After using the Raven theme for a while, because I like dark themes, I have gone back to the standard WordPress 2017 theme. Mostly because it had a dark option. It also doesn’t look terrible, which the Raven theme kind of did. Continue reading “Theme Changes and Optimization”
G-Sync: The Best Thing Since SSD’s?
I am a bit of a sucker for buying nice shiny things when it comes to tech. I have been wanting a triple monitor setup for a while, along with higher refresh rates and G-Sync (my graphics card is a GTX 1060). Since it was Amazon prime day and they had no good monitor deals, I bought an AOC G2460PG from Aria.co.uk. Continue reading “G-Sync: The Best Thing Since SSD’s?”
Have You Been Pwned?
Have you been pwned? Troy Hunt, a security researcher at Microsoft has set up a great project called “haveibeenpwned” so you can find out. You can use the website to search for an e-mail address and see if they have been included in past data breaches. You can also sign up to be notified of future breaches too. If your e-mail has been found, it will tells you what data has been leaked, such as poorly hashed passwords. My results (for my generic sign-up email) are below. The Adobe and LastFM password leaks are a serious concern since MD5 is no longer considered a secure hashing algorithm. Oops. Continue reading “Have You Been Pwned?”
SSL Issues
Shortly after re-making my website I got a little obsessed with Google’s Page Insights and optimising how quickly my website loaded. Since I am using a cheap host one of the negative points was that the server response times were a bit slow. Continue reading “SSL Issues”
Linux Server Pulling Sextuple Duty
There are many services out there which you can buy with your hard earned money, which under the hood are nothing more than a Linux server. Mostly you are paying people to write all those pesky Linux commands for you because Linux = hard. However, if you happen to have a Linux server for one reason or another, there’s no reason not to make it do all the things you need. Continue reading “Linux Server Pulling Sextuple Duty”
Guess Who’s Back
I’m back, not that I was ever here. A few weeks ago I noticed a large(ish) bill on my credit card statement for my web hosting. Oh, that’s right I though, I have a website. That one I made to write about my engineering/tech projects which I never update, not that I do any work on them anyway. Clearly, I had great foresight in choosing the name Procrastinating Engineer.
Continue reading “Guess Who’s Back”
Going Dark(themed)
My website is going dark for Halloween! Last week I finally managed to find a nice (free) dark theme for WordPress, which had been surprisingly difficult. There are A LOT of really overpriced themes out there which don’t look that great, but I guess they are aimed at businesses who don’t want to hire a designer. Continue reading “Going Dark(themed)”
Get it Together Microsoft! (Windows 10 Rant)
On 8th March 2016, Microsoft released Windows 10 build 1511, which as far as I have been able to tell is pretty good, apart from one minor detail. It broke all my computers!
Microsoft chose (wisely in my opinion) to force users to update Windows 10 to stop people running older un-patched versions full of security holes. More recently though, they have also started forcing users on Windows 7/8/8.1 to upgrade to 10 by making it a recommended update (probably so they can claim a high adoption rate).
I updated my desktop, and afterwards it would crash about 3 minutes after booting up. It turned out that the update had installed an old graphics driver for my Nvidia GTX 660’s. So after booting into safe mode, removing the drivers, loading up normally and using G-Force Experience to get the newest drivers, it all worked fine. Realising that because it installs when ever it likes, and that it might break my laptop at a inconvenient moment (when I’m away from home and a decent internet connection), I decided to upgrade it straight away. 3 failed attempts later the update still isn’t installed, no longer appears in the update list and I can’t install a definition update for Windows Defender… FML
Now I don’t normally get too annoyed when updates break stuff. I write software, I know its hard. Besides I break my computer all the time anyway messing around with hardware and BIOS settings. However, most of the 200 million+ users don’t know how to recover from problems like bad drivers. If they use a recovery disk, they will just get the update forced on them again and eventually call someone like me for help. I’m already busy fixing my own stupid problems without my family and friends bugging me to. The curse of competence I guess.
There are some pretty serious downsides to forcing updates on users, at least in the past you could just roll back and block a dodgey upgrade. If you have had similar problems maybe consider switching Mac, I hear that it ‘Just Works’. (Just works at making you poor)
Update (07/04/2016)
I managed to update 2 Microsoft Surface Pro 4’s without any problems. At least Microsoft can get updates for their own devices right.
Update 2 (12/04/2016)
I didn’t realise I was still on the insider preview for Windows Mobile 10, the latest update (10.0.14295.1000) broke most of my apps (including some Microsoft ones), the insider app included and has caused issues switching between apps where they just sometime close. Also the graphics driver issues with Windows 10 caused Firefox to blacklist my drivers (because they crashed all the time), which took me a while to get to the bottom of.