The PolyBlog

Today I choose to upgrade and update my software (TIC00019c)

August 9 2020

As I mentioned yesterday, I have an almost-new computer setup — not a new computer, just a lot of upgraded components, including more memory, more storage, new Windows install, new ports, etc. Faster and more efficient, and a cleaned-up install. But that clean install comes at a price. I have to rebuild everything that sits on it. Today’s focus was mainly about the apps.

I had the techies install Windows fresh and clean, with no caffeine, but everything after that is on me. They could have migrated my old install but that would have defeated the purpose of the upgrade. Too much old bloat. Going through some of the old files, I found remnants of programs that I removed over three years ago! Pass.

I tend to think of my software as grouped by headings:

Systems — This is basically technical apps, like the NVIDIA controller for the graphics card, and I also threw in my drivers for my colour printer. I have two other printers available to me, a Brother LaserJet upstairs in the office and my old HP LaserJet 4L next to my computer, but I haven’t tested that part yet.
Security — At the moment, I have two main security tools, namely Bitdefender for all the firewall and antivirus stuff, and while it comes with a crappy VPN too, I prefer Private Internet Access for my VPN system. Everything reinstalled, tested, and the VPN upgraded to having the KillSwitch activated.
Internet — I have only three programs in my Internet category, which is down considerably. Normally I have FTP programs, multiple browsers, maybe some P2P stuff, and an email program. Most of that is part of my old life and not really a feature I need right now. Instead, I installed my browser (Firefox), and that was pretty much the first thing I installed — I needed it so I could install all the updated installation files for everything else. I do a bit of Torrenting, so BitTorrent is also there, and it gets the job done. I tend NOT to let it run unmonitored so it meets my needs along with the VPN. And last but not least? MIRC. That’s a weird one, I’ll grant you. It’s an Internet Relay Chat app, and it works pretty well. I’ve used variations of it going back all the way to the late 1990s. It serves a similar function to BitTorrent, and while I don’t use it often, it’s frequent enough to install the latest version along with some extra scripts. From time to time, I also use it to play in a couple of online trivia groups.
File Management — While most Windows users rely on the simple File Explorer for most things they do, I hate it with a passion. Back in the late ’90s and early ’00s, I used a program called PowerDesk and it was my favorite replacement. Then they changed the layout and user interface, and it tanked. I hunted around for a replacement, and after a few iterations, I tripped over a program called xplorer2. It’s not big, it’s not flashy, but it works GREAT for me. Multiple columns, tabs, views, layouts, previews, everything I need and a lot of stuff I don’t, but I can hide the stuff I don’t (not something I can do with a lot of the flashier apps). If it ever stops working in Windows, I’m going to cry. I use it for EVERY file movement I can. After that, I use some things for some niche tasks — a special RAR extractor that has a few bells and whistles called FreeRarExtractFrog (I might just use it for the Frog motif); a 7Zip extractor and compressor; VeraCrypt to encrypt some financial files; and then a small suite called XN (i.e. XNViewMP, XNConvert, and XNShell) that do a bit more with graphics than my default xplorer2 can do. Two things that are missing from this list are a backup program as I’m currently transitioning to a new tool that I haven’t bought yet (in the meantime, I’m relying mainly on full file copies with multiple redundancies) and online storage (related).
Office — While I mean that term generically, MS Office 365 is the big install. On top of that, I have MS Teams for work and Zoom. I used to have a lot more installed and I just never use much of it anymore. Open office replacements, mind mappers, organizers, portable apps, a few other bells and whistles. I still need to install drivers and software for my label printer and my scanner, although I’m not sure if they go under Office here or under Systems above.
Photos — Right up front, I have Mylio as my photo manager. I’ll come back to this one tomorrow, as it is not a simple “install and go” option. It’s a bit more complicated than that. In addition, I have Affinity Photo, GIMP, Paint.Net, and Photo Pos. Plus I restore the default Windows Photo viewer; it works well for simple edits and viewing. Interestingly, I didn’t need to reinstall a bunch of other niche apps — bulk image converters, duplicate photo finders, image resizers, online gallery uploaders, etc. They’re not really part of my workflow anymore even though I have the apps if I need them. I still need to install a PhotoSync app that copies my iPhone photos over to my desktop without using iTunes or connecting a wire, just links through my LAN.
Video — With my growing interest in astrophotography, some of which is done with video rather than images, my video software has expanded. For editing, I have VideoPadEditor; for viewing, I use VLC or Kodi, depending on the media; for conversion, I have AnyVideoConverter Pro or even DVD Shrink with AnyDVD, which can handle mostly old stuff at this point. Skype was already installed, and while I have a webcam, it was plug and play, so no extra cam software was needed. Nor did I need any of the other editors and converters that I’ve tried over the years.
Music — This is where things got interesting. Sure, I have iTunes since I subscribe to Apple Music for the family. I love their radio stations with no ads. I’m almost incapable of listening to normal radio stations now. But I also have Amazon Music and YouTube Music for uploading. But for day-to-day file management, I use Media Monkey. I just wish they had an IOS app. What I find most interesting is my archives for software in this area — old MP3 player file managers, Real Player, WinAMP, all of which would still run. I just don’t need it right now. But I am loathe to delete them as they do READ a lot of old files if I ever need to convert stuff. I don’t install them, but it’s almost like time travel to see all the various apps.
Ebooks — Getting everything installed today was a bit of a pain in the butt, to be honest. I’ll talk about it more tomorrow, but I kind of screwed up my preps for the upgrade, and while a fresh install is great, I should have planned a bit better to make the transition a bit more seamless. Ah, live and learn. I have Calibre installed with a bunch of plugins, Amazon’s Kindle for PC reader, Adobe’s Digital Editions (to read books from the library) and Cloud Library (ditto). I didn’t install the Kobo reader, I never use it.
Astronomy — This was more extensive than I expected. For planning, I have Best Pair, Select Astro Stars, and AstroPlanner; for navigation, I have Starry Night 8 and Stellarium; and for processing, I have PIPP, AutoStakkert, Deep Sky Stacker, Nebulosity and Registax. I considered playing with PixInSight but the price is too exorbitant for my blood. I didn’t install the Canon software for point and shoot cameras or any of the software for controlling your telescope since I don’t do any of that from my desktop.
Programming — I really only have programming stuff for Jacob at this point, and since it is on his computer, I didn’t feel the need to also install it on mine. So, for now, I have nothing installed. I want to do some app development in a year or so, so will need to find a solution or two, but nothing right now.
Games — I have a bunch of one-off games here and there, mostly card games (like Bridge or Solitaire, etc.), and I installed none of them. They’re all pretty old now. I also have RetroArch which I *will* install, but not yet. I also tend to play MS Solitaire, but that comes preinstalled.

And that’s it. About 16GB of install files, and about 60GB of installed programs with Windows. I have a few more to add here and there, but the bulk of the rebuild is done. Whew. It was a long day.

Today I choose to prioritize, reinstall and update all my software on my computer with a fresh install.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to upgrade my computer (TIC00018c)

August 7 2020

In my last post, I noted that I had broken my chain at 9 days, deliberately so but still a break. So I’m starting “series C” for my TIC posts. I also noted in the last post that one of the things I did before heading off on vacation was to drop my computer off for an upgrade.

A history of out of date hardware

I have a strange history with my computers, particularly given how much time I spend on them. I started messing with computers in high school, Commodore PETs at school and a simple VIC-20 at home. The C64 was out but I limped along with a simple V20. And my journey with “2nd or 3rd generation back” computers had started.

In university, I started using a PC at work, and while I was writing essays and stuff, I settled for a simple electric typewriter that had delusions of being a wordprocessor. The memory functions were rudimentary so I mostly just used it as a typewriter.

Decent, but hardly the latest and greatest version. In between first and second year, I upgraded to an IBM XT clone; the ATs were out, with the faster 80286 chips, but I settled for an 8088. I even ran DOS for awhile, programming my own BATCH menu that incorporated some elements from Lotus 1-2-3 menus and a shell system I saw on a BBS system. I could make it get up and dance, and I used the computer well past the arrival of WINDOWS 3.0.

I eventually upgraded to a Windows 3.0-capable machine, but barely capable. I could get it to do just about anything I wanted it to, albeit not necessarily the fastest or most efficient system. Windows 95 and even 98 arrived, but I kept running my old system. Eventually, it died and I had to upgrade, but I went for something that was WIN NT capable just as other, later versions of Windows were current. Again, a couple of years behind the curve, but functional.

Then about 4 years ago, I decided I needed a new computer and something with a bit of power. I had played with basic laptops and netbooks, but nothing super powerful, and I didn’t want to spend over $1000 if I could avoid it. It has been a constant theme with me. I generally get the most bang for my buck at a given price point — $1000-$1200. Almost every time I have bought a “new” system, I’ve gone in at that price.

This last time, I decided to go for refurbished. The bells and whistles I wanted were just too expensive to buy new, and if I did my REAL desired system, I’d be in the $2000 range. Nope, there’s a store in Bell’s Corners called The Trailing Edge and they specialize in tech that is NOT the bleeding/cutting edge, but a season or two back. Tested, functional, and cheaper. I splurged on an i7 chip and motherboard, semi-decent graphics card, some basic memory, and I was away to the races. I subsequently added two more hard drives — it came with 500GB, and I added another 500GB and then a 1 TB. But of late, with 2TB available, I was down to about 200GB of free space spread across the three drives. And running a mite slow.

I played with the idea of upgrading and going full laptop this time. We bought Jacob a laptop back in March for his “home schooling” options so he wouldn’t be confined to our office, and it is pretty sweet. We got a good deal on it at the time, large screen, gaming speeds, a definite option, but to be honest, I already had a laptop and a functional desktop. Why go to having TWO laptops, even if one of them is semi-permanently connected to my downstairs TV? Plus, J’s computer doesn’t have a ton of onboard storage at that price point, and with another bell or whistle, I’d be pushing the $2K mark again for what I wanted.

No, I like having my desktop, and I like having the power that goes with it. I just want a bit more speed and power. And this time I figured I would go for the gusto, even if I’m choosing to upgrade rather than buy new.

Configuring the upgrade

So my motherboard and chip set gives me an i7 setup with quad-core processing, and that is still more than plenty powerful enough for what I want to do.

I’m getting a bit more into video, but it’s not like I’m Spielberg or Lucas doing high-end special effects, most of the time I’m editing a video to remove some segments. An iPad can do most of that, to be candid. I considered upgrading from my 1050 graphics card (which is considered basic gaming capable) to the 1650 card, which comes with 4GB onboard instead of 2GB in my current card, but NONE of the video software that I’m using takes advantage of the onboard video, it all works its magic through the main processor. I could have added it for $220, but to what end? No, my money was directed elsewhere.

First and foremost, I wanted to switch from a hard disk drive (HDD) to an actual solid state drive (SDD). It’s like a hard drive made out of RAM, and they’re super fast. You basically put all your software on it so it loads super fast and it does … Firefox used to take 3-5 seconds to load when it wanted to load that is, and now it’s less than a second. Booting up from scratch requires the BIOS to load and then Windows to load, and while I can’t do anything about the speed of the BIOS really, Windows now loads in about 30 seconds instead of 3 minutes previously. I considered a simple 240GB drive which would have just held all my software or 500GB which would give me apps + some storage space for active files (like videos that I’m editing). I considered going all-in on a big 2TB SDD, but that was pushing the $300+ mark, and final pricing and availability couldn’t be confirmed. I settled for a 1TB drive, $190 or so, partitioned as 350GB for apps and configuration files with a bit of extra room, and 585GB for active files (most likely for anything video related, but I have some other projects I might want to store in there too). They open like lightning from that drive.

Second, I wanted more memory. I had 6GB installed, and there were times I was pushing that limit with some of the processing I’m doing for astrophotography. I upgraded it to 16GB for $60. It’s hard to benchmark the performance boost from that without doing a hard-core processing request, and that will take some time to get back setup and going because of step three.

Third, I had them completely do a fresh install of Windows 10. I’ve tried a lot of software over the years, and some of it just does not uninstall gracefully. Plus there are all the updates to Windows itself, blah blah blah. It was running slow before and I didn’t want them migrating it. I got them to install the new drive, move the other one out, and reinstall Windows from scratch. Crisp and clean and no caffeine. It was hard to believe that when I booted, I had NOTHING loading. Not my security software, not my internet setup, not my VPN, nada. Heck, I didn’t even have Office installed. A completely fresh install. Of course, that means a bunch of tweaks I did here and there were gone, but I can fix that as time goes on.

Fourth, the SDD drive is nice, but only 1TB, and once you put all the software in, not much more than 600MB left. With my other 1TB drive, I was only boosting my space by about 500MB, since I had to take a 500MB drive out to make room for the SDD. Instead, I had them take out the second 500MB drive, throw them in external enclosures so I can use them as backup drives / portable HDDs, and then fill that empty bay with a large internal HDD. Namely, I went for a full 6TB of space! It was about $300. I had the tech partition it for 2TB+2TB+ whatever was left, which is actually larger than expected. It comes out to almost 7TB by the time I’m done. So, I have:

My main SD drive, 350GB with 300GB still free before I start installing all my apps;
A second SD drive (partition), with 585GB free;
A 1TB drive, which at the moment has stuff still on it but I’ll move it around;
A 1.95TB drive;
Another 1.95TB drive; and,
A 3.37TB drive.

It seems crazy I know, until you realize that most of my high-end astrophotography uses either RAW format or large TIFF formats. It doesn’t take long before processing jacks the storage requirements for even a single night of imaging. A guy in our club did a huge mural, way more than I ever did, and the final picture file was almost 500GB in size. Crazy time. And to be honest? I seriously considered an 8TB drive. They have 12TB drives available, but that seemed like overkill.

But with great power comes great responsibility, namely to do backups regularly, and while I will do a lot of incremental backups, I wanted more speed. So I had them throw in a port for USB 3.0, something seriously lacking in the original system since it wasn’t available when this system first hit the market. I don’t need that speed all the time, but for about $50 I think, I had them add it.

They also did some other work under the hood, but that was the big breakdown. Oh, and I’ve been thinking of getting a new printer for my basement office, but I had them reconfigure my old HP laser printer that I bought back in 1995 — yes, you read that right — and they were able to get it working under Windows 10. Sweet.

There was also a bit of a crapfest story around dropping it off just before I left (waiting for a quote, confusion in communication about their hours of operation, rushing in at the last minute so they could upgrade it while I was away, picking it up today surrounded by some idiotic customers who had no clue what social distancing meant, etc.) but it isn’t worth relating. The important thing?

Today I choose to have an upgraded system that gives me enough power that I don’t have to simply limp along on some of the projects I’m doing. I actually have the power to do it fast and efficiently. No more workarounds. Well, at least not for a few years anyway.

What choices are you making with your day?

Today I choose to stop making choices for 2 weeks (TIC00017b)

August 6 2020

While the date of this post will be July 24th, a Friday, I am actually writing it on August 6, a Thursday, two weeks later.

On that Friday, I was looking at my “Today I choose” chain and wondering how I was going to keep it going while I was on vacation at the inlaws’ cottage. Making conscious choices is hard enough on a given day, and when you’re thrown into a shared-space environment of joint decision-making about meals and times, or even activities, it is sometimes less stressful and more harmonious to just choose to go with the collective flow rather than try to make conscious decisions to “go my way”. On top of that, I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to keep blogging consistently. And there is the escape phrase of “it’s a vacation” to excuse all laziness.

The short answer as it turned out was that I wasn’t going to be able to do either very well. So I made a conscious decision, a “choice” on the 24th of July, to break the chain at 9 days of choices, a new record.

Over the course of my vacation, and my return, I still made some conscious choices. One of them is about my computer setup, which I’ll post about later tonight.

I also actively tried to read “more”, and ended up binge-reading 7 books in a series (I Am Number Four, by Pittacus Lore, which is way better than the movie). Jacob was reading them too so it was fun to go through them sort of together.

I did some photography of the night sky just with my tripod and iPhone, no telescope involved. NEOWISE was missing in action, but I got to play with shots of the moon, Saturn and Jupiter, the Big Dipper, and star trails around Polaris. I’ll post about those sometime soon too.

And I reached out to my family in Peterborough to try and get together for a socially distanced lunch, and managed to do so with my brother Don. Not the most uplifting of experiences, but it was good to see him.

Oh, and Andrea and I got to check out a pub in Norland near the cottage that we’ve been wanting to go to for a couple of years and timing was never quite right. Plus, no word of a lie, you normally need reservations. It’s small and popular. One of Jacob’s short-term bucket list items was to go to a restaurant again, so we ate on the patio at the pub and the food was quite good.

A good vacation, extended by an extra day on the end, and then back to work this week on the Tuesday. A little rough on the re-integration, and I’ve been feeling a bit of separation anxiety, so to speak, with my computer being in the shop. I wanted to work on a couple of projects that are just way too painful to try and do on the laptop, and when I was at the cottage, my laptop’s wifi wasn’t even connecting. Now that I have the PC back and can get going again, I feel like I’m able to work on a couple of fun things. Just as soon as I reinstall all the software. Sigh.

Today (okay, actually 13 days ago from when I’m writing it) I choose to break the chain and just “be” for the next two weeks.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to time-shift my work (TIC00016b)

July 23 2020

As I mentioned earlier in these posts, Jacob has various courses that he is trying to do at OutSchool.com. He’s enjoying them, but then again, there’s no real work involved. He has some reading to do for one of them, but it’s about Gods, and he would read that anyway!

Today was a full day for him. While I was working this morning, he played Fortnite and then had a call with a social worker, upgraded from phone to Zoom (yay!) and he thought it was nice to be able to see her, so we’ll count that as a win. Personally, I think it’s a HUGE win for him, but that’s just me.

I ran over to Tim Horton’s for lunch, took a break for that, and then back to work for me. He then had a class this afternoon on mythology in general or Greek Gods specifically, I forget which, and then chess lessons. But after that? I took another break so I could sit with him and do Lego.

We’re working on a project, I’ll likely add it to my choices tomorrow (assuming we finish), so I won’t reveal the content yet, but we are assembling it together. Originally, I was going to do it by myself, a special project just for me, but since he’s struggling a bit on the isolation front, we made him my assistant for it. Normally, I man the book and he assembles stuff, but for this one, it was supposed to be me assembling and him manning the book. Until today when he was getting impatient and wanted to be in there with his hands. So I let him take over. He needed it, and it’s a small price to pay. I have lots of other projects I’m working on in other ways.

Then I came back down to work while Jacob did some reading, I got caught up on a few transactions going through, returned a couple of calls I needed to follow up on, and then it was dinner time. We’ve been eating a lot of leftovers this week in different forms to use stuff up, so it was relatively quick to make fajitas tonight and we’ll likely have it again for lunch tomorrow.

After that, I introduced Jacob to the comic stylings of Tim Allen in the form of Galaxy Quest. I was debating Spaceballs vs. GQ, but GQ has a storyline that is more fun than just jokes, and we did just watch Guardians of the Galaxy, so it seemed like a “save the universe”-type theme. He loved it! I had forgotten a scene where they beam the rock giant onto the ship to fight the invaders, it was fun.

And then? Bedtime for penguins, and I came back downstairs to work a bit more. I’m trying to finish a workplan for my team, and I had about seven or eight inputs to wade through for possible inclusion, so it wasn’t just copy and paste or tweak. Ironically, I got it all done, ready to send to my team for a 10:00 a.m. meeting tomorrow, and realized I forgot to include one of the files I’m doing these days myself.

An odd work day…sort of 9:00-11:45, 1:00-3:45, 5:00-6:30 and then 9:30-10:45 or so. Yeah, a little more than my 7.5h I guess, but who knows if there were production lags from start/stop too. Either way, it made the day “work” for being with Jacob. It would be good to have longer “shifts” in there, but it worked.

Today I choose to time-shift my work.

What choices are you making with your day?

Today I choose to play more with Jacob (TIC00015b)

July 22 2020

Jacob has a busy summer schedule with a ton of classes on Outschool. Greek Gods, mythology, astronomy, trivia, a bunch of topics. But ultimately, it works out to about an hour a day. On top of that, he’s playing Fortnite with friends online, a bit of XBox for other stuff, and reading. Overall? A recipe for eventual boredom.

So while Andrea and I are working full-time, we’re taking breaks here and there to break up his schedule. Usually we try to switch off so he gets two playbreaks in the day, one with Mom, one with Dad.

Today we did it together and broke out the board games. We started Settlers of Catan, played for an hour, and then he had to jet across the room to his computer for his latest class. Mom and I went back to work. Then, later, he and I did some Lego together for a new project, followed by finishing the Catan game. I know lots of people who get bored with Catan, need the expansion packs to keep it interesting for example, or have nailed the “optimized” placement of settlements, cities and roads. We kind of do a bit of a random layout of numbers, while ensuring nothing is too hard to get, but each time our game is different. One time we played, I somehow failed to get wheat early on, which was REALLY frustrating, yet I still managed to win through armies and roads. This time, we started playing, realized that some of the numbers weren’t fairly distributed, adjusted so it wouldn’t be a two-sided game only, and early on it looked like a winner. We were all getting resources and doing stuff quickly. I thought it might be a fast game.

And then? We stopped rolling one number (10) which controlled the majority of our wood. And we were blocked for wheat. Do you know how many things you can do without wood or wheat? Zero. It was a LONG game. Andrea finally put us out of our misery.

Then we had dinner, considered a movie, and Jacob opted for playing Moonshot Euchre, which we haven’t played in a few days. Again, a LONG game. And we never finished. We’re not even CLOSE, actually, but it was 9:30 and time for a little penguin to crash.

I also finished another book that he is going to read, and it was REALLY good. Now I want to talk to him about it, but Andrea is likely to read it too, and now I have to wait for all three of us to finish! Sheesh. 🙂

Overall, I think it was a good day together, even if we’re not on vacation yet.

Today I choose to spend more time with my son playing games.

What conscious choices are you making today to create a new reality?