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Journaling June - Day 8
Journaling June
Day 8
Back in the 2000s, during the first iterations of this website, I had a section dedicated to Wallpaper designs and now using a picture such as this as my computer's desktop image I sometimes consider bringing back such a section, the only issue is (as was the case back then) they end up eating up a lot of space, even if I do have plenty here on Neocities. I had ended up with a couple of things to post this morning; some fountain pen parts in addition to the capacitors I sold yesterday. I elected to cycle a bit further and grab some reduced-priced groceries and then call in to visit the guy who'd had the property fire last week. He was presently engaged so I checked my phone and discovered a missed call from someone in the same town that needed my services so I called them back and said I could be with them in 30 minutes (it's one of these funny quirks in life where I just happen to be somewhere and end up with another job in the area, it's handy but I like people to think I have travelled some way especially). Since I had some time to kill I popped into a nearby charity shop to see if anything might grab my attention and walked away (after paying of course) with a couple of CDs...
My client's problem was weird but simply resolved (the WiFi setting in his router had been turned off). Since I'd used my phone to investigate his WiFi issue I found there was a big update available for my phone so I loitered around to download that #freeloader. Immediate differences are the shades of grey are now different in ebook mode which is how I have my screen set so I'm not being bombarded with bright stimulating colours, there are lined borderes around Home screen segments, a new Hotspot icon, and a new Translation app has appeared (I'll be cautious about this because all of the agreements indicated everything I used it for would likely be shared with Honor). More on this later. Then I returned to visit the guy about his fire; he was in good spirits and indeed it was "only" a shed full of cars that had gone up (he was intending to eventually use them to pay off his mortgage); he said that if the wind had been blowing in the other direction he'd have likely lost his house too, but he said the many fire crews that turned up did a good job. He reeled off the short list of cars while I pictured in my mind the makes and models he was referring to; no Ford Capri after all it seems. We had a good chat otherwise. Back at home I made myself some lunch and then sat outside in the sunshine to read some more of the book about sleep, which reminds me, last night I dreamed about three cats visiting me; two past cats and the new one that wanders through my garden sometimes. In my dream they knew each other, and as a weird quirk, the house of the neighbours I have who live across the road were actually positioned next door in the dream; odd. The next few days don't look so favourable for such outside activities so I wanted to make the most it. I watched Tech Tangent's latest video about an IDE adapter. Here was another bout of AI criticism; I'm not sure where everyone is basing "their opinions" or whether it has just become a "popular opinion" to have in certain circles. TT's himself criticises Youtube itself towards the end of the video, for its deployment of AI-generated comments, yet who knows how much of Youtube is developed and run by AI behind the scenes, yet he seems perfectly happy to use the platform. Somewhat ironically I used an online tool to grab the transcript of his video. This was output as a block of text so I handed it over to ChatGPT to format for me. I personally browsed through it to get a clear picture of where the points about AI were being raised. I then got ChatGPT to go over those points with me, providing some further details and context. It hadn't mentioned anything about "RAM" or the construction of Data Centers as reasons for such AI criticism that I have heard, so I raised these points with it and got it to elaborate. I also got it to provide me with a list of relevant news articles and research papers. I can see another vlog in the making... Anyway, speaking of intrusive tech, I saw a notice on my phone prompting me to finish setting things up following the update earlier. One of the stages involved asking for details such as gender and age group so it could suggest apps to me, so I opted out of that and the next page had a bunch of apps with some selected, so I deselected all of them and proceeded (most were games and thus not of interest to me*).Yet, even then it proceeded to download stuff/Apps. This was especially annoying because I have a data limit and generally such things can wait for WiFi, like the earlier update itself. I disconnected and then investigated further. AppSelector was to blame; I don't know if that was newly installed as part of the update or if all of its settings were reset to now allow it to do what it wanted, but I turned off all of the Notification options and its options for downloading stuff. I then did a Force Stop of that component. Bloody updates. *I've come to think that grown adults shouldn't be still playing video games, even if I am tempted to purchase some old PC games I have some nostalgia for. I've ended up buying an iMac. There was one going cheap, of the 27" i5 variety on ebay at the weekend, but I procrastinated about it and then it sold quick. Then today I saw another of a similar price, supposedly with just a failing hard drive. Supposedly I can just tinker with it and sell it on as faulty or fix it up and use it as power draw of my current i5 is pretty good and perhaps the iMac will be not too much more, plus it'll be a nicer screen than this crappy 19" TFT on VGA. I already have an iMac but of an earlier Core2Duo... I should really sell that one if this one turns up good. Weirdly the iMac supposedly has an ATI Radeon HD 5750 with 1GB RAM, while my computer has a Radeon HD 6450 with 2GB of RAM that BraveAI claims that "While the HD 5750 is a desktop card with 720 shading units and an 86W TDP, the HD 6450 is a low-power entry-level card with only 160 shading units and a 18-30W TDP, making it suitable for basic display output and media centers rather than gaming." Supposedly due to the 5750 having a 128-bit memory bandwidth compared to the 6450's 64-bit. "The extra VRAM on the HD 6450 is effectively "wasted" because the GPU core is too weak to process the data stored in it." Providing I don't cook the chip in the Mac...
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