Tag Archives: today I choose

Today I choose to upgrade my computer (TIC00018c)

The PolyBlog
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A history of out of date hardware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)

The PolyBlog
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 prioritize safety over style (TIC00012b)

The PolyBlog
July 20 2020

I am not now, nor have I never been, a member of the Commun…oh wait, wrong denial speech. I was GOING to say that I’m not a style maven in any way, shape or (literal) form. I don’t dress well, I’m not built for showing off clothes, and I don’t have high-end manners. On a good day, I’m a schlub.

That doesn’t stop at the body or clothes, it continues up into my hair. I had bowl cuts as a kid, with my father using his skills from the Army to give us various hair cuts. I really don’t know what happened in earlier years as he did a decent job sometimes in the teen years, but from about age 16, I just went to the barbershop and paid with my own money. And that continued right up until Covid.

For Jacob, we’ve never been ones to try and cut his hair. Why traumatize him when we can take him some place that has videos on TV screens right in front of him to distract him? Chiquicuts covered us for a long while, but he outgrew them, and most of the time we go together to a place like First Choice and get it done some night when nobody is busy. Or a Sunday afternoon. Similar cuts for both of us, quite short, above the ear, square back, high bangs, lots of clipper action. He likes it, I like it, but if he wanted a Mohawk, I’d probably get him one. He doesn’t, he likes low maintenance like I do. Until Covid.

We waited until our hair got long in April/May and then did the home special with Andrea cutting mine, and mostly me cutting Jacob’s. Mine was a bit rough, but fine by me, and Jacob’s turned out passable as our second attempt.

Yet things are open again. We COULD go. But honestly, do I REALLY care if my hair isn’t perfect? Only my work team really sees me on Zoom, and half the time I leave the camera off to increase stability of the network. Jacob is in the same boat, he doesn’t really go anywhere and his last haircut at home turned out really well in his view, he was quite happy with it. I gave him the option of considering going out, but he said that we should just do it at home.

And to be honest? I was willing to let him go as a mild risk if everyone is masked, but I wasn’t loving the idea. Risk goes up with proximity and time with other people who aren’t in your bubble, and you can’t do haircuts without both of those violating the normal social distancing routine. Hard to cut hair from 6-feet away, and you are literally breathing in the other person’s air as they get close to your head. And while everyone says, “Yeah, but you’re wearing a mask.” Yeah, a mask sewn together by your friend, not a PPE device that actually blocks any water molecules. Ever worn a scarf or balaclava and breathed out while it covered your nose and face? It still steams up the air pretty strongly. The cloth masks work, but they’re not PPEs. There’s a reason why doctors and nurses are not just throwing on a cloth mask.

But I digress. The point? We chose safety over style. Are our resulting haircuts as amazing as we could get from any barber in Canada? Nope, not really. Andrea did a good job on mine, but my head is a bit misshapen, and you can see it very clearly on top of my head. It’s like there’s a sunken area and when you do a general clipper cut, it contours to the shape of your head more than a scissors-based cut would likely do. Jacob’s turned out okay, but not as good as the last time. I feel like the sideburns didn’t cooperate as much as the previous time.

On the positive side, the clippers have now paid for themselves in terms of the money we’ve saved on four haircuts (Jacob and I x 2 each). Definitely on the savings side of the equation now, baby! I’m curious to see Jacob’s choices when we get back into regular outings if/when there’s a vaccine. For me, I’m fine either way. I’d just prefer that when Andrea’s cutting my hair that she would stop saying “oops” so often; it is VERY disconcerting and not at all related to the final outcome.

In the meantime, today I choose to prioritize safety over style.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to expand my astronomy gear (TIC00010b)

The PolyBlog
July 17 2020

I have traditionally NOT been a binoculars guy when it comes to astronomy. If I’m totally honest, I’m even a bit judgey for those who respond to newbies questions about what type of telescope to get with “get binos, great way to get started” advice. It’s a common refrain, by experienced amateurs, and I think it can be amongst the worst advice to give anyone.

Why NOT recommend binos to newbies?

First and foremost, the learning curve is enormous for the sky. Yes, you can look at stuff easily and pan quickly, but almost EVERYONE starts with hand-held binos. Which shake in your hands. It is VERY hard to get decent sized binos to stay solid unless you are naturally still OR you rest against something with your harms. But they don’t tell people that, they just say “buy binos”.

Second, for many people learning, sometimes the best aspect is sharing it with others. Like kids. Can kids hold the binos steady? No. Not easily. So tell them to look at X, pan sideways and down a bit, blah blah blah….aaaand they’re gone. You’ve lost them. If you have a telescope and you set it on the object and say, “Here, look through here”, they will see what they’re supposed to see, generally speaking.

Binoculars combine low magnification with the highest degree of unsteady viewing and the worst learning curve to find objects. What could go wrong?

There are TONS of people who start with binos, get bored, and give up. Because someone knowledgeable told them that starting with binos was good, and if they find it wasn’t for them, they decide astronomy overall is also maybe not for them. Let me give you an example of why they might struggle.

If you want to find the Hercules Cluster, a small globular cluster of stars, and assume that you have dark enough skies to find it and see it, then you will likely have to start at a nearby known star, follow a small trail of stars by hopping from one star to another to work your way down the sky, and BAM, there’s your cluster.

Yet here’s the thing though for a telescope. You can find the first star, look at a map, look back at the eyepiece, look again at the map, figure out what the first “hop” is, make the hop, look back at the map, look again, etc. It doesn’t run away from you when you look at the map. It stays on the target.

If you’re using binos, and as I said, most people do NOT attach to a tripod initially, then you have them in YOUR HANDS, look up, see your starting point, put your hands down, look at the map, look again at your starting point, look up, put the binos down, look at your map again, etc. You’re “losing” your spot each time. If any of those markers are small or faint, or if you have to do three jumps, the first time star-hopping is going to be REALLY frustrating to figure out.

Binos CAN be good, I’m just not sure they come with enough context or caveats. Your big advantage though is that in binos, you see a HUGE swath of sky at a time, so the likelihood is that your telescope might take 3 jumps to do what in your binos only takes 1. But, again, it is less magnified, and you can’t see as much detail.

Making a choice

For me, though, I’m working on a personal guide to introductory amateur astronomy. If I’m going to write about binoculars, I have to know how to use them and the parameters I’m considering. Including owning a pair, trying various setups, etc.

Recently, famed Canadian astronomer Alan Dyer wrote an article in Sky News about the best binoculars for beginners in Canada, and he listed a number of choices. His cut-off was $300 and ones that are generally available in Canada, which is a pretty good starting point for me. One of my complaints about a lot of bino lovers is that when asked about bino models, they frequently recommend binos that cost $500-$1500. The RASC Observers Handbook has a similar snobbyness in it towards only high-end binos, well out of the price range of most beginner astronomers. For the same price, they could have a telescope that would kick butt three times over. But I digress.

Dyer covered 13 choices, I worked through all the configurations and bought a pair of 8×42 Vortex Crossfires HD. (If you want to read my thought process, you can find it at https://polywogg.ca/choosing-a-pair-of-astronomy-binoculars-for-beginners/).

Am I potentially “complicating my life” by expanding? Absolutely. But I’m also simplifying somewhat. Right now, for example, Comet Neowise is all the rage. I could go down to the river, set up my telescope, do all that work, OR I could just look through the binoculars. I do want to get good at using them. Yet I was still on the fence.

Until a webinar like the one I mentioned yesterday on astronomy answered me a different way, which is a bit similar to the original advice of astronomers. If you’re using 8x42s, it’s a good way to learn your way around the sky pretty fast.

Not a good tool necessarily for getting into astronomy, but a good tool to use when learning the night sky, star hopping, and constellation mapping. That’s a more practical bit of advice, and not limited to newbies.

So today I choose to expand my astro gear with binoculars.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to learn about astronomy (TIC00009b)

The PolyBlog
July 16 2020

About two weeks ago, I started a new challenge for myself — to blog each day about forward-looking choices I was making. Things that involved some extra effort to “create my reality” beyond drifting through the day. I went for the Seinfeld method — how many days in a row could I keep the chain going — and I crashed at 8 days. On the ninth day, I made poor choices or let my scripts push me through the day. So what do I do with a broken chain? Start a new chain.

That new chain starts today, and I’m maintaining my numerical sequence (so today is #9) but I’ve added a “b” after it for my second series. Let’s see how far I get, particularly with holidays coming up. Will I still blog while I’m at the cottage?

I don’t know either, but today I was still at home, and I registered for a RASC Speaker Series presentation by Zoom from the President of the Vancouver Centre. He was billed as talking about how to get going in astronomy, navigate the sky, star hop, etc., but it really didn’t seem to be what he was talking about for most of the night.

I arrived a bit late to the call, and he was already in about 9 slides and talking about how you plan what you are going to see. He had talked already about learning the constellations of the sky, and he was demonstrating a table he had made that listed all the constellations you could see throughout the year and at what times of the day, if at all. The goal was to use this in an Excel spreadsheet so you could decide with a bit of sorting, which constellations to try for in any given month of the year, and prioritize those that were the best for seeing.

Other tools he showed were weather apps and light pollution maps, plus a chart to track moon rise/sets and how much viewing time you would have between astronomical twilight after sunset and astronomical twilight before sunrise.

Was it the best presentation ever? Not even close, to be honest, but that isn’t as harsh a criticism as you might think. There are a LOT of bits and pieces in there to share, and while the presenter has a background in education, I did not get a feeling that he had a set vision of what he wanted everyone to know at the end. I see this as a common failing in the explanations we give people on astro stuff as a community. We give them info, we do not set out to teach them how to think about things.

Let me digress for a moment. I see lots of people who are trying to help people understand how to get going with their new telescope. And the explanations are all over the place…start with the moon, start with manual sky charts, start with an app, etc. No one, well except maybe me, seems to look at those questions and say, “How can I teach this person in a way that they will get it logically and coherently in a way they will remember tomorrow?”.

When I explain similar stuff, I start with an explanation that they need to learn how to do three things. First, they need to set up their telescope physically, including aligning their finder tool to their scope. Second, they need to know how to navigate the sky to find key stars. Finally, they need to to align their scope to the sky and start observing. Step one gives them elements they need for step two. Step two gives them elements for step three. And step three adds some other elements to build on their learning. They can literally do step one only the first night and they’re golden for several outings. Then they can learn step 2 and do more. And finally, they can pull it all together for step 3.

I’m not some exceptional brainiac that figured this out where no one else could, more that most people don’t seem to think about how to explain it to others in a way that is easy to understand — and thus easy to replicate. I have a few pages on this site that explain some hot topics in astronomy, and other people have found them useful and then referred still others to my site for the same info. There are certainly people who are far more knowledgeable about the issues than I, yet people still come to my site to read my version.

And as I expand my offerings, some of it will cover the same ground that the guy did tonight. I need to see different ways of explaining the same material, even if I don’t completely agree with the methodology. Nor even some of the content. The speaker tonight has views about digital tools that border on Luddite in my view, but that’s also not uncommon in the community. Mostly it comes from people who learned a specific way and therefore think that is the best or only way everyone should learn too.

However, that didn’t stop me from posing questions in areas directly related to those beliefs to get the classicist answer. In particular, I’m facing a small dilemma on buying some binoculars for astronomy. I’ve held off for 7 years, and have finally decided I need a pair, particularly if I am going to to be writing about these topics, including binoculars. By coincidence, we went out as a family to see Comet Neowise the other night, and used some old binos that I had accumulated for a DIY project. They worked well enough, and convinced me even further to splurge on some new ones. And this was a perfect guy to ask about the functional differences between two common types. It’s clearly in his wheelhouse and his answer was perfect, exactly what I wanted to know. I almost wish he did his whole presentation about binoculars.

But in the end, the real point is that I could just drift along on my own, doing my own thing. Instead, I am choosing to learn more formally about astronomy through these presentations and to soak up all the perspectives.

I don’t have to do it, I choose to do it to expand my reality. Which is also why I am blogging about my choices.

So, what choices are you making to expand your reality?