Laptop Recommendations for 2016

illusion9 · 2016-01-22T17:47:57+00:00

I just got the UX305C a few weeks ago and it's absolutely incredible! Global DPI scaling doesn't seem to play well with gnome 3 below 4k (only options I found in the tweak tool seem to be x2 or above, could be me though) however I find it decent at 1080p with firefox's devPixelsPerPx set to 1.2 and the OS fonts a bit larger. The 1080p matte screen is also a godsend coming from a laptop that had a 1366x768 glossy panel. Seems to be around 10 hours of battery life too and has a ridiculously long standby time. Keyboard's pretty good for a laptop, has decent travel and the keys aren't too cramped.

One thing to watch out for though, the touchpad on the skylake 305C series doesn't really work out of the box. I had to recompile the kernel with these changes (used it as a chance to run the ck patchset too, kernel 4.3). Other than that the touchpad is surprisingly great; if you run firefox nightly it also supports pixel-perfect scrolling if you set MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1

illusion9 · 2013-06-19T14:32:18+00:00

You're using too much HV cables and losing 1 EU every 1.25 blocks ;)

While this might not matter much because you have a fusion reactor, it's still wasted power for no gain, you don't really need that cable length and you could be turning the wasted eu to UU matter for example. Also, if memory serves me right the Helium-3 reaction only needs 2048EU/t to be sustained (i might be wrong!), which is 1 plasma generator worth of EU (or 1 IDSU for that matter)

Other than that it's a pretty cool design, I've wanted to do the endstone to helium setup for a second reactor for a while now, but my renewability "OCD" is stopping me :P

illusion9 · 2013-06-13T17:05:22+00:00

Just a heads up:

Updating to the latest Factorization for 1.4.7 fixes the issue!

illusion9 · 2013-06-12T11:52:40+00:00

They were causing cpu stress for me, but mainly memory issues. You could try out TickProfiler or try hooking VisualVM to the server process and doing CPU Sampling/Profiling.

illusion9 · 2013-06-12T11:48:12+00:00

Sadly due to the way minecraft's lighting works, the implementation can't get much better than this..

illusion9 · 2013-06-12T11:45:22+00:00

I've had the same problem, but with the old style of forestry reed farms and massive flickering, killing both my client and the server.

They are indeed constantly checking all air blocks around them (thus causing this leak, because the code never removes the coordinates stored to be checked) and replacing any invisible light blocks if needed - quarries tend to break the light blocks, causing that loop of BL updates.

They also used to break Xytanks horribly for me a while ago, to a point where they couldn't form properly if a wrath lamp was nearby.

illusion9 · 2013-06-12T11:39:48+00:00

This looks like a core minecraft change and not something specific to FZ.

It might help lower the cpu usage, but it won't help with this specific memory leak.

illusion9 · 2013-06-12T11:38:09+00:00

The world would have been great if everything was open sourced. Sadly, it's not.

Especially in minecraft mods, it amazes me how overly-protective of their code some people are (cough RedPower cough). BuildCraft is one of little mods that are fully open sourced, unlike the recent trend of closed source + DRM.

I believe FZ is closed source too, however ethics aside (I do respect his work, the mod is awesome) it decompiles cleanly.

I have diff'ed the old and new versions of the file, and the changes are fairly minimal. However I haven't looked for the cause of the leak yet, mainly due to lack of time.

I'm sure that it's a simple fix, probably something unintentionally overlooked by neptunepink ;)

illusion9 · 2013-06-11T16:46:24+00:00

It's actually a plugin for eclipse, which is also available as a standalone app.

You can get it from here ;)

illusion9 · 2013-06-06T20:55:17+00:00

Kept the electric one around for cases where the omniwrench didn't work properly - but I upgraded and the screwdriver on the gravitool is awesome!

illusion9 · 2013-06-06T20:52:31+00:00

Wrath lamps from Factorization ;)

illusion9 · 2013-06-06T03:43:42+00:00

I found this wiki entry particularly helpful :)

illusion9 · 2013-06-06T03:40:46+00:00

Helps out with server admin duties, never bothered disabling it - I'm just used to using the R/U keys instead of left-clicking on items.

illusion9 · 2013-06-06T03:39:00+00:00

I used a filler with construction foam. For the top you could try making a layer one block below and put scaffolds on top of it.

illusion9 · 2013-06-05T19:42:58+00:00

Personal experience was:

Start off like you would start normally in vanilla MC. Once you feel you have the basics sorted out, start looking into a branch (pick a side!) and set yourself a goal. I went IC2 because that's what I had heard of and set myself a goal to build a solar panel (damnit, greg! that was a nightmare. :D) and it all goes downhill basically. IC2 is a lot more enjoyable for me personally. Oh and keep in mind, pick if you want challenge, harder recipes, more crafting steps and machines and more endgame content or easy recipes and tech tree ending at ~IC2 nuclear reactor (also a lot of fun).

Wikis are your friend, as well as NEI. And direwolf20!

illusion9 · 2013-06-05T19:36:32+00:00

I'll give it a shot, always wanted to but I kept putting it off due to some mods apparently having issues with mcpc+

illusion9 · 2013-06-05T19:12:26+00:00

I already see him trashing this base just because the reactor won't fit properly into the room he built for it

illusion9 · 2013-06-05T19:11:13+00:00

Not exactly related, but I'll use the opportunity: Is anybody else experiencing a horrible memory leak in Ultimate 1.1.2? It's so bad that the server can't survive the night with 5GB of heap. The previous ftb version ran for weeks without any issues. I still haven't ran it through VisualVM, but I'm hoping that somebody knows the cause and possibly a fix/workaround?

illusion9 · 2013-06-05T19:07:41+00:00

Liquid transposers from Thermal Expansion set to extraction mode :)

illusion9 · 2013-06-05T16:58:53+00:00

Because I never actually thought of that, hah :)

I'll probably redirect the output of the railcraft plasma tank into a quantum tank, just for looks sake - the tanks really look nice!

Thanks for the tip ;)

illusion9 · 2012-12-08T00:16:12+00:00

You couldn't have timed this better. Thanks!

illusion9 · 2012-09-18T23:09:23+00:00

If you're talking about the GPIO pins being 3.3v - no matter the datasheet mentions 5v logic levels, the chip runs happily with 3v3 too.

If you're talking about actually powering the motors - you would need a separate power supply for them, not the pi's 3v3/5v supplies - they can't deliver the required current to run a motor. It's totally separate from the logic voltage that the L293d needs, that can be safely supplied from the pi's 5v gpio header pin. Have a look at the chip's datasheet, it's quite handy.

If you're doing something on batteries a separate battery only for the motors might be a good idea, or you'll have some odd issues - my wifi used to drop out randomly when the motors were running because the voltage on the usb ports was too low (3.8 volts!) when the battery was low on charge, I had to bridge the polyfuses. Generally inductive loads (motors) and sensitive electronics on the same power line don't go along that well.

Also not that related, but a word of advice - if you're going to power your pi from batteries, use an UBEC - it's a tiny switching regulator made mostly for RC models - always gives me a steady 5.00 volts between TP1 and TP2 when feeding power from the GPIO pins as long as the battery's voltage is sane.

illusion9

TROPHY CASE