Which thread was that in?
Never heard of that
I like Rick’s variant more 
1 Like
Everyone calls it that because of all the adapters you need to plug anything into it.
In my living room 
1 Like
As much as I hate to say it, Apple do some things right…and then instead of pointing the gun down and shooting themselves in the foot, they point it up and shoot themselves in the head. Case in point, Magsafe, a very good invention, is now and forever dead.
2 Likes
This “now” lasts for like two years. One of the main reasons I took MacBook Air instead of that MacBook
Damn so many arguments presented… I have nothing to say anymore…
2 Likes
Louis’ channel is great. He’s a Macbook repair technician who posts educational board repair videos, but he loathes Apple. He also does other vids too.
I see why he loathes it, didn’t know that Apple hates independent repair technicians
1 Like
Apple are control freaks and want to be master puppeteers.
2 Likes
So i got a little too bored lately…
Jupiter and the moon were beautiful in the sky enough to make me go through the following pain.
First night, i recorded both, but i realized that on the 300mm focal length of a 24Mpixel chip can give very nice results on the moons of jupiter if the exposure is high enough
so i thought of making them dance.
First night was a failure because a DSLR sony will
a)create a new directory for every day you use it but it won’t do so at 0:00 but only IF you shut it off and on.
the image numbering continues but when it reaches 9999 it b) starts over.
Hence, you got this dir with 8.000 images to combine with the previous of 3.000, it takes a full battery to empty it and then you must correct all the mistakes.
Fix was found, and that is to format the darn card so numbering AT LEAST starts on 0.
But being furtherly bored… i decided to add another digit on the mm scale for last night and decided to jump to 3556mm.
Carried a 100kg telescope out that i hadn’t been using for quite some time (because i need to make it stationary, than move it around, since EVERY time you want to use its computer it has to be aligned and if you do that on EVERY night you use it, you end up damaging the gears with friction that would happen in hundreds of years of use.)
But this also requires a PC.
I knew that i had removed the SSD from this and had it on another PC so i also needed to fix that.
So, last night was about : carried the Telescope out, (needs a lift to bypass the door to balcony rail too and i have no lift but a tripod can be lifted at three stops and with 1/3th the weight)
DSLR on tripod recapturing jupiter and re-framing it every 5-7 minutes ON THE ROOF (work ladder installed) then jump down to install windows.
all cables installed, i had 3 hours or so to install the OS until Jupiter arrives at the FOV of the telescope because a tree is hiding it. (hence, DSLR on a tripod at the roof tiles)
At some point, as the PC boots three four times (because of forgetting to connect stuff) i got into the BIOS to verify stuff and wow! 71°C on the CPU?
oh yes… PUMP, PUMP !!! who forgot to pwer it up and almost risked his CPU?
next boot with the water moving, CPU started at 11°C and moved up to 18.
much more like my style!
and we proceeded with installing everything…
first problem was looking everywhere for the OS CD… but when i found it i also realized
the PSU is at the other PC.
running up and down (and to the roof from a moving ladder every 5-7 minutes), this card needed two PCIx power cables and i couldn’t find that either.
when i found it i remember (NOTICED) that my cables were DOUBLE jack and i already had the one i needed!!! what a half an hour of waste for being an idiot!
(rushing EVERYTHING to hit crazy time frames IS my kind of fun! keeps my brain occupied to a good extend!)
Desk installed, keyboard, mouse, monitor, next to the telescope, cameras found, OS CD found, PC was up to date with software installed right 30 minutes before show
When the show arrived i was way too tired to stay up longer so i just practiced for tomorrow with the telescope unaligned. Decided i use it only as a lens without its computer because it was not worth aligning it and then moving it out of the sun and loosing that alignment for only 2 hours of recording amidst all the chaos to get there.
Plus, this was an experiment to see what result i can get by manually moving it just like the DSLR instead of the autoguide feature it has.
Reason for this experiment was that i’ve noticed a problem there.
As the telescope tries to correct itself as it is following an object diagonally, it uses the X and Y axis and the movement results in a tiny staircase that if you focus to the moons they all make a cross.
This must have terrible result on my attempts on jupiter.
Experiment failed because at 3556mm the FOV is so small that you have to fix the object in place every max 10 seconds but if you are busy doing that, who will stop and start the CCTV chip EVERY time you manually move since processing programs fail when that happens?
i found myself using my right hand on the telescope and the left on the mouse but … yeah… no… experiment is a fail.
Autoguide is a necessary evil. my problem is the nonstationary telescope that uses the XY axis instead of an equatorial mount where only one axis is needed for correction (X is fixed there)
but this equatorial mount means a) $$$$$
b) stationary, humidity free, element protected environment = 10x$$$$$)
Tonight will be the 3556mm autoguided recorded with a CCTV (installed,and up to dated in softwares at least)
My balcony is a mess of cables now… the moon dance looks okish as i spent the hot day making them an animation,
but way too little to use it alone, so tonight we are aiming for making another animation (will be around 100.000k files (images) to try to show the storm of jupiter from rise to set. (should end up as a 60-120 sec video, one second per half a minute (rotation issue)
I mean… really… what else is there to do…
these are my days of boredom!
i don’t want to video edit and i needed to spend some time “out”
nobody watches anyway… and jupiter cares more so i’ll be “out” dancing with him!
i need to get out for a day or two … i need to go swim… but to get there now that i took out the monster,
the above process will need to be reversed before i leave for anywhere! 
(flash rains suck and if you have a 14" telescope at the balcony and you leave home IT WILL HAPPEN!!)
(Murphy’s law: “If you allow room for error it will happen”)
2 Likes
i have a book on the starting points of apple (not the conspiratory side where the first mac cost 666.66$)
but one that speaks of it business moves and in it i found out something that even university professors didn’t know and insisted it’s wrong!
Well… opinions differ from reality and it’s all about how much you know or think you know!
So … ready?
Bill Gates is the brain behind the icons that we first saw on MACs (MACos) but he asked for waay too much money for it and when he didn’t get it he got out and started microsteal
i mean… microbug
oh… you know what i mean… 
My first computer was a MAC (LC 475 around 1995 if i recall right)
couple of years later i realized this had to get more "P"ersonal (P.C.)
Realized that when i killed the floppy drive by insisting it to hold the disk in (hack n’ slash finger method)
and instead of the PC Floppy A cost of 10eu the MAC version cost 200eu!
bye bye MAC!
edit : about the telescope night … CHEMTRAIL SURPRISEE
that’s some error i can’t predict but always happens when plans are set!
The astronomical society should be COMPENSATED for decisions to dim the skies!
hundreds of thousands of $$ wasted for because others have depopulation agendas…
i mean… protecting us from the sun and everything!
Being a mess but always in style!
the sun is my enemy… it sets really low and the balcony is facing west
worst thing you want is warming it up before nightfall.
it will take forever to equalize the temperature with the outside so a fan makes it all better!
Noticeably, LP always comes to the rescue 
my friend @the_termin8r will surely have many questions
i will answer one of them blindly.
using the 7990 on this PC since GPU power is crucial for lighting fast captures
and using catalyst drivers hoping that both cores are utilized.
they are not. this is not a game to split monitor in two GPUs
Hence, it’s an overkill BUT
i have three 7990ers hanging around… do them what? sell them?
(bought them for BTC mining but thankfully i realized my mistake before i finish the 4GPU water loop i had in mind)
7990er it is … no $$ spending right now for anything to match one 7990 chip.
want a couple of those? ;p
(support for the internal CrossX has been DISABLED by the new driver. you can only use catalyst to see both cores, so i already know your answer 
)
this is a sexy PC if cleaned up. have hacked front with a 3fan dedicated to the CPU and on the exit it cools off at a single fan on the rear (fanless)
so a steady 15°C is achieved on stock values and i don’t overclock it because stability is too important to astronomy.
used to be my previous work PC, now i just enjoy the quiet and cool operation at astronomical nights.
i turn the fans off too, it works at 20-25 C with only a pump (don’t forget, that happens only at night, out of the house, with jupiter and mars being the only witnesses)
3 Likes
The new Dell XPS 15 7590 is finally out. It’s kind of annoying that the cheapest version with an i9 and OLED is £2400. That’s because it also comes with 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM. Obviously prices will drop over time, but I don’t want to be paying for the SSD and RAM since I’ll be swapping them out anyway.
Not much has changed since the 9570 of last year. There’s a CPU and GPU refresh, new screen options and WiFi-6-capable WiFi cards. Everything else is the same, which I’m kind of happy about as it means it still has a 2.5" SATA bay and it still looks good and has good port selection. However, that also means it will have the same thermal issues as before with the high end CPUs. Now I’m just waiting for the reviews to start coming out.
1 Like
Damn that’s way too overpriced or am I being delusional?
1 Like
It’s ish. It’s the same as its equivalent from last year’s model, but you get a better screen, CPU, GPU and WiFi card, so I think it’s justified in that sense. If you look at it as a lump of money, then yeah, it’s expensive. However, this isn’t some laptop that you replace after a year or two. It’s a business grade machine that is supposed to last ages and is about as top-of-the line as it gets (short of custom mods and ridiculous and impractical gaming laptops).
To put the price into perspective, the closest MacBook Pro 15 (spec-wise) is £4454, the MBP is considered a rival for the XPS. Excpet the MBP has worse RAM, a worse SSD, a worse screen, a worse keyboard and an even worse cooling system. That’s before you even get to subjective aspects.
2 Likes
Besides all that, it’s still pretty ridiculous. What normal person would spend that much on a laptop?
1 Like
Let me answer that to save @the_termin8r some
Those who would buy this are:
a) people whose company will pay for it and it will gain the extra remainder for the balance sheet in the expenses book.
b) gamers and mostly if they stream and make money out of it
c) video editors
d) experienced users who have had enough (with) laptops
The truth is that if one buys a laptop, a more intelligent choice is to buy the one that is meant and designed to last than the cheap one in offer.
Isn’t it silly spending 400 every year instead of this price once for 8 years?
no laptop is designed to last a year but… trust me… they become obsolete and very cost effective to repair if eg. broken or if one part fails due to cheap design (like cooling) and they end up as very delicate and item specific plastics (useless for anything else but melting) hanging around your room.
when you see a laptop with intention to last in time, that is your best choice and it always costs more!
But you can’t tell that from cost alone.
Because Eg. MACs are different.
you are supposed to pay 2000 per year there!
it’s a policy or something…
but…
edit : i do agree with you!
i would never spend more than 1300€ on a laptop! (that, i have done once)
didn’t even do so when i was a gamer.
I find them over priced to provide eg. superb audio and high tech monitor and LEDS FFS, without which, i can live just fine and save $$ on a stronger laptop with a smaller monitor (40% down)
1 Like
Not sure if it is the right category to ask.
When you had your headset in the washing machine, how long would you let it dry?
2 Likes