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Write a blog post in the style of Russell Coker

Feeling a bit bored I asked ChatGPT “Write a blog post in the style of Russell Coker” and the result is in the section below. I don’t know if ChatGPT knows that the person asking the question is the same as the person being asked about. If a human had created that I’d be certain […]

New 18 Core CPU and NVMe

I just got a E5-2696 v3 CPU for my ML110 Gen9 home workstation, this has a Passmark score of 23326 which is almost 3 times faster than the E5-2620 v4 which rated 9224. Previously it took over 40 minutes real time to compile a 6.10 kernel that was based on the Debian kernel configuration, now […]

Intel vs AMD

In response to a post about my latest laptop I had someone ask why I chose an Intel CPU. I’ve been a fan of the Thinkpad series of laptops since the 90s. They have always seemed well constructed (given the constraints of being light etc) and had a good feature set. Also I really like […]

T320 iDRAC Failure and new HP Z640

The Dell T320

Almost 2 years ago I made a Dell PowerEdge T320 my home server [1]. It was a decent upgrade from the PowerEdge T110 II that I had used previously. One benefit of that system was that I needed more RAM and the PowerEdge T1xx series use unbuffered ECC RAM which is unreasonably […]

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014

In May 2014 I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition tablet (wikipedia page [1]) with 32G of storage. It’s display is 2560×1600 resolution which still compares well to the latest tablets. The Galaxy Tab S8 [2] is the latest high-end tablet series from Samsung and the 11 inch tablet in that series also […]

Pixel 6A

I have just bought a Pixel 6A [1] for my wife. It’s one of the latest Google phones that was released almost at the same time as the Pixel 7 series, so if you want to spend a lot of money on a phone that’s the latest and greatest then the Pixel 7 and Pixel […]

USB-PD and GaN

A recent development is cheap Gallium Nitride based power supplies that provide better efficiency in a smaller space than other technologies. Kogan recently had a special on such devices so I decided to try them out with my new Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 5 [1]. Google searches for power supplies for that Thinkpad included […]

Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen5

Gen1

Since February 2018 I have been using a Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen1 [1] as my main laptop. Generally I’ve been very happy with it, it’s small and light, has good performance for web browsing etc, and with my transition to doing all compiles etc on servers it works well. When I wrote my original […]

Workstations With ECC RAM

The last new PC I bought was a Dell PowerEdge T110II in 2013. That model had been out for a while and I got it for under $2000. Since then the CPI has gone up by about 20% so it’s probably about $2000 in today’s money. Currently Dell has a special on the T150 tower […]

Philips 438P1 43″ 4K Monitor

I have just returned a Philips 438P1 43″ 4K Monitor [1] and gone back to my Samsung 28″ 4K monitor model LU28E590DS/XY AKA UE590.

The main listed differences are the size and the fact that the Samsung is TN but the Philips is IPS. Here’s a comparison of TN and IPS technologies [2]. Generally I […]