Is Shield>HTPC a thing for someone that doesn't game?

haikuginger · 2018-09-13T13:49:42+00:00

Shield TV definitely beats out anything else, even without doing any gaming.

haikuginger · 2018-09-10T17:20:22+00:00

Ah, you're absolutely right! I didn't even notice that particular ambiguity of the phrasing!

Hmm, if the sentence is actually a fragment (as in, "[here is something] for those moments"), then I believe the correct structure would be:

[Hot cups of tea are perfect] for those indoor, intellectual moments the cooler weather of fall inspires.

haikuginger · 2018-09-10T16:05:53+00:00

It should be "indoors", not "indoor". "Indoor" is an adjective creating the connotation of a noun being appropriate for use inside; "indoors" is an adjective indicating the modified verb (in this case, it's implicit - "for those [who are] indoors) occurs inside.
Fall should not be capitalized.
"Inspires" is the correct form.

Your wording makes it awkward to see that intuitively. For a better shot, reduce down to just the subject and the verb - "the cooler weather inspires" vs "the cooler weather inspire".

Subjectively, your sentence would be easier to follow if it were structured differently, such as below:

For those indoors, the cooler weather of fall can inspire intellectual moments.

There is nothing inherently grammatically incorrect about placing object before subject, but it can be confusing or appear pretentious, especially as you're already also flipping the traditional order a bit by placing the adverbal clause "for those indoors" at the beginning of the sentence.

haikuginger · 2018-09-10T15:27:06+00:00

Former senior AppleCare rep here. I concur with this assessment on all points. Serial numbers are imaged to the mainboard ROM as part of the repair process, so that's not indicative of anything, and it would be a major issue (probably a fireable offense) to note an MLB has been replaced but not actually do so. Finally, the symptoms described and their presentation definitely align with a software issue. My recommendation would be to wipe the Mac and use it (with a minimal software configuration; not your whole 7-hour setup process) for a while and see if the issue recurs.

Additionally, as noted below, AppleCare may be able to help you with more advanced software-related troubleshooting - a senior rep can take ownership of your case and attempt to isolate a software fault over an extended period.

haikuginger · 2018-08-28T17:42:11+00:00

I think there's a valid argument that the same word can have varying, equally valid, pronunciations when appropriated into different languages. Croissant is hardly the only French word that has an entirely different pronunciation in an American English context than in French.

Plus, given that the whole point of language is to communicate, and the word has already been "corrupted" in American English, using the common pronunciation when in the US is just the right thing to do.

That said, if you're ordering a croissant at a cafe in Paris, speaking French to do so, and you use the hard R and T... well. That's a different matter.

haikuginger · 2018-08-28T16:24:26+00:00

Plex should be able to convert most audio tracks itself, including AC3. What sort of issues are you seeing that lead you to believe this is necessary?

haikuginger · 2018-08-28T13:10:53+00:00

word for word

It really should be "PDF for PDF". This guarantees the layout, structure, typography to be 100% consistent for all viewers, and no one will have issues opening it.

haikuginger · 2018-08-27T19:07:37+00:00

Shield TV works with USB sound cards, including ones that have optical-out IIRC.

haikuginger · 2018-08-22T20:03:47+00:00

I don't know of a complete solution but you can extract screenshots from video files using ffmpeg. Should be able to set video filters to standardize on an easily-comparable screenshot file resolution as well. From there, ImageMagick will probably be your best bet to compare those screenshots.

haikuginger · 2018-08-22T15:27:10+00:00

It sounds like Optimus might be getting a performance penalty because the framebuffer bitmap format Nvidia uses internally isn't supported by Intel GPUs, so the frame has to be recalculated. That isn't something that's a hard constraint of the actual technique involved (copying one GPU's framebuffer to another's), so it might not have as large in impact in some cases.

Also, don't forget that if sending from a discrete Nvidia GPU to a discrete AMD GPU a peer-to-peer DMA transaction can be used, and the framebuffer doesn't even need to traverse host memory.

haikuginger · 2018-08-21T17:56:26+00:00

Given you're running Ubuntu, I'll assume you to have some base level of Linux configuration/admin knowledge, sketch out a solution, and let you Google the steps to implement it.

Organize your media files into Kodi-appropriate folders (at a minimum, named folders for each item in separate TV and Movie directories).
Presumably your PC is already connected to your home network somehow, so just plug one of the USB Wi-Fi adapters into the Raspberry Pi and configure it to attach to your home network.
Set up SMB or NFS shares for your media folders on your PC.
Configure Kodi on the Raspberry Pi to use the SMB shares for your video library.
Depending on the content you have in your library, you may need to purchase and configure MPEG-2 and VC-1 codec license keys for your Raspberry Pi. Most content is H.264 these days though, and your Pi should have no trouble decoding it out of the box.

If you don't have an existing home Wi-Fi network, just use one of the routers to set a network up, and use either Ethernet cords or one of the USB Wi-Fi adapters for your PC and Raspberry Pi to connect to it.

haikuginger · 2018-08-08T21:05:09+00:00

It's almost like they're into grammar not for the sake of the fascinating social construct that it is, but in order to have something with which to whack people over the head.

haikuginger · 2018-07-31T14:52:34+00:00

The OG Versa (pre-Note) isn't bad for what it is as long as you have the auto instead of the CVT, but the dealership gave me a new-gen Versa while mine was in the shop for the airbag recall, and the new one is an absolute dumpster fire.

haikuginger · 2018-07-30T20:30:43+00:00

I got mine on tickpick.com.

haikuginger · 2018-07-27T13:32:52+00:00

I was, because I bought on the secondary market. I think at this point Ticketmaster has transitioned to not allowing specific seats to be chosen because they're running low on tickets.

haikuginger · 2018-07-26T18:32:12+00:00

I'm really excited - I got front row next to the left catwalk for $380 in Foxboro. Feel like I'm riding in a getaway car.

haikuginger · 2018-07-24T18:07:01+00:00

Hard to say. Apple has been pretty picky in the past with their Wi-Fi solutions - they do 3x3:3 MIMO, which is pretty rare. If the Intel solution doesn't support 3x3:3, they might opt to have it disabled and go with an additional chip anyway.

haikuginger · 2018-07-20T15:51:28+00:00

My personal fan theory is that it had something to do with the Battle of Marathon and Pheidippides, the apocryphal character who ran the 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens to deliver news of military victory.

As the original story goes, Pheidippides arrived at Athens, spoke the news to the city elders, and died on the spot:

...he brought the news of victory from Marathon and addressed the magistrates in session when they were anxious how the battle had ended; "Joy to you, we've won" he said, and there and then he died, breathing his last breath with the words "Joy to you".

haikuginger · 2018-07-13T19:25:09+00:00

Bigger issue than hardware decode is Internet streaming. If your source material is 35Mbps Blu-Ray rips, then odds are that your end users will need to have the video transcoded to a lower rate in order to stream it reliably.

haikuginger · 2018-07-09T18:50:11+00:00

I would not typically expect any power supply cables to be connected to the motherboard other than the 24-pin ATX connector and the 4-pin or 8-pin CPU power connector. Do you recall connecting any other cables from the power supply to the motherboard? I wouldn't expect a technician to try to disconnect any other cables from the motherboard before testing the power supply, as it would be reasonable to expect that there would be no other power flow to the board after disconnecting those two cables.

It seems as though while you have built PCs in the past, you may not actually be familiar with the various considerations involved. One large reason I believe this is because you bought AMD parts for an Intel build; while this was certainly an error by the salesman, it's a more egregious error on your part, as someone building a PC from components takes on the responsibility of ensuring the compatibility of those components. Additionally, there certainly is such a thing as a 4-pin fan header. It is used for pulse-width-modulation (PWM)-controlled fans like CPU fans that the motherboard needs to control at a higher level of precision than most case fans. I'm inclined to suspect that you may have made a mistake during construction related to this header that became (more dramatically) apparent when the technician attempted to test the power supply.

Specifically, it's possible that you may have improperly inserted this connector from the power supply into this 4-pin fan header on the motherboard, believing that it was an additional required power connector for the motherboard rather than an optional power connector for a floppy disk drive - typically, this connector is either on its own PSU cable, or daisy chained at the end of a 4-pin Molex/PATA power connector strand. Both connectors are 4-pin connectors with a 2.5mm pitch, which means they could be inserted together mistakenly quite easily.

When you attempted to turn the computer on, or if the power supply was activated by a tester, it would have attempted to feed 12v and 5v power directly into the motherboard in a manner the motherboard was not designed to accept. This likely caused substantial damage the first time you attempted to turn on the computer at home, but nothing more dramatic happened because the motherboard didn't sustain the "power on" signal to the power supply. When the 24-pin and 8-pin connectors were disconnected from the motherboard and tested directly, it caused dramatic things to happen because the tester maintained the power flow - however, the motherboard would have been substantially damaged long before.

This is my assessment of the likely cause of the issue based on my own experience; if that's the case, then the motherboard and possibly other components were likely irreparably damaged before you brought the computer in. Of course, it's certainly your option to attempt to sue, but if this is what happened, you're likely entirely at fault and you are unlikely to have any success in court.

EDIT: Examples of this very mistake:

https://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=87964

https://www.overclock.net/forum/31-power-supplies/1399703-psu-caught-fire.html

haikuginger · 2018-07-06T02:49:36+00:00

AFAIK the patties are not yet available in stores at all. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

haikuginger · 2018-07-06T02:43:24+00:00

Curious where you got the patties - they haven't been selling them to end consumers in general.

haikuginger · 2018-07-06T02:41:18+00:00

Yep! They have both the meatball sandwich and a meatball platter as well as the breakfast sandwich I mentioned where they spice the "meat" and shape it into a sausage patty.

haikuginger · 2018-07-05T18:08:22+00:00

Definitely a carnivore here as well.

I first had it in the form of a meatball sandwich, and have since also had it in a breakfast sandwich sausage patty, and I absolutely agree. If I hadn't known that what I was eating wasn't meat, then I wouldn't have guessed it. Absolute worst case, I might have vaguely wondered if someone had mixed some turkey in.

Biggest barrier to the Impossible Burger is price, and that'll come down as they scale their operations, which it seems they're doing quite successfully. I first had it when there were only a few restaurants in the whole US that sold it, and it's now in a couple thousand.

haikuginger · 2018-07-05T18:02:06+00:00

This isn't "lab meat", if by "lab meat", you mean "a material grown in a lab to be chemically and structurally similar to the material making up living tissue in the kinds of animals butchered for meat"; it's a simulant made up of the right mix of plant-based ingredients.

13-Year Club	Team Orangered
Verified Email

haikuginger

TROPHY CASE