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04/01/08: Another big gap between updates, and still nothing new to report: all my existing projects are on hold at the minute, principally because of the problems I've had finding a decent replacement laptop. My old one has served me faithfully for about four years, enduring about ~10 reformats, and it's obviously just gotten a bit clapped-out. It still works, but after about 20 minutes it starts slowing down considerably. I initially suspected malware, but after a full destructive recovery failed to fix the issue, I noticed that it was also running the fan full blast 100% of the time and that after any length of time you could feel the heat rising through the keyboard. My sole diversion from University work, --Team Fortress Classic-- , was completely unplayable by this point, and it was taking 10+ seconds to load Microsoft Word. Given that it was already a bit doddery in other areas (the DVD/R no longer Rs, or recognises rewritable media for that matter, and you have to carefully adjust the screen when you start it up to stop it flickering due to a dodgy power connection) I decided to take the plunge and spend some of my student loan on a new system. This proved to be more difficult than one might imagine.
My first stop? --PC World-- , where I discovered that the new crop of laptops all apparently had less than half the processor speeds of my old laptop (a 3GHz P4). Apparently, the larger cache on the new dual-core types more than makes up for this staggering regression, but it left me feeling rather put out; after all, if processor speeds are now so deceptive, how can customers make a reliable purchasing decision? Intel no longer incorporates clock speeds into the names of their processors, instead opting for such dubiously descriptive monikers as "CoreTM 2 Duo". I wanted something as close to my old laptop as possible, but the only XP laptops were worse than my 4 year old model in real terms and cost almost as much as the old one when new. --Moore's Law-- my backside! I was eventually persuaded to go for a rather sleek-looking iridescent greeny-grey model with Vista pre-loaded (I was informed that I *might* be able to install XP on it, but doing so would almost certainly void the warranty). Trying my best to forget the numerous Internet articles I had read bemoaning Vista's notorious lack of compatibility with older software, I swallowed my pride and coughed up £400 for it (actually, it was closer to £370 without factoring in the peripherals - an old friend's brother let me use his family discount in a spectacular and much-appreciated demonstration of --pseudo-nepotism-- ). It took PC World three attempts to let us buy the -bleep-ing thing, which on reflection I should have taken as an ill omen. The first time, they set everything up on a checkout machine and couldn't get the debit card reader to work when plugged in. The second time, they scanned the card, but couldn't take the money off it as the PIN was locked * and they "weren't equipped" to let me sign my name on a piece of paper ( :claps slowly: ).
When I got the Vista laptop, I quickly realised it wasn't going to be a fairytale relationship. The actual construction of the thing was awkward: yes, let's run the headphone jacks from the back left so the cord gets sliced every time you open the DVD-R tray, and put the mouse cable in the centre back so it has to sneak past the power lead! Let's swap the Ctrl and Fn keys so it feels more like a Mac (did I mention I hate the look and feel of OS X?). Ctrl-Z now requires a degree of digital flexibility from the keyboard operator hitherto reserved for contortionists, but who cares? Let's boot it up. Ooh, pretty (and completely extraneous!) graphical effects. Why are there random boops and bings in the middle of the classic "Welcome To Windows" theme? I keep jumping because I think I've pressed something and -bleeped- up the system. I have to burn my own recovery disk (with no assurances that it's actually burned properly and no instructions how to use it) because they're too cheap to throw a 50p DVD on top of a £400 machine? Great.
So, I get started, and things go downhill quickly:
- There's only one partition, and no easy way to divide it into two without risking messing up Vista. Apparently, this is more secure, as you can back up everything automatically. I beg to differ; having your files on a separate partition from the OS means they are less likely to get -bleep-ed up by a virus, especially one that squats in the boot sector and prevents you from just reinstalling the OS (did I mention you don't even get a Windows Vista disk?). If you are forced (or want) to reformat, your files are safe on the second partition. Ideally, a small "C:/" partition should run the OS and the pre-installed software whilst a separate "D:/" partition holds your important files and runs the programs you install. In an attempt to get going, I just made a folder called "D" on C, which still invalidated my shortcuts.
- Hideous huge icons on the desktop. You can (almost) reduce them to XP size without them being completely obscured by the "shortcut" symbol, but *not quite*. The "Classic Windows" theme is still there, but the animations feel distinctly half-assed compared to XP (we REALLY want you to see those translucent window borders, people). Seriously, when you try and minimise/maximise a window it just makes a sort of perfunctory jerk up/down - there's clearly only one or two transition frames. Hey, good to see that the 13GB slab of hard drive Vista is using (ROFLOLANIP)** is going to good use.
- Access to FTP (client) functionality is still possible with IE7 but requires more fuss. Under IE6 and XP I can have my site up, ready to edit in a single click, compared to (7? 8? In Vista). I will allow that my current setup is a huge security loophole (you can literally Google people's --passwords-- from their IE6 bookmarks), but this is ridiculous. I suppose I should be thankful there's any OS-browser integration at all. Oh, and I dislike IE7's default Firefox-like interface. I only use Firefox when absolutely necessary (e.g. downloading .pngs, etc.) because I hate tabbed browsing. Also, see my next point.
- IE7 gave up the ghost after two days. It's supposedly an integrated part of the operating system and it took two days to become unusable. As in, start-the-thing-from-the-.exe-and-Windows-brings-up-an-error-message-unusable. Hey, Bill? You're really not helping your case against Apple here.
- For no apparent reason my cursor kept jumping around when typing, even in built-in programs such as Notepad. I eventually realised it wasn't a software bug but a hardware design flaw. Because the touchpad had no raised edges my hand kept straying onto it and "clicking" the mouse.
- The wireless on-off is now Fn-F9 (Fn-F11?) which you have to press every time you boot up to access wireless networks. OK, I can see they're going for more security there, but making it a Function of Windows seems to defeat the object of the exercise. On my old laptop it was a big glowing button at the front, so I could turn it on/off before Windows booted.
- The "Burn To CD/DVD" function (why the -bleep- is that incorporated into the basic explorer GUI anyway?) is located directly where the "View" drop-down menu is in XP. Who thought it would be a good idea to put a button that ejects the DVD-R right where people now instinctively reach to change their viewing options?
- "address", "open", and "save have all been nuked by the horrible new Mac-style (again!) browsing system and the lack of integration between Explorer and Internet Explorer. Want to navigate through your folders? Good luck - everything's tied to a "level" now - to access a level you can't just go "up", you've got to click "back" or click on the preceding folder in the address bar equivalent.
- Microsoft have apparently decided that imitating Linux's rabidly over-enthusiastic permissions system is the way forward (hint: there are no Linux viruses because no-one uses it, not because it's any more secure), and if anything they've made it even more annoying. Even when you're logged in as an administrator, asking Vista to do anything it hasn't done before (e.g., AUTORUNNING A -BLEEP- CD) will freeze your system and flash you to a black screen with a prompt for permission.
- Team Fortress Classic? Forget about it. Vista doesn't support OpenGL, so it's software mode or nothing for Half-Life games. Did I mention Microsoft's original "Halo" doesn't work at all?
In fact, the only upside I could find for the Vista laptop was that I would be finally be able to watch DVDs on my laptop again and that burning in Vista seems a lot easier. The fact is at the minute I need a program set I can rely on and a system I already know how to operate.
Accordingly, I set off to get an XP laptop from --PC Paramedics-- . They said they could probably get one in by the 3rd of January - which we said didn't leave us much time before I needed to go back to University. They eventually persuaded us to put down a half deposit on the understanding that they could get it in on the 27th of December. Again, I shouldn't have got my hopes up - the fact that they had extreme difficulty actually getting their ordering system to recognise the model in question says it all. Unsurprisingly, it didn't arrive on the 27th. Nor did it arrive on the 28th or the 29th, despite repeated assurances that the box was "on the lorry" (note the wording there: not "on the road", despite their attempts to convince us that this was the same thing). It later turned out that the laptop had been delivered to the wrong location: because of their ultra-sophisticated, super-efficient tracking system, they couldn't just move on to the right place. No, having stopped outside the wrong PC Paramedics, they then had to lug the entire delivery (including numerous other systems) BACK to the depot. By this time it was the weekend. Given that the next Monday would be the last working day before the New Year, we were understandably rather concerned that it was going to end up coming in later than their initial estimate, which we had rejected! The owner of the local PC Paramedics begged us to wait one more day and said he would go to the depot in person. On the day, "go to the depot in person" actually meant "phone them and ask whether it was going to the right place this time", but at least it finally got to the storefront.
I'm using the XP laptop now (having sold the Vista laptop to my parents in a fantastically over-complicated transaction which constituted them buying the XP laptop and me paying the difference between the two minus the cost of the peripherals), and whilst it's got a few weird features*** I think I can get used to it. At least I can use Flash, Photoshop, and Indesign again (I'm soldiering on with ancient versions and a growing arsenal of registry hacks). So it seems I've "upgraded" from Vista to XP, just like in the spectacularly mean-spirited --Apple-- ads. My only consolation is that Apple seem to have dropped the ball on --Leopard-- almost as badly as Microsoft have on Vista, with accusations of --bloatware-- , incompatibility problems, and --data loss-- issues being thrown around by the Mac faithful (including a rather ominous bug that wipes any data being transferred between storage mediums if the transfer is interrupted). Ironically enough, just as Vista is coming under fire for "borrowing" Mac features such as the widgets (oops, "gadgets"), OS X hardliners are accusing Leopard of making the Mac more like a PC. The most damning new "feature" is the --"blue screen"-- caused by a software conflict whilst upgrading, which finally strips from the Mac its much-vaunted superiority over Windows and the "blue screen of death" (which, unlike the Mac "blue screen", simply requires a cold boot to fix rather than potentially requiring a reformat, and offers useful information on what went wrong and how to fix it). Apple's response has been hilarious - claiming that it's not a "real" bug because it is caused by the Leopard upgrader freaking out when it encounters outdated third-party software (newsflash: real computers can handle software from hundreds of different companies - that Apple's machines fail completely when their software monopoly is challenged doesn't bode well for their attempts to mainstream the Mac) and failing to provide the correct --commands-- to resolve the issue on their website.
The Linux Collective has also jumped on the growing bandwagon of pretty but phenomenally bloated next-gen operating systems with --Ubuntu Beryl-- , an X Window System-style GUI that demonstrates why OS design should be handled by paid artists, not bedroom programmers working on an open-source project. Vista's translucent edges? Yeah, we'll have those. Leopard's flowing minimisation/maximisation effects? Yup, them too. BADLY RENDERED 3D FIRESTORMS THAT APPARENTLY CONSUME YOUR DATA every time you close a window? Sure, why not. Every time you move a window, the contents wibble and distort like gelatine (I'm not joking here)?! Great! Four desktops at once, SPINNING ON A MASSIVE 3D CUBE on top of some absolutely bitchin' skybox art from Doom?!? THROW IT IN. Seriously, it's hilarious.
In other news: the Christmas break, whilst unproductive as far as personal projects have been concerned, has been fascinating as regards getting an insight into how the average person's mind works these days ("this is your brain on ITV", etc.). You can tell it's Christmas at our house because we're arguing epistemology. Of course, this can be difficult when the people involved don't actually have, as far as I can tell, any means of actually processing definite theses. The other day I had a long and involved discussion with Certain People on the subject of discrimination and the distinction (as I saw it) between race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and worldview. This was a fairly bizarre discussion. I was shocked to learn that Muslims are a "brown race" originating in the Middle East (quick, someone call Dave "Wonderbread" Sim) and that people are "born Muslim" because they are killed if they try to marry Christians. Of course, these are the People who read the --Daily Mail-- and once told me Polish immigrants should be put in "camps" (!) because we have "no racial or religious" commonality with them (erm, would these be the WHITE, CATHOLIC POLES? my response was simply to point out that everyone in the room had been born with an Irish surname).
Anyway, I gave what I think has to be my most stellar performance in a dinner debate yet, presenting a simple, logical train of thought, and explaining why religious/worldview and cultural supremacy is *sanity* (only a few decades ago, the idea of "holding a belief" that you don't actually think represents reality would have made you an immediate candidate for the padded room), why ethnic/national supremacy is dodgy, and why racial supremacy is insane and should not be protected by free speech (but that this does not prevent a frank discussion of human anthropology/anthropometry, and that in fact the doctrine of adaptationism**** as an explanation for racial differences tends to diffuse racialist theories). Some time after the dinner, I happened to mention in a light-hearted way that I thought I had rather gotten the better of the exchange. The response floored me: they said they had not been arguing for anything (apart from, you know, tired Neo-Nazi garbage, which, I pointed out, would have been directed against their own phenotype only 50 years ago) and that they were "just trying to keep an open mind". So basically, there was no point me even talking to them! Why bother giving people information if they don't use it to make up their own minds? I wouldn't even have minded if they had outright said I was wrong - but the point is, these people aren't looking for truth; they don't even want to think. Is there any wonder things are going downhill so fast?
Trustease Property Management Ltd., the company I savaged in my --last update-- for their shoddy handling of the British Gas debacle, decided in early December that they want to get even more money out of us than last year by squatting on our deposits from January through to next September. They also upped the rent to almost £300 a month - when I called them on these "interesting" developments, they claimed it was the power of "the market" and an inevitable result of the recent fall in housing prices - as I pointed out to friends later, when housing prices were rising, they used that as an excuse to hike rent, because the worth of the house was allegedly increasing; now they're falling, they're using that as an excuse to hike rents, because the landlords needs more cash to make his mortgage payments with higher interest rates. Anyway, Trustease gave me a generous 18 days to find three complete strangers with whom to share the property next year when my Year 3 housemates move on ("because we can't advertise three rooms in a house" - yeah right). This was, by the way, two months before the University starts advising Year 1 students to seek accommodation for the next year, ***** so you can tell how well my poster campaign went over. I got one reply, but he was only interested if he could move in immediately. Apparently, despite the deadline having passed, I still get priority if I find three people before they find four (less paperwork), but it's looking increasingly like I'm going to have to find somewhere else for next year.
Website-wise, I'm afraid I've let everything go a bit - --Uploadingit.com-- seems to have vanished permanently, with another one of my major file hosts, --Snapdrive.net-- , ailing. As a result, quite a few links in the --Downloads-- section are broken. I also haven't done my customary check of the --Links-- section, so there might be a few 404s in need of pruning there too. God willing, now I've got a working computer platform I can begin to move forward on the new --Rants-- I have in progress and add some more information to my --Settings-- page. I'm also writing a new CV for one of my assignments, so after that's gone through the plagiarism-o-meter I can use that for my --CV/Jobs Page-- and finally put some content up there.
Eek! Once again, a needlessly epic update, and one that's taken me the better part of a day to write: I'd better leave it there. Signing off, blessings all round, watch for the lightning from the clear sky, etc.
* That would be the fault of --Lloyds TSB-- , who join the list of incompetent corporations I've had to deal with this year not through any particular *mistake* on their part, but rather through the fact that they seem to exist in a parallel financial universe to the one we mere mortals inhabit. First off, they decided that since OBVIOUSLY no-one needed it anymore, they wouldn't bother including a cheque guarantee on their debit cards. The result? I needed to give my parents' address to buy a bus pass. I had never even heard of a "cheque guarantee card", but the people at the --SU-- seemed to think it was perfectly normal. More directly linked to the PC World incident, they apparently give out their debit cards with the PIN locked by default. This security measure is so airtight that my mother has used her PIN for hundreds of purchases without ever needing to unlock it or even realising that such a thing as a PIN lock even existed. Meanwhile, I was getting disapproving stares in newsagents, followed by a demand that I sign on a scruffy piece of what looked like toilet paper because "the PIN won't work". Lloyds TSB - the bank of the 21st century. I could have done with it being the bank of the 20th.
** "Rolling On The Floor Laughing Out Loud At Nothing In Particular". I was shocked to discover that the Internet hive mind had not yet invented this acronym, and have therefore decided to popularise it myself.
*** To whit: an oddly curving keyboard, all the USB ports (of which there are shamefully few, by the way) bar one at the back, a power cable that runs straight across the radiator, headphone/microphone jacks at the front so you get tangled up in the cord, almost nothing on the left, but the DVD-R on the right where it hits your mouse mat when it ejects (I shall probably be singing the praises of this feature in a week when I get used to not having to swap hands to put in a disk, but for now it just feels weird), and tiny piddly little "sliders" on the front controlling Bluetooth and wireless access that look mechanical but are actually digital sensors that require Fu Manchu fingernails to activate.
**** Adaptionism: the idea that phenotypal differences in the human population are first and foremost caused by geographical isolation coupled with environmental adaptation, rather than the contrary position of null-adaptionism - the doctrine that there are three or four distinct phenotypes, either created by a supernatural force or by dramatic mutation, and that the smooth continuum of phenotypes we see in modern humanity represents varying degrees of admixture between these sub-species. Both "adaptionism" and "null-adaptionism" are terms of my own invention. Most racist theories (e.g. --Christian Identity-- ) are null-adaptionist; it is possible to construct a crude form of racial superiority out of adaptionist ideas, but this will tend to see humankind polarised into the "extremophile adaptoids", who have become highly adapted for harsh environments and will therefore be physically hardy on their "home turf" but mentally unexceptional, and the "temperate zone non-adaptoids", who have settled in temperate regions and accordingly have had the biological "leisure time" to develop high brain capacity and physical attractiveness (but which will be physically less capable in extreme conditions). Such a view would logically eschew both ideological extremes of --Nordicism-- and --Afrocentricism-- in favour of the superiority of the Atlanto-Mediterranean, Mediterreanean, Persian, Middle Eastern, and North Asian peoples.