Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 in October 2025. So ends a decade of a somewhat confused operating system but one we kind of grew to love. But what happens next? Should you upgrade to Windows 11? What other options are there?
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Since the server move, from AWS to Google, I had noticed that every now and then, you’d be greeted with a database has gone away type message, requiring a restart of MySQL. This has been bugging me a little and turns out it was a pretty simple fix (that better not be famous last words!) to implement. Thing is, the free servers on Google Cloud are not particularly well specced (funny that). They have about a gig of usable memory and CPU’s that share their load amongst other servers. It’s fine for a small blog with low traffic, such as this. You wouldn’t want to run something that requires numerous threads/users and all sorts going on.
Anyhoo, I realised the server was probably running out of memory, causing the MySQL Server to crash. Whilst upgrading the server, adding more memory is an option, that would take it out of the free tier. To keep things cheap, I am using the hard drive as usable memory; setting up a 1GB swap file which the server can access. Slower than RAM but should fix the crashes.
Started up my Linux dev machine, this morning. Right off the bat, Bluetooth wasn’t working. My bluetooth settings, in KDE, were showing a ‘no bluetooth adapters found’ message; resulting in no mouse. First thing I did was do an apt upgrade on packages, to see if that resolved anything, and rebooted. Nope. Next up I tried removing everything under /var/lib/bluetooth and restarting the bluetooth service. Still nothing. Restarted my machine and went into the BIOS to check it hadn’t somehow been disabled. All looked good there. But still no adapter found. Despite the bluetooth adapter previously working under kernel 6.8.x, I decided to install HWE, in order to upgrade the kernel to 6.11.x, in case something had gone wonky. Nada.
By this point I’d tried several reboots with no joy. This was getting frustrating, as I had work to be getting on with. After about an hour of tearing what little hair I have left out I decided to power down the machine and perform a cold boot…
Bluetooth was back. I paired my devices back in and carried on with life.
Sigh…
It’s been some time since I last properly posted, which, even then, was in acknowledgement that I don’t post a lot. There are good reasons. The main reason was that I wanted to get away from WordPress as, frankly, I hate it, from a developer’s perspective. If you hate a codebase, you’re unlikely wanting to spend time customising it – especially if you’re not getting paid for it. I also had my own css templates ready to completely overhaul the look of the site (and didn’t want to create a theme in WordPress), and had that planned to be built in to whatever next CMS I wanted to use next. It’s not been easy to find a CMS that will suit me. As I work with it daily, for my job, I’d like a Laravel based CMS, with PyroCMS being the front runner. However, development on that seems to be halted, or at least very slow, which doesn’t give you confidence of there being a codebase that won’t outdate very quickly. So I’m still on the lookout for a replacement.
With the above in mind, I was on a data freeze until I had gotten that part of the project done. I really am not looking forward to the data migration to a new CMS, and the fewer posts to move the better. Obviously, it hasn’t materialised as yet, and I have articles I had prepped just sitting in draft, being forgotten about and also outdating. So I should at last try and keep this site ticking over, whilst we wait – as it could be a long wait.
I also wanted to do a server and domain migration. It was getting annoying having to manually update the SSL cert, every 3 months, due to .dev domains not having port 80 access (yes, I know there are plugins that can do this but it’s quicker to do the 3 month manual thing than sort it out). Now I’ve moved to a .net domain, the SSL cert can be automatically renewed. I have also moved to a different server, which will help with running costs.
And life also got in the way. I was recently diagnosed with FND – which is something I have been dealing with for many years, and took a hell of a complaining to even get to see a specialist. It plays havoc with my memory, and ability to think clearly, amongst a host of other things – just great for my line of work. The whole condition can be very frustrating on a daily basis.
So there we are; big plans that kinda went wrong. C’est la vie.
Disclaimer: I actually wrote this post back around October 2022, so things are already pretty out of date. The CPU is still going strongly, at least. :)
I’ve been looking at building a new system, lately. My current one is certainly no slouch, and it was also treated to an AMD Radeon 6800, summer of 2021. Mainly so I could play Microsoft Flight Sim 2020 at high resolutions, with the settings mostly turned up. (Yes, the card was expensive. No, I don’t regret the purchase). This system was originally built back in early 2018. In that time, I upgraded the CPU from a Ryzen 1700 to 3800X and was very impressed with the results.
Continue reading “Ryzen 5900X: One last hurrah for AM4.”
It’s been a little while since I last posted on here. It’s not that I’ve forgotten about it. More that I’ve had a fair few other side projects I’ve been doing. Plus work has been pretty full on, the last couple of months.
Continue reading “It’s Oh So Quiet”A couple of months ago, when I installed the Ryzen 3800X in to my desktop, I noted that, whilst the provided stock cooling was decent, it did have a tendency to get noisy under load. Far noiser than the cooler provided with the Ryzen 1700. It also isn’t all that great at keeping the processor cool; easily reaching the upper limit of 95 degrees celsius, the moment it needed some grunt. I do like a quiet system, so decided I may as well get an aftermarket cooler sooner, rather than later.
There’s a lot happening in the AMD world. Some of the third generation Ryzen chips have just received a slightly faster sibling, in the form of the XT models, and Zen 3, in the form of the desktop Ryzen 4000 CPU’s (don’t get me started on the mobile chip model designation convention) can’t be too far away, with the expected release to be towards the latter of 2020. I’ve been umming and arring about what my next upgrade was going to be but when Amazon cut the price of the 3800x to £280, albeit temporarily, the decision become much easier.
Continue reading “PC upgrade time. Ryzen R7 1700 to R7 3800X.”13,639 total views, 28 views today
I’m having a little sort out of this site, over the coming weeks. My main plan is to move the domain name over to simonpreston.dev, ditching the Devpond name (which wasn’t all that great anyway, really). I’ve already begun the process; the new domain name already points to the blog, and the site title has been updated. The next phase will to be update links, inside blog posts, that point to the old domain, to the new one. After that set the old domain to redirect completely to the new domain, and bye bye, old domain (eventually).
That’s just the first phase, and I’m not planning on stopping there. I’m looking to move the site to a new server, in the near future. Also, I want to give this site a more personal look, and create my own theme. Not quite sure which will come first; probably the server move, as that’s the easiest. A new theme will be some months of work. Especially when this site isn’t part of my day job. Other ideas will be to plug more of my own applications in to this site, so it’s not just a bland blog.
So there may be some little bumps, and unexpected downtime, here and there – including one earlier, which I’m thinking may have been a transaction lock on the database, preventing the site from loading, as every thing else looked fine. But it’s all for The Greater Good.
Server switch done! A bit sooner than I expected. But, as it turns out, we all have a lot more time on our hands, these days, thanks to many of us being stuck indoors. Earlier in the week, I got the domain name switch complete, and the old address now redirects to the new domain. Over the last couple of days I’ve been getting a new Ubuntu server set up, with a mirror of the site primed and ready. I’ve flipped the public IP of my old server, to the new one (a nifty feature in AWS, which means no need to wait for a new IP to propagate), and got the new certificates set up. I’ll keep the old server running, for a bit, but our new home is looking pretty good.
Given up on the idea of creating a new theme, for now. As our team was mostly reduced to a skeleton crew, I’ve had so much actual paid work on that’s it’s pretty much been an impossibility, due to the site theme being such a large project in itself. So that’s on the back-burner for a while. Will revisit that, at a later date.
You’re at your workstation, struggling to understand the current task in hand, or devise a solution for it. It’s over running and people are asking when it’ll be ready. You can’t give an answer. Then the brain kicks in, questioning itself, asking “am I really cut out for this? Maybe I’d be better in some other career.” The thoughts dwell on, perhaps keeping you up at night, as you wonder if you’ll be found out soon, and given the chop.
You’ve just experienced Imposter Syndrome. A pain in the bum inflection where self-doubt and worry you are not to the standard expected, in your field, is prevalent. The funny thing about it is people seldom want to talk about it, as they fear letting on that they are having doubting thoughts, over their own skillset, will lead to a lack of confidence from their peers.
But it’s nowhere near as bad as you think…
