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I got sick, and my computer got sick
(30 Jun at 23:26) |
Ugh! I did make a lot of progress on this darned video (I have about 10 minutes of high quality content baked in now) and was hoping to keep up the momentum this weekend but I got pretty sick. I thought all week I was just suffering headaches from this medium-severe heat wave we've been having, but I think it was also me starting to get ill. It does not appear to be COVID or Flu-A or Flu-B (it is cool that you can get a combo test for all three of these now) but it has kept me with minimal energy. The other, perhaps worse drain on my ability to finish my projects is that my computer also got sick. It has been struggling to install "Windows 11 24H2" for as long as that sounds from the name (24 is 2024, like COVID-19 is 2020), rebooting every week or two (interrupting valuable computational geometry) to give it one more try and then rolling back, which is annoying, so I was rooting for it to one day succeed. Last week it finally decided to stay on my computer, but right away I started to get kernel panics, which on Windows 11 are illustrated as ":(". I spent all weekend trying to improve the situation, upgrading every driver and firmware I could find, deleting everything old I didn't need, and all stuff that I hate. This was a machine that was extremely solid before this update, by the way; like I would regularly running a Premiere encode while compressing a directory full of files and playing Call of Duty Black Ops 6 and 100 Chrome tabs including more than one concurrent instance of gmail and Photoshop has been open since the last windows update reboot as well and 16 cores of computational geometry also happening at idle priority with 100GB of resident allocations. So this is a stark difference. I am reaching the end of my troubleshooting wits (a few steps down the list is I renounce Computing and go live in a cave with my polyhedra) but at least nothing has crashed since the last thing I tried (force remove some drivers I may not need so that I can enable Core Isolation) so I'm going to at least try to go to bed optimistic tonight.
I did make some actual progress on this geometry problem (not covered in paper) so now I'm actually looking forward to talking about that in the video. There's hope yet.
Speaking of idle priority, I actually finished Call of Duty Black Ops 6 for real now (I had done this previously, but then they released new crap, and while I was unlocking that I "decided" that I "should" also unlock the dark matter camo for every item in the game) and I think I've successfully put it behind me. I tried going for the polar opposite, which may be the game Crimson Diamond (it does involve murder but that may be the only thing they have in common). This is a cute old-school (~CGA graphics) text-parser adventure game, which reminds me of my Sierra youth, and may have been directly inspired by the Colonel's Bequest. Not sure how far I am into it, but I do enjoy it and so far it has been possible without any hints. Really for genre fans though. I'm also nearing the end of Stuck In Time (which may have previously been called "Loop Hero"? Something like that; they got cease-and-desisted and had to change it), which is a pretty clever idle/adventure game. The game has "idle" mechanics (lots of permanent upgrades; needs to run for some time in order to complete) but the core mechanism is designing the path that your guy follows through the world, and it's pretty active as a result. I liked that it didn't lean too much into the tower of exponent stuff; it's really mostly about exploration and making a good loop to let idle overnight. Pretty good pixel art and music, too. It is good if you are sick and working on a busted computer but want to be able to switch to another window to forget about that for a few minutes sometimes. Like writing a blog post! |  |
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| Wishing you both a speedy recovery and looking forward to the new Noperts! |
Loop Hero looks similar, but is less of an idle game. An Autorunner, but you need permanently give it attention so the hero does not die, by equipping items and lay out cards. Seems like stuck in time is coming from loop odyssey... Okay, those names are way too close.
For the PC, maybe time to run it with Linux? |
> Windows
Yep, here's your problem |
Thanks team!
mixmix: You are a good spy.
onli: I was trying to make a joke about this but I see now that it was very obtuse. :) It was indeed originally "Loop Odyssey" and the window still says that when you're playing!
Windows Update: I think I fixed it and it's feeling stable now (no crashes since the blog post). I took the opportunity to add a huge chonky hard drive to make the video editing less painful (the previous was working great but "on borrowed time").
I use all of Linux, OS X, and Windows. I usually prefer developing on Linux, although Windows is finally getting good here with msys2/clang64. The main thing is that I use Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Audio DAWs, Fusion, 3D printer software, and things like that which aren't really available/supported on linux. Not to mention Call Of Duty, Black Ops 6 (which, maybe I'd be better off without so many games :)). These days the stability of Windows 11 is quite good, similar to what I experience in linux, notwithstanding this recent issue. It certainly has its annoyances, though; I found that putting it in "enterprise mode" was essential for me to enact corporate policies like "my organization does not allow the use of Cortana, sorry." (Nobody asked but I feel like OSX is neither here nor there. It is fine. Their laptop hardware is excellent, though, so it's my preferred choice for travel!)
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| Hello Tom. I am looking forward to the video. Your videos have become one of my yearly highlights as I find them brilliantly entertaining. :) |
| dlorddd, thank you as well for the encouragement! It is well underway but I keep getting distracted working more on the problem itself! |
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