thing to listen to. The second season is coming late 2015.

Completely Unnecessary Podcast - hosted by Pat Contri (Pat the NES Punk) and Ian Ferguson (dude who runs a game store and has very interesting opinions for the most part) talk about new & old video games, video game collecting, gaming announcements and other stuff too. I recommend checking out some of their YouTube-clips first, and if you like those go listen to the full episodes.

Accidental Tech Podcast - hosted by Marco Arment (the developer of Overcast as I said above), John Siracusa and Casey Liss. These 3 gentlemen have conversations about all things Apple and it's really interesting if you are into Apple stuff. They also talk about various other random subjects, which are fun to hear about too. I don't care much for the ending jingle though.

Connected - hosted by Myke Hurley, Stephen Hackett, and Federico Viticci. These guys talk about Apple and how technology has impacted our life. Personally I mostly listen to it because im a big fan of Viticci and him using his iPad as his main computer which I always like hearing new stories about.

Recently I’ve gotten interested in the Sega Genesis/MD (from here on called SMD.) My brother used to have one when I was a little baby, but as I understand I urinated on it and they threw it out. Only memory I have of it is playing a game on it where you were a guy or robot on rooftops, and it was a sidescroller, if anyone knows what game this is let me know.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to know that the SMD is very import friendly, especially the Model 1. Basically, there are two settings in the console (not settings as in you can go in a menu and change them, but solder points that has traces between them that sets different options). One setting changes between 50 Hz and 60 Hz. The other changes between English and Japanese system language. To change these settings, you can mod it to toggle them. Another, more traditional way of modding it, is to have two switches: one for the Hz, and one for the language. Eitherway, you can effectively make your SMD play whatever game you throw at it.

Once I got to know about this, I ordered a japanese SMD Model 1 (which hasn’t arrived at the time of writing this). Excited as I am, I got the emulator Gens and started messing around with this stuff. I have ordered a EU version of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker and a JP version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, so I wanted to check if both would work in my japanese SMD. In Gens, there are three options that affect the CPU emulation: 

Japan (NTSC) = 60 Hz, and Japanese language = Japanese SMD

USA (NTSC) = 60 Hz, and English language = American Sega Genesis (SMD)

Europe (PAL) = 50 Hz, and English language = European SMD

Japan (PAL) = 50 Hz, and Japanese language = Doesn’t exist in practice

Most games for the SMD use the same rom worldwide, meaning in theory it is the same exact game everyone is playing in the world, but because of the console setting(s) it acts differently. Moonwalker for example, is a (W) game meaning it is the same rom worldwide. Therefore, no matter what setting you have this on it will work. 

Around 1993 however, SEGA started adding checks to see what region the console was. Streets of Rage 2, also known as Bare Knuckle 2 in Japan, is an example of this. If you try to run the (U) [american] version of it, with the CPU Country-setting set to Japan or Europe, this shows up when you boot up the game:

Likewise, if you run the (JE) [japan and europe] rom with the CPU Country-setting set to US, this shows up:

So, let’s pretend you live in the states and you have a Genesis from your childhood and you imported Bare Knuckle 2 from Japan because you like the box art more. When you put the game in your Genesis you see the screen above :( What do you do now? Well, you perform the mods I linked above, then you would set the language setting to Japanese, and keep the Hz-setting at 60 Hz, and boom: it would work.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is also an interesting game if we’re talking about region locking. It has three separate versions: one for america, one for europe, and one for japan. Not only that, but it also checks what Hz your console is set to. What this means, is that you absolutely have to run it on the exact same region it was made for: (E) will only run on 50 Hz and English, (J) will only run on 60 Hz and Japanese, and (U) will only run on 60 Hz and English. If you don’t fulfill these conditions  you will be greeted by one of these screens: 

(50 Hz and JP setting results in a black screen, as this combination doesn’t exist in practice - there are no japanese speaking countries in PAL territory)

In theory, you can import, let’s say an european copy of it, and then just have the console set to 50 Hz and English, and then after the SEGA screen you could switch the Hz back to 60 Hz and it should work (it does on Gens, not sure what happens on an actual system). The downside of this, is that it would run sped up, as Sonic 3 is one of the few games that have been optimized for 50 Hz (personally I don’t trust this and I will import an US-NTSC copy of it probably). Disney’s Aladdin is another example of this (except that the (J) version runs on any CPU setting), which is a bummer as it’s a very cheap game for the SMD here in Sweden. Now I’m gonna have to buy a expensive US-NTSC copy of it if I want a English version of it that runs in 60 Hz. 

One interesting thing with Sonic 3 is that if it’s combined with Sonic & Knuckles it doesn’t care about anything. Judging from roms, the Sonic & Knuckles rom is a (W) - meaning Worldwide, meaning the same rom worldwide. Because of this you should be able to combine any Sonic 3 cartridge with any Sonic & Knuckles cartridge and be able to run whatever Hz or language you want (I have no way to test this though, as you can’t “manually combine” S3&K in Gens afaik.)

Streets of Rage 2 / Bare Knuckle 2

This game is interesting in a lot of ways. First of, that there is a (JE) and (U) rom. 

Secondly, that you can flip the language switch at any time and get instant results. If you have the country setting set to JP, you will have japanese subtitles during cutscenes. If it’s set to english and you are using the (JE) rom you will have english subtitles (makes sense). Now, what if you imported an Japanese version and want to play it in 60 Hz with english subtitles, how would you do it then? Well, as mentioned earlier the (JE) rom wont run if you use the 60Hz & ENG settings. Therefore you have two options: use the Japanese setting and press start on the SEGA startup logo, as soon as the screen goes black hit the language switch and voila: english. The other, easier option, is to start it up in 50 Hz & ENG setting (European), then at any point after the SEGA logo flip the 60 Hz switch. 

Thirdly, as the game is called Bare Knuckle 2 in Japan, and Streets of Rage 2 elsewhere, they have different logos. The Japanese one uses gold color, and the English one is blue. 

On the menu, both has a kind of glowing/reflecting animation, as if you would use a flashlight and drag it over them. Now, if you flip the language switch interesting things happen. If you have the english logo and flip it to japanese, it will get gold on top of the blue, because of the “glowing” animation:

Likewise, if you have the japanese logo and flip it to the english setting, you will get blue on top of gold:

The final interesting thing is that the region check isn’t just during the startup. If you let the demo play through, it will come back to the SEGA logo again and check the region & Hz setting again. This is probably because the game just sends a “reset command” to the SMD, but still, it’s neat.

Bonus

Another interesting effect from messing around with the language switch is that you can notice regional differences. Here’s the SEGA screen from Sonic the Hedgehog (REV 01): 

Notice how the JP setting doesn’t have a TM-thing in the top-right? Yeah, that’s cool. (REV 00 has TM-thing in top-right no matter what setting.) The same thing is in Sonic 2 too (and probably many other games too.)

Bonus 2

Background

For months now, I have been cooling my CPU with a Cooler Master Seidon 120V. As the stock fan that came with it was horribly loud I removed it and replaced it with one of the fans that came with my computer case, a Fractal Design R3 (or maybe R2, not sure, I bought it pre-owned).

Anyway, the fan that I took was this one:

After googling it, it turns out to be a Fractal Design Silent Series 120mm, a fan that costs 99 SEK at Inet.se at the time of writing.

One day I ordered a new PSU from Inet.se (Fractal Design Edison M 650W), and I decided to buy a new 120mm fan then for my radiator. So I went for the Noctua NF-F12 PWM, which costs 199 SEK at Inet.se at the time of writing.

For fun, I decided to benchmark my CPU temps with this current fan, so I can compare it to the Noctua one to see if it made any difference.

The Computer

Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3

Intel i7-4770K @ 3.5GHz (Overclocked to 4.1GHz @ 1.15 V)

2x4 GB Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 1660MHz

ASUS R9 280 3GB DirectCUII TOP

Fractal Design Redefine R2/R3

Cooler Master Seidon 120V

I also have 2x 120mm fans in the front (in), and on at the top of the computer (out). The radiator is at the back of the computer with a fan blowing air from the inside of the computer outside (through the radiator).

The Tests

OCCT CPU test for 15 minutes

Prime95 Small FFTs until temp hits 100 C, or computer BSOD's

I ran the tests with my Fractal Design fan, and then I ran them again when I got the Noctua fan. While I ran the tests I had HWMonitor (to measure temps) and CPUZ running (to see CPU freq and voltage). I then used the freeware utility AutoScreenShot to take a screenshot of my screen every X seconds (3 secs for prime95, 15 secs for OCCT). After having run the tests, I checked the screenshots to get temperature, frequency and fan RPM. I wrote these down in an Excel document.

I did not take my room temperature into consideration during the tests. My room is usually around 21-22 C. This might cause some inaccuracies but I still think the results I got were because of the fans, not the room temperature.

Results

Conclusion

The Noctua fan beats the FD fan. It's not a huge difference, but it's an improvement. With the FD fan, Prime95 reached 100 C after 2 mins, while the Noctua fan kept going until 4:24 in, where the computer blue screened (I got a bad 4770k for overclocking I think, 4.1GHz @ 1.15 V should be easy), it never reached 100 C, it topped out on 97 C.

It is worth noting that for the Noctua test, my computer did use a different PSU. I don't think this made any difference to the temperatures though. If anything, it made it worse as prime95 has made my computer BSOD alot more since I got it.

So is a fan that is twice as expensive also twice as good? No, it isnt. It is better, but not by a huge margin.

If you want to, check out the excel document. It has all the data, along with fan RPM. The CPU never throttled down from 4.1GHz so those numbers are a bit uneccessary, but oh well. The Noctua fan had an PWM so that is why it increased it's speed.

I just got out of the sauna/shower, and for some reason, while in there, I started thinking of old memories I had of using comptuers and PCs pre 2005 or so. Probably because I tweeted this right before I went in:

winrar is so nice to use the first 30 days

— djs (@djs__) March 4, 2015

I'm gonna try to put them in chronological order, but I cannot guarantee that they are. Most memories involve something of that period (like Halo 2 in 2004) so I can probably use those to aid me.

I'm not gonna write down every memory I have, but i'm gonna write down those that I think might be most interesting and maybe funny. I'm not gonna put any gaming memories in here, probably saving those for another post as I have alot of those. In this post im trying to focus on computer and hardware stuff. For example, there is a little bit about Xbox gaming, but as it was about FTPing I consider it computer stuff.

In case you arent aware, I am born in January 1996. Keep that in mind as you read these.

~2003 - Reinstalling Windows ME

I remember my cousin (who is 9 years older than me) coming over to reformat and reinstall Windows ME on our computer. This was a time where formatting a hard drive took fucking forever (there was no quick format), so we watched the movie Evil (2003) while doing it. It finished late at night (I remember my mom telling me to go to bed) but the next day I woke up, it was fixed and the computer worked fine again!

I cannot remember why my brother didn't do this. I'm guessing he was on a trip or something.

We actually used Windows ME for a long while. I dont think it was until 2004 we started using Windows XP...

~2003 - Going from 56k to 10mbit fiber

Holy shit, I remember this day like it was yester day. It was warm and sunny outside (probably june/july, I dont think I had school). A van and some guy shows up to our house and asks me (because I was outside, wasn't a nerd quite yet) where my dad or mom is. I point him inside and she starts talking to my mom. I follow him around to the back of our house and saw him taking out a drill and started drilling into my brothers room.

First hole he drilled got a bit ugly/off-center, so he made another one (this first hole still exists and my dad is still not happy about it). Once he was through he put the green fiber wire my brother and dad had dug down earlier (yeah, it must have been summer as they digged) through the wall. Once inside, he connected it into a box (kind of a modem I guess) that makes that fiber wire into a standard CAT-6 plug, that we still use today. After that he left.

Some hours later my brother came home from school and he got super excited. We had just gone from 56k to 10/10 fiber. I have a very strong memory of this, as we had tried to download the Majoras Mask rom (which took forever over 56k) but eventually ended in a corrupted download. Now on the fiber, it went in a few seconds and both of our jaws dropped. Holy shit this was amazing.

(I don't think we played it though as we had the original game on the real deal)

~2003 - FAT32 file size limitation

Did you know that FAT32 has a file size limitation of 4 GB? I do. We learned this when we had acquired some DVD movie (usually around 4.7 GB) split across .rar files. And we were so confused when WinRAR errored saying that it can't unpack it. So my brother googled it or something and we pierced a command into our heads:

convert c: /fs:ntfs

This converted the file system into NTFS.

~2003 - BitTornado

This window is pierced into my mind.

After that we used BitLord, BitComet, Azureus (idk spelling), and finally uTorrent. Before torrents we used DC++, oDC and Kazaa. All of which were terrible (although, I do have some good memories of searching for hubs on DC)

~2003 - First time using IRC

For some reason, I have no idea why, my cousin had installed mIRC and nbs-irc on our computer. Anyway, curious as I was I started it and started messing around.

I haven't used mIRC in a while, so I dont remember exactly, but there is a window where you can pick popular servers and popular channels so I did that to get into a swedish channel. Once I was in there I felt like a hacker (because my cousin had set a black background & lime text theme).

Because I had no idea how IRC worked, I clicked on the names to the right and started PMing some random dude. He told me where I lived (thanks to IP/hostname lookup), and I was super super spooked. So spooked I told my mom and she told me never to go there again.

~2003 - Daemon Tools?

Me and my brother, or my cousin, did not know of anything like Daemon Tools/Virtual Clonedrive. So whenever we had grabbed an ISO or .BIN & .CUE files, we burned it to discs and then plopped the disc back in to read them (alot of discs were wasted this way, especially when I didnt know how to burn an image properly (I dragged and dropped the files onto the disc, oops)). Later this year my brother started gymnasium (high school pretty much) and some friend there told him of Daemon Tools. Amazing piece of software.

~2004 - My brothers new computer

I remember coming into the house, hearing my brother talking on the telephone. Shortly after he said that he had asked our uncle to build a new computer. Later that week it arrived and it blew our minds. It was a Pentium 4 2.8GHz, 1GB ram, 80GB hdd, Geforce Ti 4400. My brother played Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Far Cry (1) on it (so it's probably around early 2004). One particular memory I have of this computer was that our uncle set up Norton Ghost on it. I think we only used it once and never used it again.

~2004 - >Not FTPing games to original Xbox

For some reason, me and my brother had not realized that you could FTP games over to the Xbox hard drive and play them from there, so we burned discs. I remember one instance where my brother had bought a 5 pack of DVD. He gave 2 of those to me, and 3 of those to himself. His game picks were: Halo 2, Jade Empire and Fable. Mine were Juiced and TH: American Wasteland.

It was later next year we discovered FTPing capabilities for games and got a bigger hard drive for it (Slayers 2.7 disc is another memory). I think the first game we played from the hard drive was POP: The Two Thrones (released December 2005). Ironically, that game had a bad rip so it didnt work very well, so we blamed the hard drive loading and kept on using discs for a while.

~2005 - ViperGC modchip for Gamecube

Judging from when Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was released (nov 2004) and my birthday being in January, this was around feburary 2005 I would say. My brother had asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I had no idea. So he suggested this way for us to play free gamecube games on our gamecube and I went with that.

So he got the ViperGC modchip. I remember my brother melting a BIC pen to make a triwing screwdriver. my dad soldered it in, we plugged in the gamecube again, it worked! Well, the gamecube worked. The modchip did absolutely nothing. Prior to this we had put Echoes on a disc but that was just a waste as our gamecube didnt read backup discs.

We think that it had something to do with the flashing step (the chip came blank, you had to flash in a BIOS on it) but we could never fix it. It's sad.

That gamecube is thrown away anyway. Sad sad sad.

~2005 - Discovering my friends PS2 is modchipped

Star Wars Episode III was the new hot shit, and the video game looked awesome. Me and my friend were looking at a ton of screenshots of it (watching gameplay videos wasn't really a thing for us). For some reason I had acquired a ISO of it for the PS2 version.

Somewhere around this time, I noticed that some of my friends PS2 games looked really cheap and weird (no cases, just a printed out cover and printed label on disc it seemed like), so I asked him what the deal was with that and he said that he had bought those games in Thailand, and that his sisters boyfriend that sent in his PS2 to a company to modify it to play those.

Sure enough, there was a sticker for this company (chipper.se) on the back of the PS2. I had known Chipper from our ViperGC days, so I figured his PS2 was modchipped.

We burned the disc with the ISO and put it in his PS2. And it booted... but then died shortly after. We started trouble shooting and I, for some reason, tried burning the disc at a much lower speed (compared to 48x or whatever), and it worked great! Following that time alot of games were burnt and played, so much that he had to replace the laser once.

~2005 - I learn very basics of HTML

My brother was taking a HTML class in school. As I was super attached to my brother I watched him do his HTML homework, seeing what he was typing and trying to understand it. Once he left the computer to go to a friend or something, I decided to try myself. My first website probably (probably = 99% sure) looked something like this:

<html> <body bgcolor="black"> <font color="lime"> *text*

Sadly I can't remember what I wrote instead of text, probably something like my name. Anyway, when my brother came home I showed him it and he was super impressed. He started showing me more and more stuff, which resulted in me doing my own school website in notepad.exe (instead of PowerPage or whatever it was called). My teacher was also impressed.

Ending

I'm just gonna come out here and say that I am extremely crazy when it's about keyboards. I buy keyboards, I break keyboards, I sell keyboards and then regret it and buy them back, I order keycaps, I order accessories to them, I end up regretting that, bla bla bla... Basically, I can't make up my freaking mind.

Back in the days, times were simpler. Atleast when I was younger. I didn't care about the technical specifications of a keyboard, if it looked nice and I could afford it: I wanted it! Obviously, when I was a little kid and started out with computers I didn't know what I liked about keyboards or not. I just used whatever we had. I used a grey/beige/white/old one, I used a black one, I used one with blue LEDs.

I think the first keyboard I bought myself was some random noname, imported from china for cheap, and sold for small profit. It was like 50 SEK (rougly $5), black, cheap rubber domes, and worked great!

Then a friend had a Logitech Ultra-X flat, I thought it was awesome. So I found one at a retail store, and I bought it.

And then I used a bunch of random keyboards here and there. If I saw one that looked cool and was cheap I generally got it if I had money (keep in mind that this is around 2005-2010, i was 9-14 years old).

There were some generic $15 Logitech keyboards here, my brothers Saitek eclipse (?) keyboard, that had blue LEDs and was really plastic and cool.

Let's say that at this point, I had spent 500 SEK on keyboards.

Sadly, all of these keyboards were more or less broken by me. I can admit that I tend to rage in video games quite a bit (nowadays I can usaully prevent myself from breaking things, but back then I was stupid, and still am for raging at a video game that is meant to be fun). The Saitek one I smashed and broke in half when playing CODMW2 (great game!), the other ones I just generally smashed, my Logitech Ultra-X I was gonna remove a key from because I accidentally kept hitting it, but once I did that I realized I couldn't get it back in so I considered it broken and threw it away.

One christmas, I think 2011, I wished for a Microsoft Sidewinder x4

I got it, and it was great! Absolutely the best rubber dome keyboard I have ever used. I actually had 0 complaints about it when I had it. Then I traded it for my first smart phone, and I went back to some random white keyboard with PS/2 connector we had lying around.

At this point, I can't really remember what keyboards I used. I think I had some half-broken Logitech keyboards lying around so I think I used them (when I got tired of the white PS/2 one).

Then, I decide to buy my most expensive keyboard yet, a wired Apple one. I can't remember why I wanted it. This was my first Apple product in fact, and at the time I don't think I was a big fan of them. I wanna say that I was talking to maxx on #zelda irc, about development, and for some reason, presumably I, wanted to know what keyboard he had so he said he had this one. And for some reason I got it. And it was great, I genuinely liked it. So that's another 500 SEK.

At this point in time, the popularity of mechanical keyboards really started to accelerate, atleast I wanna remember so. Prior to this I don't think I had ever heard the term. I'm sure I had seen pictures of one, but I thought it was just some random old one that the person didn't wanna throw away.

Summer of 2012, I get a Mac Mini, my first mac (I need to write a blog post about this, because it changed me and really shows how fucked up I am), and I realized I needed 2 setups: 2 monitors, 2 keyboards, 2 mice, 2 mousepad. I had all of those things, except a keyboard. I needed a keyboard for my gaming PC (using a Apple Keyboard with an Apple Computer seemed appropriate).

So I find out about Das Keyboard. It was mechanical, it seemed great, it seemed like it was perfect, I heard about Cherry MX Blue switches making clicks which I thought was cool and a great idea, so I bought one, from getdigital in Germany, for roughly 1400 SEK including shipping. Damn.

Somewhere around here, I stopped using my gaming PC. I can't remember why (I think it was something with like HTPC, fuck PC gaming, file server or something), so my only computer setup was with my Mac Mini. So naturally I wanted to use my Das Keyboard with it. Coincidentally, my friend needed a keyboard and he liked the Apple Keyboard, so I sold it to him for 300 SEK. Fuck.

So at this point I had used the Das Keyboard for a couple of months. It was loud, it was big, the black glossy plastic body really showed the dust, and I realized I didn't like it. But I kept on using it, because I was high on that "I bought this, it was really expensive, I must use it"-feeling (same with my Mac Mini). And the most important thing, I was kind of slow with it. I think the best I got with it on typeracer was around 135 WPM, but with my Apple Keyboard I had gotten 157 WPM.

So I got a horrible feeling. I had spent so much money on this thing that I didn't like, and I didn't wanna sell it either because I live in the middle of nowhere, so I would have to ship it, and I didn't have the box so it would be just a hazzle. And since I had sold my Apple Keyboard, I would have to get a new keyboard. So I stayed with the Das Keyboard for another year.

Winter 2013, I ordered a new Apple Keyboard for myself (500 SEK again). I hope you can see now how fucked up I am, can't you? I buy a keyboard, sell it, and buy it again. Keep that on your mind. Anyway, I loved it. It was quiet, it was tiny, it was sexy (Apple products are sexy for the most part if you ask me), it felt cool to use, and I liked it.

And then I read something like "Why you need a mechanical keyboard" in my RSS feeds, and OCD struck me again. As soon as I got home, I unplugged my Apple Keyboard and plugged in my Das Keyboard. Fucking trainwreck, I hate myself. And this wasn't like even 6 months or anything, I think I used my 2nd Apple Keyboard for like 3 weeks before I used my Das again.

So, summer 2014. I work alot, earn alot of money, I get interested in PC gaming, especially osu!, and I buy a Macbook Air. I start out playing osu! on my MBA, and it's fine, u know, as fine as it could be. I had to bootcamp into Windows, the computer got hot as hell, the fans were screaming, I would get occasional frame drops while streaming it, and I hated myself again. I had bought a 8500 SEK portable laptop, to play osu! on, atleast it seemed like at the time.

So I rush out and buy a R9 280 (graphics card), and a Corsair k65 (keyboard) for my gaming PC, and I start gaming on that again, and I haven't played anything on MBA since. Great.

So since I had this new Corsair k65 keyboard, I thought everything was great! It was relatively quiet, it had a aluminium body so it didn't show dust, it had red switches which was great for osu, and I liked it! So I sold my Das Keyboard to my cousin, for 500 SEK I think, which was a steal for him, and I was happy.

And then I wasn't. I realized that I was a bad typer on the Red switches. My fingers accidentally slid over the keys when I was typing, making me do errors, so I realized I hate the Red switches, and this keyboard, and I wanted my Das back. So, guess what I did?

...

...

I traded it back! My cousin got my brand new K65, and I took back my old, dusty, crappy, Das Keyboard back. So my cousin had gotten a K65 for 500 SEK, and I had just spent like 395 (the K65 was 895) to get my Das back. I am such a fucking idiot.

So, I quickly realize, again, that I hate how loud the Blue switches are, so, I buy a pack of O-rings for it, for about 200 SEK. I quickly realize that these are shit and makes it feel like a rubber dome keyboard, so that was another 200 SEK down the drain.

Then I look at my keyboard, and think that the all black layout is so boring, so I buy some white keycaps, which are really boring and nothing special at all, for 250 SEK (I'm still using them, but I could live without them).

So, now we are in the present. All this text, in this post, is written with my Apple Keyboard.

Now, where do I go from here? I prefer my Apple Keyboard, in pretty much every way. But as soon as I hear someone mention "mechanical keyboard", I am triggered. Like today I was playing GTA SA with my Apple Keyboard, having a great time, and then in this podcast I'm listening to, I hear this guy typing on a mechanical keyboard and going like "yeah I bought a new keyboard", and he proceeds to tell about how happy he is with his loud mechanical keyboard with clicky switches.

So I hook up my Das again, and play with that for a while. Then my brother complains about how loud it is, and I agree with it, I can barely hear my podcast with me tapping SPACE on it (you tap SPACE to run in GTA SA), so I hook my Apple Keyboard back to it.

So why don't I only use my Apple keyboard? Well because I am sooner or later gonna hear about how great Mechanical keyboards are again, so I will wanna use it. The only way for me to prevent this would be if I muted all instances of the words "cherry", "mechanical", etc (you get it) but that's not gonna work, especially not if they're mentioned in podcasts.

And what do I end up with? Well... this:

I'm crazy. I'm stupid. I hate myself. Fuck my (imaginary) OCD (I'm not diagnosed). Fuck having a choice of what to use.

You see, on my MBA, the keyboard is stuck there. I can't change it. I LOVE THAT. There is no choice to make, you just accept the way it is and like it, and I don't really like it (some buttons feel squishy), but for the most part it's fine. But I don't have to care about it, because there is nothing I can do about it.

A store in Sweden is having a sale on Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Stealth 2014, which uses Razer's custom switches (essentially theyre MX Browns), but I did not buy it, as I need to cool off with buying keyboards. Even though it was like on 40% discount, it's still alot of money for a product that I already have two of, even great ones in theory.

Now, I could spend time here writing about what kind of keyboard I would want, and what would be optimal for me, but whatever the fuck I end up getting I'm not gonna be happy with it, so I'm not gonna waste time on doing it.

Everytime I reinstall OSX on a computer or restore my phone to a clean version of iOS I am always annoyed by some settings not being on by default.

Here is a list with 3 of them that I think should be on, by default.

1. iOS: Show Battery Percentage

99% of the people I know, that have iPhones, have this thing on. But it isn't on by Default, you have to navigate into Settings > Usage and turn it on there. Even Apple's own website, with it's iPhone 6 promo's have it on. So if you are doing it, most of your users are doing it, why not have it on by default?

2. OSX: Tap to Click

This is maybe the worst one. If you ever get a brand new Macbook, or just reinstall OSX on your Macbook, you will notice that you can no longer tap to click! Amazing. This is also annoying if you have many User Accounts and Filevault enabled, because then when you power up your comptuer you will have to enter your password to decrypt your hard drive, but you can't just tap on your username, you have to click on it. This always gets me when I reboot my Macbook, and I'm always as annoyed.

I guess I can maybe see their reasoning though: a lot of shall we say, "computer newbies" aren't used to having tap to click. So if a person like that accidentally taps the trackpad, they will be confused over what happened. Atleast, that is my theory.

3. OSX: Require Password immediately after Sleep Mode or Screensaver has been activated

(Actual setting title might vary as mine is in Swedish and I'm just going by memory here)

This is something I just realized I hate. I recently installed OSX on my Macbook, and everytime I shut my lid and shortly after returned to it, I noticed that it hadn't been locked, unless I would've waited 5 mins, then it would have been locked.

This isn't a huge problem if you are at home, but what if you are in school, in a classroom with your mates that you know, but you need to use the bathroom?

Okay, so you shut the lid, get to the bathroom, return to the classroom, and realize that your "friends" have been on Facebook or Twitter and posting shit.

Okay, that's pretty tolerable. But what if you are at home, and you don't have your shades shut? A thief outside your Window is scouting you out, and you go for a cup of coffee. You shut the lid, and you start walking to the kitchen, and then you hear glass shattering and you run to your room and see the thief is running away with your laptop and he has opened the lid and now has access to all your stuff.

Prologue

Gaming in 2014 was for me quite interesting, I played a bit of everything. More or less quitting speedrunning and regular streaming made me instead focus my gaming time on "casually" playing games.

In this post I'm gonna try to remember what games I beat during this year, and write a little about them.

January: Zelda: A link between worlds (3DS)

Last christmas I got a 2ds, and shortly after I got this game. But it wasn't until January that I beat it. Anyway, really great Zelda game. Probably my favorite of the modern ones (post Wind Waker). It had great controls, great dungeon design and great gameplay. The bosses were everything from super easy to super hard. All in all, I enjoyed it. I didn't get 100%, I only got like 95% or something (still a few hearts missing IIRC)

February: Hotline Miami (PS3)

I remember this. I was sick, PSN was having a sale. I saw this game, remember hearing about it, so I bought it. First time playing it I didn't know what to think. The music was super cool, the gameplay was super fast and cool. A couple days later I had beaten it and the only thing I can really complain about is that stage when you're in a hospital.

May: Metroid Prime (Trilogy Version) (Wii)

This is probably one of the more random games I beat. I was at the time playing Prime1 on the GameCube, kind of speedrunning it, and then I got this game on my USB Loader for fun, and well I started playing it, getting mad at the controls but somehow stumbling my way through it. At the end I remember thinking the controls weren't that bad. I remember it being quite fun and relaxed to playthrough casually, I enjoyed it.

September: Super Castlevania IV (SNES)

I cant remember why, but my cousin came over a Saturday night, and we both had been (re)watching some AVGN episodes, so we felt like playing some "retro" games (sidenote: I kind of hate the term retro game), and we popped this in and started playing. We played 1 stage each OR 1 game over each, and I think we made it up to 6-1 (sidenote: this evening was one of my greatest gaming moments in recent years, so much fun). After that, he went home, school started again on a Monday, and later that Monday I played again, using a password to get back, and I got a little further each time. I think I made it up to 8-1 on monday, then on Tuesday I beat the rest (8-1 through B-3).

Beating this game was super dramatic. I had never beaten this game before, except on emulator with save states. And I had not watched a speedrun of it, so I did not remember how long the game was. When I got to A-1, and the classic Castlevania remixes started playing I knew I was close and had to keep going. B-2 was super frustrating (the room with the platforms flying up). And then B-3 with it's boss rush was super intense. I assumed, like in the previous stages, that if I die here, I will go back to B-1, so I put my entire mind into it and went into beast mode I guess you could call it, and managed to beat the first 2 bosses without dying once. When I got to Death, I died and I got devastated. I was like "OH GOD, no, I have to do it all over again!!" but nope, I started at the same place again so I pushed on and made it up to Dracula, the last boss, and eventually managed to beat him too.

All in all, this was a great game to playthrough for my first time, and I enjoy playing it today too, kind of trying to get a good run-through of it (deathless optimally). The music is epic.

October: E.T. (Atari 2600)

I remember this night. I was home alone and bored, and WoW was boring. I downloaded Stella (Atari emulator) and this game's rom and played through it. I did it kind of cheatingly though: I looked at the SDA run and more or less copied his exact moves (Stella had an function for pressing a button the first frame possible, so getting the RNG manipulated was easy). I remember thinking that the game wasnt that bad, but would probably be if you didn't have a speedrun to copy.

Novemeber: World of Warcraft Warlords of Draenor (PC)

First off, by beating WoW I mean reaching the max level. I started playing WoW again in octoboer while being home alone, and bored. I got on skype and talked to my friend, who plays WoW, and so I bought some game time. I also noticed that I had all the expansions, except Warlords, since I had bought Vanilla in 2010 or something. Anyway, WoW was a ton of fun. It's a really special atmosphere to play that game. It's so peaceful to level up in that game.

When Warlords hit, I sat with my friends in Skype and basically tried getting into the realms a whole day, played for a couple of hours, went to bed, then queued a whole 'nother day, rinse and repeat. Once I hit 100 I lost all motivation to play the game, which is good as my school work was taking a hit. Maybe next expansion I'll play again.

November: Metal Slug X (MAME)

Being bored a weekend, after being done with WoW, I was looking at lukemorse1's videos and saw his arcade stuff. Therefore, I remembered MAME and started googling on how to get it setup, I had previously never played MAME. So I got my old original Xbox out, hooked it up, put an MAME emulator on it, got some roms on it, and played. I played a bunch of games, but then I saw the "mslug*" roms, and mslugx looked the coolest, so I picked this and started playing.

The game quickly appealed to me. It had nice graphics, nice controls, nice sound effects, nice music and nice gameplay. So about 30-45 minutes later I had beaten it. Maybe someday I'll play through the other Metal Slug's too.

December: Max Payne 3 (PS3)

PSN had sale in like April or May or something, which is where I got this game. And I actually started playing it then too, I played all the way up to Chapter 12. Then I forgot to play it, and I forgot the game.

Well now in December, while bored and waiting for my Wii U I decided to finish it, and so I sat down and just finished it. It's not really a fun game. It's pretty tedious because you just shoot people, survive, and do it again. I think the story must've been pretty good though since I played through it, I can't remember any of it though :P

December: Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)

This game is awesome. Probably GOTY. Sm4sh might be good (I haven't received it yet), but at the time of writing, Mario Kart 8 is GOTY 2014 for me. It's so fun. The stages are awesome and unique, the music is fantastic, and the gameplay is just plain fun. And that's the strange part, I don't know what's so fun. You just hold down A, and drift in the turns and press R right after leaving a ramp to get a speedboost, and that's pretty much all of the techniques I know of so far, but it's super fun.

The strange thing is that I have never really been a big fan of Mario Kart games. SMK is boring, MK64 was okay, MKDD was pretty good co-op, MKWii sucked, MK8 GOTY...

Anyway, I played through the Grand Prix on 150cc and I am now in the process of doing Time Trials (seems like you get a stamp for each Nintendo-ghost you beat), and getting 3 stars on all Grand Prix's.

December: New Super Mario Bros U (Wii U)

I really wanna like this series, I really do. The graphics are cool, it looks cool, but I just don't find it cool to play. I find it more frustrating than anything else. It's basically like Super Mario World for the SNES, but with a new engine and graphics and story and sounds and levels and everything. But I think it's the engine I don't like. Being used to the older games, I find it awkward when Mario suddenly starts sliding along a wall waiting for me to wall-jump, and often when this happens, I just wanna cancel I so I mash like A and B but that results in me jumping into a pit and getting killed, proceeding to hear the super fucking annoying mario voice saying "Oh no..." and then "Aihhh" on the World Map.

So ugh, not my cup of game. It's okay but it's more frustrating than anything else.

Ending

So that's all. Not a lot of games, atleast from what I can remember. I'm considering writing a "Games I beat in 2015" (similar to MTI's), for each game I will beat in 2015, but we will see.

Today I have decided to start blogging on Tumblr, instead of on my own thing. Why? Because it's easier.

Tumblr takes care of the rss and design, all I gotta do is write.

Before my workflow was this: write markdown, ssh into my vps and paste it in a new file, edit the rss manually, check the post to make sure no css was messing up.

Now all I need to do is write, and that makes my life so much easier.

The URL

I also added a sub-domain to lambdan.se, and made Tumblr use it, so this blog will be hosted on blog.lambdan.se. I found it kinda neat that you can do that, looks pretty.

Migration

I also moved some of my old posts from my old place, to here. With some posts, I mean the good ones. I mean I had a lot of shit posts on my old blog that were not interesting and all, and some of them were just posts that tested my system. Some of them also told you about my new blogging platform... Well, all of that is not needed now, so I removed them and kept the good ones, and tagged them with #oldblog

Tumblr in general

I have always thought tumblr was this random meme webpage, where all people did was to post memes and sad quotes and got votes or whatever it is Tumblr is using. So Tumblr never applied to me.

Well, then I read peppy's old blog today and saw that he had moved his blog to tumblr, and I was like "what? can you use Tumblr for that?" and sure enough you can. (To clarify: I have known about peppy's "new blog", but I was gonna google it (because I couldn't remember URL) and so I found his old blog, and it was at this point I discovered his new blog used tumblr)

And I really like blogging with tumblr so far, it's really nice. I was also surprised that you can manually edit your html and css, so you can add your google ads or whatever you want.

Comments?

Scrobbl is amazing. It's an last.fm scrobbler that runs as a daemon on your jailbroken iOS device and just checks what you are listening to in Music.app and scrobbles that accordingly. It's probably one of the main reasons why I consider jailbreaking my phone. It's so good!

That is the app's interface. Basically, the app isn't much, you just log in to last.fm there and then you have 4 settings to config: Scrobble Tunes (Music), Scrobble over Edge/3G, Scrobble Podcasts, Toggle Debugging.

This is perfect

I love these settings. They are just what I need. No bullshit.

If you have the Edge/3g Setting off, it will only send now playing notifications on Wifi, and will automatically scrobble the songs you listened to while you weren't on Wifi once you connect to a wifi network, without you having do anything. Perfect.

iOS 5

Now what I find truly amazing over this tweak/daemon is that it was last updated for iOS 5 support. Yet here I am on iOS 8 and it works! On iOS 7 and 6 it worked perfect, on iOS 8 one thing broke, but there is a one-liner to fix that:

mv /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nodomain.scrobbled.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nodomain.scrobbled.plist && reboot

Basically the location where LaunchDaemons should be stored changed in iOS 8, so all you need to do is move it to the proper location and reload it and it's done!

Scrobbled

There is also Scrobbled, which is a fork of this original Scrobbler. Basically, it is an better version: it encrypts the stored password, it uses an new last.fm API to scrobble, it supports other Music apps, and some other stuff. Basically, it's better in every way, and I'm just a conservatist.

If you really wanna jailbreak your phone to scrobble songs, I would probably recommend Scrobbled instead since it's newer, but there is just something about the original Scrobbl I love. It's so simple (Scrobbled has more options) and it's very old and still works (I find that cool). I will probably keep on using Scrobbl until last.fm deprecates the old old scrobbling API that the original Scrobbl is using, then I'll switch to Scrobbled.

Both are these are free anyway, and can be found in Cydia in the BigBoss repo.

So if you ever check my last.fm page and I'm scrobbling from Scrobbl for iPhone, you know what I'm using!

The Time

So I got it at the very end of September (29th or 30th I believe), and it is now the 2nd december. That means that I've used it for a good solid 2 months now. In that time I have used my phone more or less everyday, some days I have even used it for like a solid 12 hours or something.

I believe I have done everything there is to be done with it (except Apple Pay because Sweden is slow), and I think I have discovered everything I really don't like about it.

So let's go through my old initial impressions post and compare them.

Then and now: The Good things

The Size

Every review said it was so big. It was so so big. While I wanted an iPad, I didn't want a huge phone so I took quite the gamble going for a phablet without trying one first. But im happy I did. I think its pretty good in size in fact. I don't know if it's because I have big hands or what (I wouldn't say that I have). Wonder if it could be some difference where the average American reviewer have smaller hands than Europeans?

I say this phone is usable one-handed, and also a great size for watching movies and such. It's phabulous.

I am still happy with the size. For the most part, having a big phone is nice. For one thing, my typing speeds have increased dramatically. It doesn't feel big anymore. Everyone else say it's real big though, like today I had a math test and my teacher took the phone from me: "oh my god it's so big" (yeah perverts).

One-handed usability is mixed... Taking out the phone and reading a SMS and writing a short reply back: sure! Writing a long reply with one hand: yeah maybe you should use two hands. You could do it one handed but it's just so inconvenient for the most part.

Walking around and checking twitter is easy though. Not a problem there, very one-handed friendly in that aspect ;)

The Slippery

Every review I read said this phone is very slippery to hold in your hands. So I almost ordered a expensive case for it, and now I got the phone and... I'm not sure if I'm gonna get a case or not. I don't find the phone slippery at all.

The only reason I would get a case would be for protecting the camera sticking out.

I have still not dropped it. I got 3 cases for it: offical Apple Leather case, a yellow cheap bumper, and a translucent cheap case.

The apple leather case was my first one, and yeah it felt premium, but it removed the "clickyness" in the buttons, so I don't really like it. Nice way to waste $30 or whatever.

The bumper was pretty nice, but discolored quickly and the volume buttons fell off of it.

I'm currently rocking the translucent case, and it's my favorite. It keeps the beauty of the phone, and the phone still feels slick and, most importantly, the camera doesn't stick out. The only downside is that it feels really glossy on the back, like a Samsung. And I hate that feel, I'm kind of used to it now though.

Somedays I go without a case too, definetely 100x more scary, but damn it's a sexy phone (really happy I went for Space Gray)

The Box

The box the phone came in is one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen. It's so cool. I love it. I even had to post it to my personal Instagram.

No comment.

The Camera

It's good. I'm not a professional photographer so I don't know what makes a camera good or bad but as a guy who just wants to take photos I think the photos look terrific. The 240 fps video recording is really cool too.

I'm not a big photographer, but from the photos I have taken, I am super happy with the camera. I have probably taken less than 100 photos to be honest. Probably over 100 screenshots though :P

The Back

On photos the back with its antenna stripes looks really bad. In person? Not bad at all.

It's a sexy phone. I still think the 4/4S looks better though. Black iPhone 5 and Gold 5S is up there too. But yeah, the antenna stripes don't matter.

The M8 co-processor

Having a stepcounter built in is really cool, and motivates me. I like it.

I'll be honest. The first days I had the phone I deliberately went out for walking as much as I could to fill it up. Now I don't. And I still havent reached 10k steps a day (on the other hand, my lowest step count is around 250). I still check it daily though, and it's fun to see. No complaints really. I wish the data stayed through restores/backups.

The Battery

I got the phone at around 77%, and it's now down to 8%. Might sound like alot for less than 6 hours, but keep in mind that I've shot tons of photos and 240 fps videos, I've downloaded probably around 10GB's worth of apps, I've synced my 12800 emails to it, and I just generally have been using it all the time.

I think the battery is great, and hell I even thought the iPhone 4S battery was great, so I think this battery might end up being a little too great for me."

Yeah, it's still great. I am never in a hurry to charge it. Generally, every night before I start sleeping and I plug in my phone it's at ~45%. We've had crappy signal reception up here though recently so it's been draining battery, but yea, no problem. Great battery.

The TouchID

... is convenient. And it works great. Probably 33/35 times it has worked first try and really fast, no problems.

Yeah that number still holds up. Probably at round 1000-2000 now though. But yeah, it works. In general it always works. Maybe 5 times a week it fucks up.

The Quality

After reading and watching this #bendgate stuff I was worried this phone would'nt feel premium or high quality.

But damn, it feels really solid and premium when you hold it. The weight makes it feel extra good. It's hard to describe.

Well, after 2 months, after sleeping on the phone and wearing kind of tight jeans on mondays (freshly washed stretch jeans), the phone is still not bent. I check if it's bent daily though, because I wanna see what causes it if it happens, but yeah, haven't happened yet. You don't have to worry about #bendgate.

Then and now: The bad things

The outdated apps

This isn't really the phones fault, and not really developers fault either. It's more like Apple's fault for not revealing screen sizes earlier so developers could get to work earlier.

And the outdated apps look really ugly. They are huge and the text is huge, and it just looks silly. Really hope Tweetbot, Reeder and Spotify will be updated soon.

For those who don't know: the 5/5S ran at 1136x640 resolution. The 6 Plus runs at 1920x1080. To make older apps work on the newer devices, they are scaled up. You can just imagine that. It looks super awkward.

Most apps are updated now. Except Snapchat and Spotify. Like seriously, what the hell are you guys doing? (Spotify's iOS app is terrible though so I'm not surprised (actually it's pretty good nowadays, better than the Desktop client in some ways)).

The apps that are updated look amazing though, like Fantastical and Reeder, holy shit.

So this isn't a problem anymore. Very few apps that I use daily aren't updated.

The vibrator

It's loud. Really loud. I don't know if mine is defective or something, but it doesn't sound right. It's not terrible either, it's just that it's loud.

I recorded a sample of it here so you can hear for yourself.

It's still as loud. But I have gotten over it, so it's not a problem.

The Software

... has some glitches. Control Center isn't working from lock screen and iOS sometimes gets stuck in landscape mode. Really weird, but it's all software related as pressing the Lock button fixes both.

I seriously feel like Apple has dropped in quality recently. Maybe they took too much water over their heads? Previous years they've only had 1 new device to optimize for. Now there are 2 devices, and they added a ton of new API's which just brings out more bugs here and there.

I can't say I'm that happy with iOS 8 so far. Mostly it works the same, but it has it flaws. iOS 7.1.x was really solid, I can't remember anything I didn't like about it.

iOS 8.1.1, as of this moment, is still terrible. I still have that Lock Screen-Control Center bug. I don't use a third-party keyboard yet either.

For the most part it works good, but it does weird shit sometimes.

It's worth noting that I was jailbroken for a while, but I removed that after a week or so. You know that "fuck customization"-personality of mine (read about it in a previous blog post of mine).

Also, I wish more apps could use landscape mode. I kind of like using this phone in landscape mode but then I open Twitter and I need to rotate it anyway. I think it has a lot of potential.

So yes, still a problem for now. I have high hopes though.

I do have to give props to iOS 8 though, and OSX Yosemite, for its Handoff/SMS Relay stuff. It's really neat to do all my phone calling and green bubble SMS'ing through my Mac if I'm on it. No need to take phone out of pocket! This isn't a 6/6 Plus exclusive thing though, so I can't really credit this particular device for it.

The Camera Sticking Out

I'm not sure I will ever be able to accept this. I really don't see why they could'nt have made the phone as thick as before, and just added a even bigger battery? It's really fucking stupid.

On the other hand, the phone doesn't wobble as much as I thought it would while lying on a flat surface."

I still think this is a gigantic fuck up from Apple. With a case it's not a problem, but without a case I refuse to put my phone down on a table. If it didn't stick out I would go caseless.

FIN

So yeah, that's all the "then and nows".

Oh god what happened to me? I was a innocent boy until I got an iPhone. Then I updated to iOS 6.1.3 and couldn't get out of jail. December 2013 the evasi0n 7 jailbreak was released and so I broke out of jail.

Around April or May 2014 I restored to iOS 7.1 and I was in jail again. Then Pangu released an jailbreak for 7.1 and so I broke out of jail. But then the plot twist: I deliberately turned myself back into jail and I stayed in jail until now.

I enjoyed the life inside jail. There were little to no choices to make, the screen was always bright and you knew what to expect because the environment was so controlled and strict.

But then the hype got real. Pangu released a jailbreak tool that installed OpenSSH, with some side effects and Saurik shortly after released a iOS 8-compatible Cydia, with side effects. And today pretty much all of these side effects were cured and all seemed good.

So I went for it and broke out of jail again, on my new iPhone 6 Plus. And it's great, right now atleast.

The breaking out

The process went smoothly and took about an hour. I hooked up my phone to my computer and made a backup in iTunes, including apps. This took the longest time. Then I restored the phone to have a clean iOS version ready to go. then I put the backup back in and disabled passcode and find my iPhone. At this point I opened up the Pangu tool and jailbroke it. Also went by smoothly. Once that was done I opened the Pangu app and installed OpenSSH and then I transferred and installed Cydia, and boom: done.

All and all, it was a smooth jailbreak experience. The installing Cydia part is kind of satisfying. It's basic ssh stuff, but it's fun.

The aftermath

Pretty much immediately after the install completed I went out for a walk with the dog, and that was when I discovered: my steps in Pedometer++ and Health.app had disappeared ;( Not a huge deal, but annoying (app idea: place where you upload your daily steps to, real basic). And I'm pretty sure this isn't the jailbreaks fault. The M8's data probably doesn't get backed up.

A issue I ran into was when I was gonna sync music to my iPhone: it couldn't be done! It was like if someone had put write protection on the music folder: new songs couldn't be added and old songs couldn't be removed. Another issue was with iCloud backup: it refused to backup. It just kept asking for my password.

Luckily, rebooting my device twice fixed both of them and it seems to be solid now.

This post

What's special about this post is that I am writing this on my phone, in Byword, with f.lux enabled, and it's wonderful. Activator is wonderful too. I'm doing three finger pinches and spreads to do the multitasking (like on an iPad) and it's great.

So yeah. I am on jailbroken iOS again. Will I stay for long? I don't know. I'm not 100% sold on jailbreaking because it's not a permanent thing and if Apple releases an new iOS version that I want I am going to have to sit tight. But Saurik is awesome, the /r/jailbreak community is awesome, f.lux is awesome. Jailbreaking is awesome... for a while atleast.