Why Would I Write

Category: Technology

  • Talking Without Saying Anything: BTC edition

    Talking Without Saying Anything: BTC edition

    In case you haven’t already noticed, my posts do have regular themes: Music Monday, Technology Tuesday, Writing Wednesday, Thursday Thoughts, and Freewriting Friday. I thought I’d start with some direction for my Friday posts – Facebook Feed Friday, the day where I write about the ridiculous posts being shared on my Facebook feed.

    However, after scrolling through my feed for half an hour, it turns out that I don’t have any ridiculous news to write about today. It’s either the Facebook filters are doing a great job (I have spent a lot of time hiding posts I don’t want to see) or people on my friends list are getting less gullible.

    However, while scrolling through my feed today I’ve noticed plenty of posts about bitcoin. I think more would have shown up if I continued scrolling. To be honest, I don’t really have much interest in bitcoin. I mean, I’ve looked it up in the past because I had no idea what it was, and that was it. I wonder if me writing about it will cause Facebook/Google to think I care about bitcoin and show me more bitcoin ads in the future. (Please don’t.)

    For those who aren’t in the know, bitcoin is basically another currency you can use to buy things. What sets it apart from regular currencies is that it is decentralized and unregulated, and as there are only a fixed number of bitcoins in existence, its value won’t depreciate like regular fiat money. Why is it suddenly in the spotlight? Turns out that people have started to recognize it and are investing in it before it gets even higher. Media coverage on it has sky rocketed, which has increased its popularity and more people are hopping on to the bitcoin train, continuing the cycle.

    My only experience with bitcoin has been in the past when my PC slowed to a crawl when it was infected with mining malware. If only I had started mining coins for myself back then. Maybe I’d be rich now. Oh well.

    Turns out, I really don’t have anything to contribute to the topic but for those of you interested in finding out more about bitcoin, you can read this helpful FAQ.

  • The First Boot

    No matter how many times I go through it, the first time you turn on your computer after making some changes to its hardware is one of the most nerve-wracking experiences you can have. When you plug in the power cord and turn on the machine, you always hope that the computer boots up fine. In my experience so far, it’s probably been less than 50%. There’s always something that doesn’t go right the first time. Yesterday I decided to upgrade my desktop by replacing the motherboard, processor and RAM. It was a pretty straightforward procedure. The hardest part was probably attaching the I/O shield to the motherboard because for some reason my ASUS H270 Prime Plus came with a lot of excess metal that had to be folded before I could set it on properly. After that was screwing the board onto the case and then plugging the power cables into it.

    I decided to screw everything back properly, confident in my skills, before the first boot. Powered the machine on, the lights on the board lit up and the CPU and PSU fan spun so I thought it was all good. Nope, the screen stayed black and the motherboard was beeping continuously. Weird, but a beeping motherboard means something was wrong so I unplugged the computer, unscrewed the PSU to have a closer look at the processor. The cooler was on tight and I was 100% I put the processor in correctly (it’s pretty much idiot proof these days, with the specifically cut nook to guide you). I decided to re seat the RAM stick and looked around the board for any other abnormalities. I then noticed that I had forgotten to plug in the top chassis fan. I plugged it in, plugged the power back in before screwing the PSU back into the case and viola! It booted successfully. I did a quick run through of my BIOS options and started the boot into Windows 10. No issues at all.

    Oh, interesting thing about Windows 10 – you can actually change your hardware without having to do a reinstall of the OS. I’m not sure what Microsoft did to make it work, but in my experience it has been a flawless transition. It was pretty much like sticking a hard disk into a new computer and have everything work perfectly. I’ve read online that this isn’t the case most of the time but for what it’s worth, it worked for me. I’ll update this post if there are any issues in the future.

    Don’t forget to link your Microsoft account to your Windows 10 product key so you can reactivate it again after you change your hardware. My reactivation didn’t work when I tried to use the built-in Windows 10 activation feature so I had to get in touch with Microsoft support. The tech rep controlled my PC remotely and helped me to activate it (after I showed him proof of purchase of my new motherboard) and gave him my product key. That bit was annoying, but I didn’t have to do anything much so it wasn’t too bad.

    The stock fan on the i7 7700 is kinda noisy, so I might change that in the future if it bothers me but other than that I’m happy with my upgraded PC. I even managed to run a 720p 60 FPS stream last night without any lag. This means there’s no reason for me not to stream again, woot!


    Feel free to drop by for some low level dotes. It’s always a fun time!

    Other than that, I’m learning to use a 60% keyboard which I picked up a week ago. The Anne Pro is a pretty good alternative to the Vortex Pok3r if you’re on a budget. Some might even prefer the Gaterons to Cherry MX switches – but that’s a personal preference (as for me, I have no complaints). I’m still not used to pressing Fn WASD for directional movements at the moment, but time will tell.

  • Parking Ticket Technology

    A week ago, I received a fine for parking my car in a spot without putting a ticket on my dashboard. Why didn’t I pay for the ticket? Well, the parking ticket machine wasn’t working, so I couldn’t get a ticket from it. Since I was going for a quick lunch I decided to chance it. After all, I was only going to be 20 minutes. Turns out, that was enough time for a cop to issue me a fine. I paid off the fine yesterday, so I’m in the clear.

    Today, I parked my car again in a public parking spot. Guess what? Another broken ticket machine. Didn’t feel like picking up another fine so I purchased a set of parking coupons. Paying for parking is not an issue to me. I believe in paying for convenience – like using tolls and not having to park 10 streets away just to hike to your destination. But when the process of paying for parking is such a hassle, that’s when I get annoyed.

    We’ve got Touch and Go. We’ve got credit cards. We’ve got smartphones. Why do we still have to scratch pieces of paper (a few if you plan to park for longer than an hour) just to park our cars? If you want to charge for parking, the least you could do is keep those machines maintained. Or let us leave money under our windshield wipers for the cops to collect. How about billing us directly? After all everybody has an e-wallet tied to their MyKad and all car license plates can be traced to an owner.

    In the UK, they use cameras to capture your car plate number when you drive into the city. When you’ve arrived at your destination, you can just login and pay the charge within two days. No fuss, everybody wins. Also, you don’t have to carry bags of change around with you. Why haven’t we come up with a proper parking system yet?

    And I know, this issue isn’t just in Malaysia alone – a few years ago when I was in Singapore, I had to do the same thing when I left my car parked for a day. And man, it cost a fortune. Also, a lot of time was spent poking holes in the parking tickets and making sure they fit properly on my dashboard.



    We’ve already made advancements in malls, most of them allow you to pay with Touch and Go now. It’s 2017, I think we should have the same for outdoor parking spaces. At the same time, maybe revamp our toll systems. Or make Smart TAG batteries last longer (I’ve seen way too many people getting stuck in Smart TAG lanes on the morning drive to work, I use the Touch and Go lane – no battery problems). The technology is available, we just need to embrace it.