Journals

For frick sake, life, quit taking people that I care for away from me!

This is a followup to an older journal post.

I decided to finally do something and got me a 1TB WD Blue.

I knew I didn't want to lose several days of work doing a clean Windows install followed by hunting down drivers and installing all the stuff I already had, so I decided to take a different route - cloning the old drive into the new one.

I looked into the suggestions posted and also had a look out there in the vastness of the internet. It looked like dd was an easy enough option.

I borrowed my dad's desktop and plugged both drives to it (and unplugged his because it didn't have any more SATA cables). Booted up a Linux Mint live disc and thought, why not use GParted? So that's what I did instead. I copied all the partitions into the new drive with GParted, set the same boot flags, put the disk back in the laptop and... nothing. A measly blinking cursor welcomed me.

Five hours of messing with it later, turns out it was failing because I didn't copy the MBR. So I copied it using dd and NOW I FINALLY HAVE A WORKING DRIVE.

So if anybody finds themselves in need of doing this too*, here's a summary of the process:

1. Plug both drives into the same computer
2. If said computer doesn't have Linux on it already, boot a live disc.
3. Run GParted, triple check which drive is your original drive and which drive is your target drive.
4. Copy every single partition from the original drive into the new drive.
5. Make sure the boot flag is set in the exact same partition (and any other flags the original drive may have). This still won't boot yet because the MBR hasn't been copied.
6. The MBR is located at the first 512 bytes of the drive. Assuming your original drive is /dev/sda and your target drive is /dev/sdb (otherwise replace accordingly), fire up the console and copy it with this command: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1
7. Put the new drive back in the target computer and leave the old drive in the back of a drawer until the end of time.

After this I only booted up Windows from the new drive and created a new partition in the unused space. Now the most I have to do is move some files over to balance the free space. The great thing is that the new drive is a lot quieter than the old one! Noise drives me mad.

As a side bonus, I now have a complete backup of the entirety of my files on this computer including Windows up until today.

I may also move my Steam installation to the other partition. Haven't decided yet.

*I'm also writing it here to save myself a future search.

My grandma had died last Saturday night, the funeral was yesterday. Being a hard case of stoicism, I'd mostly emotionally coped with the loss, even though just yestrday I was about to break down and cry. Yet still, memories and thoughts remain and seemingly start to haunt me.

Three weeks ago when she was taken to hospital, I had decided to stop working on anything related with writing or development for some time, to let the steam off. But the more I tried to suppress creative processes ongoing in my mind, the more painful thoughts I received. In effect, I started writing a book, greatly changed and improved lore and setting of my game project and thought over concept arts and OST for it, and came up with numerous ideas for my Darkmod fan mission.

I've never been so moved, brooding and nostalgic, yet so motivated and ready to act in my entire life. As if creativity was the best way for me to cope with anything bad coming my way.

From Romania, with love.

0010 0011 . 0000 0010 . 0010 0000 0000 0010
0010 0011 . 0000 0010 . 0010 0000 0001 1000

or

10111.10.11111010010
10111.10.11111100010

or if you will

17.02.7D2
17.02.7E2

10 (used to be 0F until today)

(have some respect, I did the conversions mostly in my head, rest in Notepad :P)

As a follow up to my recent journal, here's what I'm arriving at.

I decided I will acquire new equipment soon. Some people suggested I go for AMD setup but it appears to be less available than Intel gear. So after considering my options and seeing what's available near me, I am considering the following setup:

Processor: Intel i5-7400 3.0GHz (7th gen/Kaby Lake) socket 1151
I might go for an i7-7700/4.2GHz but I believe I read somewhere it's generally not worth it. I don't remember what how where or why, so if anyone can point me in the right direction that'd be great because I couldn't find it.

Mobo: ASRock B250M Pro4
(I was offered the other two, but from what I read on several sites this appears to be a better option and it's also available)
Downside: Neither seem to be compatible with 8th gen processors.

RAM: 2x ADATA U-Dimm DDR4 8GB 2400 (for a total of 16GB)
I kept getting offered fancy "gamer" models that cost twice as much just because they're red and have speed stripes and wings and headlights. Thank you, it's a computer not a race car.

Storage: Probably a 1TB WD Blue + a 250GB SSD. "Possibly" a second 1TB drive.

GPU: I haven't yet decided. Suggestions more than welcome. I am also considering dual screens, so anything with two outputs sounds like a good idea. Considering. Depending on whether I can afford it on top of the already crazy number I'm going to spend.
EDIT! I'm leaning towards a GTX1050 because it's the least stupidly-expensive card. FFS graphics cards didn't cost this much the last time I got one!

Power supply: From what I've read this setup should do well with 450-600W.

Case, while I'm at it: Whatever that doesn't have windows and neon lights inside. It's a computer not a strip club FFS

For those knowledged enough in the subject: Does this setup look right? Is there anything that looks blaringly wrong and I should change course ASAP? Do you have any suggestions or alternatives I might have overlooked? Can you help fill in the blanks where I don't know what to get yet?

Please help me spread the word for this crowd funding project.

Thank you!

The beginning of next semester is getting closer, my break ends at upcoming Monday. I need to vent...

I've been working my ass off as usually when getting back home. I always helped my parents and family overall as much as I could. I'm one of the rare cases of college students that instead of taking money, bring it back home to help out family. It's been tough after my father's surgical operation, but I'm used to much more work, I'm only a bit tired.

However, my gradnma had an effusion today, several hours ago, and it was a really heavy blow. Thank God I'm still on break and was there to help before an ambulance arrived. It was only a weak effusion, but it really scared the shit out of us, especially that my grandma is 86 years old. She's much better now, most of examination turned out great results for her age (which is not weird, she was always active, never needed any medicine and never even stayed in hospital!), but it's not certain whether she'll be alright.

Overtly worrying is really bad for my health (especially stomach), but sometimes it feels like the whole house would fall apart without me...

Got roped into being the sound operator for an amdram show about 3 days before the dress run, I'm only doing it to save face for the society putting the show on but sorta regretting having to do a mediocre job for the next week and getting paid a sweet, phat sum of £0

At what point does one consider themself good enough at a certain thing to start charging a decent amount of money without being overbearing? I've exactly this same issue when doing posters / graphic for folk, as well as DJing. I know enough to gauge that I'm absolutely not the best at a certain field, so continuously undersell myself because I'm completely unaware of the limit of my abilities and what I'm actually worth / valued at

This was Scott eliminating the entire team the other day playing Overwatch.

That makes me a proud daddy!

Hey guys, remember the good ol' web designs from the 2000's? Yeah me neither or at least not in the way I would like to anyway.

Flashy gifs and horrible color matching aside what I like about the old way of doing things is that everything was small, font, buttons etc... I don't know if that was a result of low resolution 4:3 CRT's that everyone had those days or what, but it somehow leaves me something to desire in today's web designs where everything is blown out of proportion. I understand that mobile exists today and that sort of requires that everything is big.

TWHL is probably the only website I know and visit that still rocks the old design style, but that will change with v4. It's all fine and dandy I'm not here to cry over that times change and you need to as well.

Sooo whats this all about then?! I have a little personal/work project I'm working on that could benefit from the "old style" web design, specifically an admin page where you could fit a lot of information w/o having the need to scroll down as much for more. I've seen people using CRM software that looked like it was made in the 90's, tree menus, 12px font everywhere etc.. And it struck me that you can fit a lot of data on a 1080p resolution screen. And you can probably see where I am going with this, if not here's a little hint:I'm having a hard time finding inspiration for it and hoping some of you could help me? (pretty please )

This also serves as a discussion on web design. Now vs then, likes and dislikes.

Everything have got solution in life, less two things:

The death and download cs_canbunk ;(

I guess I've entered the "2 monitors" club.

After realising that my "new" PC was practically worthless except for games in Software mode (until I buy a GT 710 or something for it):

... I decided to utilise the monitor somehow. I connected the monitor to my laptop via a VGA cable.

This is so, so good. I wish I had the pleasure of working with 2 monitors before. :]

Honestly, a friend of mine was right: "Once you start using 2 monitors, you can't go back."
Now I see why.

There's a good chance I may have made another person. Sorry.

Specifically, Jude Morris, my son. Born on the 17th at 06:07 and weighing eight pounds and three ounces after only 32 minutes of labour.

For those not yet making babies, my daughter took nearly 16 hours to appear. 32 minutes is crazy fast...