I am going to very quickly summarise the next problem I have had with my motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3, in this post because it has reached the point that I can't take much more of it.
Firstly, my previous computer, better known as the Platypus (which I loved but sold most of it to a fellow computer enthusiast), was a marvellous computer. It had no problems. It was simply because I had read about Intel's Sandy Bridge being so incredibly good for video editing, which I was certainly doing a lot of at the time, that made me want to buy one for myself.
So the Platypus left and the new computer, better known as the Zebra (both are named after animals named after their chipsets: P45 and Z68, although the Zebra is also black and white) took its place. The Zebra was built with an incredibly cheap-to-build system, as most of the expensive components from the Platypus could be kept and reused. The Zebra cost around £575 (£100 for the motherboard, £50 for the RAM, £250 for the CPU and £175 for the case), which to me seemed great, but it was terribly flawed.
Now I loved it when I first got it, and still love it now, but it's breaking my heart more and more these days (or maybe just really annoying me I suppose). Here's precisely why:
It started with the motherboard having a device that seemed unknown to the computer. So I disconnected everything and noticed it was still there. Next, I decided to plug a USB flash drive into each USB port, and there we went. The problem was solved. One of the rear USB 2.0 ports was not working. I complained to Gigabyte, who seemingly did nothing to help, apart from saying that my chipset was incorrectly installed, which makes no sense anyway. I filed a complaint and tried to get it sorted under warranty. But it was too much effort after assembling the computer that I decided to leave it, as it was just one USB 2.0 port, and Gigabyte themselves even said they would not pick it up.
It now suffers from another problem: a device that plugs in and then unplugs a second or two later. Listening to the Windows 7 device connected (dum dum) and then immediately after disconnecting (bum bum) was driving me mad. I could not bear it any more. I muted and removed the sound from the Windows sound manager in the Control Panel.
I have decided when I can. I'm going to sell the motherboard and get a new one for my birthday when Haswell is well and truly ready. I will probably sell the CPU as well.
Today, someone (you know who you are!) was going on about how my MacBook isn't up to the specifications for the price. This post is going to briefly explain why this is not the case with myself and why I have stood by the use of my Apple computers.
I have known for a long time that FireWire was a part Apple "invention" (well no, it is actually not, but it was Apple who pushed it on to the market). But it had not struck me until now that I have been using FireWire as my favourite choice of connection to my external drive since about 2007 - way before I got my first Apple product. Now I have a MacBook Pro (and it is well worth the money, PCs have generally more issues and I know this because I am definitely still a PC user first and foremost), iPhone 5 and iPod touch. In the house we now have 4 iPhones and 2 Macs (soon to be three, I think).
I did not realise though that whilst I have been a proud fan of FireWire, what I was saying was that I was really a strong supporter of Apple. Nowadays FireWire is not as big as it used to be, and I have Thunderbolt on my MacBook which I intend to use in the future as it becomes more widely available (it is now available on some PCs and motherboards) and used.
However, it seems to be the build quality that makes me choose Apple. I like many PC manufacturers (not HP though - 3 broken machines due to overheating and not fixed under warranty - that's just saying something) such as Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Samsung and a few others, but I never feel that the quality is any good - especially when someone else you know has a MacBook (I'm talking the Air or the Pro here) or just when you generally compare them side-by-side.
The price point puts people off, but it should not. At the end of the day, I'm still a huge Windows user, I write my software for Windows, not Mac OS X, simply because I have always preferred Windows. But if we are not talking about the software but the hardware, I believe that the quality of Apple's products is much higher than any other. Simple thing likes a magnetic (patented) designed power connection (to prevent pulling the computer off the table if you trip on the wire) are the kinds of things you can expect from Apple. PC manufacturers also put in tweaks, but they tend not to be consistent across the vast range of products (remember those little ExpressCard 54 remotes you used to get with your HP Pavilion notebook?). Another one had Windows SideShow where PC manufacturers would put a display on the outside of lid chassis which could display the song you are listening to or whatever and when the system was shutdown, the user could still use the computer using the outer LCD and could enjoy hundreds of hours of battery life by using the laptop battery but with the small footprint of the outer LCD. Where did that go?
My final point to make is that Apple products are just so much better thermally. My MacBook hardly ever gets warm (although when put under strain it will) but a PC I had would need its fans to run every 3 or 4 minutes when performing the exact same tasks. Why are most PC manufacturers so flimsy when manufacturing them? Apple puts a lot of effort into each product, hence why they end up being the way they are.
I am still though, a Windows user.
I now love Linux and OS X, and I am more of a Mac OS X lover.
WordPress is available as an add-on to a website in HTML, CSS etc. It utilises PHP and MySQL to make it efficient and effective. WordPress is great because the theme of the blog can be changed at any time with a variety of different themes to choose from. I like the current standard WordPress theme, known as Twenty Twelve (2012) and will be using this for the time being. I may change it at anytime, though.
WordPress also has a built in spell-check as well as making the administration of my blog much easier. I am currently leaving the BlackRabbit and WE Blog blogs the way they are and they will remain as my standard blogs, provided by my host. There may come a time when I change them also.
WordPress has also offered me much more in the view that millions of people use it, so it is well maintained. As well as that, Google Searches are more likely to stumble across a WordPress blog than they are a blog created by my host.
I have also now copied every single post from my old blog into my new blog, along with their time and date strings. On top of that, Blogger has finally been moved to this blog, so all my historical writings from when I first blogged in 2010, have moved here.
In about 2 or 3 minutes I will be deleting my old blog to make room for my new WordPress one. I have moved all of the posts over to this blog so they will still be available.
You may have noticed my blog has now changed to a WordPress blog. This is a new update that I have fired in today, unexpectedly! The new design makes it much easier to find the information you need, as well as the post you need. On top of that, the blogging system when compared with my host's default blog is much nicer. I can also do many more things as well as having the MySQL power over the database.
I was a bit inspired to build one of these blogs and have been for a while. So here is my new WordPress blog. For future reference, I will begin transferring all of my old blog posts onto this blog.
My website has got support for MySQL databases and I have just learned how to implement a database. So I started to work a bit on some PHP to access my database and got it working. Because of this, the subscribe button now puts the email addresses and names into a database which I can easily export for the newsletter.
Convergence is a funny thing - a great thing at that, however.
Convergence is the concept of "bringing things together" or as put by Marc Benioff:
The world is being reshaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces. The combination of these technologies unlocks an incredible opportunity to connect everything together in a new way and is dramatically transforming the way we live and work.
There is something very powerful about that quote.
It is down to the fact we are changing our lives by having single devices that control and do "everything". It is a great thing, and it has been going on since the first feature phones (where MP3 players and cameras were integrated into the phone, and in turn almost wiping out their entire market).
I love convergence. What do you think?
Today I would like to announce the performance improvements that Painter Pro now has. All the effects; I Want It There, grayscale, sepia, inversion, reflection and intensity have improved to perform considerably faster. On top of that, colour comparative methods based on these iterate much quicker through the selection.
Even though I should not really say it myself, Painter Pro is astonishing. Some people who have tested it now want me to bring it to Android (not something I am planning just now though). Others have just said it is brilliant as it is. I never intend for my software to compete, but I do intend for it to have a purpose; one of which is for work on my YouTube videos as well as my website and personal use.
Painter Pro is still currently password protected, but you can obtain the password by contacting me.
Meanwhile, Cobweb Internet Browser, 2.0.2.0 is now on my website. New features include faster browsing as well as better tabbing and some bug fixes to do with start up times.
Some people love the web. I for one do not and here's why:
The web is constantly changing. People who build sites in HTML will soon realise that it's all for nothing as soon as the next standard is released. My website was built without HTML5 which limits it to XHTML Transitional. I wanted HTML5 but I had already written most of it in XHTML Transitional before realising the mistake.
New innovations are constantly being released. My website was originally designed in 2010 with a simple tabbed design. It was acceptable at the time (funny that I was listening to Calvin Harris: Acceptable In The 80s earlier), but nowadays its just not smart looking enough. So I implemented a new menu in January 2013 in the website Major Overhaul of 2013 and guess what, some Internet Explorer applications (although the same version as the next) do not display the correct way. On top of that, the tablet revolution has lead to the release of Windows 8, and now the tablet version of Internet Explorer simply cannot open the menus on my site (strange because it is fine on iOS and Android).
I'm obviously not a web developer, and never will be since I'm actually no good at this and really struggling with it. I think I will leave it once this is redone and move back to C#, VB.NET and Java based programming since this project has been messy!
As some who read this blog know, I like to have a rant about things. But the web is one of the best thing because its just got to stop changing so drastically.
