Blog

Akvaristisk Nedtur

Akvarier skal være kasseformede, med mindre selvfølgelig der er tale om en smart hjørnemodel, buet front eller en mangekantet model. Og så skal de holde formen. De skal i hvert fald ikke begynde at bule ud på midten, sådan som det skete for mit akvarium en søndag sidst marts.

Udbuling på akvarium, efter at tværsprosse er knækket.

Årsagen var hurtigt fundet. Den tværsprosse der sidder på midten af akvariet og netop skal sikre at vandtrykket ikke deformerer akvariet og forårsager brud på enten glas eller limning, var knækket! Det var ikke et rart øjeblik, med udsigt til at få spredt 500 liter vand ud over stuegulvet, fisk inkluderet. I stor hast blev tanken tømt halvt, indtil udbulningen ikke var til at se. Med mere ro på kunne jeg overveje næste skridt. Reparer, udskift eller finde ny hobby? Hvad med de små og store fisk?

Den følgende mandag skabte klarhed. En ny sprosse blev bestilt og fiskene fanget op og sat i pleje (hvilket ikke er trivielt når fiskene er 15+ cm og har personlighed).

Det er heldigvis sjældent jeg er nødt til at fange fisk. “Bøvlet” er ikke ordet, og mens de største cichlider er relativt lette at fange, så måtte jeg fjerne det meste vand og alt træ og planter for at fange de sidste pansermaller. Vel, jeg havde alligevel længe haft lyst til at nyindrette…

Til sidst blev akvariet tømt for sten og så var det bare at vente på den nye sprosse og tænke over den nye indretning.

Nogle tips ved tømning af akvarium:

  1. Når der fjernes grus skal der være vand nok i akvariet til at gruset er dækket af vand, ellers kommer der let ridser på glasset.
  2. Det allersidste vand fjernes let med en fejebakke.
  3. Det er godt at have fiskenet i rette størrelse på alger, så man er forberedt på en uforudset indfangning.
  4. Jeg transporterede fiskene i plastikbøtter, samme type som bruges til at gemme mad i køleskabet. Man bør nok rense bøtterne grundigt for sæberester og eventuelt bruge bøtter der aldrig har rørt sæbe. Så forsigtig var jeg nu ikke og jeg tror faktisk at de fisk der døde kort efter udsætningen blev transporteret i nye bøtter.
  5. Det kan være svært at få alle fisk fanget op – jeg overså en pansermalle som var meget god til at gemme sig.

Me and my (MI) band

This is a special day in my relationship with my MI Band. For 41 days in a row I have able to meet my daily goal of walking minimum 8000 steps. That apparently is better than 67 percent of the users who are sharing their results. Not too bad, I think.

Weekends are difficult though. I don’t get the automatic 4000 steps from the daily walks between home, train station and my workplace, and with freezing temperature (RealFeel – 13°) I don’t see myself walk another 4-5000 steps today. And so my steak is coming to an end. I will also  go on vacation soon, and I don’t want that to become an exercise in, well, exercising.

Having said that, I look forward to starting over again, because this walking thing is good. Not just the exercise itself, but the evening walks that are sometimes required to reach the 8000 or even the Google-Fit stretch goal of 10,000 steps are a great way to clear the head after a long day and relax.

Looking back at my previous post, what have I learnt?

  • First of all, I actually do get a fair amount of exercise everyday that I go to work
  • knowing the distance of certain standard walk is great too, such as he distance to the train station, the super market and the kindergarten
  • You get used to wearing a wristband on your right hand all day, every day, However, the fact that it doesn’t show the time immediately when you look at it makes it a showstopper for my as daily driver watch. the heart rate sensor still doesn’t work well. Therefore, However, the MI Band 2 still still won’t replace my old wrist watch. I am however, warming to the idea of getting a proper smart watch.

Finally, where I previously picked the work-from-home option often to avoid a lengthy commute (most of my stakeholders and daily co-workers are at other locations in any case, so where I work from doesn’t make a big difference), I am now more likely to make the trip.

Updates

  • For a while I have been toying with the idea of getting a tablet (I am generally not an early adapter : ), but being an Android person that is always a disappointing market to shop in. The high-end stuff is still 2 years old running, and there really is no middle tier, which would be the interesting point for someone who is mostly looking for an e-book reader. As a test I wrote part of this post on my daughter’s  Lenovo Tablet 10″, and while that does work, I see that I can write just as well on my OP3 phone with it’s  5.5″ screen. And the sorry state of Android tablets need no further explanation to me: As the phones get bigger, they become less relevant. With 6″ phones becoming increasingly prevalent (and handle-able, thanks to shrinking bezels), that tendency can only continue.
  • Speaking of tables being replaced by phones: The year’s big electronics shows like CES and MWC have come and gone, with none of the excitement I remember from 3-5  years ago. And the Samsung Galaxy S9 has come out and is unexpectedly getting favorable reviews with a it of a so-what tone, with the improvements being as expected. Personally I am most interested in hearing about the next generation of Nokia phones that is, HMD phones), since they promise high-end builds combined with vanilly Android One.
  • Also speaking of bigger pones impact:  I scrapped an laptop this weekend (A 2009ish Dell latidue E4200), which, while still working, was not providing any value compared to my phone or the other house laptop (a 2014 model). I kind of hoped to be able to reuse the SSD in my desktop PC to test Windows 10 1803 (since my experience with the 1709 was bumpy), but since the connectors were non-standard, that was not to be)
  • I am reading Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon is Harsh Mistress“. Heinlein is one of those authors I have long wanted to read more of, ever since ‘Starship Troopers’ which has long been a favorite of mine. Great book so far and I look forward to be fully qualified to say that “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” (while the term may not have originated with Heinlein, his use s the one that counts for me). It is amazing how one can read a science fiction book from 1966, i.e., written three years before the first moon landing, doesn’t feel old-fashioned in any way, whereas many never stories, especially if technology driving the story, can wear out surprisingly fast.
  • I am really looking forward to finally watch The Last Jedi. I have been well able to dodge spoilers, but it is now so long after the movie premier that it’s story seems to be considered general knowledge, not requiring a spoiler alert. Almost there – almost there…

Hvilket forår?

Vinteren er kommet sent i år og den bliver hængende. Det er 17. marts og 5 graders frost. Men snart må det da blive bedre… Så kan jeg I det mindste glæde mig over indendørsprojekter, hvor første hold chili er godt på vej (om end adskillige sorter skuffer), og der er også flere kryderurte forsøg på vej i vindueskarmen.

Jeg har ladet syningen af vores piletræ udsource – med de vejrudsigter var det ikke til at regne med en god weekend til opgaven. Min hustru og jeg havde så dem årlige diskussion om hvorvidt vi overhovedet vil have sådan et træ som bare står dér og koster tid og penge, og endnu en gang får det lov at blive, for det hjørner haven så godt af.

Fiskenyt

For de små nye fisk endte børnelykken som forventet: Efterhånden som æggene klække flyttede forældrene ungerne til et nyt skjulested og efter yderligere nogle dage svømmere den lille sværm frit rundt. Det holdt måske et par dage, så var de alle væk. Jeg ved ikke om den væsentligste årsag er sult (akvariet mangler jo de nederste lag af fødekæden, eller om det var de andre fisk der snuppede sig en snack. Udfaldet er jo det samme. Nu må tiden vise om de prøver igen, men som nævnt før, er det ikke interessante unger, så jeg lader nok naturen få sin gang.

Haveplan 2018

I 2017 nåede vi mindre i haven end forventet – målet med denne plan er i det mindste at nå standardopgaverne. Indtil videre er der ikke planlagt store projekter i haven, men vores garage bliver formodentlig renoveret i april-maj.

Forår

(1. kvartal)

  • Bestille frø til drivhus
  • Beskære espalier
  • Beskære paradisæbler
  • Så frø til drivhus
  • Styne piletræ
  • Klippe roser (når det er slut med nattefrost)
  • Flyt rabarber
  • Læg kartofler til spiring

Forsommer

(2. kvartal)

  • Fikse staudebede
  • Planlægge nye løgplanter, plantes til efterår
  • Olier og klargør græsslåmaskine
  • Sylte hyldeblomster
  • Flytte rododendron til nyt bed

Sommer

(3. kvartal)

  • Sylte bær

Efterår

(4. kvartal)

  • Sylte kvæder
  • Lægge forårsløg
  • Tømme drivhus
  • Pakke have ned

Relaterede indlæg

Haveplanlægning

Havejournal 2018

PC Update 2018 – for Lightroom and occasional gaming

For years I have been the satisfied owner of a well-running PC that is based on a vintage 2011 Intel i5-2500K CPU. While there are situations where a higher performance could be desirable (photo editing, that is), the main reason for updating at this time would be Windows 10 compatibility issues. Of course, the performance dip following the meltdown patches also motivates looking for a newer, less impacted CPU.

Down Memory Lane

As an IT enthusiast of a certain age it is strange to think back at the pace in which things developed through the 1990ies.

My first computer was a Commodore 64 bought in 1986 (financed  by delivering Sunday newspapers), followed by an Amiga 500 in 1990 (supermarket, sorting empty bottles and pushing trolleys). I moved to the checkout line a few years later and could buy my first PC in 1993 (i386). Things moved fast from there, with major upgrades at a regular pace: i486 in 1995, Pentium in 1996 and an AMD K6 in 1997. The K6 was good enough for a quite a while. I remember playing StarCraft, XCOM Terror from the Deep and Baldur’s Gate II on it in 2000-2002. I also remember using it with a dial-up modem, but don’t think I ever used it with LAN, which I only got in 2002, the same year that I replaced the incrementally upgraded box from 1993 with a new Athlon XP-based system. That one I kept until 2009, but from 2007 it was de facto replaced by various laptops I had. Next was another full replacement to a Core2 Duo based system, which, however, seemed to have a motherboard issue (could be a compatibility issue with Windows XP – the system has been running Win 7 and Win 10 for several years after I passed it to my farther in law and there have been no complaints) – so I replaced Motherboard and CPU with the i5-2500K system in 2011 and have been evolving that one ever since, with various upgrades along the way.

Seven years later it holds the record (the Athlon was bought in fall 2002 and replaced just after new years 2009, so I only had it a little more than 6 years), and it still works nicely, as is the case with many systems of similar age and part of the reason the PC market dipped, and as mentioned in recent posts, my gaming is far away from the bleeding edge – case in point, I am making another attempt at Pillars of Eternity and will hopefully be able to complete it before Deadfire the Sequel is launched in April.

However, we are seeing compatibility issues now, with some trouble with network card and  the Windows 10 1709 Fall Creators upgrade gave us serious problems. On top of that, our work with photo-editing has repeatedly inspired us to upgrade to something faster. But then, checking how little CPU performance has actually increased since the 2500K came out, we have never gone through with it. Then Spectre/Meltdown happened, and while the industry is still working on patching the issues, it is likely both degrade performance of current systems, and require a CPU generation or two to fix, so on one side we are extra motivated to upgrade, on the other hand would rather wait a year or two.

Situation the Present

Last year 2017 things started getting interesting, with AMD CPUs rising from their grave with the aptly named Ryzen CPUs. As sch 2017 was a great year not to replace a PC, with the first generation Ryzens having a few issues to sort out (which they appear to have been) and then Intel getting time to respond with price/performance. Waiting a year for 2nd generation Ryzen and an Intel generation incorporating a response on Ryzen (if nothing else, then on price), makes sense. Of course, with the Spectre/Meltdown issues, it may make sense to wait another year, until CPUs incorporate better fixes for the vulnerabilities.

My requirements

As described, the issue isn’t burning red and hot, but knowing that a driver update could break the system, it is time to design the replacement system, so here comes, my PC Upgrade 2018.

Some initial thoughts: Focus on replacing CPU and Motherboard. The video card is good enough for the kind of games I play at the moment and Lightroom isn’t utilizing it. Also, since GPUs are now used more for cryptocurrency mining instead of rendering virtual worlds, now isn’t a good time time for that upgrade.

Some use full loínks related to optimizing a PC for Lightroom:

Adobe: Optimize Performance

The Lightroom Queen: Lightroom Performance – What Computer Hardware Do I Need?

PC Design 2018

What is the best CPU?

Thanks to AMD getting back in the game there are now several options to choose from in the mid-to-high end CPU market:

  • AMD: Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7
  • Intel: i5 and i7

where Ryzen 5 has 4 or 6 cores and twice as many threads, Ryzen 7 has 8 cores/16 threads (link); whereas in the latest generation (8th) the i5 has 6 cores/6 threads and i7 has 6 cores/12 threads (->here for an explanation if Intel’s i3/5/7 designation)

With Lightroom being the primary choicedriver choosing the best chips is really just a Google search away, which may find ->this. Still, doing some research feels right and makes the final buy decision more informed, so here comes a comparison between candidate CPUs, with benchmarks from the PassMark Software:

Since single thread performance is most important for Lightroom, the best option is indeed the i7-8700K (although both the 8700 and 2016’s 7700K comes close. However, the i5-8600 is close behind on the single thread performance, and since I don’t really need hyper threading for anything, I may save the money and stick to i5.

Motherboard

The motherboard must have the right CPU socket, which for the latest Intel generation means LGA1151 which must support the 8th Coffee Lake generation. USB support is wort considering (but will require a new case)

RAM

These days, RAM must be DDR4 with 288 Pins, speed 2400 MHz (or whatever fits the MoBo). 16 GB seems like the right amount, especially for my occasional adventures into virtualization. I haven’t seen any good arguments for going beyond 16 GB RAM for a consumer desktop.

GPU

I am not in urgent need to replace my current ATI Radeon HD 7850, but checking the net , it looks like Nvidia GeForce GT 1050 or 1060 is the right thing at the moment.

Harddisks etc

I will keep a setup like today, with an SDD system disk, data disk and one for backups. Adding a second second SDD for Lightroom catalogues could make sense, but that can wait as long as CPU is the limiting factor.

This week (month):

  • Watching the Falcon Heavy launch on Feb 6 was amazing in so many ways, with the tandem landing of the two boosters being a great finale. It was also great to watch something live again. In a time where most TV I watch is from streaming services, it was fun to wait for a program to be one and then watch events live as they happened (but I do remember that’s how TV used to eb not so long time ago). Thanks to SpaceX for making their launches into a good show too (I realize this is part of running SpaceX on commercial terms and I am OK with that).
  • Having listened through most of what Enigma has to offer I have moved on to a tour of Mike Oldfield’s catalogue (liek a do every couple of years), starting with The Songs of Distant Earth from 1994 which was a natural place to go after the early Enigma. I continued to the first opus, and may take it chronologically from there – perhaps even realizing my idea of doing a series of reviews. We shall see.
  • Am also trying to do something about my gaming: Another attempt at Pillars of Eternity.
  • Got a Wacom Intuos Art pad for my birthday – interesting bit of gear, that I wanted to try ever since seeing too much fan art at deviantart.com. Not that I believe I have any particular talent – just thought it could be fun to try and learn a bit about digital art. Not surprisingly it turns out to be difficult, starting with the hand-eye-screen coordination being a whole new motor-skill that I need to train. Great to get an opportunity to try something like that.