Rubenerd

This originally appeared on PenguinCoffee, Clara’s and my old shared weblog.

Ahem.

Now that early adopters have their hands on the first batch of Mac Pros, we're starting to get some details from reviewers about the machine's capabilities. Other World Computing, Anantech and the Accidental Tech Podcast have all done a really good job dissecting this sleek black tower of goodness.

I never liked the term "teardown"

Firstly, the Xeon CPU is socketed. This means it could be upgraded or changed depending on user needs. It's non trivial to change however, and the Intel server platform is already fairly dated as it is, limiting potential future options. I'm also not sure how much money you'd really save buying the lowest spec Mac Pro, then buying a crazy priced, high end Xeon to replace what's inside.

Speaking of this, the current Intel server platform doesn't have chipset support for USB 3. Apple overcame this with a single USB 3 controller for all ports. Unfortunately, the two gigantic graphics cards take up most of the available PCI express lanes, and additional ones are needed for the 802.11ac, Gigabit Ethernet and Thunderbolt2 ports.

Without expandable internal storage, we'd all been thinking how we'd be attaching our external enclosures. The Mac Pro so desperately needed both USB 3 and Thunderbolt 2, but I'd certainly taken comfort in the fact I could always make do with just USB 3. Or at least, until the cash I'd spent on this sleek cylinder had been recouped and I could afford to upgrade to Thunderbolt peripherals. The money… the money!

The message from Apple here is that if we want to replace the internal drives we had in the Mac Pro with similarly performing external drives, we'll need to use Thunderbolt. Given all four USB 3 ports will be sharing one controller, it's possible that we'd reach contention with a single high speed device. Practically speaking, it'd be rare that all four USB ports would be demanding that much bandwidth at once, but if I'm going to be spending this much on a machine I'd like to have consistent storage performance.

The good news, at least, is that each Gigabit Ethernet NIC has its own controller and dedicated lanes, meaning a NAS (or iSCSI, if we're being adventurous) isn't outside the realm of possibility for external storage. I've had success with both streaming content across the house and my massive VM farm. So many VMs.

Hey, I just realised "VMs" is only one capitalisation away from "VMS". Now there's something I'd like to run in a VM.

Probably only half of this post was wrong

I'll admit, I'm in over my head with all this. I stopped building my own machines when the Penryn Core 2 Duo was hot. What I'm realising, as many others are, is these compromises that make this Mac Pro a killer graphics machine won't serve my needs; even with the student discount!

If Apple came out with a Retina iMac with the appropriate amount of grunt to power it, I'd probably get one of those instead. Then I'd spend the money I'd save on a really nice, quiet NAS and a single high-speed external Thunderbolt enclosure.

Which is to say, I'd get a new Mac Pro anyway. ECC RAM, and Xeons! Well, darn.

This originally appeared on PenguinCoffee, Clara’s and my old shared weblog.

rubenerd:

Ah, they’re so cute ^^; Also, loose socks need to come back. I’d even wear them, if I had the legs for them. Just saying.

Clara: But but. Thighhighs!

I've had a semblance of a responsive design on my sites for a while, but scaling images continued to elude me. I've always defined the height and width of images, meaning previous attempts at inline scaling resulted in some warped and stretched images.

With some help from Clara, I discovered Rubenerd specifically needed the following lines (your mileage may vary):

#content img {
  height:auto !important;
  max-height:auto !important;
  max-width:100%;
}

Now images, such as this Railgun image by Dream C Club, will preserve their aspect ratio while scaling up and down. Whether it will improve karaoke abilities is another question.

It has come to my attention that web designers are abusing the non–standard -webkit-font-smoothing CSS property to make fonts look thinner, fuzzier and crappier on the Mac.

There are two possible reasons for this.

1. It’s a misguided attempt at cross-platform, lowest common denominator design. The idea sounds great in theory, but then again so did GUI Java applications. Let the OS handle this.

2. Worst still, some are doing it on purpose. No, your “fixes” make it look worse. Get over yourselves, and stop messing with it. Don’t like how it looks? Use Windows or Linux and their sub–par font rendering.

In the words of Maddox, if you disagree with this post, you are wrong.

This originally appeared on PenguinCoffee, Clara’s and my old shared weblog.

I want to see the Northern Lights one day. Too bad I live in the Southern Hemisphere…

By 3211 on Pixiv.

This originally appeared on PenguinCoffee, Clara’s and my old shared weblog.

kirinyan:

I’m not sorry. By 强襲型黑兎 on Pixiv.

Really, I’m not …..

This originally appeared on PenguinCoffee, Clara’s and my old shared weblog.

Clara: Better?

Credited: Dream C Club

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Ah, they’re so cute ^^;

Also, loose socks need to come back. I’d even wear them, if I had the legs for them. Just saying.

This originally appeared on the Annexe, in a parody post series about the podcast. Art is by zy2386262 on Pixiv.

No Agenda #579:

But just, the whole process of putting that thing in your mouth… I just don’t understand it.

Agreed, chewing tobacco makes absolutely no sense. Spitting it out is disgusting. But smoking, and exhaling it into the air for everyone to breathe… that’s totally understandable. Banning smoking is just heavy handed nanny state-ism, consarnit!