Memory upgrade question

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Here’s a question for all you memory techie nerd people out there:

Given the choice, would you go for Crucial memory, or Corsair Value Select memory?

The reason why I am asking is that I’m finally getting around to upgrading Hari’s computer, now that memory prices have fallen far enough for it be a little over £100 for a full 2 GB of RAM. Crucial have the memory she needs at £108, but they’re currently out of stock and there’s no indication as to when they’ll get stock back in. Scan, on the other hand, has Corsair Value Select memory available now for £107 including delivery.

Obviously the two cost the same so price isn’t an issue, but should I wait and buy Crucial memory, or get Corsair memory now? The fact that it is ‘value select’ seems to imply that it might not be as good as Crucial’s memory but I have no idea whether this is actually the case; all I know is that Crucial and Corsair are good brands.

Obviously it would be nice if she could afford high quality gaming memory but this is about the best we can do for now. Any thoughts are welcome.

Lowdown on London

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So, London. We caught a late train out of Bradford (one of the direct Bradford-London trains) and got into the capital about 10pm on the Friday night. The great thing about London is that the public transport systems don’t stop at about 7pm, like they do in most other places. So, after meeting a friend in a pub near Euston, and leaving at closing time, we could still get to our hotel. The hotel was near Canning Town and is a good half hour away by tube/DLR.

We had intended to do some sightseeing over the weekend, but when we mentioned to various of our friends that we’d be in London, they were all keen to meet up with us. So, we ended up spending the afternoon socialising. We went to the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes, again near Euston, which is an awesome place. It’s a pub which does nice food and decent beer, but also has a 10-pin bowling alley and karaoke booths, as well as retro arcade machines. Very easy to kill a lot of time there.

Saturday evening was the main reason for going to London – to see a musical in the West End, which is something neither of us have done before. We’ve seen musicals at theatres before – we both went to see Jerry Springer: The Opera when it came to Bradford in May last year – but there’s something special about seeing it in the West End (which for those unfamiliar with London is a bit like Broadway).

The musical we went to see was Avenue Q – I bought the soundtrack late in 2005 as the songs are hilarious, but it was only last year that it came to our shores. You may remember a song called “The Internet Is For Porn” being passed around the internet a lot some time ago – that’s taken from the musical and is quite a good example of what you can expect from it. If you’re easily offended then you’ll hate it; if you’re not then you’ll be rolling in the aisles laughing. Even though I knew most of the songs off by heart, to see it live was an awesome experience.

We went to the matinée performance, which had the benefit of being quite a bit cheaper than the later Saturday showing. We didn’t buy the cheapest seats since they were right on the balcony, and didn’t have a good view, but the ones we did buy were quite good for the price that we paid.

Afterwards, we went out for dinner – we had to walk around quite a bit before we found a restaurant which was in our price range, but we settled for a nice Italian restaurant just off one of the main streets which was actually very reasonable. We then had another late night tube journey – it’s surprising just how busy the Jubilee line is at 11:30pm on a Saturday night.

Sunday was also supposed to be a sightseeing day but we didn’t really do any – instead, we had lunch at Yo! Sushi (which I’d promised Hari as she has taken a real liking to sushi) and perusing the food court at Selfridges, which is the only bit of the shop we can actually afford. We came away with a big box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Oreo cookies – believe it or not, these are considered premium brands here and are hard to get hold of, with a standard packet of Oreos costing up to £3 (which is about US$5.50). They’re expensive, but sooooooo nice.

The journey back was okay, bar the fact that the train was 20 minutes late leaving London. All in all we had a really good weekend and although we did spend a lot of money it was worth it.

Unfortunately we’ve both been ill with colds since getting back 🙁 .

5 Years of Blogging

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5 years ago, I started a blog. It wasn’t particularly good, or even particularly interesting, but it was out there, on the internet.

5 years on, and it’s still here. It’s changed somewhat – the URL, the design, the back-end system have all changed – but it’s still my blog and I’m still the one posting it. Had you told me 5 years ago that I’d still be doing this, I’d have been surprised.

I’m not going to do anything big, or announce anything major today – for a start it has come at a really bad time 🙂 . But I just want to take the opportunity to thank everyone for reading this, especially those who have been reading from the early days.

Incidentally, I finally finished my dissertation yesterday, and had it laser-printed today, ready to hand in tomorrow. That’s one chapter of my life I’m very glad to have behind me 🙂 .

End of Year Quiz 2006

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In what is now an annual event, it’s about time I did the ‘End Of Year Quiz’. Read my answers from 2005, 2004 and 2003, or read on for this year’s answers.

1.What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before?

Drive a car. Under instruction of course, I’m still learning.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Last year’s resolutions were:

  1. Don’t binge drink. Yep, managed it. My overall alcohol consumption this year has been down overall, or at least much more spread out (so a glass of wine a few times a week rather than waiting until Friday to get totally sloshed off my face).
  2. Eat more healthily. A step back… I think my diet was worse this year than last year. Definitely going to do something about it this year.
  3. Do more work. Yep, still need to do that.
  4. Do more exercise. Some improvement again, but I’m not exactly in tip-top shape fitness-wise so more work to be done.

For 2007, I think I’ll carry on with 2,3 and 4 since binge drinking really doesn’t appeal to me anymore, and add ‘Keep my room tidy’ since that’s something I’ve really fallen back on this year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My cousin’s wife gave birth earlier this year – here’s a picture of the little bundle of joy from last week.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Not exactly, but I ended up consoling someone who lost a close relative.

5. What countries did you visit?

Stayed firmly in England right the way through the year. I’ve neither had the time or the money, and Hari hasn’t had the money or passport.

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?

A car, a proper job, and a house with just me and Hari in it. We’re looking at renting together this summer, hopefully.

7. What date(s) from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Introducing Hari to almost everyone in my extended family, the beach party (again), visiting Haworth and getting stuck in the Lake District because of the snow.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Staying with Hari for a whole year.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Having to resit a lot of my exams.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Again, lots of colds. No physical injuries thankfully.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My MacBook. This is the third year in a row that something made by Apple has featured here.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Hari, for sticking with me, and my friends for being cool.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

I’ll let Mr Bush off this year because he hasn’t done anything much to make me hate him more, but Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, stays there, as does the Israeli government for invading Lebanon.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Once again, Apple Computer took a sizeable chunk of my cash, as did BSM for my driving lessons and the university for my tuition fees. I didn’t spend so much at the pub though.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Hari, the beach party and going to Cadbury World, thus revealing my inner 5 year old again.

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?

“Monster” by The Automatic.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

  • happier or sadder? Probably happier.
  • thinner or fatter? About the same.
  • richer or poorer? Quite a bit poorer 🙁

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Work on my dissertation…

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Playing World of Warcraft. Though I’ve only played it a bit these past two weeks.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

Um, I spent it at home with my parents, and went to see the rest of my family.

21. Who deleted question 21?

The Penguin of Death.

22. Did you fall in love in 2006?

Was already in love. Thankfully I didn’t fall out if it.

23. How many one-night stands?

None.

24. What was your favourite TV programme?

Doctor Who wins again, as does Family Guy. I haven’t been watching much TV this year, to be honest.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

No, not really.

26. What was the best book you read?

Me? Read a book? Nevah!

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Yellowcard. Okay so most people probably discovered them about 3-4 years ago, but never mind.

28. What did you want and get?

My MacBook.

29. What did you want and not get?

I’m still waiting for that pony…

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

I actually enjoyed The Holiday even though some gave it lousy reviews. I also got to see Narnia which was thoroughly enjoyable.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I was 22 – we went out for dinner and had a few drinks.

32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Not having to study so much.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?

Same as usual.

34. What kept you sane?

Hari and my friends.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Kirsten Dunst still.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

I really haven’t been all that involved in politics this year, or at least not anything on a national scale.

37. Who did you miss?

A friend of mine from university who moved away to a new job when she finished her course.

38. Who was the best new person you met?

Didn’t really meet that many new people this year so no-one sticks out.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006.

Playing Solitaire does not boost your academic performance.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

That’s quite hard because to be honest this year hasn’t been hugely interesting – no big events or major crises. Unless anyone knows a song about life being normal, not particularly eventful and neither really great nor really bad.

Merry Christmas

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Just like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas 🙂 . I hope Santa brought you everything you wanted and that you have an enjoyable day.

A brief overview of what arrived for me this morning:

  • Pass-plus lessons (extra driving lessons for when I pass my driving test)
  • A new shirt
  • A new electric razor
  • 2 boxes of Turkish Delight
  • A bottle of Spanish Cava
  • A sonic tapeless measuring thingamabob
  • A handful of books
  • Money
  • Christmassy sweets

And socks, of course. It wouldn’t be Christmas without a pair of socks.

Memory upgrade

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Today I finally got around to upgrading the memory in my Mac Mini. Since buying it last year it’s had 512 MB of RAM, which is fine for general computer-ry stuff (reading email, browsing the web, maybe running iTunes in the background) but lately it’s been used more and more for playing World of Warcraft, which is a very memory-intensive program. With it running, doing anything else on the system is, at best, difficult – switching between World of Warcraft and, say, Firefox takes a long time.

I ended up buying the memory from Crucial – I’ve bought from before and had no problems, and this time was no exception. I ordered the memory yesterday morning, and despite going for the free delivery and not the more expensive guaranteed next day delivery it still came today, which is excellent. Crucial also happened to be cheaper than buying Corsair memory from either Scan or Dabs, and I’d rather not have generic memory if I can avoid it.

The reason why I have been putting the upgrade off isn’t so much the cost aspect (which ended up at £85 for 1 GB of PC2700 DDR RAM), but the actual upgrade itself, and in particular taking the unit apart. It’s a very small unit and the case isn’t screwed on – you actually have to pry it open with a knife – I used a standard putty knife from Wickes. Because my unit also has Airport and Bluetooth, you have to then detach one of the antennae before then lifting the RAM out and inserting the new module. Thankfully, there are videos which explain this process – I really would not have bothered if I hadn’t seen it being done first. One thing I did do, however, was boot the computer before putting the lid back on and making it sure it worked – after going through all the effort of taking the machine apart I didn’t want to have to do it all over again just because the module wasn’t seated correctly, for example.

Thankfully, the upgrade worked, and now the Mac has double the memory to play with. It’s not a seismic difference in speed but it does feel snappier; still, my MacBook, with its Intel Core Duo processor, beats it when playing WoW. But not by quite so much.

The Un-Funny Truth about Scientology

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Screenshot of the Un-Funny Truth of Scientology

This was originally a guest post at Stupid Evil Bastard, re-posted here following that site’s demise.

If you have a few moments to spare, watch The Un-Funny Truth about Scientology over at YTMND. It’s a presentation showing how people’s lives have been affected by the Church of Scientology and how events have been covered up. If you were ever in doubt about just how cooky these people are, then this should confirm your suspicions. Beware of some disturbing images, however.

A sequel has also been published which details the Church’s reaction to it.

Things

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Thanks for all of the birthday wishes over the past couple of days – I had quite a good birthday but most of my presents aren’t coming until tomorrow. Not entirely sure what I’m getting but I think they will mostly be vouchers for driving lessons.

I’m having a brief experiment with Trackback. A while ago I removed the block of code that allows other weblogs to discover the trackback URL and post to it, in an effort to reduce trackback spam. This turned out to be very successful, making the trackback problem almost non-existent, however since then I’ve been getting almost no trackbacks at all which makes the feature almost useless. So I’ve re-added it, but now I’ll only be opening trackback on a handful of entries (with it off by default). I’ll see if I start getting more pings this way, or if the spam problem becomes intolerable again.

I’m looking at alternatives to trackback, such as getting data from Technorati and displaying a list of blogs that link to that entry, but I’d like to give trackback another chance before I give up on it.

Poorest Brits are healthier than Richest Americans

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This was originally a guest post at Stupid Evil Bastard, re-posted here following that site’s demise.

A study published by the American Medical Association shows that even the poorest Brits are healthier than the richest Americans:

Middle-aged, white Americans are much sicker than their counterparts in England, startling new research shows, despite U.S. health care spending per person that’s more than double what England spends.

A higher rate of Americans tested positive for diabetes and heart disease than the English. Americans also self-reported more diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, lung disease and cancer.

The gap between the countries holds true for educated and uneducated, rich and poor.

The study focused only on non-Hispanic whites and took factors like smoking, drinking and obesity into account – Brits tend to drink more heavily and more Americans are obese. It concluded that Americans tend to have a worse diet (eating more junk food) and took part in less exercise, but also that in Britain the primary health care provision was better, so that ailments were being picked up and treated earlier.

The media on both sides of the Atlantic constantly derides Britain’s state health care system but actually it does work nearly all the time, and studies like this show that.

British racist politician tries to justify his views on TV

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This was originally a guest post at Stupid Evil Bastard, re-posted here following that site’s demise.

Sky News, a 24-hour-news channel partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., held an interview with Dr Phill Edwards, the press officer of the British National Party (BNP) – a far-right political party. Though the BNP claims it is not racist, it is essentially opposed to all forms of immigration and several of its members have been taken to court charged with making comments which may incite racial hatred, which is a crime in the UK.

The video of the interview is here – in it, Edwards stands by comments made to a student in January 2005 where he says that young black people have low IQs and are likely to mug you, and that black people generally are not high achievers. Edwards has a PhD and he claims that black people are genetically disadvantaged.

It’s worth a watch.