Author Topic: The computing stuff rant thread (Read 410724 times)

Biggsy · « **Reply #1075 on:** 27 March, 2016, 04:14:11 pm »

Certainly weird things in Windows cause weird things in Acronis. True Image has saved lots of bacon for me anyway throughout the last ten years. I'm regretting purchasing the 2016 version, though. The interface is nasty and it can't import backup settings from previous versions. That's my rant. 2014 is the sweet spot.

Afasoas · « **Reply #1076 on:** 06 April, 2016, 08:46:35 am »

TalkTalk are making me do lots of swears. They seem adamant there's no issue with the network. I beg to differ.

The bright red bars are packet loss. In the top graph, each bar is averaged out per minute. In the second graph, each bar is averaged out over five minutes. They ran some tests against the line last night at which point the fault was not occuring. Lo and behold, as soon as their tests were complete, the fault manifested again. At 04:30am the fault either manifests or disappears. When the fault is occurring, factory resetting the ADSL router and disconnecting the firewall makes no difference. Neither does using the master socket.

Virgin Media vDSL install is scheduled for later in the month and we're all set for high availability (Dual ISP internet). I thought it was OTT but as of right now, I'm unable to reliably provide out of hours support to my employer.

Kim · « **Reply #1077 on:** 06 April, 2016, 01:25:57 pm »

Quote from: Afasoas on 06 April, 2016, 08:46:35 am

TalkTalk are making me do lots of swears. They seem adamant there's no issue with the network. I beg to differ.

That change in latency at 4am looks like a DSL line re-syncing with different parameters (speed, margins, interleaving, etc). Can you log sync data from your modem to compare?

Afasoas · « **Reply #1078 on:** 07 April, 2016, 12:08:25 pm »

I've had a look at the ADSL status pages on the router, whilst the connection is stable.

What follows is a bit of a acronym-laden ramble, so feel free to ignore it.

I've got ADSL line speed, attentuation, SNR margin, Errored Seconds, Severely Errored Seconds, Unailable Seconds, Forward Error Correction and Cyclic Redundancy Check.

It looks like the line sync speed has been reduced, as it's now lower than what I've achieved in download tests prior to this knavery.
SNR margin looks reasonable - would be nice to see the actual SNR
Downstream attenuation is twice that of upstream - should they not at least be similar? (~44 dB down and ~26 dB up)

There are numbers for ES, SES UAS, FEC* and CRC on downstream
There are numbers for UAS upstream.

From what I've read, the UAS count should only be incremented as a result of ten consecutive SES occurances. On the basis of which these figures don't make much sense as the UAS count is greater than all the numbers put together. And it's the same value up and downstream.

An engineer visit is booked in for Tuesday.

*Interleaving is currently switched off

Pickled Onion · « **Reply #1079 on:** 09 April, 2016, 03:57:53 pm »

Why is tagging of Classical music so unbelievably shit?

Unless you really believe the LSO is a covers band, or that people really file their albums under conductor??

MAX was incapable of doing what it was told, so I tried to rip Mahler's 9th using iTunes. Half the symphony went under "Compilations", as Ovation something or other¹, because there was a Wagner piece to pad out the first CD. The other half ended up under "Georg Solti". Seriously. It would be nice to play the whole symphony, and to find it under M for "Mahler".

[1] "Ovation" is the name given to a series of recordings by Decca, and has nothing to do with the music.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #1080 on:** 09 April, 2016, 07:03:59 pm »

Rip with Something Else and jibble the tags with Mp3tag before importing to iTunes?

CrinklyLion · « **Reply #1081 on:** 13 April, 2016, 11:06:13 pm »

One of my client sites just got Win10'd.

That was a challenging morning in the not-office...

Kim · « **Reply #1082 on:** 13 April, 2016, 11:38:10 pm »

Having one of those "it'd be nice to be debugging my own crap for a change" days.

Mrs Pingu · « **Reply #1083 on:** 16 April, 2016, 07:32:26 pm »

Frikkin Santander and their sodding crappy Internet banking!
Everything I use it, it freezes Firefox and then the entire laptop.

Anyone got an Internet bank that is less shitty? (Actually I have several already but I suppose it's time I found another new one)

Feanor · « **Reply #1084 on:** 16 April, 2016, 10:49:11 pm »

Quote from: Mrs Pingu on 16 April, 2016, 07:32:26 pm

Frikkin Santander and their sodding crappy Internet banking!
Everything I use it, it freezes Firefox and then the entire laptop.

Anyone got an Internet bank that is less shitty? (Actually I have several already but I suppose it's time I found another new one)

RBS digital banking works fine here.

Mrs Pingu · « **Reply #1085 on:** 16 April, 2016, 10:59:58 pm »

After some Gewgling I cleared the cache and tried again, which seemed to work better. Have now set FF to clear the cache on exit, will see how it is next time I have to use it in anger.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #1086 on:** 17 April, 2016, 04:30:22 am »

I've not had any problems with Santander's online banking using Chrome, but OTOH I aten't used it in about a year.

Biggsy · « **Reply #1087 on:** 17 April, 2016, 11:27:34 am »

Santander works fine on Pale Moon (originally based on Firefox). I'm not happy with the way the bank treats fraud victims, but that's another story, and perhaps applicable to all banks.

mcshroom · « **Reply #1088 on:** 17 April, 2016, 12:44:14 pm »

Works for me on chrome and on the mobile app. Not had any fraud problems other than them refusing to process payments I've tried to make because they think they're suspicious. Last time was trying to pay for my car's Service/MOT bill the day after two weeks of touring (and using my cards) round the Highlands.

Afasoas · « **Reply #1089 on:** 19 April, 2016, 10:55:17 am »

Gah. Online-Banking. Halifax's new on-line banking seems to lockup Firefox for minutes on end.
I don't keep any history between sessions and cookies are destroyed when closing all the tabs associated with them.

It's probably got something to do with the metric shed load of javascript used for tracking user journeys, collating stats and advertising :/

Karla · « **Reply #1090 on:** 21 April, 2016, 12:46:57 am »

I've updated Ubuntu and my bluetooth speaker no longer works: it connects but the sound doesn't get routed to it. I've tried the usual fixes and either they don't work or the author of one program hasn't started supporting 15.10 yet.

Ubuntu has had problems with bluetooth for years. FFS, why isn't this sorted by now?

Wombat · « **Reply #1091 on:** 21 April, 2016, 08:10:47 am »

Quote from: Mrs Pingu on 16 April, 2016, 07:32:26 pm

Frikkin Santander and their sodding crappy Internet banking!
Everything I use it, it freezes Firefox and then the entire laptop.

Anyone got an Internet bank that is less shitty? (Actually I have several already but I suppose it's time I found another new one)

Strangely, apart from the first few months when Santander banking didn't like Opera, we've had no trouble with it at all. I think Mrs W uses it with Firefox, but on an Android tablet. I use it on the PC through various iterations of Windows, with various iterations of Opera, and on my Android phone.

I tried Firefox,. but found it had grown big and bloaty.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #1092 on:** 04 May, 2016, 01:37:46 pm »

Look, Bookcrawler, please get it into your thick fucking skull that "John le Carré" and "John Le Carré" are the same imaginary person

Kim · « **Reply #1093 on:** 04 May, 2016, 01:41:49 pm »

PSU failed on the router last night, unusually in a way that caused it to repeatedly blow mains fuses.

I'd replaced it and done a motherboard swap before barakta suggested checking that the kettle lead actually worked.

That's an hour of our lives we won't get back.

barakta · « **Reply #1094 on:** 04 May, 2016, 02:13:40 pm »

My job is to "do exactly as I am told, nothing more nothing less" while simultaneously reading Kim's mind and not getting offended by snappiness. Oh and asking stupid/obvious questions.

Jaded · « **Reply #1095 on:** 06 May, 2016, 08:12:55 pm »

Standing watching a presentation in a local town, with techie people providing the PCs and projector feed and they are flipping through the slides in Poerpoint, not in slideshow mode. So menus and that tray thing at the bottom showing. Pah!

mrcharly-YHT · « **Reply #1096 on:** 11 May, 2016, 11:25:23 am »

I fucking well hate Perforce

Andrew · « **Reply #1097 on:** 11 May, 2016, 11:40:23 am »

My wife ranted her frustration at the Windows 7 box last night. "Can I have Linux back?" she finally said. My work here is done

But I shall leave it. As much as I'm not a fan of Windows, it is 'useful' having it around. Justin Case.

I sense a job for VirtualBox though. That should be some fun for me. I've set up a Windows virtual platform under Linux but not the other way around.

Kim · « **Reply #1098 on:** 11 May, 2016, 01:10:26 pm »

Quote from: Andrew on 11 May, 2016, 11:40:23 am

My wife ranted her frustration at the Windows 7 box last night. "Can I have Linux back?" she finally said. My work here is done

I do keep wondering when Windows will be ready for the desktop...

Quote

But I shall leave it. As much as I'm not a fan of Windows, it is 'useful' having it around. Justin Case.

Sadly true, though much less so than it once was.

simonp · « **Reply #1099 on:** 11 May, 2016, 05:09:07 pm »

This week is all about context switching. My internal stack is getting pretty deep.

Author Topic: The computing stuff rant thread (Read 410724 times)

Afasoas

Afasoas

Afasoas

Andrew

simonp