Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

 Following on from the CPU upgrade mentioned in my last post I am going to record my current build for posterity.  CPU: AMD Ryzen 9800x3D Motherboard: Asus TUF x670E plus Wifi Ram: 2x16GB 6400MHz DDR5 (running at 6000MHz CAS 32 for stability)  GPU: Nvidia RTX 56070ti SSD: 2Tb DDR 4 NVME HDD: 4Tb HDD with 512Mb ssd cache PSU: 850W EVGA Case: Still using my old Fractal Design Define R5. No window and no RGB.  Screen: MSI MAG274QRF-QD 27" 165Hz 1440p monitor + Dell P2719HC 27" 75Hz 1080p second monitor  Sound:  Swan OS 10 speakers + Sennheiser HD598SE headphones Peripherals: Logitech G915 keyboard / Logitech G502 X mouse / Microsoft Xbox One controllers (x2), Lenovo 500 FHD webcam.  Operating System: Windows 11 Pro 25H2 The Lenovo webcam is a recent acquisition because it was the cheapest webcam I could get that has the infrared camera necessary to support face log in with Windows Hello. It works but after it arrive I realised that it doesn't have a built...

 I have just upgraded my CPU from a Ryzen 9700x to a 9800x3D. The 9700x was plenty fast enough for my 5070ti  but I wanted to try one of AMDs much vaunted x3D cpus for myself. It is the most expensive CPU I have ever bought but then again my 5070ti is the most expensive GPU I have ever bought.  At least the €400 9800x3D is currently the best gaming CPU on the planet. My €800 5070ti on the other hand offers less than 60% the performance of an RTX 5090ti. Given that the RTX5090 currently costs around €2.7k I don't think I will be upgrading my GPU again any time soon.   I haven't noticed much of a difference in Windows or in Games yet. Total War Warhammer seems a bit quicker over the end turn but that could be wishful thinking. I ran a few synthetic benchmarks and the 9800x3D is a bit slower than the 9700x in single threaded tests but faster in multi threaded. That makes sense because the 9700x has faster clocks but a smaller cache. The single threaded test probabl...

I have just spent €802 on a PNY Triple Fan OC Nvidia  Geforce 5070ti . This is actually a good deal for a card with US sticker price of $750 taking into account Ireland's 23% VAT and the extra costs associated with living on a small island. It is also the most expensive PC component I have ever bought. I am definitely not OK with the fact that enthusiast level GPUs  cost double what equivalent tier cards cost ten years ago.  I chose this version because it is one of the cheaper variants available but it is well built and one of the faster overclocked models with a large 3 slot heatsink that keeps it cool and quiet under pressure. It has no RGB or other frills but I don't care about that.  Initial impressions after playing around with it for about an hour: In 3D Mark, Total Warhammer 3 and Cyberpunk the card does seem quite a bit faster than the 7800Xt particularly at very high graphics settings. On the other hand the Nvidia Control panel still looks archaic. AMD's Ad...

Life is infinitely complex. In the language of mathematics it is everywhere continuous and nowhere differentiable. This is the definition of a fractal.  The thing about fractals is that you can zoom in as far as you like and it never gets any less complex. I think life is like that. At one level you see kings and emperors and their epoch defining movements. Zoom in and you see common people arguing over the price of corn. Zoom in further and it is just one person trying to decide what clothes to wear. I think that God, if there is a God inhabits all of these levels and all of the complexity that each entails. 

I am not an audiophile and yet my life has been touched by music.  One of my older brothers was an audiophile. He loved music and he was passionate about audio systems. He gave me my first lessons in music appreciation and in audio quality. We became close because of it. Coincidentally I was also very good friends with several very talented musicians who went on to make careers out of music. I spent my teenage years surrounded by music and musicians.  It is important to realise that music was more important to young people back then than it is today. Music was the foremost cultural phenomenon of the age. If you were a teenager back then the bands you followed defined you. Despite this I didn't follow any bands and I didn't buy any records.  My brother suffered from serious mental illness. When he was in the grips of psychosis he would use music  as a weapon to disturb the neighbourhood and to deny people from sleep.   I had a complicated relationship with m...

I have been experimenting with the premium tier of PlayStation Plus which allows streaming a limited selection of PlayStation 3 and 4 games to a PC. This allows non PlayStation owners to experience some of the platform's highly regarded exclusives.  The up front cost involved the purchase of a second hand PS4 controller (€20) and a one month subscription to PlayStation Plus Premium (€16.99). The lower tiers of PlayStation Plus do not allow streaming. Although other controllers can be gotten to work the PS4 controller is highly recommended for maximum compatibility. Apparently even owners of newer PS5 controllers need hacks to get them running with the service.  For some reason the PS Plus app requires the controller to have a wired connection even though I can connect it to the PC via Bluetooth and Steam recognises it just fine via wireless. Google and Reddit sent me down several rabbit holes trying to get the wireless connection to work but in the end I gave up and just went ...

 When I immersed myself in Elden Ring for several weeks back in January / February I invested in strength and tried to build a melee focussed character. Last week on a whim I reinstalled the game and started over as magic using glintstone sorcerer prioritising intelligence. Now I find I am progressing through the game far more quickly and enjoying the experience more. A lot of this is due to my familiarity with the game born from experience but I am enjoying the playstyle more as well.  Before I go much further I must address the elephant in the room. There is a section of the Elden Ring community who look down on magic as easy mode. They consider it an inferior playstyle to the carefully timed parrys, dodges and counters that are a hallmark of Souls games. I would like to think I am above being influenced by this kind of snobbery but that isn't entirely true. I am pretty sure that my decision to initially play as a melee character was influenced by a niggling feeling that tha...

I have been playing PC games for more than thirty years and it is still my favourite hobby. Over that time I have regularly come across questions on forums asking why should someone game on PC rather than console. I have occasionally offered my own opinion on the matter as I did in the reddit comment below. Surprisingly my answer to the question hasn't changed much over they years. If I can find an older answer I gave to a similar question I might post that as well for comparison.  Top reasons to start PC gaming: It is at least two hobbies in one. Tinkering with HW and Software and trying to get the most of out of limited HW is a whole game in itself. If you are nerdy enough you may enjooy it more than actually playing games. PC games are cheaper. AAA gams may start out the same price but prices fall quicker on PC and PC has an enormous back catalogue of free games. You can pick up classics for a few $. PC gamers can quickly amass a library of hundreds of games. Did I mention the e...

 My father was born a subject of the British King George V. He died a citizen of a free republic the equal under law of any king.  As you might have guessed I am not in favour of hereditary Monarchy. I realise that the British Royal family is probably the world's greatest tourist attraction and the ballyhoo and romance surrounding them brings significant tangible and intangible benefits to  the United Kingdom. Nevertheless the very idea of the royal family underpins a deeply ingrained system of hereditary privilege and power which in my opinion is anathema to a modern twenty first century free country.   There is a proposal that during the coronation ceremony today that the King's subjects watching from home can swear an oath of allegiance while sitting in front of their tellys. Needless to say the notion of people swearing oaths to their TV screens has provoked considerable derision even among fervent supporters of the royal family. There has even been several ...

What was I writing about in April 2013?  https://mindbendingpuzzles.blogspot.com/2013/04/ I started the month complaining about the ever growing issue of DLC. Unlike most gamers of the time it wasn't the rip off factor that annoyed me it was the nuisance factor of there being too much of it.  My second post that month was a long and thoughtful analysis of the demise of the PC. The PC proved more resilient than I expected at that time but it interesting that the PC market is again in sharp decline after a pandemic lock down inspired boost. One of my biggest concerns about a possible decline of the PC was whether or not I would still be able to play older games. It is interesting the the big consoles from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have since become much more aware of the value of their back catalogue and have introduced various ways to play older games.  I was playing Fallout 3, Darksiders 2 and the Walking Dead according to my next post. I remember finishing the first t...

  I had a life changing experience at a school retreat but not in the way you might think. This was many years ago when Ireland was a very religious country. Our retreat was led by an enthusiastic young priest who played the guitar and wanted to inspire us to change the world. He was actually a nice enough chap and he led us through a couple of days of prayer and soul searching. Then towards the end he put a challenge to us "Do you want to accept things the way they are like a humble mouse or do you want to go out there and make a difference like a a roaring lion". We were young and impressionable and most of us got caught up in the wave and said "Yes we want to change the world. That is what God wants us to do." There was one student though. He wasn't from a privileged background and he wasn't a star in class but he was the lone voice who spoke against the wave of enthusiasm that the rest of us got caught up in. "I don't agree." He said. ...

 Back in 2012 the brooding world of Dark Souls consumed me for several weeks . I bounced off several other FromSoft games but Elden Ring's more accessible approach  has sucked me back into the Souls world once again. I now have now spent over 200 hours in the game and it has become a compulsion. At this stage I am strongly considering taking a break.  Elden ring has taught me something about myself and about the way I approach games. I play very very slowly. How Long to Beat  suggests that the main storyline takes about 55 hours and that 100% completion takes around 130. After 200 hours my level 65 character is less than half way through the game (currently in Redmayne Castle preparing to take down Starscourge Radahn). When I realised how slowly I was progressing compared to others I initially blamed it on my lack of skill however on reflection I think it has more to do with the way I prefer to play. To give an example from yesterday: I spent four hours overcoming a ...

 Steam says I have played Elden Ring for 77 hours since installing the game 23 days ago. Some of that is undoubtedly idle time but I have probably clocked at least 50 hours of actual playtime and I am still very much a beginner.  Elden Ring is the 2022 mega hit game from From Software, creator of the hugely influential Demon souls / Dark Souls series. These games are notoriously hard core and make a virtue out of not hand holding players. Elden Ring remains true to the souls formula but in a bigger bolder and more accessible format. Elden Ring has been rewarded with huge sales and multiple critical accolades including several "Game of the Year" titles.  More accessible is a relative term. Unlike previous souls games Elden Ring does have a tutorial (if you can find it by jumping off a cliff) but it only teaches the very basics of melee combat. Most of the games many many complex systems are left for the player to figure out by themselves including things as fundamental as ...

 Copied from this Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/zf8x35/what_was_pc_building_like_25_years_ago/izdndkg/ I am late to the party but your question brings back some nostalgic memories I would like to share: I first built a PC in 2002 so only twenty years ago and not twenty five. In 2002 building your own PC was not as common as today but enough people were doing it that guides were readily available and specialised retailers sold components. The actual steps of the build itself were not too different but they probably took a bit longer especially installing windows and drivers. The main components were still CPU, GPU and RAM and you still had multiple choices: Intel or AMD for CPU, Nvidia, ATI and a few few others for GPU. There were a lot more ancillary parts however. You needed a sound card, you needed a hard disk, a floppy disk and a CD/DVD drive. You also needed a dial up modem to get 56kbit ! internet. You needed a wired keyboard and a wired mouse...

The original Call of Duty made a big splash when it came out on PC back in 2003. Call of Duty has since  become one of the biggest franchises in gaming. Even though most of the money is now earned from multiplayer and even though the series has long since moved on to modern day and futuristic settings it still visits World War 2 occasionally. I recently had the opportunity to play through most of the single player World War 2 Call of Duty games on veteran difficulty and I would like to share my thoughts and comparisons.  I have middle aged reflexes and I am far from a leet gamer but I chose veteran (the hardest) difficulty  because I have replayed these campaigns several times over the years and it makes sense for me to up the challenge. I also think that playing a 2003 game on a modern PC makes things easier. I remember jerky response times making it hard to aim and survive during the frenetic battles scenes way back in the day. A modern gaming PC can handle those early ...

 This post is about eating breakfast / lunch / any other snack safely at your desk while working. Lets get the elephant out of the room before we begin: Eating at your desk is a terrible habit that is bad for you both physically and mentally. If at all possible you should switch off the computer and go somewhere else to eat. However the sad reality is that many of us regularly do so. In my case my computer is an integral part of both my work and my leisure and eating at the desk is a common occurrence. In fact this became so common during the enforced covid lockdowns that I learned, through trial and error two tips for eating at a computer desk and it is these tips that I wish to pass on today.  Tip 1: Never place a beverage cup between you and your mouse.   I am right handed and the intuitive position for me to place a cup of coffee is slightly to my right about 20cm from the edge of my desk. Unfortunately this is also the default position of my mouse. My first reac...

  For some reason I am chief clothes ironer in this house and it annoys me how much harder my wife's things are to iron than my own. This is despite the fact that my clothes tend to be much bigger and have a lot more material to cover. Reason 1: My clothes are all made out of cotton that can be steam ironed at high temperature. My wife's clothes are made out of a variety of light materials that will melt at anything above luke warm. Reason 2: Male clothing tends to be made up of a number of large flat panels. You just lay each panel flat and iron it. Even sleeves and trouser legs can be laid flat. Women's clothing tends not to have flat panels. It is made up of irregularly shaped pieces of material which are sewn together in escheresque arrangements. It is literally impossible to lie them flat. Reason 3 accoutrements. My clothes are all fairly basic. The only accoutrements you need to watch our for are the occasional button. My wife's clothes almost always have some kin...

  There have been a lot of bad Warhammer 40k video games over the years and only a very small number of good ones. The first two Dawn of War games were excellent RTS games while Space Marine was a great third person shooter but Necromunda: Hired Gun is the first 4k based first person shooter I can remember actually enjoying.  The game pits you as a soldier of fortune undertaking missions on the gang ruled munitions factory planet of Necromunda. There is an overarching plot which sets you up on the trail of a shadowy figure who is stirring up trouble but the story is utterly secondary to the gun play and the gun play is quite good. Movement is fluid and controls are tight. There is a good selection of appropriately powerful weapons and bionic powers available. The missions are set in large open levels which allow plenty of opportunity for parkouring around with grappling hook, wall running and sliding. The maps do feel a but repetitive by the end of the game but there is enough...

I heard a recommendation for Final Fantasy Online a few days back and decided to give it a go. It is a long time since I felt the urge to play an mmorpg but I have been bouncing around between a few games recently and perhaps in a fit of nostalgia I remember the good times I had fifteen years or so ago when  World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online were cool. For a brief few years MMORPGs offered an exciting glimpse into the possibilities of virtual worlds. They also demanded a huge time commitment and required a lot of busy work which is why I and most other gamers eventually moved on. I am trying FF XIV at a very casual level, no guilds , no raids just questing around in the world. First impression are pretty good. There is a very generous free trial that appears to offer a lot of content with not many restrictions. the game has been around since 2013 so it is not surprising that it seems very polished by now and it looks pretty too. Of course it has a confusing array of lo...

The RTX3060ti I "borrowed" from my wife's Dell XPS machine is a great card for 1440p gaming but the twin fan cooler gets quite noisy when it is pushed hard. This post will explain how I managed to reduce the audible noise while maintaining performance using MSI afterburner.  The Parameters First a bit of background information. The three most important parameters are: 1. Fan Speed:  The louder the fan spins the noisier it gets. In my experience anything below 1000rpm is very quiet while anything above 2000rpm is intolerably noisy. I like my fans to idle below 1000rpm when the PC is not being stressed and I like them to stay as far below 2000rpm as possible when being pushed hard. Long ago PC fans ran at fixed speeds but nowadays they are nearly always controlled using a fan curve dependent on GPU temperature (or CPU temperature for CPU fans). The hotter the component gets the faster the fan spins.  2. GPU (core) clock speed. Simply enough the higher the clock speed the...