Author Archives: Fordiebianco

The FX-9590: A Whole New Dimension In Madness

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While observing me losing against a 14 year old in a Squash game, a friend of mine once commented ‘That Fordie doesn’t have a competetive fibre in his body’. That might be correct when it comes to meaningless things like games in which the main goal of the players seems to sustain a ligamental knee- and/or ankle injury as quickly as possible , but when it comes to the performance of my computer, I do start to get a bit twitchy and keep a virtual eye on the performance of the rest of the users out there. Not that there is a iota of common sense behind behaviour like this, but for goodness’ sake, if a man is not allowed to engage in some primal chest beating about the speed of his computer, what else is there left for us Y chromosome carriers. At least I don’t drive a sports car, have a hair piece or play golf. Fortunately the best girl friend ever (BGE) regards the whole thing as some sort of occupational therapy and is probably quite happy to have me locked away in my play room office for an hour or so, so she can watch Paul O’Grady.

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Paul O’Grady and a Dog

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An AMD FX-9590

 

 

 

 

 

I always thought that my gaming rig office computer had quite a bit of oomph (Sabertooth 990FX 2.0, 16GB Ram, 250 GB SSD, 2x 2 Terabyte HD, R9 290, Asus Sonar Essence for those who really want to know), but it turns out that it’s processor really doesn’t hack it anymore in today’s world of games advanced real word graphic simulations. Because I have a smidgen of loyalty and and I am stuck with an AM3 socket motherboard, there was only one alternative: get a quicker processor from AMD Piledriver’s architecture. So I acquired their quickest one.

The FX-9590 is a bit of a beast. It’s power consumption and heat dissipation is legendary and I was worried that I might overwhelm the local electricity provider but all I did was overwhelm my already massive cooler, as benchmarking resulted in my motherboard shutting things down. So, after getting the only air cooler that apparently handles the heat from the 9590 without it destroying the rest of the motherboard, I spent two very meditative hours trying to hitch the bloody thing up to my motherboard without destroying things (trust me, it has happened).

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Before 9590 implant. Note already quite beefy cooler. iPod classic for size comparison.

 

 

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After successful implantation. That pink thing is a Phantek PH-TC14PE. Sorry for the cable disaster.

 

Ok, so it’s not pretty, but is it working?

Fortunately I can confirm that everything seems to be working spiffingly. CPU temperature at idling (Word, iTunes, Power Point, Firefox and Outlook running parallel) is 32 Celsius, and so far the maximum temperature recorded was during a session of Titanfall at maximum resolution, and at 52 Celsius that was still pretty balmy (especially as the R9 290 gets really hot as well).

So, I still only have a second-rate processor compared to the new generation of Intel’s products, but at least I don’t have to worry heating the house ever again.

 

The 50 Euro tablet

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So I was ambling through the bottomless pit of despair that is Frankfurt Airport’s Terminal 1 to pass the time before my Lusthansa flight back to civilisation, when I felt the uncontrollable urge to enter one of those ‘duty free’ electronic shops sprinkled freely around the airports of this world, drawn like a particularly stupid fly to a liverwurst roll to its earphones, cameras and Iphones of pure gold. After ignoring the usual offerings by Beats for the 3gazillionst time, my eyes swiveled to a table that was decked out in tablets, particularly to one that was rather small and looked a bit podgy (the tablet, not the table). This was the Denver TAC-70111 , a 7″ tablet running Android 4.2.2 (Jellybean) by the Danish importer DENVER, sold new for 50 Euro (£ 41). I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t resist. This was just too tempting. While the best girlfriend ever rolled her eyes, I jumped like a little puppy to the check out, where the manager knowingly commented that they had tested the device at their shop and pronounced it better than expected.

As we had a good hour to wile away before our departure beyond the channel, I unboxed it and started to play around with it. First thoughts were obviously underwhelming: no Bluetooth, no mobile data, no camera on the back of the device. No home button. 512 MB DDR3 ram and 4 GB storage. But, it booted without problems, updated itself quickly and was by all means a fully functioning tablet, albeit with the speed of a pony that is carrying an overweight, hippophobic American tourist on Blackpool beach.

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Quick size comparison: Note 3, TAC-70111, Ipad Air

The screen is not particularly bright and has a sub-par resolution of 800×480, but is moderately responsive. There is a micro-SD card slot that will expand the built-in storage, a micro-usb adapter and a AC adapter, so the bare necessities are certainly there. The main problem is undoubtedly though the CPU: a single core allegedly running at 1.2 GHZ and there is no specsheet on the net that actually names it which is decidedly dodgy. JFDP Labs’ Hardware Info gives the following specs and makes the hardware manufacturer out as another Shengzen company, Itek :

Processor: ARMv7 Processor rev 2 (v7l)

Cores: 1

Max Frequency: 1200 Mhz

After many hours of research and downloading more hardware info proggies I am now convinced that this is a Allwinner A13 platform, a Chinese all-in-one computer that pretty much runs half the entertainment infrastructure of the world. Now this isn’t the world’s fastest processor and Mobo, but together with a mali 400mp graphic unit, the little thing is able to play content on the BBC’s Iplayer without hitch:

 

If this is stuttering, it’s your connection, not the tablet.

Now, for 41 quid I already had hours of geeky fun, a functioning toy to play with on the train and a possible gift for my nephew, though he’s not going to get it before I installed Cyanogenmod on it. Would I advise you to buy one? If there’s only a smidgen of nerdblood (technical term) in you, you’ll fire up your browser now and buy it this very second.  You might have more fun than that time when you tried to install OpenBSD on your first Gameboy.

Stay tuned for the report on Cyanogen insertion.

Runrig: Amazing Things

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Runrig was one of the reasons that I physically was much fitter in the nineties. As their songs were inexplicably played on German radio station SWR3 on an all too frequent basis, it was one of the most common reasons to engage in a mad, fast dash to all radios in the vicinity to switch the channel as quickly as possible to get rid of their aurally upsetting noodling.  I have never understood the German fascination with Runrig in the nineties, but then I didn’t get the David Hasselhoff thing or the Scorpions either. I have probably spent too long to in the UK to be devoid of an irony switch.

I was given this CD by a true fan. He recites his Runrig live experiences as some of the most profound of his life, at which stage his long suffering girlfriend would normally start to gag and roll her eyes while the conversation often would die down and enter one of these embarrassing pauses that can only be changed with either a comment about the weather or last week’s performance by Sheffield Wednesday. He insisted playing it all evening that night I was given this poisoned chalice and since then it has been sitting in my CD-collection. Unheard for 13 years.

Until today.

I listened to it intently while writing a paper for the Open University which only inspired me to focus more on my work. There was much celtic troubadouring, fiddles, bagpipes, electronic percussion and a singer who obviously took himself very serious. Lyrics like ‘Lifetimes in memory, flesh being born: but this is the age of invisible dawn’ littered the album. It sounded like a drunk Scotsman trying to sing the karaoke version of some eighties Bon Jovi material with added ‘celtic’ bits in it.

Bill Bailey famously called music like this famously ‘some old celtic bollocks’.

I agree. I think I will use this as my new favourite coaster to avoid coffee stains on the furniture.

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Swing Out Sister: Live at the Jazz Cafe

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Design? Who needs Design? We have Word for Windows.

Design? Who needs Design? We have Word for Windows.

There was a time in the eighties when suddenly having a jazzy, retro feel to the records was perfectly fine. Sade was channeling Astrud Gilberto, both The Style Council and Matt Bianco had a go at Samba and Working Week sounded like they could be from Rio (even though they were Londoners). The over all term was ‘SophistiPop’, and Swing out Sister (SoS) with their Bacharach/seventies big string sound fitted right in there. Their first album ‘It’s Better To Travel‘ sold reasonably well on the back of “Breakout’ but the SophistiPop thing was over after a year or two, and the representatives of the genre soon decamped to Japan where they like that sort of thing (many a SophistiPop band that you thought hadn’t existed for thirty years is still around making new albums on the back of their popularity in Indonesia. No, really).

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Some stimulating prose right there

So in 1992, with 3 albums under their belt, SoS decided to release a live album for the Japanese market, recorded at the Jazz Cafe in Camden (ironically still Matt Bianco’s London live home in 2014) with a ten piece band. With their original arrangements being rather string heavy this feels quite stripped back (although there’s still quite a bit of midi background synth fill: the keyboarder has after all only 2 hands), but the vocal arrangements are spot on, the brass sounds crisp and the rhythm section is excellent.

So, these guys are obviously good musicians, but what about the music? Well, there’s the rub. In the humble opinion of this crtitic, their material doesn’t really lend itself to live performances: most of their material is midtempo and really benefits from large orchestration and elaborate arrangements.  On this album they even reduce the tempo on some of their normally livelier songs even more, so the whole thing sounds rather treacleish (technical term). I don’t think much dancing was going on at the Jazz Cafe during the recording. Probably more gentle nodding of heads.

Which really defeats the purpose of a live album. You really want to hear your favourite songs in a feverish, exciting atmosphere, but this sounds more like the recital of Virginia Woolf at the Women’s Institute in Torquay.

Which probably explains why I hadn’t listened to it for 20 years.

 

Gravitas? Nope.

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Over the last ten years, during which middle age has finally set in (both mentally and physically, although I still don’t vote conservative/republican) the pleasure of going to the cinema has reduced inversely proportional to the size of my TV. At present the TV size is 55 inches, while my interest of going to the cinema is tending towards nil. As I am a happy sticks-dweller, the next cinema that’s worth visiting is 1 hour away and choosing the right showings has become tricky, as you want to avoid both mobile toting, constantly chatting teenagers and smelly single individuals. An additional bonus is the wait for some proper online reviews and the fact that catering is much better at home. I know of very few cinemas that serve their main feature with a fillet in mustard crust and parsnip chips. Add to that the fact that I can cuddle the best girlfriend ever during gruesome scenes (Red Wedding anyone?) without an arm rest and a kilo of popcorn between us, the cinema tends to be less important these days.

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So I was absolutely thrilled to finally get my hands on the 3D Blu-Ray version of ‘Gravity’. After all the hype and the Oscars, I was looking for a veritable SciFi fest, featuring my favourite moving object in the sky (no, not Sandra Bullock), the ever so cool International Space Station, where science might be mighty expensive but Russians and USAians still get can get along.

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So, the best girlfriend ever and I switched off all the lights, popped the disc into the noisiest Blu-Ray player Samsung has ever created (think of train noises) donned the 3D glasses (mine green, hers white) and off we went into the first Oscar winning Sci-Fi movie since 1996 (Independence Day for Visual Effects and Sound, Star Trek ‘First Contact’ for Make Up. Not kidding). 90 minutes later, a few shots of Sandra Bullock’s undoubtedly fit figure later and I was thinking ‘that’s it?”. It’s pretty much a seventies disaster movie (think Airport, Towering Inferno, Poseidon Inferno) with graphics my R9 290 could do on a fraction of its processor time and some horrible dialogue (which -I admit- is necessary in every disaster movie) in space. Without Roger Moore, instead with his naughty equivalent, the Cloonster (During the whole movie I begged for Roger Moore to appear behind a friendly helmet visor – or at least a friendly drunk Russian, as it was still possible in Armaggedon. But no).

ImageSo, before you choose ‘Gravity’ as an evening’s entertainment, here are my alternative choices:

  • If you reaaally want to see Sandra Bullock half-naked, watch ‘The Proposal‘
  • If you want to laugh out loud with Sandra Bullock, watch ‘The Heat‘ (which is admittedly brillant)
  • If you want a proper George Clooney movie in which he doesn’t get killed, watch ‘Ocean’s 11‘
  • If you want George Clooney sexy, watch ‘Out of SIght‘
  • If you want to see Space at it’s most beautifully rendered, watch ‘Starship Troopers’
  • If you want a nailbiting disaster movie, watch ‘Cloverfield‘
  • Or else, go and watch ‘Moonraker’

One thing I have to confess, though: Ed Harris was brillant.