This is my tech blog, here you’ll find my thoughts on emerging technologies, things I like or not! I’ll try where possible to include podcasts.
You’re welcome to agree or disagree with anything I write about – freedom of speech welcome – All I ask is that you keep the comments civil!
Have fun, and if you want click on the about me link for more information on my technical background.
While there might truly be examples of 5G popping up here and there, in 2021 nationwide global coverage of 5G seems a long way off.
The biggest hurdle is how this technology works. 4G tends to have far more practical base station implementations that have tremendous range and don’t require direct LOS (Line of sight). 5G on the other hand has pitiful range and does require direct LOS to get those really high speeds.
Even with direct LOS, you need to be really close to a base station to get full speed, speeds comparable to fiber.
It means that besides all the hype and talk from telecom companies and all their promises. They haven’t cracked this problem because it’s frankly unsolvable just due to the way the technology works. This is why there’s major delay with any tangible rollout, other than a few spots in a few major cities.
For 5G to actually work as they advertise it will, it’s going to require at least one base station for every streetlamp. That’s right you heard me, unlike 4g where 1 or 2 towers can service an entire neighborhood, 5G signal range is around 500m, and that’s max range, in reality the signal degrades way before it hits this max range. Coupled with the fact that it can’t penetrate walls or any solid object, something like a tree in the way could mean the end of you getting a 5G connection to your house.
It makes sense for carriers to improve communications in large cities, but the notion of a 5G national rollout to anywhere you can currently get 4G is what a lot thought would finally give us fiber like speed at home without the need for fiber optics.
In most areas the idea of a fiber rollout is in the realms of science fiction. It’s just not viable for any provider to install extremely costly cables to a suburb or out of city rural setting. But surely we thought 5G would be a wireless rollout and hence completely plausible. Well not entirely. Best we’re going to get if we even get it is 4G LTE+ (or fake 5G).
Not that 4G is too terrible, perhaps more 4G towers and some aggregated or bonded connections would allow some of us to break past the 50mbps speed barrier.
But the idea that miraculously in 1 or 2 years some 5g network is just going to be turned on, or some magic switch pressed and those 4G towers start broadcasting 5G signals – sorry that’s not how it works and the reality is way too depressing to think about, that we’ve all been conned into believing in a solution that will most likely never rollout or perhaps we will find a way to overcome these broadcast limits in the distant future.
Ryobi make decent tools and when I started my woodworking journey it seemed like the logical place to start. Mid to high range quality in the hobby sector, while still being somewhat affordable.
The Ryobi 18v one plus range has many decent tools that mostly have you covered. For the most part, Ryobi tools work well enough to get the job done.
Ryobi though isn’t without it’s quirks. Quality is somewhat lacking. While the tools might be fully functional they’re somewhat entry level-ish and lacking in features. I know that’s a generalization but take my random orbital sander for example – The Ryobi one has no speed selection and after about half a year of use, it’s making some interesting noises but it still works. Then there’s the trim router, which does a decent enough job, but can only accept 6mm bits and the spanner for the bit adjustment broke and it’s never been comfortable to use.
Next point worth discussion are accessories. Ryobi once again offer a very basic spread of accessories which are either average quality or non existent. Never amazing or stellar. Bosch on the other hand offer a much wider range of accessories and consumables and the quality is far higher.
And last but not least is the battery form factor, while this has never been a glaring issue for me, the Ryobi battery size and shape is the same as it was when it first hit the market, so it’s quite a bit larger than other brands as technology has scaled down.
It is not that Ryobi tools are terrible, in fact on the whole they’re pretty good and most of their core tools will end up serving you well. It’s just that Bosch and specifically Bosch blue tools are simply better and either cost the same or slightly more.
It’s a misconception that Ryobi tools are cheaper. They’re not.
Unless you have an unlimited budget, it’s a good idea to pick a battery line and stick with that. The reason is when you need a new tool, the cost is heavily reduced if you already have existing batteries for those tools.
In many cases, the battery costs more than the tool, and you will need a way to charge those batteries too.
Because of this and only because of this, I would always recommend bypassing an inferior brand from the get go.
Bosch isn’t that expensive compared to other manufacturers and still gives you incredible quality and longevity in the tools you use.
My view point on a certain matter has changed. You see, for roughly the entirety of my life, since I was born on this amazing little rock circling the sun, America has had it’s Army and Airforce aligned to the middle east and my entire life I’ve thought well obviously those greedy bastards are just after the oil.
This has influenced my thinking on war, the military and how politicians can direct force disguised as one thing or another and how the general population can be duped. I’ve thought like this my entire life up until very recently.
That event that changed it all was the Taliban coming to power in Afghanistan. This one event got me to question everything I thought I knew about war and US involvement.
I’m sure a great deal of those previous suspicions I had are shared by many and war or military involvement isn’t straightforward, certainly there are always going to be cases where corruption or hidden agendas are present, but on the other hand let’s get back to basics and discuss the obvious.
The obvious point we must acknowledge is that humans are nothing more than a species of apes. Fairly intelligent apes capable of creating powerful and destructive weaponries to kill other apes. Petty apes who cannot always reason through problems or find peaceful solutions. Apes who possess multiple world view points and divided by cultures, religions, ideologies and geographic barriers. Not all of these apes are noble, and not all of these groups of apes and their ideologies are good for humanity at large. Certainly even in 2021 more than ever dogma tends to be the predominant theme.
I’m against the idea of a simplistic black and white model of good vs evil. What I do however strongly believe in is that people can be programmed to believe almost anything and that programming is not always good, and can not always be reasoned away.
Hence war and hence a vigilant and powerful military force is sometimes needed to keep such elements at bay. Sometimes that force will be the US Army or Nato.
The world has a huge population of Muslims who aren’t out for blood or domination, who are generous and kind people who just like everyone else wants to live a good and peaceful life. These muslims are valuable to humanity. Unfortunately with everything in life, there are always going to be bad elements of what might be an otherwise good thing.
Because when perhaps one day, action is required against bad elements of humanity it isn’t going to be your Netflix watching ass that will do anything about it while you theorize conspiracies and wish the problem went away.
I made a decision to cut down on Reddit about 3 years ago, however roughly 2 year ago I decided to stop using Reddit completely.
Sometimes though, not often you might need to ask an actual serious question. In my case 2 days ago I had a woodworking related issue and decided I would take it to Reddit.
I had to register a new account for one question. The question also involved a specific brand of tool, omitting this would make the question total nonsense.
Since it was my first post in years, I expanded on it, and made a quality post, only as soon as I submitted, and I mean within milliseconds I noticed the familiar new message icon light up.
Lo and behold “This post has been removed by the moderation………… “. Reason “advertising a tool brand”. I then noticed the list of impossible to adhere to rules of that sub group.
Now I honestly don’t really care enough to chase it up. I simply immediately logged out, and closed the browser tab. I was obviously a bit disappointed, but not too outraged. I remember thinking “Well it’s typical Reddit, what else can you expect”. A site that wants to infuriate you.
What I will say is, Reddit might once very well have been the front page of the internet, but these days that’s all changed and at least to me it’s inevitable that the site is totally doomed and will become extinct. It’s already no longer mainstream and it’s had its day.
Here are the reasons :
Certain things on the internet never totally go away. I mean AOL still technically “exists”, likewise games like Anarchy Online still exist. Reddit still exists but I suspect the only thing keeping it alive are school and college kids looking for memes. For anything else it’s mostly total trash.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve most likely heard of Sudoku. Most of us however just aren’t very good at it. What I discovered recently is undoubtedly the best and most concise Sudoku course on the entire internet and it’s free.
I’ve been playing Sudoku on and off for decades, and yes for the most part I can solve even fairly complex puzzles but at some stage I get stuck and once I’m stuck even after hours of staring at a particular puzzle I just can’t find the solution.
This is really what started my journey. I decided why continue to play this game 1/2 cocked? Surely even the most casual player would benefit by brushing up on the rules, but I’m playing more and more Sudoku these days. Why be satisfied with being stuck in more complex puzzles?
The complete and concise course can be found here : https://sudokuswami.com/
Or the Youtube playlist can be found here : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzg42yqvfiLKESOIrp-NlQ-lgvtuwO5JE
If you’re a hardcore pen and paper type, then he’s got you covered too : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzg42yqvfiLKot17m8XwCfhnzPxqwPzvu
I do have a few favorite Youtubers who also cover Sudoku solving technique, but none of them cover absolutely everything in a progressive way and none of them provide a full blown course.
For example, Simon over at Cracking the Cryptic makes for great entertainment while sipping a coffee, but all his videos comprise a puzzle he’s solving and inadvertently he talks about the solving technique at a higher level. This means you could watch many hours of Simon solving puzzles and unfortunately not gain the deeper knowledge needed to apply those techniques yourself. Just to be clear, this isn’t a criticism per say on Simon directly. He’s a highly skilled problem solver, both him and his crew, however they’re all over the place and cover stuff randomly rather than taking a clean step by step approach to their content.
There are others on Youtube too, who mostly try and cover certain patterns you will encounter, but in my experience they’re just not as good as Jaco from Sudoku Swami. What Jaco has done is provide an academic framework.
While going through the course, I very strongly suggest watching EVERYTHING. Even if you think you know what you’re doing, even if you think you can skip ahead, just don’t. There’s a lot of new information, even for seasoned solvers early on.
Don’t try and rush through the content. Watch and rewatch the parts until you really understand it. If you are in a later video and have forgotten a basic principle or just aren’t totally sure, then go back and rewatch the part with the terminology or explanation.
Don’t skip the tips and extended examples. Watch these in their entirety too, once again juicy bits of information can be found there too.
I really like that Jaco actually answers your questions and engages with you, and so you get help from a grandmaster, but what I’ve found is the course covers so much that usually most of what you want to ask is already covered in the course.
Have fun solving on your journey to excellence!
AliExpress is a cheap site offering an entire world of goods crap that you have to start wondering if you really need.
Yes and no. Yes the prices are cheap, but cheap doesn’t mean good or unbeatable. The vast array of cheap plastics and electronics found on Ali could also be sourced from any local Asian market and then you get the option to at least look at the stuff you’re buying. Also when it comes to things that you want to actually last, then avoid AliExpress. Almost everything you buy from them is going to be inferior quality or a knock off.
Maybe. It’s a bit of a gamble. The internet is littered with complaints from people who have not received their goods and shit out of luck. On this point there isn’t much you can do without getting into a long drawn out process which may or may not actually work to get you a refund or partial refund.
Often you’ll see stuff labelled as “set” and showing a photo of 2 units. You’ll then be surprised or infuriated to discover only 1 unit arrives and the photo and production description was misleading. This has personally happened to me on my first (and only) order. I went back to the site to check for other examples and within minutes found more.
I don’t have the time to sit and play games when it comes to my online purchases. Either I’m buying something and I expect it to :
AliExpress is an ideal paradise for people who :
AliExpress might have all the junk in the world with pretty pictures and misleading descriptions but is it really making the world a better place. Are we still so far up the ass of consumerism that we accept all their low quality fake merchandise which mostly just ends up on landfills. Is that really who we are? Well that’s not me.
Long ago in the land of nod, regular TV’s existed, they had one function to play TV or video feeds. Anything else required consoles or players connected to the TV.
Then along came Smart TV’s, something many of us only started looking at when it was time to replace our existing TVs.
What makes a TV smart? The ability to browse the web? Being able to connect wireless speakers, streaming content from Netflix, Hulu, HBO? How about checking the weather.
If we really break it down, ultimately we’re talking of a TV that has an OS and this OS has Apps.
That’s what makes it SMART.
As I learnt the hard way though, what LG are offering is less than satisfactory. In a frustrating kind of way.
Yes, it’s smart, just not smart enough.
The web browser that comes with LG Web OS 3 is not customizable. You cannot install plugins and you cannot replace it. It does not support Flash. This might be less of an issue in 2017, but it’s still an issue because many sites still use flash. Most likely including your favorite porn sites.
It’s also not Chrome, so you can’t install an Adblocker. Other extensions such as custom subtitles in Netflix – forget about this.
The browser is ok for most things, but you will find yourself wishing it was Chrome. And there’s nothing you can do about this.
The LG app store consists mostly of crap you’ll never use. There’s not here to talk about but the few apps that are present are mostly Russian scam apps, and aquarium apps that require mini purchases.
The term FREE here is misused a lot in the app store, out of the few apps that are free, many actually require an initial purchase to get working. EG: The so-called free radio app. That costs a few dollars before you can even use it.
So what you’re ultimately left with is Youtube, Netflix and a weather app – that’s about it.
You’ll be begging for Play Store but you’re shit out of luck.
Unfortunately the casting app is another one of those Russian scam apps. Too many ads to take seriously. So you’re left with some limited casting options. Basically you can only cast Youtube videos from Chrome browser – that’s it! Forget about trying to cast your desktop – you’re shit out of luck.
Fuck me if this isn’t one of the biggest scams LG ever pulled. They bring out a remote that’s purposely designed to be difficult to use, then market a LG magic remote to you, so you can purchase a remote that actually works.
Firstly, go buy yourself a TV that runs Android. I should have gotten one that did, but the reviews I was reading said Web OS was roughly the same – It’s not
Next, if you’re like me stuck with an LG, you’ll most likely want to buy an Android TV dongle or smart box, with it’s own remote and interact through your TV via this box.
So here’s the kicker – LG’s smart functionality then cannot live up to Android or Google Play services, so you’re basically having to buy that extra hardware nullifying the built in smart functionality completely.
That means you might as well have bought a regular ass TV!
I’ve decided to write this article during compiling my InstallShield project. It’s been roughly a month of development and my installer is nowhere near ready.
My project is not too complex either, only that I was tasked to build an installer without any prior experience with InstallShield.
Firstly there are other options. You can Google these, all I’m saying is there are 2 other install products out there which are better in every way than InstallShield.
It’s not that it’s slightly bad, or needs a few minor improvements. It’s outrageously terrible. I have to question how Flexera are even in business. And it’s not just me, anyone who uses this product will experience extreme levels of frustration.
More………
I’m purposely not going to talk about the competition, but if given any choice, NEVER go with this product or you’ll be ripping your hair out.
If you have any say in it, don’t give this company your business and actively boycott it.
Unfortunately there is no beating around the bush on this one.
The pricing isn’t the problem, I will give them that, it is really affordable roughly 300 crowns per month for unlimited viewing on 2 devices and they claim this includes HD too.
They also offer a free trial for a month, which is generous.
Very low resolution streaming. I’m all for subscribing to a convenient steaming service when it is affordable and I really wanted to enjoy Netflix but sadly the steaming quality is so poor, it has really made me question if Netflix is over rated.
Yup I am pretty sure. I’m not trying to watch HD quality on a 56k modem, I’m on a UPC Fiber connection with a 200 mbps download rate.
Here is some proof:
As you can see my internet is comparable to some of the best provided on the planet.
Not 1 or 2, but 3. They asked me to try viewing in another browser, then they asked me to restart my modem, and finally after 2 hours of taking zero responsibility, they told me the problem is with my ISP.
Up until now I haven’t had any issues with throttling or shaping. My internet is just blazingly fast and just works.
Netflix claim that only 7 mbps is required for full HD steaming. I just don’t see UPC purposely throttling Netflix. But I could be wrong.
Pretty damn terrible to be honest. Before we get to the screenshots. Netflix allows you to change your playback settings. Obviously I did this.
Have a look:
Now what you’ve been waiting for, the screenshots:
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or old, you’ve played first person shooters. It’s a defining genre most gamers take to instantly. Most of these games are fairly intuitive. Every FPS can be described as running around shooting stuff – that’s pretty much it.
What separates great FPS’s from average are mechanics, weapon selection, maps and enjoyment.
Sadly no matter how good the mechanics, weapons and maps are in CS Go. The enjoyment factor is pillaged by one glaring problem – but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Let’s talk about intuition first. One would think when you hold an AK-47 at someone from 2m away and unload a clip, you should bloody well hit them. NOT in CS GO. This happened to me today. I was camping a corner, a guy came around and I was aiming at his stomach, I held the trigger down. He was literally 2m away.
Let me be clear – it’s not physically possible for bullets to avoid a target from 2m away! Now you purists might say learn the spray pattern – well indeed hence the gun was aimed at his stomach, this means I should have got 2-3 chest shots in right?
And this leads us to the next glaring issue.
Look at an enemy – Dead, Put your head around a corner – Dead, Try unload a clip – “You hit enemy for 11 with 3 bullets” vs “112 damage with 1 bullet by enemy”, result – Dead, Try camp – Dead, Try move – Dead. Breath – dead. Spawn – Dead
This game is divided into 2 groups. The super elite who can kill you just by thinking about it. Now I can’t emphasize enough how good these players are. They’re so good in virtually every match I’ve played there have been accusations of auto aiming. Well I can’t say this is happening – maybe they just do nothing else other than play CS all day long. I bet after 12000 hours of playing you might be good too.
Until then – the cannon fodder. Anyone else installing this game or trying to get into it. There is no middle ground. Right from the start you play against useless bots, or super fucking extreme world championship type players.
So is this enjoyable?
I guess if you’re that good – then new players must just seem like defenseless chickens. When you’re the one getting your ass shot off every 2 seconds, no it’s not enjoyable. I mean forget actual aiming. Before you can click your mouse you’re dead – even if you see an enemy.
When you try your best to get some kills and can’t. Or you do get a kill or two in from some fluke of luck, only to have your ass shot off by “a real player”.
So the game sucks and the guns feel broken. Or maybe I just suck, but I think I’ll never be super elite.
I would say unless you’re super talented with FPS games or enjoy getting your ass shot off, you’re going to have a bad day.
Michael's Techbox 