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Yurizaki's Tech Ramblings

A blog by Mira Yurizaki in General

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About this blog

A random blog about technology related things. Updated whenever I have something on my mind.

Entries in this blog

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Why multi-video card setups can't combine VRAM

( I need a name for blog posts like these, but all the good ones are taken ) While I don't think it's often brought up, an idea might come about that when using multiple video cards, such as in SLI or Crossfire, their VRAM combines. So if you have two 8GB cards, you effectively get the same thing as a 16GB card. However, this isn't the case. You might be asking... but why? If these setups combine GPU power, how come VRAM doesn't combine? On a broader view, the video cards

June 2, 2018

3

When something seemingly designed well still has a problem.

With yet another security bug found on processors, one has to think how anyone would've let this through for this long. People would like to think there's incompetent engineering out there and while sure, they exist, what people also don't see are the designs that even you would agree with all of the knowledge and experience in the world that seems sound without experiencing it in the real world. So I have an example of such. This one I love to share, partly because pride (I was a junior develop

May 5, 2018

2

About that Task Manager CPU utilization "being wrong" (and about idling)

Note: I posted this as a status update, but it got long enough that I wanted to preserve it as a blog. This popped up in my news feed: Netflix's senior software architect says Windows' CPU utilization meter is wrong. He has some good points in that it's not measuring the time a thread is actually doing useful work, rather than waiting on something, like data from RAM. Which he also points out that there is a gap in performance between RAM and CPU, but that's been a known problem for

May 2, 2018

2

The Software Enigma Machine blog Pt. 4: The GUI

Part 4 in the making of the Software Enigma Machine. This last part deals with the graphical interface. The Outline A recap on the outline. Part 1 What is the Enigma Machine? Why did I choose to implement the Enigma machine? Before Programming Begins: Understanding the theory of the Enigma Machine Finding a programming environment Part 2 Programming the features Rotors

April 29, 2018

0

The Software Enigma Machine blog Pt. 3: The Plug board

Part 3 in the making of the Software Enigma Machine. This time, talking about the plug board. The Outline A recap on the outline. Part 1 What is the Enigma Machine? Why did I choose to implement the Enigma machine? Before Programming Begins: Understanding the theory of the Enigma Machine Finding a programming environment Part 2 Programming the features Rotors

April 28, 2018

0

The Software Enigma Machine blog Pt. 2: The Rotors

Part 2 in the making of the Software Enigma Machine The Outline A recap on the outline. Part 1 What is the Enigma Machine? Why did I choose to implement the Enigma machine? Before Programming Begins: Understanding the theory of the Enigma Machine Finding a programming environment Part 2 Programming the features Rotors Rotor housing Part

April 28, 2018

0

The Software Enigma Machine blog Pt. 1

Since enough people seemed interested in a status I posted some time ago that I thought, hey, it might be a good idea to do a write up. It'll be short enough that it'll actually end! The Outline This section is just to provide an outline of this series: Part 1 What is the Enigma Machine? Why did I choose to implement the Enigma machine? Before Programming Begins: Understanding the theory of the Enigma Machine

April 28, 2018

0

Outpost 2 - A game that should be given a second chance

I recently had a bug of a niche side of the city building genre: colony building. But then I remember an old standby that I still think should be used as the yardstick for all colony building games. That game is Outpost 2: Divided Destiny. What is Outpost 2? Outpost 2 was a game developed by Dynamics and released by Sierra in 1997. It can be summarized as Sim City meets Command and Conquer. Well, loosely speaking. The premise is that humans have left eart

April 5, 2018

0

Think beyond computer problem solutions than just knowing them

Fixing computers is always a satisfying thing. Especially after chugging away at it for hours or even days. And when you come across the solution, you tuck it away in your memory, notebook, or what have you so the next time the problem shows up, you can fix it again. But I don't think that's enough to really "master" the computer. I'm having a feeling that a lot of people who are beyond beginners accumulate solutions to problems or at least know how to find them online and simply spo

March 11, 2018

3

Project Dolly: A look into cloning Windows (Conclusions)

It's earlier than I'd said I would report this but for reasons I'm choosing to wrap up this experiment. In day-to-day usage, I still haven't ran into any problems. Granted I did not play any games on the laptop, but I did run 3DMark after the cloning. However supposedly people do have issues regardless if they game or not. I also may not have been exactly representative of the use case, since I didn't clone after say a year of use. Though I can't think of anything that would cause is

October 26, 2017

0

Project Dolly: A look into cloning Windows (Preliminary Results)

A couple of days ago, I decided to examine if cloning Windows was as bad as everyone says it would be, in that you'll run in to problems and other issues. So I'm using my laptop as a test bed for this project to see if anything really happens if you clone Windows. When I started this project, I installed Windows 10 Fall Creator's Update to the laptop's SSHD, then installed programs that I would've used in a normal setting, and imported the settings of two of them (Visual Stud

October 21, 2017

1

Project Dolly: A look into cloning Windows (Planning)

I'll admit something. If there's one topic I typically stay away from because it seems like everyone has a consensus on the subject, it's cloning Windows installations from an HDD to an SSD. The consensus is it's always better to just reinstall the OS. While there are some practical reasons, the most common ones I've heard to avoid cloning is because you'll encounter a plethora of issues. I've found this puzzling considering: I've cloned multiple times with no ill effect I don't un

October 18, 2017

4

On the complaint of "incremental CPU improvements"

A common complaint I see about Intel is because they didn't have much in the way of competition from AMD for several years, they were content with releasing each new generation of processors with only "incremental" performance updates. Incremental being about 10%-15%. I wondered if in the past, we were enjoying a period of great performance improvements and so I went to looking around for benchmarks of processors from around the mid 2000s to late 2000s/early 2010s. I found out that b

September 6, 2017

0

We should really stop chastising people who think PC building is "too hard"

The other day I found a Gamer's Nexus video in my subscription feed. It was Steve Burke criticizing a magazine's article on how PC building is "hard" and to prove it wasn't, would do a speed build. Admittedly I didn't watch the whole video, nor did I read the article in question. But my overall takeaway is this: to all you people who build or built their machines, stop saying it's easy as if building a PC is like operating an elevator or using a phone. Now ignoring the ot

June 11, 2017

1

Web app development is actually a good way to learn multi-threading concepts

As a way to expand my skill set and give me something to do in my spare time on programming, I've taken up learning what is called full stack web development. In it's most high level description, that means dabbling in both the front-end (client app, web page, etc.) and back-end (server, database, etc.) of the development process. To ease going into this, because I didn't want to learn almost a half-dozen languages, I've stuck with Node.js and MongoDB, as both use ECMAscript. Essentially all tha

June 4, 2017

0

Does Making Windows 10 Lean Do Anything For Gaming Performance?

There's been some talk about Microsoft implementing a "gaming mode" for Windows which should help improve the performance of games. Or at least, minimize the impact of the OS on gaming performance. What this means is up in the air. However I decided to take a stab at something that could be like it and create a lean build of Windows 10. That is, a lot of its components were either disabled, deleted, or otherwise no longer a factor. The Setup I'm using my computer for this test,

January 14, 2017

1

A trip to The Computer History Museum

Since I was in the area, I decided to take a trip down to the Computer History Museum in Sunnyvale, California. I also could've made a pit stop by Google's HQ and Apple's HQ for maximum geekiness (well and maybe glance at Oracle and Adobe's HQ), but nah. It's a nifty place if you get the chance to go. Just don't expect much out of the gift shop, there's a lot of cringe-worthy "geeky" stuff. But then again, maybe you're into that sort of thing :3 Since a picture dump really isn't feas

December 29, 2016

0

Let's build the PS4 Pro

EDIT: It's probably a good idea to lay out some ground rules at the top so people know how I'm approaching this: Everything must be new. The reason being the used market is not consistent or reliable. Everything must be gotten from official channels. Hardware must be matched as closely as possible. If the exact part or equivalent cannot be found, a justification must be needed. If a part on the PS4 is available for the PC, it must be included. If I'm allowed t

December 9, 2016

3

How the computer world became serial

Practically every peripheral interface, be it USB, SATA, PCIe, Thunderbolt, and even DisplayPort, uses a serial interface. That is, it transmits one bit at a time across the data channel. That seems kind of inefficient, considering that we used to have parallel interfaces that could transmit many bits at the same time. In fact, the only truly parallel interface that remains is DDR memory and inter-processor communication. So what happened? To understand this, it's best to look at several aspects

December 2, 2016

0

The Adventures of Adding Thermal Pads to an EVGA GTX 1080 SC

tl;dr - things to know about installing the thermal pads Your back plate may have extra padding where you need to install the back plate thermal pad. You'll have to remove these before applying the thermal pad. The back plate has plastic covering parts where the thermal pad will be installed. This plastic is a pain in the rear to remove and leaves a obnoxiously hard to remove adhesive. If you want to feel like the thermal pad will actually do something and you want to remove it, be

November 19, 2016

0

List of Guides I've Written

A list of guides I posted somewhere on the site, just in case I post more than the 10 URL limit for profiles (plus that'd get wild anyway) A guide to how to identify if you have a CPU bottleneck and see how much it can affect you. An explanation on HyperThreading. It also answers the question "Why is it bad to have no page file?" Not really a guide, but might be hel

September 25, 2016

1

A look back at the gadgets and gizmos I've had over the years

I usually try to avoid buying the latest and greatest technological thing that's "in". Like when smart watches were all the rage last year, I avoided them. When the iPad came out, I saw it more as a novelty. I avoided wireless things, since I didn't want to deal with charging them up and such. But all that's changed, since now I've owned these kinds of products (well, except the iPad). So here are my thoughts about the gadgets I've purchased over the years, and whether or not they're still impor

September 15, 2016

0

Is PC gaming really cheaper than console gaming?

Oh boy, I'm going to stir up the hive with this entry. I found myself in a discussion on another gaming website where the article was originally for discussing the PS4 Neo, and the comment train went on discussing the implications of if consoles do follow the hardware refresh model like cell phones and such. Or rather, if you're going to have to spend $400 on the latest and greatest thing, doesn't this drive the value of console gaming down even more? So I want to look into this topi

September 4, 2016

2

I want to see autonomous cars fail more.

I came across a YouTube that had a video that explained two points. What causes traffic Why autonomous cars are better I recommend watching at least the first half because it has a few scenarios that causes traffic, some of which are semi-preventable. And you should watch it. And you should apply that to your own driving habits. Anyway, the later half talks about how autonomous cars solve this problem. But if you skip to about 4:04, it shows autonomous car

September 2, 2016

0

It's strange to think people dislike the PS4 Neo and XBox Scorpio...

A few articles that popped up on my news feed are kind of upset over the idea that the new business model for consoles from here on out may be to shell out an upgraded refresh every two years or so. That now they are copying the cellphone model and feeding on the drive that people must have the latest and greatest shiny thing, lest they look like an ancient old fart living under a rock. I don't really mind it so much, as long as they continue to not kill support for the older consoles until the

August 20, 2016

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