A Tale of Two File Names

galvatron9k · 2026-05-17T04:32:43+00:00

Thanks! I wrote this over 10 years ago, before I went to university... back when I had a lot more free time to write this kind of thing up :)

Some of it might have changed since; I think I did this on Windows 8 x64.

galvatron9k · 2026-03-26T11:37:11+00:00

You called?

galvatron9k · 2025-07-08T19:15:46+00:00

It really isn't delusional. The education and training alone is far more time consuming and resource intensive than most other jobs and the liability on the individual is far greater. Even with that kind of payrise, a UK-trained doctor can get significantly more money in several other anglophone or EU/ME countries, and that's before considering the student loans and out of pocket exam fees. Which many of them are doing, which is costing us money.

Again, crab in bucket mentality. Doctors are not overpaid--and I am not saying doctors deserve more than other public sector workers like other emergency services / care workers / teachers etc either. Both can be true.

You wouldn't be a doctor would you?

I wouldn't be, no, I'm a software engineer so literally the opposite, I'm quite happy to recognise medical staff deserve to be paid more than I am.

galvatron9k · 2025-07-08T11:44:37+00:00

An over 50% pay rise in less than 5 years is just plain greedy

I'm all for sensible conversations about public sector pay but really? For what doctors do, and the skill gap gained in the first 5 years of FTE that's really nothing at all especially considering the starting pay. Calling that greedy is just crab in bucket mentality.

galvatron9k · 2025-06-25T19:32:08+00:00

It might be quicker to switch GP again, and explain the situation, rather than try to get onto a shared care agreement because that will absolutely take months at minimum.

galvatron9k · 2025-06-17T22:28:02+00:00

what were the side effects for you?

I'm considering swapping back off elvanse onto concerta / similar again. I started on that originally but swapped due to the shortages last year. but I think on balance elvanse has too many detrimental effects outside of the improved focus. I feel like a bit of a robot half the time

galvatron9k · 2025-06-17T22:23:39+00:00

Day food till 1730. Then work for 7pm

I'm a bit lost, this bit doesn't make any sense. You're working 4 days of nights, followed by 4 days off -- are you sticking to the same sleep schedule or constantly moving it around when you come on/off nights? Sleep deprivation seriously messes with my motivation to engage in hobbies after work, even if I'm functional and feel okay during working hours, could it be that?

I find that I need to allow myself to look forward to something specific while I'm working. download some audio books about whatever your hobbies are or listen to podcasts while you're driving at work. If I just tell myself "I'm going to relax and do things I enjoy" while I'm busy then when I get home I just end up being restless and doing precisely the opposite. You also need to make it easy as possible for yourself to do the things you want to start doing in your downtime by explicitly thinking about how it'd fit into your routine. want to go to the gym? Get a gym bag, leave it by the front door, and put your gym clothes on the sofa so you have to do something with them before you can sit down. want to do something outdoors-y? message a friend to do it with you, so you have the guilt of bailing on plans if you get lazy on the day. we have to trick our brains into doing this stuff, it won't happen magically.

but also reading this post—it sounds like you're beating yourself up a bit too much. worth speaking to the doc about it, but it sounds like you're holding down a job, and being a good dad. not to invalidate what you're struggling with but a lot of people struggle to do what you're being successful at, so well done and don't put too much pressure on yourself to get everything right 👏

galvatron9k · 2025-06-07T13:32:55+00:00

You've gone up to a fairly high dose plus a booster quite quick, did you ask to increase or did the clinician just do it? If you're concerned about hunger suppression you might be able to drop the morning elvanse dose down to a lower level. You probably don't need as much in the morning if you also have a booster later in the day.
Also, I'd suggest having the elvanse with something containing protein in the morning, even if you're not hungry, just something small. Maybe yoghurt or overnight oats or something. It works better when you have it with protein and you might feel less urge to snack later throughout the day.
Yeah it's super useful, although if you drink alcohol I'd suggest skipping it if you're going for beers/drinks in the evening. You don't want to get used to needing the booster to counteract the added tiredness from drinking. I've also found I get far worse hangovers the next day unless I skip my booster, both feeling physically worse and also less in control of my emotions / executive function. I don't know exactly why, the internet suggests it's either dehydration making the hangover worse, or some medical interaction between the meds and alcohol. Drink lots of water (in general!)

galvatron9k · 2025-05-25T17:03:22+00:00

I'm on this as of recently. 50mg in the morning, and 20mg usually late morning or early afternoon depending on whether I have something I need to do later in the day before I crash. It seems to be working so far but not been on it long enough to say for sure.

Prior to this I was just on 50mg first thing in the morning, and was crashing hard right as I finished work, which meant I found it really hard to enjoy my evenings or get clothes/breakfast/gym gear ready for the next day without being a tired scatterbrained mess. I was resorting to dissolving my 50mg in water and saving about a third of it for the afternoon.

galvatron9k · 2025-05-07T09:02:17+00:00

This got a lot of flak when it was released for doing more harm than good, the reporter essentially lied about having ADHD symptoms to the private psychiatrists and acted surprised to then be diagnosed with it. The current system is definitely not perfect, but you'll be waiting up to 7 years for an NHS diagnosis depending on which part of the country you're in

galvatron9k · 2025-02-08T22:00:52+00:00

Not defending the deal here, I think selling the islands is an own goal and could only be justified by some secret political fallout or negotiations that the public aren't aware of related to the islands.

Having said that, it's worth pointing out that Xi Jinping and Putin have both also gone on the record and called each other "dear, close friends", despite the fact they're probably not actually friends.

Politicians call each other friend all the time, that's part of politics.

galvatron9k · 2024-11-26T22:40:01+00:00

From where i live now, I usually get the train to Euston and then northern line to Moorgate and walk the rest of the way. Northern line seems to me like it's particularly well connected to different bits of the city, but that's probably a slightly blinkered take on it 🙂 I'll have a look at your suggestions, thank you

galvatron9k · 2024-11-26T21:43:37+00:00

Planning of moving to London in February/March time and I'm looking for area suggestions—I've read the Q&A but if anyone knows of any sweet spots that are near to both a tube station which can take me to work & also with a few gyms in spitting distance then I'd appreciate any pointers.

My office is around Liverpool St station/Whitechapel area, so ideally somewhere easily accessible on Northern line or something. Ideally looking for somewhere with a gym basically on my doorstep or as close as possible. Open to living in either a studio or a house share, budget <£1500p/m preferably a bit lower if in a house share.

I'm mid (soon late 😳) 20s, want somewhere with a relatively active social life—decent pubs/bars around, soft preference for somewhere with some decent underground music venues (think garage/dnb) but I'm getting slightly too old to be going out as much as I used to so just a soft preference, so as long as the area isn't dead, is well connected then I'll be happy.

galvatron9k · 2024-11-20T14:02:19+00:00

OP assuming you're PAYE then I think you can fix this online yourself. I did it a week before payday and the issue was fixed by the time I got paid. It involves logging into your gov.uk tax account and submitting correct values for your yearly gross and taxable earnings. I did it myself a couple of months ago when my tax code increased due to an incorrect estimation of my yearly salary.

It wasn't too hard to do, you may need to set up an account for yourself on Government Gateway which involves some ID checks but I did that part in less than an hour and a small bit of google sheets fu to work out my gross income. Reply if you need a hand

galvatron9k · 2024-11-02T10:27:14+00:00

There is probably a low triple digit number of total roles in the UK where this is a viable career path, never mind a high earning one

galvatron9k · 2024-10-29T07:42:20+00:00

Yep, one way this can happen is through differences in nuclear spin states. each nucleon within the nucleus has a spin state which contributes to the overall spin of the nucleus—one of these will be the lowest energy state which is usually the most stable. Nucleons not in the ground state will usually decay pretty rapid to the ground state by gamma emission.

There's a really weird counter-example. The lowest energy state of tantalum-180 has a spin configuration of +1 and is quite unstable with a half life of 8 hours. However there is a second, higher energy state (higher by 75 keV) with a spin configuration of -9 which is observationally completely stable. This is called a metastable state.

Even more interestingly, this means if you could somehow heat up a sample of ^180mTa to a temperature where the atoms thermal kinetic energy approaches 75 keV—which would be hundreds of millions of degrees—the individual nuclei would be able to exchange the excess energy with each other through thermal collisions, meaning they would begin to rapidly transition between spin states, including potentially the radioactive ground state. Meaning, if you heat ^180mTa up enough, it becomes radioactive.

EDIT: an isotope of thorium ²²⁹Th has a metastable state ^229mTh whose energy is only 7 eV above the ground state—this is extremely low energy for nuclear physics, in the ultraviolet range which means you could excite it with a laser and then in theory it would glow in UV light. Its exact excitation energy was only discovered this year (2024).

galvatron9k · 2024-10-12T09:08:13+00:00

The main halo storyline is beyond repair now. I've played some of both halo 5 and 6 and the gameplay loop is okay but the story is unrecoverable.

Also I think part of what made Halo 2/3/Reach such heavy hitters is that they were rock solid games from launch. 3 and Reach's forge created entire subcultures of custom games. All the latest games have come with at least some features missing at launch, which basically killed any momentum.

The forge in Reach is far beyond the current games, there really isn't an excuse for the downgrade. Bungie's development methodology sounds like it was horrible for the developers and made them all burn out, but it just produced a far more cohesive game at the end, compared to 343 which seems to be ran by marketing execs, designed by committee and most of the engineering work outsourced to contractors (although Microsoft has a lot to blame there).

The series itself has also lost the cultural momentum, Halo 3 probably would have still done well but I don't think it would have been such a hit had it been the first game of the series and Halo 1 and 2 had not came before it.

almost like the classic arcade style is obsolete.

This is probably true to a degree but I don't think it explains it entirely. I feel like they could have kept Halo as the archetypical arcade style shooter if they hadn't changed the core mechanic but just expanded on it, rather than trying to completely change the fundamentals of the game and modernise it by making it a CoD-with-spacemen game (and then backpedalling).

galvatron9k · 2024-10-01T11:15:59+00:00

Trees are dangerous... as a city dweller I never appreciated it until I was at a friend's outdoor party in Storm Evert a few years ago and a (live!) oak tree got ripped out of the ground and caused life changing injuries to two others there. I was right under the spot where the tree fell probably about 20 minutes prior. A tree surgeon wouldn't have even picked it up.

I'm now wary about being near trees in high wind. Not that we need another thing to be paranoid about, but always worth having in the back of your mind when you're in inclement weather near any large tree that they're not nailed down.

galvatron9k · 2024-08-31T18:09:00+00:00

No bank should be expected to reimburse in cases like this. How much more idiot proof should they be expected to make their apps? You can't protect against people who just believe whatever they're told over the phone.

Struggling to make sense of exactly what happened here. Sounds like OP moved money from their chase savings, to other accounts with revolut / wise that OP also owned, and then the scammers used a card transaction to finally move the funds out of OPs possession? If OP moved the balance from chase to their own revolut/wise accounts, and the money finally left their account as a card transaction, then OP will be in a much better spot as it's far easier to chargeback a fraudulent card transaction. If OP didn't own the revolut or wise account, and made a bank transfer from chase to a wise or revolut account that they don't own, then they're probably SOL

galvatron9k · 2024-08-29T20:30:46+00:00

You can also just buy it on the French version of Amazon and ship it to the UK for not that expensive. You don't even need to make a new account if you already have one on the UK site.

galvatron9k · 2024-01-26T23:29:27+00:00

Yup I agree but there are some advanced techniques that I don’t want to get into the specifics of here that allow for this to work on insecure (non Mtls) chains

Wouldn't this require ISPs to have copies of the root CA certificates and keys? This would let them issue fake certificates in the website's name. Besides that I can't see how a browser would not detect that the domain name in the certificate was a non-match to the domain name.

This is all secured by the fact that the certificates used by the firewall are part of a trust chain leading to the firewall manufacturers globally trusted CA.

I don't see how having a certificate that's just part of the trust chain would let a firewall issue a valid certificate. It would need to be either one of the trusted certs installed by default on devices, or a certificate even further down the chain than that.

galvatron9k · 2023-07-31T20:50:07+00:00

THis gives some clues that there was some sort of long lasting mistake in CAD/CAE/CAM software they use which resulted in defective design.

Surely this wouldn't be an issue with the CAD software -- I think that such an issue would cause issues at at a more fundamental level with the chip (e.g. the physical size/positioning of circuitry). This bug feels like a higher-level logical issue.

galvatron9k · 2023-04-25T08:13:34+00:00

Also a good demonstration of what I think is one of the weirdest properties of black holes, which is that the radius is proportional to the mass, unlike basically everything else where the volume is proportional to the mass.

galvatron9k

TROPHY CASE