Literary vivisection

I just don’t get it. A couple of minutes ago I got an e-mail from Voddler touting that they now have a couple of tv-shows available for 9kr each (about €1). Really? Is that something worth celebrating? Well, I guess it is since they still have some shows that cost a whopping 27kr per episode.

Who, in their right mind, would even consider buying something for 9kr per episode, much less 27kr? Let’s do some quick comparisons;

Heroes season 1: Voddler = 9 * 23 = 207kr
Heroes season 1: Retail DVD = 149kr

House season 1: Voddler = 9 * 21 = 189kr
House season 1: Retail DVD = 149kr

Now, even going just by price you’d naturally pick the DVD boxsets when confronted with those numbers. But it doesn’t stop there. You don’t actually get to keep the video when licensed from Voddler, you rent it. It’s DRM-riddled so forget about putting it on a mobile device of some variety. The quality is quite simply subpar compared to even DVDs, how they’ll survive the onslaught of HD content I’ll never know. They also lack all types of bonus material, which both me and Becka enjoy.

There are exceptions to the above. You “sort of” get to keep the content when buying from iTunes. It’s DRMed and locked to apple devices which rules me out of the equation but that’s sufficient for many people. But why would you want to subject yourself to any of it?

Let it be said that I am a huge fan of Voddler. Despite this rather negative post I absolutely adore their service and consider it the wave of the future. I’m just extremely reluctant to buy anything from them for the previously mentioned reasons. I would probably have rented movies from them instead the video store if they could have managed a client that actually ran on my atom/ion mediacenter pc. The quality is a drag but at a proper distance you don’t notice it as much so it’s decent enough from the livingroom sofa, if it had worked at all that is. Which it doesn’t.

However, their constant adding of free sci-fi / horror movies has kept me coming back on a daily basis. I’ve even found movies on there that I’ve never heard of before, which should be considered a compliment. I don’t mind the ads, I accept the quality and get free entertainment. There is no way for me to back up the following statement but I believe it to be true; a lot of people are like me.

We visit voddler to have something running in another window when we’re working / writing / etc. We like it for what it is but have no illusions of it ever reaching a mass penetration in its current form. When we want to watch a movie with friends in the livingroom we rent/buy a blu-ray (heck, even a DVD would be better). We don’t visit voddler.

Will that spell misfortune and become the death knell of companies like this? I don’t know, but I surely hope not. They have the chance to build something great, the technology and infrastructure is in place, people have warmed to the concept of paying for digital content. Are they generating a profit with only free movies or are they relying on paid rentals to offset the free ones? Who knows, what I do know is that I’ll never pay more than 25% of a retail DVD for a digital copy that isn’t even mine when the dust has settled. Ever.

This gem just popped into my inbox as a comment was awaiting moderation and I’m still trying to find my jaw behind the sofa.

“Hiya, I was reading one more factor about this on another blog. Interesting. Your perspective on it’s diametrically contradicted from what I read earlier. I’m even now pondering with the opposite elements of view, but I’m leaning to a good extent toward yours. And irrespective, that’s what is so perfect about modern-day democracy as well as the market of ideas online.”

That has to be the most eloquent and pleasing comment I’ve ever received on any of my multiple blogs. Unfortunately it’s just spam and linked to a russian porn site of some variety or other. That’s the internet for you, figures.

Great men pass into the night no different than lesser ones. But they are never forgotten, never alone. Family is forever, as are our immortal souls. We will miss you, forever.

Roughly two months ago I started getting backpains. Now, we’ve all probably had the usual “ouch, I must have strained myself”-moment. But we’re talking daily pains here. My scale clocked in at 127.5 kilos. I’m a big guy, I’ve got very broad shoulders and the usual jazz so it wasn’t outright obscene. But I was overweight according to my BMI. It was time for a change.

I shopped around and read up on the science, chemistry and success stories for various diets. I settled upon a Swedish one called LCHF, Low Carbs High Fat (couldn’t find an english descriptor for it, think a much stricter Atkins). It’s a bizarre concept, you can eat as much fat as you want and you will -plummet- in weight. Assuming you eat almost no carbs at all, sub 20 grams per day. It was extremely difficult to begin with since I had to kick some addictions, like noodles, soda and basically all of my favorite foods were out (no more pasta, no hamburgers since they had bread, etc). But boy did it work.

If you’re going to give it a try then be prepared for a tough first couple of weeks. I got severe headaches and close to apathy levels of energy during my first week. That tapered off rather quickly but I was still running on fumes until my body adjusted to using Ketons instead of Carbs for energy. At that point it was like a walk in the park.

I’ve now lost exactly 20 kilos. It took me slightly more than 2 months. That’s almost 10 kilos per month. My backpains are gone, I rarely get headaches anymore (as opposed to weekly migraines), I sleep better, I’m not at all as tired in the mornings, I’ve increased my muscle mass and generally have a much easier time getting about.

There’s additional, undocumented, benefits as well. I lost my appetite entirely for instance, and I meant that in a good way. I could eat whenever I wanted to and appreciate the food, I just never felt hungry. Ever. I went 32 hours straight without a bite of food (stupid but it was unintentional, I just forgot to eat) and I still wasn’t hungry. This is because carbs trigger your insulin production and your blood sugar level elevates and drops. With LCHF your sugar level is always flat at close to 0, so you never really develop a hunger. Or at least I didn’t, can only speak for myself.

But why quit if it’s working so great? I’d like to blame it entirely on my fiance who gave up around the time her vacation kicked in but no, I’m rather fed up with it as well. I absolutely adore meat, once my beef is consumed the meal is over no matter how many green things remain on my plate. I’ve always been that way. But eating only meat, fat, cheese, eggs, butter, bearnaise, etc ad nauseam just got the better of me.

Thus I’m switching to a regular calorie based diet after Becka firmly discussed the topic with me. But LCHF is always going to have a special place in my heart thanks to the huge weight loss I got in such a short time. Heck, I’m quite willing to go back to it if I ever put on weight again. But now I’m going to do it the old fashion, and slow, way by checking my portions.

EDIT: Apologies for the double-post, I blame solar flares.

I’ve had a birth mark on my right cheek for as long as I’ve walked on this mortal soil. It’s never bothered me, in fact it helped define my face nicely. Unfortunately it started stinging a couple of months ago and then proceeded to grow to about 300-400% of its original size (still growing). Now it’s at the point where it actually hurts.

I called the local (social) clinic and was met with a 40 minute waiting line, all the time it kept stating that I was number 1 in line. When someone finally picked up I was met with grunts and a complete lack of interest. They said someone would call me back. Great, another hour of waiting I figured but they actually called back within 30 minutes.

This person was obviously stressed but also rather hostile. He pointed out that it was summer and birth marks change color so I shouldn’t call whenever it happens. When I pointed out how much it had grown and the fact that it had given me discomfort / pain for over 2 months he didn’t even comment but he obviously didn’t want me to come in. I kept pushing and eventually he relented and gave me an appointment on the 25th. That’s 19 days. Fantastic, 19 days of constant facial pain. Worst part? He said outright that they wouldn’t remove it on that day, just take a look at it. So who knows how long I would have to wait?

I decided distance was irrelevant and called my favorite private clinic. They picked up immediately and listened carefully to my symptoms. Then they gave me an appointment on the 10th with a specialist (who focuses on skin issues above the shoulders) who would remove it on the same day.

Having my new appointment I bit the bullet and called the socialistic clinic again to cancel my appointment. Surprise, surprise. A grumpy person picked up and seemingly grudgingly cancelled it. After which he said bye and simply hung up.

Now, why am I writing this post? I’m a capitalist. I despise socialism in most forms but I’ve always been an avid supporter of government sponsored healthcare and schooling. Why? Because without an education a person will not contribute to society and if a person is sick but can’t afford healthcare he will also be a drain on society. Much more so than if he had been cured and been able to go back to work.

Are my beliefs paradoxical? I don’t think so, socialism doesn’t mean communism despite what many ignorant people think. Aspects of socialism can greatly help a country and, most importantly, keep it stable. Look at how Sweden weathered the financial crisis, not rock solid but close to it in comparison to other countries’ whose whole economies collapsed. Most European countries has socialistic tendencies, some just manage it better than what we do.

Look at France for instance, their healthcare is almost as cheap as Sweden’s but it’s managed much better. Private practices that receive funding from the government. Clearly defined caps and structures. Why is Sweden even trying anymore? Scrap these pointless clinics and properly fund private ones instead. The reason why is simple; private practices depends on having clients (sick people). If they mistreat a person they will never return, thus resulting in less income for the clinic. There is -no- reason for a socialistic clinic to do anything to help the client, in fact they would be happier if nobody showed up at all. Well, to a certain point, if they had zero influx of patients it would probably be closed down but you get my drift.

I know this has been a somewhat political (and thus possibly boring post) but I had to get that out of my system. My opinion of the poor state of healthcare in Sweden isn’t formed from this single incident but a lifetime of encounters with incompetent doctors and the mayhem they wreak. In my immediate family roughly 75% has received an erroneous diagnosis, in some cases when it was a life and death issue (cancer). Again, always by social institutes. I’m tired of it. I’d rather have good healthcare than free healthcare.

Just let me make one thing clear. I don’t think any of the people working in our healthcare sets out to make mistakes. They’re just overworked and underpaid and the reason why is the same as what is stated above; they get paid the same wheter or not they do a good or a bad job. Thus why not just pile on ten times their capacity, it wouldn’t cost the state more after all.

It was that time again. When I built my last rig (Hansa) I focused almost exclusively on what would benefit me the most at work. Since I’ve (mostly) managed to migrate away from OSX to Windows for development I needed a dedicated game-rig to prevent the overlap of work and hobbies. Waitress, one decent gaming rig, please.

OS

Windows 7 home premium

CPU

Intel (quad) Core i5-750 2.6ghz (overclocked to 3.2ghz)

Corsair Hydro H50 liquid cpu cooler

Zalman cpu paste

Case + Mobo

Coolermaster CM 690 II Advanced

Coolermaster silent pro 700w

Asus P7P55D Premium

Ram

Corsair 4gb DDR3 1600mhz XMS3 Dominator DHX

Cooling

2 Fractal design silent 120mm

2 Xigmatek eXtreme silent 120mm

2 Coolermaster 120mm (came with case)

1 Coolermaster 140mm (came with case)

Graphics

XFX GTX 275

Storage

Samsung 750gb sata

WD 500gb ide

Random dvd-rom ide

Peripherals

Razer Lachesis

Logitech G13

M-Audio studiophile av 40

A handful of items are worth commenting on. I went with the i5 instead of the i7 mostly due to cost vs performance issues. The i5 is dead easy to overclock with liquid cooling and can hit the same range as the i7, but I did get a mobo that can handle both in case I want to upgrade. I was considering building a liquid cooler but opted for the H50 instead. Its sealed nature and disposable nature make it perfect for rigs that won’t require liquid nitrogen to remain cool while being overclocked.

The motherboard is an interesting beast. It supports 6gb sata on two ports, has a huge array of inputs and a very smooth bios (with failsafe). Amusingly, it also comes with a remote that allows immediate overclocking, even while in a game.

The case and PSU are less interesting. They’re both extremly solid (although the PSU has a rather limited amount of modular contacts) and I wanted an open, meshed case this time as opposed to the entirely sealed Coolermaster Cosmos I used for Hansa. The built in sata-hotswap slot on the top of the case is beautiful since I regularly shuttle hundreds of gigs back and forth.

There’s a lot of fans in this case but I made sure that the absolute loudest ran at 20db or less. In fact, the case is dead silent (with the exception of the gpu fan, which screams every now and then, unfortunately). Most importantly I’m using a push-pull system with 2 fans mounted on the liquid storage tank, both running at roughly 1500rpm (again, only 19db).

I’m rather happy with the peripherals. To be clear, I’m using usb-switch boxes so I can use my mouse and Microsoft arc keyboard with both of my PCs. The arc isn’t particularly forgiving while gaming however, hence the logitech g13 to balance it out. Love the mouse, with a couple of exceptions I’ll probably detail in a later post.

I was pondering getting another set of D’Feldt audioengine 5s for my computers but the amount of use they’d get doesn’t justify their price. Instead I scaled it back a step to the M-Audio av 40. An excellent pair of reference speakers (as long as you keep the bass disabled).

I’ll admit it straight out, I’m a Unix guy. Even used to have the beard and everything. Thus I was a bit flabbergasted when I was tasked with synchronizing several directories to various end-points under windows. I had always used rsync before and while it is available in a cross-compiled version I opted to check out some graphical alternatives.

First I stumbled across a tool called SyncBack. Since I didn’t need the extra features I opted for the free version called SE. It suited my needs almost perfectly but I found it to be an utter slog at times, especially when it came to synchronizing tens of thousands of smaller files.

Next I stumbled across Synkron. Hey, I remember this app from my linux days. Naturally I installed it with all haste but it wasn’t what I needed. It’s a great tool when it comes to doing what its name implies, properly synchronizing two directories. I’m after a type of manual backup however and thus I do not want changes to the target destination to propagate back to the source directory.

Somewhat dismayed I checked a variety of tools that I didn’t grow attached to at all. Then I stumbled across a forum post praising Microsoft’s synctoy. Vary of anything with the word “toy” in its name I hesitated before downloading it.

Synctoy is the shiznah for basic needs. It’s very fast, it supports using syncing as a form of backup and yields a clear overview when prompted. If you’re looking to sync directories under Windows 7 and you don’t need the plethora of advanced features other applications offer then give this a shot. I’m certainly happy I did.

The Sherlock Holmes series by Frogwares is rapidly becoming one of my absolute favorites. They had a Lovecraftian theme with The Awakened and continue on a dark path with Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the ripper. Not as fond of the pure detective stories (Silver earring) but despite my flare for the morbid I would still heartily recommend them.

This post is about an issue I encountered with both The Awakened as well as Jack the ripper. For some ungodly reason the game engine seems to ignore my preference of turning vertical sync (vsync) off. I need to do this since the low FPS make me motion sick at times. To make matters even worse it seems to be capped at 30 at most times, no matter what your refresh rate is. It even dips to 20 (steady) for no obvious reason at times.

It’s easily remedied however, just open up the file called “setup.ini” located in your “home folder / AppData / Roaming / Games / Sherlock holmes versus jack the ripper”. Remember to show hidden files and directories or the AppData folder will not be visible. In this file you simply need to change two variables;

VSync = Off

frequency = 60

This will greatly raise your FPS (or frames per second) as long as your system can handle the load.

I feel its presence, the icy fingers upon my throat.
I hear its eerie sounds, unsettling my every thought.
I try in vain to slumber, my reveries gripped by violent terror. My only salvation, the shock of awakening.
Something is very, very wrong here.

Master storyteller Roberta Williams challenges you to experience the ultimate interactive nightmare.

Walkthrough
Metacritic
Buy it at GoG

Chase sequences at the end (because I opted for the quick and painless way out), they missed Mike’s corpse unfortunately;
Take 1
Take 2
Take 3
Take 4