Computers

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One of the side effects of the RAID-mode oops incident has been having to re-rip and encode my Blu-rays and DVDs. At this point, most of the anime collection is basically done, but movies are in the “As needed” case because of the time/effort.

Recently, I was in the mood both, for watching Pacific Rim and taking a look at one of my original reference videos from back when I setup my previous AVC/x264 presets in HandBrake. I.e., Prometheus. In the years since then, I shifted over to an HEVC/x265 and slowly started to adopt it. Most discs since then have been anime or few and far in-between, so not as large a sample set.

So, naturally, this was the preset I chose when ripping Pacific Rim. However, I found myself disappointed in the video quality. Fortunately, I still enjoyed it greatly–as one of my favorite films and one that I haven’t seriously watched in a few years.

In particular, the opening sequence and numerous cases of darker scenes exhibited artifacts. Now, my original AVC preset wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t that bad either. Taking the first chapter, I decided to do a bunch of experiments, focused on the parts most prone to artifacts. The logo’s background fire effect, the star field, and the breach, followed by the more general video quality of the next 5~6 minutes of the opening.

EncoderQualitySize (MB)Bitrate (Mbit/s)TimeComments
Blu-rayN/A38,32022.8N/AReference Blu-ray ripped with MKV.
x264RF 201,01014.806:05Reference AVC.
Limited artifacts
x265RF 18949.113.813:11Like reference AVC
RF 2079411.511:39Close to AVC reference.
Not as good as RF 18.
RF 22688.19.806:56Reference HEVC
Too many artifacts.
Video ToolboxCQ 801,78025.701:08Close to AVC reference.
(not as good)
CQ 701,08015.701:08Close to AVC reference.
(not as good)
CQ 22448.96.501:07Like a mid 2000s video game
(only better)
CQ 18453.26.301:07Like a mid 2000s video game
(really)
CQ 104246.101:07Like a mid 2000s video game
(too close for comfort)

The AVC and HEVC reference referred to above, are my presets. For x264, high profile level 4.1 was used with the “medium” preset. For x265 auto was used for both profile/level, with the “fast” preset. The only adjustment for the experiments were the Constant Quality, which for those encoders is a logarithmic scale where higher numbers are worse quality.

For Video Toolbox, I couldn’t find any documentation about the scale but the tests obviously show higher numbers are higher quality. In each case, the “medium” preset was used.

Based on what I found, I’m kind of disappointed with the x265 cases. Perhaps it’s time to experiment with kicking it to the medium preset or enabling a deblocking filter to compensate. For the most part though, the quality is there sufficiently if comparable bitrates are thrown at it. The downside of course is that basically doubles the encoding time from x264.

The Video Toolbox case is more impressive, but also not so useful. I believe the M2’s encoder is a lot better than the ‘Bridge and early ‘Lake era Intel encoders. But in much the same way, they just don’t serve my purposes. To make my M2 achieve good enough quality for streaming, the file sizes balloon to near the original Blu-ray–so may as well not bother transcoding in that case. But still, we’re talking about a speed of 190~200 fps encoding versus about 30-40 fps encoding. I think it’s better suited for video editing than streaming video from my server to my TV.

The difference though is considerable. At the uber quality levels, it’s still subpar for Netflix/YouTube quality at this point, versus a Blu-ray reference.

Partly though, I’m tempted to revert back to using x264 and partly tempted to just leave it at Blu-ray. I didn’t really change from AVC to HEVC to save on disk space, so much as I did it because the more modern codec was now widely available on most of my hardware. The kind of perspective that AVC is still fine, but I assume devices will hold onto HEVC support longer once AVC becomes to new MPEG-2 :D.

There’s also the option to just stick with MakeMKVs output. My entire Blu-ray collection probably represents about 4 TB to 5 TB of data at this point, and ahem, it’s an 8 TB storage array with 6 TB free. My storage concerns were pretty much solved two sets of hard drives ago, back when my server’s storage was made up of 3 TB drives rather than 8s. The playback concerns, well, much like HEVC capable devices becoming the norm, most of my devices have less concern with Blu-ray quality bitrates at this point.

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The amusing nature of memory consumption and the modern web. Going by Activity Monitor’s memory page as a measure, wikipedia is pretty darn memory efficient at a couple hundred megs–for a website that’s about 95% content aside from the CMS, I’d call that’s pretty good. For sake of a value, one of the random pages loaded were around 180 – 200 MB.

By contrast my own website (also mostly content aside from the CMS) and Google’s home page, burn around 400-500 MB. Which to me, feels excessive, but to be fair, part of why I started to believe in whole-lotta-memory designs was in the 2010s when I realized 2 GB was not enough to surf the web anymore, unless you loved trashing hard drives. Most content-heavy rather than ad heavy websites, fit that description as well.

Now for comparison? A few common news sites that you’ll see just about any compute nerd visit: around 1.5 – 2 GB for basically any article and easily reaching 3 – 4 GB in activity monitor. Largely depending on the amount of ads, and whether or not it’s a website that endeavors to load the content first. So basically, the modern websites consume so much RAM that we should be charging websites for the resources their advertising consumes rather than supporting them by not running ad blockers 😜

Ya know, if you just throw enough videos modern web advertising may be to computer memory usage what the pop up ad was to the 1990s web browsing experience. Seriously, web ads were Really A Lot Worse Back Then ™ when actual pop up windows were allowed.

At this point, I think the only thing that consumes more RAM than the modern web is working with high resolution graphics and artificial intelligence with loads of parameters, lol.

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Reading “BOFH: The USB stick always comes back – until it doesn’t,” I’m quite sure I’ve known a few sticks that meet this description.

I still remember the pain and suffering that was the performance of USB sticks, back when I had to do some installation framework goodness for an embedded system. The whole live bootable stick was taking about 2 1/2 hours to load per test, so eventually I reached for the pair of USB sticks I was carrying at the time. One of those $10 sticks reduced the I/O wait time down to about 35 minutes, making for a much faster development cycle; so much so that production bought a bundle of those for use in the lab.

And then there was that other $10 stick, which I never realized was so drastically slower than the first. That sucker was so damn slow that it was “Free to good home USB stick, just don’t bring it back!” and of course, I met that stick more than a few times over the years.

Ya know, I should’ve just used the soldiering iron 🔥

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Reading “I was skeptical about Snapdragon laptops. A work trip made me a believer” from my news feeds, I couldn’t help but snicker at the actual story content.

See, the first time I had the joys of three planes to reach a destination, I was rocking an Asus EeePC 1015-series that I principally kept in text mode and low key to be able to write on. It didn’t even last the first flight never mind the entire 12 to 14 hour trip. All it literally had to do was run vi to be sufficient for my purposes.

The next time I ended up on such a trip, I was rocking an Eee Pad Transformer TF101 and found it to be a world of difference. Instead of a dead battery on the first flight, I literally had enough power left to fall asleep to Netflix in my hotel room before I even reached for my charger.

In the years since, Intel has managed to “Not suck” on power efficiency but only in relative terms in my experience. It’s not crazy to get a decent work day out of an Intel powered laptop, provided you are not pushing it too hard. But once you ramp up the workload the battery life tanks accordingly as measured in hours away from an outlet. By contrast, my first ARM powered tablet never blinked unless I was compiling code in a chroot for 8 hours straight, on a system that wasn’t meant to work that hard in the first place.

I kinda look at the notion of Windows on ARM with hopefulness, because frankly I think it’s about damn time. What helped PCs take over the computer world is the insane compatibility that IBM and Microsoft compatible machines afforded. Almost all of the Windows 95/XP targeting games in /dev/closet just work on modern machines, despite Intel PCs having changed drastically in every sense. Hell, I still have machines that will boot MS-DOS digital eons after both it and floppy diskette ceased to be relevant.

Compatibility is the best reason to avoid different CPU architectures, especially for ‘brainless’ perspectives. But we passed the point where native code was the only option: Apple’s Motorola to PowerPC migration and the original Java virtual machine proved that well enough in the wild. That was several decades ago, and performance has improved all over. Today, my M2 MacBook Air can literally run video games in Rosetta 2 well enough that I wouldn’t know they weren’t native \o/.

One of the things people often forget though, is that Microsoft originally did something really clever back in the 1990s. Windows NT was designed with multiple architectures in mind. In practice, the MIPS and DEC Alpha support didn’t mean much since almost everyone would be using a 386 with a load of memory, or soon would be dominated by x86 one way or another. But NT hedged many bets.

Personally, I have no real love left for Intel despite being an Intel brat most of my PC life. ARM in my experience, better delivers what I tend to want in a battery-powered machine but that tends to be different than what I want in a desktop PC. Likewise, having dealt with more than a bit of shouting, “Damn it, Intel!” back when I was an embedded monkey, I have even less love professionally than personally. Even more so the further you go from purely CPU and into their other pieces of the puzzle.

They had a good run, but I say hasta la vista, Intel.

WiBArM

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There was a game that I played as a child on our old Tandy 1000 that I’ve wanted to look up for about the last 20 years or so. A relative had sent us a copy, but no one really could read it since the instructions were in Japanese. The 5 1/4″ diskette however, worked just fine.

One of those problems with being a kid, even if I can remember things from way back in more details than I probably should, is that memory is more visual than auditory for me. My best recollection of the name was something like ‘Wib barn,” but hey I was like 5 when I played the game! It’s not like I could spell yet! Literally, I was using MS-DOS before I could read…lol.

Needless to say, trying to find the game on this side of the floppy diskette era has been largely fruitless whenever I’ve tried.

Well, last night I was watching a video on 80s game development, and noticed that the clip of Thexder was Really, Really similar to what I remember but definitely not the same game. Sadly, doing some research into the game also showed that its sequel wasn’t it. Also, I’m pretty sure that I never encountered the Firehawk games personally.

Attempting to find similar games led me to the similar games tab on Giant Bomb, which began as mostly another exercise in futility. I’ve tried to look up the game in the past, always without success. Like seriously, how many late 80s side scrollers were there where you can transform between a robot, and a jet, and a car while exploring pseudo 3D dungeons reminiscent of the Windows 95 Maze? Yeah, you’d think that’s easy, but a lot of old stuff on old video games never made a big impact on the Internet. There were more than a few such ‘robot’ games, but I don’t think any that combined all three modes.

Then in scrolling through the list, I come across one word and it’s like “Holy shit, I remembered the name right,” and lo’ and behold: their page on Wibarm even matches my childhood memory to a tee on the screenshots. It’s without a doubt the same game, and it checks all the boxes: the three modes, the side scroll and 3D like dungeon, and the almost RPG like battles when you encounter the mobs.

So now, after many years, I finally know what that game was, and that my childhood memories are even more accurate than I expected.

Thoughts on Home Audio

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In general, I haven’t cared too much about whole home audio, but have had that available long enough to not really care.

The first setup I had for that, was based around Chromecast almost a decade ago. The 5.1 Vizio surround sound system I had in my apartment had Chromecast support, and the Chromecast Audio was very cheap and very effective when paired with the AUX/Line-In on the analog based Logitech 2.1 that was hooked up to my desktop. No real complaints about the multi-room audio support, although the sound system was enough to fill my apartment.

Sadly, those both audio devices went the way of the trash heap over the years. And I haven’t really used the Chromecast audio since the move to Desktop=Games, Laptop=Desktop. The move from Android to iPad tablet made that less of a concern, since the iPad Pro was only secondary to the surround sound system in terms of speaker quality at home, and could fill my entire apartment with music almost as easily.

The second setup, which is still in use, is an Alexa based one. Over a lustrum, things expanded from a simple puck based Dot, to an orb with a clock. Enough to easily have the audio controls over my shit in the bedroom and kitchen/living room space of my apartment. These days, one of those is still on my headboard and the other is in my kitchen/dining area; and I bought a Pop to gain Alexa control in the study.

Because of how good Nerine’s speakers were, I never really cared too much about the whole home audio was, even after losing the surround-sound setup. Doing multi-room audio with Alexa worked well enough in my experience. But in practice, I only tend to need current room audio and at most, briefly next room audio. The kicker however, is that what audio device I’m playing from can vary. It’s usually going to be my tablet, but it might be my laptop, or my phone, or one of the experiment earlier this year, etc, and sometimes my devices change.

That’s kind of what lead to the Roam 2 solution. I was never really impressed with the Echo Dots for music playback, but they were good enough for anything not an iPad Pro. Since Nerine’s retirement, that’s now basically the case for anything, because the Mini can’t beat the Pro on listening to music, lol.

For me, the dots have always been more about whole-home Alexa control than whole-home audio. But really, both have been a pain in the ass in recent years. Generally, I liked Alexa control. As a voice assistant, it worked better than Siri which has always been rather meh for me and unlike Google’s, doesn’t tend to make me rage-monkey. Let’s just say, Google’s voice assistant wasn’t a concern when I left the Android eco-system.

Since Amazon’s cutting up of their Alexa division, I’ve generally found myself going more “Why do I even bother” at how well my Alexa control works, both in terms of voice recognition and third party things. Enough so, that I mostly consider its days numbered at this point. Since discovering that my watch can handle “Hey Siri, turn on the book lights,” I’m even more considering the end of Alexa control. As meh as my relationship with Siri is, when it works, it does actually work.

E.g., if my typical use case is like, “Alexa, turn on the book lights,” as I’m changing my clothes after work–there’s two ways this exchange can end. Either the lights turn on by the time my belt’s off, or I may as well go out of my way to do it by hand. Let’s just say that I’ve become grateful over the last couple years that the controllers for my Nanoleaf lights are easily accessible, and that they use a capacitive button that doesn’t make me worry about straining the adhesives.

That’s how much my relationship with Alexa control has soured in the last two years compared to how well it worked (let’s Alexa all the rooms) ~five years ago.

In terms of a Bluetooth speaker for the current room though, I’m basically calling the Alexa setup a dead stick. Much more than saying “Pair phone” and hoping the current Dot connects to my tablet, and it’s more bother than it’s worth. Pairing new devices typically ended with grumbles like the Dot connecting to my actual phone not the device I’m using, issues in getting it to connect to the device I’ve named, and the joyous fun that is connecting a new device–even if using the Alexa app.

So, a portable speaker is looking to be a good plan. Off sale, the Roam 2 costs a bit less than my surround sound system did, and on sale closer to what replacement for my JBLs were looking like on a purely Bluetooth front.

I think Sonos is too damn expensive for building my next surround sound system, and may be too expensive for my taste in terms of equipping a speaker per major room, even if I exclude the smart home control as a factor. Really, for downstairs it would make more sense to just migrate from Fire TV to Apple TV for being able to use an AirPlay target–when I eventually go surround-sound. Since the Vizio’s demise, I’ve just made due with the TV’s integrated speakers and been glad that they don’t sound like ass.

For the short to medium term plans though, both audio and smart home control are on the agenda. For right now though, AirPlay -> Roam 2 -> take it with me, is looking to be a good plan. Plus in the study, my laptop is usually docked with the Pebbles on, making it a dandy AirPlay target.

Sonos + AirPlay 2 = :)

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For years, a friend’s told me to just buy a damn Sonos. To which, I’ve generally regarded that as the same kind of problem as why I don’t drive a Porsche–to damn expensive 😜.

Recently though, audio has been a minor thorn in my side. Getting bluetooth audio stuff to work with Alexa is mostly a pain in the ass when you have multiple input devices, and picking music in the vain of ‘Alexa, play ….’ is nice but not preferable. I used to have a pair of JBL Bluetooth speakers, one of which I gave a friend and the other, well, I frankly have no idea where the fuck it ended up.

So, flash forward to today: I may be in the study, in my bedroom, or in the kitchen. My iPad Pro’s quadraphonic speakers were great, like really I didn’t give a hoot about it being four channels-the speakers themselves were great, and while it doesn’t fill my entire home with music the way it used to in the apartment, it’s close enough. Nerine was a great machine for music.

Mayumi, the iPad mini that replaced it, on the other hand has more ordinary speakers: not great, not bad, but nothing really to write home about either. I’d say it’s a little worse than Shion’s speakers and most of my Alexas. But to be fair, music from my tablet speakers has always been an auxiliary function not a primary function–that’s what headphones and speakers are for after all.

In practice it works better to AirPlay from my iPad to my laptop when I’m in the study than to use the younger Echo. If Shion is docked, the pair of Pebbles that replaced my desktop’s old 2.1 Logitech system when it died some years back, actually sound pretty damn great and I love the audio output. I forget how much I paid for those Pebble v3s but damn, it was money well spent! In my bedroom, I’ll usually use the old Echo Dot with a clock on my headboard, after the occasional argument over which device to Bluetooth audio from and that sometimes ends with silence from the lack of wanting to beat it into submission. Downstairs the way it typically goes is wanting to use the really-old Echo Dot and ends with using my iPad speakers because the goal is to cook dinner not win battles against technology.

My remaining Bluetooth speaker hasn’t turned up over the past year, and a replacement surround sound system has been on hiatus for other reasons. So, I decided to shop for a suitable speaker for Christmas. Sonos’s Roam 2 being the winner in the end.

Contenders for this plan included Apple’s HomePod Mini, which would provide both an AirPlay target and an avenue for an idea I’ve had on the mind for a while: possible replacements for Alexa. The problem there is unlike Echo Dot’s, they’re expensive to scale and some new hardware is likely on the horizon, so I’m hesitant to dig into that. The other contender: find an AirPlay capable speaker, preferably one with a Bluetooth function or an analog line-in.

Turns out that there are actually a good number of AirPlay capable speakers now. In the end though, I opted for the Roam 2. Probably cheaper than finding another one of the JBLs I used to use, which apparently were popular enough that as years went on, the price went from okay to crazy, lol. While for me, the Roam 2 is very expensive, unlike creating a whole home audio or a surround sound setup with Sonos, it’s not prohibitively expensive.

Thus far, the little buddy passes the first test cases: P!nk’s Funhouse album and AirPlay. I often use “So What” as one of my reference songs for audio playback, among several others. So far, it’s a win ;). While waiting on my Blu-ray rips to finish, it’s also a good excuse to listen to music.

I was a little concerned about the Roam 2’s audio quality, given reviews that I’ve read. But I have no complaints. Being someone who likes music but isn’t an audiophile, I would say if this puppy sounds bad, you shouldn’t be using a portable speaker or must be moving beyond its range. Generally, I answer both those questions with “If I wouldn’t otherwise have audio, I’m not gonna complain unless it sounds like ass,” and quite frankly it sounds better than my tablet and laptop. Certainly no worse than my various Alexa devices :P.

More importantly, it doesn’t drive me batshit when wanting to connect something….

RTX space heating

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One thing that I’ve learned with being cooped up by this hamstring, is Rimuru makes a superb space heater. A while back, I bought a small sensor wanting to get an idea of the humidity in the study, since sometimes it gets rather warm.

Rimuru’s waste heat when pumping out the 4070 Ti is actually enough to significantly raise the temperature in here. After a long gaming session the study’s temperature can climb as as high as 26 C versus 21 C across the house where my thermostat is located. Or roughly, play video games long enough and the temperature rises about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Enough that opening the window is more effective than mucking with the thermostat, but then that dries things out on the humidity front. It’s quite an effective space heater when outputting 2160p, but fortunately that’s predominantly waste heat rather than internal. It’s got great cooling, the problem is the place it sends that heat is outside the case ;).

By contrast while the study TV likely has a larger amount of waste heat than the monitor at my desk, Steam Deck event when combined with its dock and an external hard drive, doesn’t really seem to affect the temperature in here at all. Considering the machine would probably become a hand grenade or a pot of thermite if it generated as much heat as the RTX card, that’s not too shabby. It’s more of a 720p/low than 4K/high on more modern games since the APU’s more like an Xbox One, but Steam Deck is actually quite capable for what it’s able to actually run. Plus for older games like MGS:V that were developed around the XB1 era, it can basically pump those out at 720p with max graphics.

So, I think in the future I may want to consider a wee bit more about how to ventilate Rimuru’s place in the study, or perhaps just angle its asshole towards the open door instead of the wall.

And then there’s the fact that without hamstring trouble, I’d actually like to get up and walk around more often \o/ \o/ \o/.

From Pro to Mini

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Based on progress thus far, it’s looking like the iPad Pro will be retiring after five years of use, most of them as my primary computing device for non-gaming tasks, and the past year as a secondary since I mainly find myself desk bound.

Adjusted for the years, the A17 Pro is exactly what I wanted versus the 6th generation Mini, and a much appreciated bump from the A12X. Not to mention the increased storage capacity out of the box.

This will be the first time that I’ve used a smaller tablet since my Galaxy Note 8.0 back in the Jelly Bean era. While the various 4:3/9.7” Galaxy Tab S’s were a pretty perfect size, the worst thing that I can say after 5 years with the 11” iPad Pro is that it’s not the device to reach for when compact or one handed operation is called for. But otherwise has been a superb tablet even if its SoC has been getting a bit out moded.

When I used Android tablets, I always favored the smaller ones or found them the best compromise between a phone and a laptop form factor. Phablets and large phones are just not large enough, and at least in Android land, typically fall short of the magic 7” crossing point that lead to tablet layouts being supported. Can’t say I’ve ever been impressed with the “Tablet” support of iOS, but the Mini 7 at least delivers the tablet layouts and is vastly superior to my phone.

Floppies still refuse to kick the bucket

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Reading the Ars article, “San Francisco to pay $212 million to end reliance on 5.25-inch floppy disks“, I couldn’t help but think, “At least they’re not the 8-inch kind,” and ironically enough the article ends with a reference to just such a case.

Growing up in an the era I did, our computer relied on 5 1/4″ floppy diskettes and I didn’t really experience the stiff 3.5″ disks until after both the Pentium and the Internet came into vogue. But it’s actually pretty odd to encounter the even older 8″ variety, since those tend to land closer to the CP/M era than the DOS era of computing.

Actually, the two salvaged Weatherstar diskettes displayed in my study may be the only 8″ diskettes I’ve seen in the wild. Even then the format was ancient. Heck, when my family was buying still 5 1/4″ disks from the school supply store for our Tandy, 3.5″ were already long since the mainstream floppy media.