Yup, I'm still not dead, tho there have been times in that last month or so I wish I was haha.
So what's the craic?
Well to be honest I have spent the last month pretty much in bed. After getting my Covid booster, the following week I got collared for my flu shot too - Not saying that either of these two caused me to be in bed, but the following week I got the mother of all colds. "It's just a cold, get over it, you big baby!" I hear you say, well things are a little more complicated when your body is trying to fix something that it can't. This cold is slowly on the way out now thankfully and normal service is being resumed.
Project updates :
Nope, Still, nothing to see here. Still slowly but surely building the money required to buy the equipment I need to finish stuff. If I was still working, I could have used what I have there to at least get one of the projects further along and I am trying to convince my boss to let me back in for a couple of hours but if this pans out or not is another matter entirely.
Not being satisfied that I have 3 unfinished projects on the go, I now have a fourth! It's not quite as exciting as it may seem. The pitch version is a Raspberry Pi in a Mini-ITX form factor. This is achieved by using a Compute Module 4 and a custom control board. The main reason for this is to allow the pi to be mounted in a standard Small Form Factor PC case. The board will also come with support or NVME's and Sata onboard. I think I mentioned in a profile post that in theory, it could support an external graphics card but I don't think there is enough bandwidth there to be able to support it but due to the compute module not coming with Bluetooth/wifi will feature a 1x PCI slot for wireless networking.
Haven't had the chance to work on it in a couple of days as I'm still in the process of reinstalling everything ... which bring me too
Other happenings :
Before I start bitching about windows, Yes I have survived another trip around the sun and I'm a year closer to my 40th revolution (Nov 26th) this year it was just a day spent in bed with a cold haha
So about 5 days ago I noticed my windows installation had a problem. Now I'm that one guy who always has Task Manager open and running for quick access to keep tabs on what's happening so noticed this pretty much right away the second it started happening. 1 drive would always be maxed out reading. To add a little more context, I ran a couple of experiments - Weird problems demand this - so I rebooted and let the machine idle and it vanished. Okay! problem solved, nope! The second you run a program, the drive it was installed on would just start reading like its life depended on it. The funny thing was the drive that would peg would be the drive that first ran a demanding application/game and it was System doing the reads. Lots of analysis using process explorers, virus scans, and googling later I just said fuck it and reinstalled windows. This should have been where it ends *should be* but nope!
I must have prayed to the wrong god or sacrificed hardware on the wrong day or something because after I was done reinstalling windows 10 it magically turned into windows 11. But this too turns out to be my fault. Some reading this may (but probably won't) remember me saying "I think Windows 11 has dropped the TMP requirement or my computer is being screwy" Weeeeelllllll turns out it was neither. So months back now I had updated my UEFI ... This update turned on the TPM setting without an actual module being present and as it turns out Windows is pretty dumb and on most motherboards, it only looks for the setting being turned on and not for the module its self.
Okay, so Windows 11 isn't as bad as a lot of people make it out to be, saying that Windows 10 is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. I seem to like the new start menu, yes it is different but seems to work quite well. The snap to feature is handy and removes having a 3rd party app I had for this. And the Notification area
bye-bye ugly bar hello nice calendar and notifications. Oh, and I also like the rounded corners on windows 
The 2 programs I use all the time and thought that could have been borked by 11 functions just fine - Fences (desktop organisation) and Wallpaper engine function just fine. The only negative thing I have to say about 11 is that I'm kinda shocked they are still using legacy windows for things like network adapters, it kinda spoils the aesthetic which can be a little jarring if you're not expecting it.
That's about it for now, I'm gonna go and dip back into the shadows and eat no shell skittles until my glucose monitor starts shouting at me.
If you don't hear from me before, have a fantastic Christmas and stay safe!
Guinea pig tax
So what's the craic?
Well to be honest I have spent the last month pretty much in bed. After getting my Covid booster, the following week I got collared for my flu shot too - Not saying that either of these two caused me to be in bed, but the following week I got the mother of all colds. "It's just a cold, get over it, you big baby!" I hear you say, well things are a little more complicated when your body is trying to fix something that it can't. This cold is slowly on the way out now thankfully and normal service is being resumed.
Project updates :
Nope, Still, nothing to see here. Still slowly but surely building the money required to buy the equipment I need to finish stuff. If I was still working, I could have used what I have there to at least get one of the projects further along and I am trying to convince my boss to let me back in for a couple of hours but if this pans out or not is another matter entirely.
Not being satisfied that I have 3 unfinished projects on the go, I now have a fourth! It's not quite as exciting as it may seem. The pitch version is a Raspberry Pi in a Mini-ITX form factor. This is achieved by using a Compute Module 4 and a custom control board. The main reason for this is to allow the pi to be mounted in a standard Small Form Factor PC case. The board will also come with support or NVME's and Sata onboard. I think I mentioned in a profile post that in theory, it could support an external graphics card but I don't think there is enough bandwidth there to be able to support it but due to the compute module not coming with Bluetooth/wifi will feature a 1x PCI slot for wireless networking.
Haven't had the chance to work on it in a couple of days as I'm still in the process of reinstalling everything ... which bring me too
Other happenings :
Before I start bitching about windows, Yes I have survived another trip around the sun and I'm a year closer to my 40th revolution (Nov 26th) this year it was just a day spent in bed with a cold haha
So about 5 days ago I noticed my windows installation had a problem. Now I'm that one guy who always has Task Manager open and running for quick access to keep tabs on what's happening so noticed this pretty much right away the second it started happening. 1 drive would always be maxed out reading. To add a little more context, I ran a couple of experiments - Weird problems demand this - so I rebooted and let the machine idle and it vanished. Okay! problem solved, nope! The second you run a program, the drive it was installed on would just start reading like its life depended on it. The funny thing was the drive that would peg would be the drive that first ran a demanding application/game and it was System doing the reads. Lots of analysis using process explorers, virus scans, and googling later I just said fuck it and reinstalled windows. This should have been where it ends *should be* but nope!
I must have prayed to the wrong god or sacrificed hardware on the wrong day or something because after I was done reinstalling windows 10 it magically turned into windows 11. But this too turns out to be my fault. Some reading this may (but probably won't) remember me saying "I think Windows 11 has dropped the TMP requirement or my computer is being screwy" Weeeeelllllll turns out it was neither. So months back now I had updated my UEFI ... This update turned on the TPM setting without an actual module being present and as it turns out Windows is pretty dumb and on most motherboards, it only looks for the setting being turned on and not for the module its self.
Okay, so Windows 11 isn't as bad as a lot of people make it out to be, saying that Windows 10 is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. I seem to like the new start menu, yes it is different but seems to work quite well. The snap to feature is handy and removes having a 3rd party app I had for this. And the Notification area
bye-bye ugly bar hello nice calendar and notifications. Oh, and I also like the rounded corners on windows The 2 programs I use all the time and thought that could have been borked by 11 functions just fine - Fences (desktop organisation) and Wallpaper engine function just fine. The only negative thing I have to say about 11 is that I'm kinda shocked they are still using legacy windows for things like network adapters, it kinda spoils the aesthetic which can be a little jarring if you're not expecting it.That's about it for now, I'm gonna go and dip back into the shadows and eat no shell skittles until my glucose monitor starts shouting at me.
If you don't hear from me before, have a fantastic Christmas and stay safe!
Guinea pig tax
