_{Jamie Balfour's}Personal blog

I really do adore writing and as some of you may know, I used to even love English the most at Secondary School before I decided to ditch it for Computing.

But some things still hack me off even more than people who don't know why their Windows Taskbar is at the right hand side instead of the bottom. I've now decided to start making blog entries on things that people consistently get wrong when writing.

Today's post is on the difference between the two words lightening and lightning. They are very distinct words that are one character different. I noticed this twice in the past two days and it's just something I cannot get out of my head. One place I now notice this problem all the time is when people are referring to Apple's Lightning connector. So here's the difference:

Lightning

That is lightning without the extra e is the form of electrical discharge that we see when warm and cold air mix (or something like that). Notice the single e.

Lightening

This is when you turn a lap on and the room begins to lighten up. Another example could be take 10 potatoes out of a bag, this is lightening the bag.

There. There may be more of these posts in the future because I get annoyed.

If you are not familiar with Mac OS X Terminal commands, then you may be unaware of the flexibility it gives you.

For a start, one of my favourite things to do is to change the way the Dock works. I'm going to show you two different yet really cool things you can do with the Mac Dock.

Add a separator to the Dock

This is a real nifty trick that helps separate icons on the Dock so that there is a better structure. I'm still surprised that Apple does not include an easy way to use this feature in the Apple Menu.

So here are the Terminal commands:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'
killall Dock

Lock the Dock

To me locking the Dock on Mac OS is a necessary feature. This again is completed via the Terminal. This can be achieved using the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.Dock contents-immutable -bool yes
killall Dock

Whilst I am a .NET programmer, I am also a big fan of *nix based operating systems like Mac OS X and Linux.

My heart was set on improving my .NET skills by learning ASP.NET. I hoped that I could move my website to a Windows Server based host and have no trouble, but oh no!

Not only have I been having real troubles sleeping at night, but I've been really having worries about how smooth the transition will be.

So, I though that this post would interest those of you who like Linux (especially you Ben). I have decided not to change to a Windows Server, I feel it is too risky and may be considered to be a step backwards.

To finish this post, I am staying with my current host until May, but changing to a better Linux host and nothing more.

Whilst it occasionally hurts me to say that I am considering a change from Linux to Windows, on this occasion I feel I have to. My ears (from all the stuff I have heard) have been in pain with this decision and I've been loosing sleep thinking about what is good about this idea.

In the next few months or weeks, or maybe even days, this website will undergo a massive change. I will no longer be hosting on a Linux server but on a Windows server. This change comes at a time when my site is at it's best and I don't want to lose it.

After a presentation today, and my inner .NET development skills crying out to me, I have decided to change to a host that provides PHP so my site stays the same and MySQL so my database can be transferred directly, that also provides ASP.NET and MSSQL.

Whilst I have nothing massive to hold against Windows (I do after all develop my software for Windows), I have been very happy with Linux. However, this change is necessary if I want to improve ASP.NET and I can promise that there will be more interesting things to come from it also. I also cannot stand the disorganised mess that my single database provided by my current host provides is.

As I say, this will likely come sometime soon, so if I can I'd like to keep this domain and keep on going with it. I hope in the next few weeks I will have made the change successfully.

What a year 2013 has been! It will be sad to say goodbye to it, as with every year. One of the best things of the year, in my opinion, was Andy Murray winning Wimbledon, being the first man to win it for Britain for 77 years and the first to win for Britain since 1977. You can find my 2012 list here. Anyway, here is my list of the last things I did in 2013. This was compiled on the 30/12/2013 and 31/12/2013.

Last meal I ate: Margarita pizza

Last thing I had to drink with a meal: Water

Last place I went out to eat: Goblin Ha'

Last film I watched: The Game

Last game I played: Super Mario 3D World/Pokemon Y

Last song I listened to: Oasis - Cigarettes and Alcohol

Last person I have sent a text to: John Smith

Last friend I have spoken to in person: Calum Cormack

Last TV programme I have watched: Scotland's Hogmanay Live

Last major purchase for myself¹ :Nintendo 3DS XL Zelda Edition

1 - £100 or more constitutes as a major purchase. So that's the end of 2013 almost, and it has been one heck of a good year.

Now all we have to do really is say goodbye to it and say hello to 2014. That'll be in a good few hours, and the list may have changed then!

Simply read. This made me laugh.

Thanks to Murray Szymanski for showing me this.

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/fix_computer

It has been a long time since I last posted to my blog. I am quickly just coming on to tell you that whilst I may have closed down the other blog on my site, We Blog, a community blog, I intend to keep this going and keep using it more and more. At the moment I am finishing my first semester of second year (after a long time waiting to get back into the swing of things after hospital, I've finally made it here) at university.

As much as one of my YouTube videos states that Windows 8 is in my opinion a recommendation, I will not be purchasing it. Sure DirectX 12 will not function on Windows 7 and that means I cannot take advantage of this great new API. Unfortunately, that is not enough to make me give up features that I use and need on a regular basis.

For a start, I do not think I could give up the Aero glass theme as I am and have always been a fan of the theme. I could live without it but I would rather not have to trade in something I love for something that I may prefer for features like DirectX 12. There's no real games for DX12 at present anyway.

The next reason is because I have bought loads of software for Windows 7 (much more than before) and a lot of this is now incompatible with Windows 8, for example Stardock Windows Blinds 7. Even if it is compatible, most of it loses its novelty. Additionally, my Logitech QuickCam Sphere is supposedly incompatible with Windows 8.

I will not be upgrading my desktop, MacBook Pro or netbook to Windows 8. In fact, this business is pushes me to love Mac OS X more and more by the day.

Finally, I have heard that because of the fact that it is a new design of the Windows operating system, it is glitchy from the kernel upwards. I am not going too much into this but I have discovered that a lot of drivers that I used on 7 do not work with 8. Therefore, compatibility is something that I would lose with a lot of hardware. I just could not use 8 without full compatibility.

Intel's new Haswell chips have been out for about half a year and are incredibly powerful CPUs. Ranging from the i3 to the i7, the 4th generation core processors was set from the offset to be a big thing.

But recently, my computer; known as The Zebra, which was a second generation Core i7 2600K based system, died on me. The problem was related to a motherboard issue. The system had to be replaced from board to CPU and I decided to replace it with a new Haswell system to make it as future-proofed as possible. The specs of the system are now being boosted several generations further, but it's not without problems.

For a start, I could not find any board featuring FireWire headers or connectors, making my drives with FireWire harder to connect to the system (I eventually decided to trade in FireWire for eSATA). This was none the less a disappointment. On top of that I could only get a decent board without PCI at all. Now it's fully understandable that PCI is being completely phased out, but it's just getting so rapid that it's more costly to the end user. Luckily, I found a mid range board that suits me fine and features just one PCI connector, the Gigabyte Z87-UD3H. This is actually my third Gigabyte and my third UD3 model, with my previous being the Z68XP-UD3 and the previous being the P45-UD3R model.

But the real problem is down to compatibility with Haswell. I've read numerous forums where users are complaining about solid state drives and compatibility with Haswell, in particular the Sandforce controller in the 1000 series (this does not include the SATA 6Gbps versions, apparently). This is the exact drive I own for my PC, so on top of a failing motherboard, I now know that I've got to fork out on a new solid state drive. The Sandforce controllers in the original drives were actually pretty bad for numerous reasons such as a false advertising AES256 instead of AES128 etc. but it was not enough to put me off buying four of them (with my MacBook Pro is the only one of the four that has been a Sandforce SATA 6Gbps).

Anyway, on top of the issues with the drive, there have also been reports that some power supply units (PSU) have also had problems, as such Corsair and other power supply manufacturers are now doing their bit to specify which of their units are working with Haswell boards. Now when you add all this together, it seems like a disaster on Intel's behalf, but from what I am reading it down to the fact that some drives are out of date and do not support the new C states to the full. C states are power states for a computer system, and apparently Haswell adds more C states that makes energy saving better in the system. Of course, all the hardware needs full compatibility with these states in order for it to work and this is where some power supply units and solid state drives have problems.

Corsair's compatibility list can be found here:

http://www.corsair.com/us/blog/haswell-compatibility-with-corsair-power-supplies/

You can share any experiences you may have had down below.

Firewire has suddenly become an obsolete connector in many areas of computing. When I build my previous computer in 2011(named the Zebra) it had a Firewire header and Firewire on the back (actually 2) and now when I'm building my new computer (due to a fault with the board) I've come across a huge problem when looking for boards that feature this connection.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to find the IEEE1394 standard anywhere now. Macs are starting to phase out a connector which they backed so hard and definitively for years until Thunderbolt came out. But Firewire still offers an excellent, CPU-free connector which is great for people who cannot afford a new hard drive with Thunderbolt (I wouldn't recommend USB because of it's topology and lack of daisy chaining).

To put Firewire into a PC is also getting more difficult as PCI is getting more and more obsolete by the day. Most Haswell boards do not feature PCI but feature PCIe x1 instead. Firewire cards in the form of x1 tend not to be hard to find, especially with an internal header.

I guess I better learn to embrace the future better...

Also, someone who agrees with my statement:

http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/2013/9/20/they_are_on_their_way_out.htm