The word of the week is resilient.
Sept 12 – Strained
If it seems sometimes like I don't have anything
momentous to write in my blog, it's not for lack of trying, I assure you.
For the last month, I've simply been trying to
'reset mysef' back to a state of balance. The lack of exercise( and too much
sitting at work )has negatively affected my body, as you may have read in
the last few blog entries, but thankfully I haven't felt anxious about the
situation. In fact, I haven't been majorly anxious in over four months time,
for which I'm extraordinarily grateful.
Unfortunately, this week I discovered that my
time spent at home with my left leg awkwardly elevated( to alleviate the
strain on the tendon )has resulted in a compensatory effect: the muscles on
the opposite side of my body have been strained.
All this last weekend, I've been hard-pressed to
find a comfortable position sit in, due to the strained muscles on the right
side of my abdomen. It's annoying, but at least I recognize what's going on and
I've been able to treat it with a combination of heating pads, ice and regular
gentle movement. It has made for some difficult nights in which I've woken up
often in pain, but it's fortunately not been anything I couldn't get back to
sleep after an hour or so.
It's just another frustration as I try to get
back to balance and get rid of these random biological distractions. I'm sure
if I was 20 years younger, I have just shrugged all this off and managed to be
productive, but I'm not and I haven't. The thought has not escaped me that at my
MMart job of over a decade, while it had its downsides in terms ofupper-back
muscle knots and wooden-leg syndrome, at least I was standing...
Sept 13 – X-ray Books?
What if you could read a book without opening the
cover?
Imagine being able to scan entire library's
worth of information simply by passing the books underneath a machine that can
read each page individually, without needing to 'see' them one at a time, like a
traditional scanner or camera would.
Such is the premise behind a device recently invented by MIT, which uses precisely-focused x-rays to read pages inside a
closed book. The device's sensitivity is fine enough to distinguish between the
density of ink on a page versus blank paper, and so when combined with
specialized software, can 'read' what's on the page... all without having to
actually flip the pages. Amazing!
Right now the technology is limited to a 'depth'
of less than 20 pages, though as the research continues, that will only improve. I'm reminded of a similar technology from one of my favorite
sci-fi novels by Vernor Vinge called Rainbow's End, in which an entire
library is shredded inside a giant scanner lined with 1 million tiny cameras.
The shredded bits of each book are reassembled by software run by
a massive supercomputer, which reassembles them into individual pages and books
- again, an amazing, if currently impossible, feat of technology.
Now if only they invented something that would
help me read a book in minutes instead of hours...
Sept 14 – Crossfire Success!
Warning: Heavy G33k-talk below...
It works! My on-the-cheap video computer upgrade
is a total success! For a mere $33.00 all-in, I've managed to almost double my
computer's video processing speed, meaning that I've given new life to my
system in playing the half-dozen or so games I've been currently poking around
with this last year or so.
 |
| It may not look like much, but it's got it where it counts - x2! |
As you can see from the picture above, there are
now two 5770 video cards in my computer. I had the foresight back in 2012 to
purchase a motherboard that could support dual video cards, which was only just
then becoming a mainstream feature. I also made sure that my power supply could handle two cards and, as it turns out, it's more than adequate. With two cards, my system draws only around 300 watts when running full-out, and my power supply is
rated to easily supply more than twice that at full load - huzzah for
proper planning!
With the two video cards now in a Crossfire
setup( meaning each card alternates in drawing frames of video to share the
load )my system no longer has a bottleneck for the video. As the image
below shows, before the upgrade, my CPU was peaking at around the 80% range
while the video card was hitting 100% usage, causing severe framerate
stuttering in games:
Once my on-the-cheap used AMD CPU( another mere
$75 )arrives in the mail from China in about a month or so, I should be good
to keep using my current setup for at least another one or two years more.
Sure beats having to pay around $1000 to upgrade
my system to current 'midrange' computer specs... I'll take the $100
used-but-still good road, thanks.
Sept 15 –
Muzo: No noise?
I keep looking for noise cancellation solutions for
my apartment.
The latest one I've come across on IndieGoGo.com is the $160.00 USD Muzo, which purports to be able to create a 'sound bubble' that the user can customize to their needs. You are able to select one of three
modes: Serenity, Sleep or Secret, the last of which is rather interesting - I'll
mention it again in a moment.
As with all active noise-cancellation technology,
the Muzo contains powerful software and hardware that 'reads' the ambient noise
of its environment and actively cancels that noise by emitting frequencies of
the exact opposite wavelength. The Muzo makes a case for itself to do a better
job by utilizing any flat surface to resonate as a speaker for those
frequencies, increasing its effectiveness. Having had a 'surface speaker' myself
a few years ago, I'm familiar with the technology and can attest to its
functionality, though I can't say that the small $25 unit I had at the time could
outperform a dedicated, traditional speaker of the same size.
All the same, the Muzo is interesting not just for its noise-cancellation abilities, but also for the 'Secret' mode it touts.
When selected, it actively mutes the conversation beyond a few feet, allowing
people to converse privately even in public spaces - fascinating! I'm not sure
that I would have need of such a feature, but it's interesting that the
technology involved can so easily be adapted to such a revolutionary function.
At the moment, spending that amount of money(
however good a deal it is! )simply isn't in the cards for me, but it bodes well
for the near future, as it shows noise-cancellation technology is becoming more
mainstream and therefore ( hopefully )more affordable.
Sept 16 – Good News on Rentals
As Tom Petty said: The waiting is the hardest part.
In the next two or three years, hundreds more
rental units are slated to come online in Victoria. The normal cycle is for new
condominiums to be built, resulting in older units being converted to rentals
by their owners, but that traditional model doesn't seem to taking place here
in the city, thanks to the red-hot rental market, where single bedroom
apartments in certain areas can go for around $1,400 or more, and that's before the possibility of bidding wars - scary.
The latest news is that a large, older hotel in a
lovely touristy area of the city may be converted into over 200 rental apartments, though at this point there's no definite word on either how long
that will take or what the final price per suite will be.
 |
| That's median... not what's actually FOR rent. |
I've always found it interesting trying to find a
balance between affordability and convenience when it comes to rentals, and
what does pop to mind - strangely - are communes. Not the old farm-the-backyard
with livestock in the living room model, but rather a group of like-minded
people getting together to purchase a property with the intent to live there
far more cheaply than they could by renting it from an investment-minded land
owner or developer.
Of course, I still would prefer to pursue my
small-size Tiny Home lifestyle, but it's difficult when there's no educated
financial infrastructure in place at the banks... as well as a sizable deposit
in my bank account which they'd obviously require.
So for now, it's just me keeping an eye on the
rental marketplace, and thanking my lucky stars that I don't have to move so I
can keep paying my well-under-going-rate rent.
Sept 17 – Daredevil
I couldn't resist.
This week, in par of my downtime each evening, I
watched the first season of Marvel's Daredevil series on Netflix. Wow! I knew it would be good, from the
recommendations of several friends, but I was impressed all over again after
only the first six episodes.
What I like about the series is that it's part
of the larger Marvel universe: we're given tiny glimpses of now and then
every few episodes. but unlike the Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. series, it doesn't
feel forced. We're firmly grounded in Daredevil's story, and it's focused on
the battle between him and the antagonist, the Kingpin in the city of New York.
While the show gets a little too graphic for my taste in parts, the story is
excellent and the characters are engrossingly well-acted.
The title role of Daredevil is played by Charlie
Cox, who starred in StarDust about a decade ago and brings a naïve yet intense
performance to his character, Matt Murdock. Right now, I can really relate to
Murdock, as he takes an incredible amount of punishment yet still gets up and
keeps going, driven by his convictions.
I wish I could take that kind of punishment and
keep going, yet it's inspiring all the same and on some level, Daredevil has
helped me through this fourth trying week of recovery from my own physical
difficulties.
Sept 18 – A few more steps...
I'm almost there.
Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon out with
my girlfriend, and left my cane in the car for almost all of that time - yay!
While I'm not going to be moving at a fast clip anytime soon, this is a major
step( pardon the pun )forward for me.
It's not to say that my left foot still doesn't
hurt, but it's more than occasional( as in, at the end of the day )ache
than constant pain, at least the way I'm taking it easy so I don't have a
misstep. This past week at work, I've been getting up and walking around for 5
minutes every half hour, which everyone is more than fine with as it is helping me
recover faster. While the backs of my legs do feel
tight at the end of the day, they're not on fire like they were a month ago and
I take that as a sign that I'm doing things right, though I always feel I could
be doing better... but I don't want to push things: I'll recover slowly but
surely, thanks.
 |
| Most days, MWO is about this fun... |
Today is also the four-year anniversary of my
playing MechWarrior Online, which kinda snuck up on me. The last month, I've
actually joined up with a couple of regular players in a unit, which is also a
first: normally, I'll just play random games and hope I do well, but since I'm
trying to improve my game, it only makes sense that I play with other people
who know what they're doing, so we can coordinate our actions. The fact that my
computer's more responsive now thanks to the video upgrade also helps,
though I'm still hitting losing streaks about half the time and have to just step away, rather than keep watching my ratings drop.
All the same, it's the longest stretch that I've stuck
with an online game apart from the first Neverwinter Nights, which is saying
something. The fact that I probably spent about $50 a year or last four years
on the game also says a lot about the new model of online gaming, where regular
micro-transactions add up over time to far more than how the traditional
'pay-once-play-forever' model of video games used to be. Even a monthly fee of $15 seems
exorbitant when you do the math over the long-term, but thankfully MWO is a
free-to-play model where you can work your way up to buying things or plunk
down some cash to save some time - it's not play-to-win, and I'll never play those kinds of games: it feels like cheating, and it is.
I like to lose fairly, and I'm learning not to do so often.
I like to lose fairly, and I'm learning not to do so often.
I'm looking forward to this week, as I only work
four days thanks to my biweekly Friday off; last week was five days of busyness
that thankfully didn't tire me out too much as my work team is quite competent
now and we all share the load evenly even when it gets crazy.
