Anyhow, as you might have noticed, this is rather old and creaky now and I’ve not posted much. Consider following my twitter feed or my tumblr blog (at drezha.me.uk) though I’m sure I’ll still use this somehow…

Yes, instantly I’ve sent some of you into a massive rage. How dare I buy myself anything Apple? Having been there myself many years ago, I  never ever thought I’d have lowered myself to purchasing a Mac. Until I did.

Background

It all started recently with the demise of my SSD – my homebuilt machine was getting annoying – stuff seemed to be failing or playing up left right and centre and I was fed up of taking the machine apart and sorting stuff out. I was toying with getting a new machine and I wanted something small but powerful. The demise and RMA of the SSD was the incident that pushed me over the edge and I started looking for a new machine. It was backed up by a telephone call to my dad who suggested I just buy a new one because my old machine was at least a year and a bit old.

Alas! Small and powerful? It would appear I couldn’t have this. All the small machines used Atoms processors. Don’t get me wrong, Atom’s are great little chips and for browsing and day to day office work they’re great. Until you hit the same problems I did when I ran one as a main desktop – compiling (even LaTeX which needs relatively less CPU power than say, compiling programs in C) and heavy day to day use (HD video, multitasking with lots of programs (talking IM, music, browsing, file copying etc at the same time) made it fall over and show it’s slow roots. So it looked like as small as I could go was a Shuttle. Shuttles are good but not quite as small as I wanted. They also happen to be reasonably more expensive than normal cases and computers and you’re only really paying for the small case. I also wanted pre built – I know I can get better deals by building myself but buying off the shelf means I get warranty and piece of mind it works. Shuttles generally didn’t have this option. Gaming seems to have taken a back seat these last couple of months, with only the LAN weekends with Loughborough Computer Soc providing the motivation to play.

So up from the deep, the Mac Mini reared it’s head again. I’d toyed with one in the past but was more taken by the Atoms. However, I seriously considered the Mini. Small machine, could keep all my current stuff (such as my logitech wave keyboard and logitech trackman and most importantly, my 26″ screen) and it was much more powerful than the Atoms. However, I was worreid about OS X but in the end decided it was worth the hassle of learning as it appeared to be a good cross between Linux and Windows – taking the linux roots and then allowing a wider range of commercial products to run on the Mac (such as Office, which I need for work). I took the plunge and pressed buy, spending a grand total of £551 (the education discount for doing a PhD at Lboro Uni was well worth taking advantage of).

Arrival and First Impressions

When this arrived I was blown away, the machine is tiny!

From Drop Box

The photo shows the mac compared against my Dell Streak (which is 5″) As you see, it’s not that much bigger. Installing and plugging in was simple.  Everything just plugged in and on turning on was detected. The correct screen resolution was set automatically, no faffing around. Mac OS X registered itself and off it went.

Initially, there were a list of problems I faced, such as the UK keyboard layout on the Mac not being the same as the PC (so ” and @ were swapped around) but with the help of Google and a few files, that was easily sorted and it’s working great now.

As for programs, I’m pretty happy with how it’s all gone – The Evernote Mac app is far nicer than the Windows one and Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac runs flawlessly. Part of the reason I thought moving to Mac would be fine was because most of the programs I’ve used over the last few years have been able to run on both Linux and Windows – most of these also run on OS X as well which made moving so much easier.

Only hassle I did have was getting gnuplot to work nicely – I had to compile that from source and thus had to install about 3GB of tools from the Mac OS X install disc. Otherwise it’s fine. As Time Machine is working, if I ever move to another Mac, all my programs and settings will be a doddle to copy on to the new one.

As for getting a new Mac, I might well have to as I’m blown away with how everything is so nicely integrated and works. No AV software to worry about and the whole system just feels polished.

For my first foray into the Mac world, this has been a great start.

For those that don’t follow me on Twitter (and I would say facebook but I left that this week due to finally having enough with the privacy concerns), I’ve been awaiting the return of my computer monitor.

Late last year, I upgraded my aging 19″ TFT monitor with a massive (in comparison!) 26″ monitor! Full HD screen (1920×1080) and about double the screen space compared to my old monitor. Anyhow, all was well until late last week when it broke on me

As you can see from the attached picture, I had a coloumn of pixels die on me and remain pink. Within two months, I felt this was terrible and sent it back – thankfully CCL Online agreed with me and sorted it out – a brief period of testing, they came to the same conclusion I did that it was broken and they sent me another which I’m currently waiting for.

In the meantime, I’ve been using my Dell Streak a bit more than previously as it performs the majority of tasks I use my PC for (exceptions being games and films). It backs up the fact that an iPad might be a good purchase for me but that’s a different conversation I’ve found the Streak, when teamed up with a bluetooth keyboard, to be an ideal distraction free typing device – ideally disconnect it from wi-fi/data connection to stop tweets being downloaded or emails and there’s pretty much nothing else (at least on mine) that will interfere with typing once you get going.

As you can see in the picture, the Streak is attached to the top of the keyboard (a Microsoft Wireless Entertainment 7000 keyboard which is incredibly nice and I managed to snag it as a bargain on ebay as this is an international keyboard with hebrew characters under the normal latin characters – 100 pounds worth of keyboard for about £15!). The whole setup is nice though currently unstable (thanks to the Streak being attached to the keyboard via blue tack. I have just ordered a Gorillamobile to hold the Streak for me on the keyboard.

Currently my favourite tool for the writing is Evernote as it will automatically sync my typed notes to my PC though I have also used a text editor and then sync’d using Dropbox for Android. As the UK Streak is now on Android 2.2 (Froyo), it can now use Google Docs and allows easy access to notes anywhere. Of course, if you don’t have wireless or data, then it’s easy to save the file as a text file and transfer using the MicroSD card.

Overall the small screen helps keep the focus on what’s important – getting your ideas down into a readable format. Therefore I recommend anyone with an Android phone (though this should also work with iPhones and iPads) gives them a go as distraction free device. I find it really helps me. And as the phone is light and so is the keyboard, I could easily use this wherever takes my fancy so it’s well worth trying.

So today I purchased an energy meter from Maplins. This little device cost me £7 and can measure various readings, such as Watts, kWh, current and can even calculate costs on running a device after inputting energy unit prices (though it can’t cope with those of us on energy plans which have dual rates ie cheaper overnight electric). Measuring the basics is as easy as plugging in and using a button to cycle through the various options. With that in mind, I set to work measuring my work laptop (I had to test it out whilst there! ) and then proceeded to test my home PC components when I got back.

Aim

The aim of this all is to find out the power consumption of my current computer technology and use it as evidence in cost based analysis for the purchase of newer, lower power consuming devices and to provide information for informed decisions in the operation of said devices.

Test machines

The machines in question are my desktop at home and my work laptop. The desktop has the following components -

• Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H
• ATI HD3850 Radeon GFX
• Intel  E5300 @ 3.20GHz
• 320Gb Samsung HD + 2TB Samsung HD
• Kingston 4Gb
• OCZ StealthXStream 400W SilentPSU
• Windows 7 Professional

More details can be found in this blog post.

The laptop is a Toshiba U400 with 3GB of RAM, an Intel Wolfdale Core 2 Duo T9400 CPU @ 2.5GHZ and 320GB hard drive.

Tests

Both machines were kept at idle to test the machine at a normal pace – any CPU intensive apps were stopped, though normal apps were left running. This was to simulate day to day usage. For load tests, the laptop run Orthos, a stress testing application designed to stress test dual core CPU’s and RAM, whilst the desktop used two instances of Folding@Home single CPU core clients as these were already installed and in use. Again, for idle these were disabled.

To find out standby/off tests, the items in question were shut-down and turned off. Nothing was knowingly left on standby.

Results

Well in the graph below, you can see how the “scores” compared.

The graph shows that the desktop PC at home is obviously more energy hungry than the laptop I use at work. Note that the desktop includes power to the speakers, screen and the PC itself. This was to be expected as the desktop contains some pretty energy intensive gear, such as the graphics card. However, I was expecting the results to be significantly higher whilst under load. In the load tests, the GPU wasn’t under stress so this is an area that would be higher during gaming and in fact it is when we look at the figures in detail. However, as I don’t game as often as I use the PC, this result was left out.

The tables below show the data for the devices.

As you can see, the data shows that the various items I have plugged in do in fact consume power, even when switched off (the standby column). I was expecting this as I’d read about vampire power before. The screen I can live with but I barely use the printer (hence why it’s not got an on value – the time it’s on is as long as it takes to print or scan a document and then it’s off again). With the power consumption measured, I now know to keep it unplugged, just to save those little bits of energy as I don’t use it.

The GFX load column is from stress testing both the CPU and graphics card – in all honesty I thought this would be much higher as graphics cards these days aren’t low power consuming at all!

Conclusion

As can be clearly seen, the desktop takes far more power than the laptop (to be expected). However the difference isn’t as great as I imagined. The aim of comparing the two was to see how much power could be saved by using the laptop at home attached to my screen – as you can see it’s a saving of about 30W to do that! Not as much as I was expecting at all. I can save myself an extra ~26W by stopping Folding@home (which would reduce the load of the PC from 100% to base level).

Whilst it may be worth purchasing a standby saver, it doesn’t make much sense to do as I was thinking of doing and purchasing an Atom based nettop and using that – the reports I’ve seen say that the ION powered ones (as I used a HD screen, I’d like to run HD apps at times) use approx 30W so the same as the laptop. However, it maybe worth carrying the laptop home each day and using instead of the main PC. Downside of this is the laptop is using XP and the OS is ancient when used in comparison to Windows 7!

I have a fond liking for crisps. Any kind will usually do but I’m a big fan of Walkers Baked crisps (salt and vinegar if you’re interested ;) ). Anyhow, this fondness for crisps (and other junk food) has taken it’s toll on me fitness wise. I had a brief spike of fitness in the summer when I was cycling almost every day but during the winter the weight has snuck back on. More often than not, I’d have a packet for lunch. This has not only hurt my waistline and fitness but also my wallet – The crisps at work often cost about 55p or 60p a packet which adds up quickly over the cost of a week.

I also have eyes on another gun purchase for airsoft. I’ve been clearing out some old kit and guns and now I’m looking to consolidate my collection.

So from these two points, the challenge is set. I shall be giving up crisps for lunch and putting the money aside for the purchase of a new gun. With luck, not only should I help my waistline, I should also be fitter by the time I have enough to purchase my new gun!

Admittedly, even saving £3 a week, it’ll take me a while to save the required money for the purchase – therefore I shall be saving separately but the hope is to at least save £50 – this will at least cover the majority of my entry fee into the 2011 Ground Zero Weekender which I’m planning to attend with members of the LSU Airsoft Society.

So this challenge will start tomorrow when I’m back to work and I’ll keep this blog updated with my progress! Rest assured I’ll be trying my best to get this new gun before the Weekender in August!

The latest example of this is Recon Rag (an excellent magazine put together by by the guys at Airsoft World – better than one of the airsoft magazines that require you to pay for it!). In the latest issue, someone has done an article on Russian Spetsnaz BDU. The BDU in question? Flora.

Now, for those that don’t know much about Russian forces, the special forces units are the Spetsnaz, usually assigned to different parts of the army and internal affairs (so it’s not quite like our SAS which is purely Army based). So that’s them, the main bulk of the army is made up from conscripts and full time soldiers, similar to the UK. However, the conscripts and standard infantry are issued with a uniform. You guessed it, Flora.

Flora IS NOT a Spetsnaz item – though I would imagine they have a set for parades or whatever, when ever you see Spetsnaz, they are most likely NOT in Flora.

This sort of thing gets me extremely annoyed! Excuse me while I go and calm down!

EDIT: In the time of writing this article, I had a reply from the author at Recon Rag. It turns out they were sent the BDU’s for review and the shop in question marks them as Spetsnaz BDU – I wont link to the shop here because I’ve used them in the past and found them to be one of the poorer shops I’ve dealt with (and their continued use of the very thing that annoys me!) – So I do apologise for the possibly strong email I sent you and for the blog post!

Earlier this month, I took my bike home for the holiday period. First day back home, first ride on my bike, I take a tumble – I was turning a corner and the back wheel slid from under me and myself and the bike skidded down the road and into the path of an oncoming car. Luckily he stopped (was only a built up area so he was doing about 20mph) and luckily I was fine, escaping with a some nice scrapes up my arm and legs. My bike and clothing didn’t fair as well however – I tore a hole in my waterproof coat and on cycling my bike home, the rear wheel seemed to oscillate. Therefore the bike went to the shop and spent the next few days there (due to the snow in Devon – 6 inches of the stuff prevent me getting out to the shop!) On collection, I’d needed to have a spoke repaired and the other tightened up. Not to bad considering.

Garmin Edge 500

Anyhow, went out for a ride on my bike today with my new GPS cycle computer (a Garmin Edge 500 – a very nice piece of kit which I’d got for Christmas). Everything was going well – I’d installed the optional cadence monitor (measures how fast the pedals are going round – so RPM of the pedals really) and the heart rate monitor was performing fine (both aren’t really needed but they came with the computer so I thought I might as well use them!)

About 7Km into the ride, my bike felt a bit funny again – the rear felt like it was oscillating again but it wasn’t as bad and then it stopped. About another Km in and the wheel felt like it was wobbling again. I then entered the fastest bit of the planned ride – I hit 40Km/h down a hill (not the fastest I could do it but I was worried about this tyre). It turns out I was right! Hitting the bottom of the hill, I started up the other side before an almighty bang stopped in my tracks  -  my rear tyre had completely burst!

Luckily, my house mate was in and came to pick me up – the rear tyre itself had torn and the inner tube must have squeezed itself out and burst by being squeezed by the road and the rim of the wheel. This means that I’ll be off the bike again whilst I have to order in a new tyre (or two)! Well this means for the time being, I’m relegated to walking again or going for rides on the single speed green machine!

However the test did go quite nicely up until this point. You can view the data from my ride on Garmin Connect (a great tool to analyse the data being collected by the computer).

Garmin Connect Ride

I look forward to being able to get back on this andf making use of the GPS properly!

This means all previous posts and all previous comments are now all present on this forum.