Fur Affinity Outage

My Kobo Bookstore

So, this past week, Fur Affinity had an outage because of some hackers. Don't worry, nothing was stolen, it was just LARGELY annoying. Everything's been taken care of now, so that's good. Anyway, this coming week, there's a furry convention in Florida, so I may or may not put something up. Because of that, I haven't been able to devote any of my attention to getting something written. The reason I've been obsessed with that is because that website is, in a sense, one of the places I call my online home, so the feeling wasn't particularly good… to say the least. I did, however, manage to distract myself for long enough to come up with a name for a recently-acquired character, kind of. Granted, I don't give myself full credit there for the sole fact that I still kept checking on the site every hour, at least, though it wasn't at the forefront of my mind; my other thoughts just ground to a screeching halt. Whelp, I'm sorry I don't have more for you this week, and next week is up in the air unless I can get something typed and timed in the next few days. After that, my schedule here should be back to normal… well, normal enough, but I won't get into those things, they're just not public. Anyway, to finish it off, this week was a hiccup, and everything should be back to smooth-sailing after next week.

Some Frustration with Intel

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Okay, so here’s the thing: I hate Intel with a burning passion. I don’t mean it for reasons aside from my own experiences with their processors. Sure, I’ll admit that the processors are capable, no doubt, I’ve just been brand-loyal to AMD, occasionally playing around with some of the more quirky options in 86Box (VIA, Cyrix, IDT WinChip, the NEC V20), and, looking at the evidence, I feel like I made the right decision. Don’t get me wrong, Intel processors have always had their pros (namely availability… name the last time you saw a computer without the Intel logo hiding somewhere), but I’ve noticed that, over the past few years, it feels like they’ve stopped innovating. When I had to get a new laptop a few months ago, predictably, I ended up getting myself a ThinkPad T14. I had done my research, and the Intel models generally had the fans going more often than not, whereas the AMD models didn’t have to deal with that. Yeah, the fans come on sometimes, but that’s mostly when I’m working with the thing in bed at night, or if the temperature is already sweltering. I could rant on and on about how I’ve always known Intel CPUs to run hot, but it goes a bit deeper than that. If you look into historical processors, then you’ll find that the modern 64-bit instruction set (x86_64) is actually called amd64.

Yup, they developed it. AMD Athlon 64.

Now, I’m sure I already have (and heavily-so), but I don’t want to proselytize. In a way, to me (apart from the nostalgia), it’s a similar situation to the Amiga 1000 computer: you can use it as an Amiga, you can use it as a Macintosh, and (with a sidecar), you can use it as an XT-class IBM PC. I mention the sidecar on that last one, mainly because, if you do it all in software, the PC emulation is notoriously slow- the sidecar is basically a self-contained IBM. Anyway, back to my original thought.

Intel did create the x86 platform, I won’t deny that, but AMD (as with the other manufacturers, in some way, shape, or form) has innovated it to a degree. Sure, I’ll admit that an AMD Ryzen 7 badge is probably more suited to gaming PCs (or so the stereotype goes, I don’t subscribe to it, regardless), but to me, it’s a very powerful processor. My last computer (which I’d like to get fixed… if I learn to solder, it’s a five-minute job… seriously) has an Intel Core i5 in it. I’ll admit that it was a few years old, but, in 86Box, running anything newer than about a /486-class machine with Windows 3.1 (if it made use of enhanced mode for any networking, it wasn’t happy). I mention that because I make extensive use of that software (as mentioned in last week’s post), not just for writing, but also for various software titles that, God-forbid, cannot run on a 64-bit copy of Windows. Sure, the old computer has Linux on the hard drive, but Wine and VirtualBox also exist, and I’m also aware of some of the tricks to get Windows 11 to run 16-bit titles, but that's just not something I'm willing to deal with, not to mention that most of that stuff starts to look a bit poorly-designed at resolutions bigger than 1024×768 and none of it was designed with a high-DPI screen in mind (the screen at my desk isn’t an issue, but the one on my laptop is scaled to 150% by default). Ignoring the screen issue and the issues around Windows 11, 64-bit Windows, and Wine, there’s just something that’s lost when running those ancient titles outside of their environment. On some of them, I have done tests between the Intel and AMD options (as well as other choices, occasionally), and, from most of my testing, it seems like the AMD CPUs do have somewhat better performance. Granted, all of this came from an emulator on a modern computer while being timed with a stopwatch, so I wouldn’t take that as the end-all-be-all.

Personally, I’d like for whoever is reading this to do their own research as, part of my brand loyalty here is colored by nostalgia, likely keeping me from being as objective as I’d like to be.

I’m Back

My Kobo Bookstore

Alright, so now that I’m back, I’m hoping that I can balance life and my writing career, as unlikely as that seems to be at the moment. Drama aside, I have resumed work on The Golden Record, meaning Chapter 9 is now started. While I’ve been gone, I had a recurring dream that has since turned into an obtrusive thought, so that’s probably going to be turned into a story, though I’m not sure if I’ll publish it on Kobo or just upload it to my Fur Affinity page. Either way, it’ll be something low-effort and free (or no more than a dollar, but that’ll probably only exist the same way a tip jar does). In non-writing areas, the program I use to go down virtual rabbit holes and “build” old computers, 86Box, has now gotten the capability to emulate a dial-up connection!

Since I have a gut feeling that it’s going to be in some people’s minds, no, I’m not getting paid to link the program’s website. I just genuinely like to build old computers, and that’s the way I go about it, since I don’t have the space or money for the actual hardware. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll settle for virtual, not to mention that I can just have all of that stuff on my laptop… for better or worse. Also, the camera I’ve been using for my photography, something that looks like an older Sony model with a blue case, has kicked the bucket. Honestly, I expected about as much, so I’ll be replacing that on my next trip to the Ollie’s with something that actually has a branding on it.

Earlier, I mentioned that I’m starting back on The Golden Record, but for a while, I'm expecting progress to be on the slow side while I get some long-overdue cleaning done, throw out some older-than-me garbage furniture (trust me, it’s not worth saving, I’ve asked). Nothing major, just everyone using my room for a storage room.