People who cannot count…

I have blogged about my new test lab. That I am working on it, but since I don’t own a lot of tools. In fact almost none and thus I have to order new stuff from time to time. And I guess you remember what happened last time, right?

Yup. They did it again. This time from a different shop, from a different city in Spain. Oh well. Who needs 17 boxes of wall plugs. Sure. I ordered some of them to keep stuff on my walls, but not 17 boxes! Now I have enough for the rest of my life, and my son – if I ever have one – will have enough as well LOL

I also ordered some SDS concrete drills for my Hilti hamer drill, and what do you know. I received a full box of 65 of them. Seriously? Yeah. I know. I don’t get it either.

Then I ordered a Spanish flag, and got two of them. So what the heck is wrong with the Spanish economy you ask? Hmm. People who cannot count perhaps?

Advertisement

Got to love statistics…

Someone linked me to some data and then I found one about reading statistics

Holy mackerel. We may have solved the mystery why people still think that Nasa didn’t land on the moon… but in a studio.

LOL Look mom. I finally got a job. I know son. You’re with Nasa now. Just don’t make the same mistake. Keep an eye on the shadow. No worries mom. Nasa will land somewhere outside the studio, we just don’t know where that may be… since we have to rely on Russian shuttles these days. Said to be junk, but at least they don’t explode.

On a more serious note. If this data is true, which I think isn’t by the way, then the US would be in real trouble. I mean when 46% of american adults cannot even understand the labels on their prescriptions… they might die as a result of an OD. I also wonder how the U.S. adults, of which 50% of them are unable to read an 8th grade level book, are going to support their children with their homework. I guess not. So what happens with their children? I guess their future isn’t that bright after all.

Source: Read Faster, Reading Stats

Fake?

Lost work due to an accidental rm…

Giving someone access to your local Github repository, in my case my RevoBoot and thus also ssdtPRGen repository, helped Jeroen to get stuff done for me… but earlier today I lost my local RevoBoot repository. Here is what happened.

Jeroen was about to test something for me, and then I want him to RM his RevoBoot directory. He only forgot that he was working remote, on my local drive, and thus POOF.

At that time I was updating ssdtPRGen and all of the sudden my Xcode window was emptied out. I had no clue what was going on. Not until Jeroen asked me why he couldn’t retrieve the latest files from the public repository. Well Jeroen. That is because I signed an NDA (remember) and thus I did not commit my work into the public repository, because that is verboten. I can’t do that. Not until the NDA is lifted. And since you RM’ed my local repository… we have to start over from scratch!

This of course is my own fault, because I should have made a backup first. Well I did, but in the RevoBoot directory and since that is gone now. Yeah. I love Sunday mornings… when I should have been doing something else instead of swearing.

Cold boot is just a waste of time and energy

Did you know that a single cold boot requires more power than when you let the same PC idle for a month?

Luckily. Cold boots will soon become a thing of the past. Thanks to the next generation of Intel processors. Introducing a lower idle frequency of 800 MHz for desktop processors and new low power states (as low as C10). Reducing the power need by a factor six. So why would you switch off your PC to wait longer and use more power? Isn’t that just a waste of time and energy?

Intel Visual BIOS (Haswell i7-4770K)

It is blue and owned by Intel…

Another one. This one runs @ 2.5GHz (i7-4770T, 4 Cores and 8 Threads, Max TDP 45 with a Maximum Turbo Frequency of 3700 MHz).

Look. I did not share this with you. Intel just did 🙂

Edit: Title changed (typo).

p.s. The new Asus UEFI BIOS features like Quick Note, Last Changed and My Favorites are far more interesting.

Hit and miss

Last week I decided to order some parts for my new lab. I also ordered some parts for a new build. This should all have been easy, but it wasn’t. Here is what happened.

Today the goods arrived. First I got two Dell monitors, instead of one. Which I of course did not accept and thus everything had to be returned. Bah!

Then I was asked to reorder. Which I kindly declined telling them I first want to receive the monitor I already payed for. Or else I may end up with two monitors after all. And since I only want one monitor to see if I want to order more…

A few hours later the new tools for my lab arrived. The poor guy had troubles carrying everything so I helped him. I signed and he drove off. I was wondering why this box was so darn heavy. I took it into my lab and opened it to find two cartons inside the box, instead of one. Hmm.

Then I opened one carton to find the two pieces I ordered. Great. So what is in the other box? Exactly the same stuff. Why? Because I can’t count. At least that was the explanation of the lady on the phone.

I checked the website and verified that I didn’t pay for the extra delivery. Nope. All fine here. So I received four parts for the price of two. I didn’t gave up and phoned again. The lady was pissed and hang up after she said that I couldn’t count, or may have issues understanding their ordering process. Excuse me? Hey lady. I was only trying to return the stuff that don’t belong to me. Now what?

I left the goods in the carton and e-mailed someone from their management. Let’s see what this brings. Wait for it. Here’s their answer. First. This person wasn’t too happy… about me complaining. He also wrote to trust his employees and when I think to have received too much, then I should be happy instead of complaining about it. Ok. I won’t Thanks!

What I don’t like about my hack

I have a number of incompatible or missing devices. Let’s have a look at them.

USB Bluetooth Dongle
My Mini USB Bluetooth dongle won’t let me wake my hack with a wireless keyboard/mouse, which sucks, but the good news is that my Magic Trackpad works. Flawlessly.

Network adapter
The network chip on most motherboards are incompatible, and so is the one on my motherboard. I need to install a kext after I installed OS X. What I need is a Intel compatible one, without the need of having me to install a kext.

WiFi
My motherboard lacks WiFi and thus I have to install a third party adapter for it, which is not guaranteed to work with OS X. What are you guys using at the moment?

SATA III
Older motherboards don’t have SATA III and modern motherboards usually only have two connectors. Then we have to patch our DSDT and install/modify a kext to get the Asmedia – or whatever – controller going.

But I would love to install a Apricorn Velocity Solo 2 but there isn’t a single shop here that sells them. No wonder, because there isn’t a distributor for Apricorn products in my country.

You can install a SSD on either side of the card in a (hardware) RAID-0 configuration, and there is one extra connector for a third drive. Fully supported by OS X and thus this thing boots just fine with OS X.

Expensive Watercooling Parts
Watercooling is either too expensive or simply too complicated for people. Kits are more easier to install, and a lot more affordable. However. They have their limits and don’t look as nice as the real water-cooled configurations but I do not want to pay a premium for a stupid radiator, fitting, hose et all…. just because it is a niche market.

UEFI BIOS modification chips
You need to have a BIOS chip programmer and search for the right chip for your motherboard. After programming it, you can only hope that it works.

What I want is a insertable print/adapter with two DIP-8 sockets on it. One for the factory UEFI and one for the modified UEFI BIOS chip. A simple switch should allow me to switch between the two. This way we can reprogram the mod chip without having to worry about anything.

Cable Sleeving
Cable sleeving may look nice, but you have to order it from a webshop that may not sell anything else that is interesting. I mean not a special kind of deal for your hackintosh.

So. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could purchase everything we need for our hack.. from one address? The good news is that Jeroen is working on something that could make this possible for us. I just hope that he can pull it off.

Oh and people who are interested in becoming a distributor/reseller – one or two per country – can contact me and I’ll forward it to Jeroen. The idea is that people can order from one place, and you do the rest.

EFI_SECURITY_VIOLATION

Good news. I found the checks in the UEFI BIOS source code preventing us from flashing a modified UEFI BIOS, but my employer said to sack me when I make this public. Fine. Then I won’t tell anyone where and in which module they need to jump over EFIERR (26). I’m done with this. Sorry folks.

Haswell 4Kx2K display capabilities

Some people say that the 4th generation Intel® CoreTM processors – known as Haswell – arn’t a real Tock update. Well. I have to disagree. Have a look at this.

And this is what you get… when you happen to have one of these multi port EIZO 4Kx2K displays.

A stunning 4K resolution, but it costs an arm and a leg. Maybe a little too much. Certainly with a EIZO® DuraVision FDH3601 with a price tag of over 30.000 Euro, but there is another solution with 4 x 1920 * 1080 DisplayPort 1.2 monitors as well. Making it a over five times less expensive.

Note: The Sharp® PN-k321 is a much cheaper alternative at around 4.500 Euro and I expect that the price will go down over time.

I tell you. This is exactly what I was looking for. I mean. Wouldn’t you love to work/game with a setup like this, or the new Collage setup with three Full HD monitors?

Update
Model and price info for the Eizo® monitor added, plus a cheaper alternative made by Sharp. Additional information about the capabilities of the 4th generation Intel® CoreTM processors can be found in in this PDF.

UEFI Secure Flash

People who ran into a “Security Verification Error” might want to read this – no further comments from me.

Or… what if we cough up the annual UEFI membership fee of $2500 ? Would that help?