Iamgrim

SpaceChem crash on start-up

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:06:00 +0100

I recently purchased the “Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle”, in order to play the wonderful SpaceChem. Unfortunately it proved unnecessarily difficult to get to run on my Windows 7 laptop, because of — well, basically because of Toshiba and Intel. It was sufficiently annoying to fix that I felt the steps I took to remedy the problem may be of interest to other people in a similar situation.

My machine: Toshiba Satellite C660-21Q with an Intel P6100 i3 processor: a low-end laptop, recently bought new. Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit.

The problem: Game crashes on start-up. A window opens, but immediately closes; the Zachtronics bug report form is loaded in a browser window.

What follows are the things I did to solve this problem, but they are not meant as instructions. Please don’t make any changes to your computer unless you know what you doing, and you’re happy to take personal responsibility for any damages or loss that may occur.

Diagnosis: outdated graphics drivers.
Action taken: visit Toshiba website, install new graphics drivers. Reboot, etc.

Result: No change. Game crashes on start-up. A window pops open, but immediately closes. The Zachtronics bug report form is loaded in a browser window.

Diagnosis: …???
Action taken: email Zachtronics for support.

Result: a quick, helpful response.

Diagnosis: possible graphics chip incompatibility.
Action taken: Edit SpaceChem config file, set disableFBOs to True.

Result: No change. Game crashes on start-up, window opens, closes, Zachtronics bug report form.

Diagnosis: red mist
Action taken: Roll up sleeves. Visit Intel website, download new graphics driver installer. Run it.

Result: Installer refuses to install. It tells me to go download graphics drivers from Toshiba instead.

Action taken: Gnash teeth; wail; swear; sob; ultimately, go to bed.

* * *

Diagnosis: Murder.

Actions taken: download ZIP file of driver software from Intel website. Unzip it into a location of your choice. Now, to convince Windows to actually install and use it. But let’s just recap: any changes you make to your computer are your own responsibility.

Click ‘Start’, right-click ‘Computer’, click ‘Properties’. Click ‘Device Manager’. Open ‘Display Adapters’. Right-click ‘Intel HD Graphics’, then click ‘Update Driver Software’ on the menu, to open a dialogue. Click ‘Browse my computer for driver software’. Click ‘Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer’. Click ‘Have Disk’ to open the ‘Install From Disk’ dialogue. Click ‘Browse’ to open the ‘Locate File’ dialogue, and browse to the location of the unzipped driver software, then enter the ‘Graphics’ subfolder. Select the ‘inf’ file that appears there, and click ‘Open’ to select the file and close the ‘Locate File’ dialogue. Do not choose ‘autorun.inf’. Click ‘OK’ to close the ‘Have Disk’ dialogue. Finally, click ‘Next’, and cross fingers. When it’s done, let it reboot.

Result: with a bit of luck, the graphics drivers have been upgraded to generic Intel ones which are more recent than the ones Toshiba have on file. SpaceChem loads and all my frustrations are immediately doused in a frenzy of atom-bashing molecule-mashing mayhem™.

Photo

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:46:39 +0000

Kevin's Clumsy Touch

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:53:47 +0000

Kevin’s Clumsy Touch

‘Do not smile when you lie,’ Mrs L. ineffectually begged her daughter, 16 the day before. Linda smiled, feeling cool in her cotton print, running her red nails down its factory freshness, aching for Kevin’s clumsy touch and a glass of lager and lime in her hand; the juke box on its rubberised supports.

Ivor Cutler.

art-documents: Gabriel Orozco / Ballon

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 23:55:00 +0000

art-documents:

Gabriel Orozco / Ballon

A Problem of Keeping Tea in a Thermos Flask

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:35:15 +0100

I thought tea in a Thermos flask should be the easiest thing in the world to make, but as it turns out, the operation is fraught with difficulties. Or, perhaps more accurately, fraught with only one difficulty: but a gravely serious one.

I speak only of Stinky Tea.

This has now happened to me on a couple of occasions. I would be setting off on a long train journey from Edinburgh to my parents’ house near Portsmouth. First thing in the morning, I would brew tea in the teapot, put milk in the flask, and pour the tea on top. Screw the lid on tight, and away we go. But no: halfway through the journey, in need of refreshment, I break out the Thermos, and something is not right. The tea is rancid. I have a flask full of undrinkable Stinky Tea.

On the first occasion, I thought that perhaps there had been something nasty growing in the flask before I put the tea in, or otherwise that the milk had been bad and I’d not noticed. But on a little reflection, it seems this is not the case.

Tannins act as a defense mechanism in plants against pathogens, herbivores and hostile environmental conditions. Generally, tannins induce a negative response when consumed. These effects can be instantaneous like astrigency or a bitter or unpleasant taste or can have a delayed response related to antinutritional/toxic effects.

My theory is that the tannins in the brewed tea are adversely reacting with proteins in the milk, causing it to go rancid. I guess that when milk tea is made and drunk immediately, there is insufficient time for this reaction to occur. However when the milk tea is made and kept hot in the Thermos for a few hours, Stinky Tea is the inevitable and unfortunate result.

Puzzles by grim

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:50:11 +0100

After my last post, I found myself bitten by a puzzle-making bug, and knocked out a number of mazes and word puzzles and the like. No doubt I will tire of the whole thing, and sooner rather than later, but while it lasts I thought I’d share. I’ll post them every weekday at my new puzzle blog, so why not go there and see?

No-straight-ahead maze

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:22:00 +0100

(This post was the inspiration for my puzzle blog, where it has been reposted.)

I made a maze. Enter and exit at the arrows. So that it’s not too easy, there’s a snag: when you come to a diamond junction, you must make a 90 degree turn, left or right. Going straight across (or turning back) is not allowed!

Full-size version (new window.)

How many diamonds did you pass through?

If you don't like it, don't read it

Sat, 08 May 2010 14:55:00 +0100

You will see the sentiment expressed on any Internet message board you care to frequent. The pattern is this: some deadbeat hack scribes an ill-advised “opinion” piece of more-than-usually-hateful rhetoric. Noble readers of taste and distinction post their thoughtful, intelligent, well-observed and often grammatical responses. This criticism is, in its turn, besmirched, slandered, and sullied by a flood of numb-brained dunces and ne’er-do-wells, and somewhere in this inevitable hosing of bilge-water comes floating the invariable turd: “if you don’t like it, don’t read it.”

By this point in the proceedings, of course, sensible discourse has become entirely impossible, and so the assertion sits and festers, a plump, proud plop that goes unchallenged, when it should be plated up and served to its author to eat in big stinking spoonfuls.

In seriousness, the problem of “if you don’t like it don’t read it” (IYDLIDRI) has become so pervasive that I would like to suggest a helpful and hardy all-weather response: “If you don’t like the comments, don’t read them.”

I don’t mean to be perverse, nor trivial. There is a serious intention here: to turn the weapons of one’s foes against them. IYDLIDRI has a kind of superficial sense to it that seemingly rends it impervious to assault, but the truth is that it contains the seeds of its own rhetorical destruction. Only a slight alteration of the formula is required to demonstrate this.

To understand why, we need to examine why it is difficult to respond to “if you don’t like it don’t read it” in the first place. But first, let’s see an example from the ZOO / Danny Dyer story, which first got me thinking about this, from “leedsunted1”:

Most of you that have posted comments really need to get yourselves a life and stop getting involved in things that dont really concern you i mean do you actually but the magazine the majority of you will answer NO and have had to physically go search oout the actual article just like all those who sit at home watching a film that they know involves sex/bad language and violence then complain when it happens because you have nothing better to do. IN OTHER WORDS IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DONT WATCH, READ OR LISTEN SIMPLE.

How does one respond to it? After all, if you don’t like IYDLIDRI — then don’t read it! You don’t have to read it, no-one’s making you read it, if you don’t like it that’s your problem, just don’t read it, etc. etc. etc. As you see, it is this curious and self-referential quality that seems to pre-empt and parry any response.

One could point out that it is impossible to know in advance whether or not one “likes it”—and that in order to ascertain that, one has no choice but to “read it”—and that if one finds that one doesn’t “like it”, one may find oneself left with no choice but to attempt a rebuttal—yes, one could point this out, and that is, indeed, a robust and reasonable way to proceed, but oh! how tedious! How depressingly pedestrian. And there is still every chance that once this dismal trudge through the dustbowls of logical consequence has been concluded, the drooling recipient will bark out some further point-missingly insolent rejoinder to leave one standing, slack-jawed and supplicant, in continued admiration of humankind’s inexhaustible capacity for imbecility.

Or, one could point out that IYDLIDRI is an encomium to ignorance, and that by following its advice, even if one were able to, one would remain unaware of all the viewpoints in all the world with which one did not accord. Once again this seems unnecessarily painstaking, but also there’s no reason to suppose that, in the mind of IYDLIDRI’s author, such ignorance is anything other than bliss.

Or, one could suggest that the real message of IYDLIDRI is in fact nothing to do with whether you “read it” or not, but that if you disagree or find it hateful, you have no right to respond. “If you don’t like it, I don’t want to hear about it.” Essentially, if you don’t like it, you have no right to say so. If you don’t like it, you have to suffer in silence. If you don’t like it - tough luck, sit still and shut up. The real message is an insidious threat, made laughable by the fact that on the Internet, there is no possible way to enforce it.

One could even make the point that IYDLIDRI is a cowardly non-response, tantamount to an admittance that whatever “it” happens to be, it is morally and intellectually indefensible.

These responses are all very well and good, but they all share two significant flaws. First: they are red herrings. They distract attention from the issue under discussion; they are meta-games: discussion of the discussion, rather than part of the discussion itself. Second, and worse: they all engage the author of IYDLIDRI in their trolling games. IYDLIDRI does not deserve to be so honoured.

Instead of any of them, I suggest “if you don’t like the comments, don’t read them” as the de facto standard response to IYDLIDRI. It is intended to dismantle the thought processes behind IYDLIDRI by reflecting them in a mirror. It is better than the above suggestions because:

It’s much shorter.
It is a refusal to engage with ignorance (“do not feed the trolls”)
It’s a trap.

Shorter is better, because the shorter it is, the better the chance that the intended recipient will see it, read it, and comprehend it: and regardless of what happens next, if that occurs then success is guaranteed.

You see, for them to read it and agree, does not require that they change their position on IYDLIDRI, but it does require that they agree to ignore the comments they don’t like. (And if they agree to do that, then they will have no reason to post “IYDLIDRI” ever again, because that would be a response to precisely the kind of dissent of which they would be ignorant.) This is an unlikely path, but that’s somewhat the point — they’re not expected to agree, but the only disagreement they can have is with themselves.

So perhaps they read it and disagree, which is much more likely, and much more better, as it forces them to change their position on IYDLIDRI. If they do not, then they show themselves to be hypocrites, and their stated position to be internally inconsistent. The same logic which enables them to engage in the discussion must also allow their opponents to engage with them as well.

Or, perhaps they read it and ignore it: in which case they have shown themselves to be intellectual cowards who can go and be wrong on the Internet some place else — which seems a perfectly acceptable outcome. The next time they try IYDLIDRI, though, they will of course meet with exactly the same response.

Finally, and ideally, they will read it and realise the error of their ways, and this is of course the superior conclusion: in which the intellectual capacity of humanity is extended, enlightenment is attained, ignorance is eliminated, bunnies are exalted, and journalists are herded into a cell and individually tried for offences against human decency.

However it may go, it is an easy win that deals quickly and elegantly with a common modern sophism that is used to justify all sorts of abhorrent and ugly opinions. I hope that the solution hereby proposed proves to be a useful and practical one, and that armed with this tool, effective Internet dialogues may be better maintained in future.

In conclusion, I hope that you enjoyed this humble blog posting. If you didn’t, then please: don’t read it.

“It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be...

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:16:00 +0100

“It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless.”

Charles Bukowski, Ham On Rye

Films with two women characters who talk to each other about something other than men? It’s...

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:12:35 +0000

Films with two women characters who talk to each other about something other than men? It’s less likely than you think: http://bit.ly/9rl8no

bookmarked: A playlist based on ‘Irk The Purists’ by Half Man Half Biscuit - tracks as...

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:33:17 +0000

bookmarked: A playlist based on ‘Irk The Purists’ by Half Man Half Biscuit - tracks as played on BBC 6 Music. http://bit.ly/dm2tSf

bookmarked: How to generate random numbers according to a standard normal distribution....

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:52:29 +0000

bookmarked: How to generate random numbers according to a standard normal distribution. http://bit.ly/booag5

Link: Trouble in the message centre. http://bit.ly/9nKeqt

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:48:59 +0000

Link: Trouble in the message centre. http://bit.ly/9nKeqt

http://home.iamgrim.com/qxw - a Windows build of Qxw; a free crossword construction tool.

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:57:19 +0000

http://home.iamgrim.com/qxw - a Windows build of Qxw; a free crossword construction tool.

The Shadow In The Cathedral - Released

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:22:04 +0000

Textfyre’s second game, The Shadow In The Cathedral, has been released! Go here to buy a copy, or check out Emily Short’s great review over on ifdb.

“Rosalind was calling me; the real Rosalind, the one who dwelt inside, and showed herself too...

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:40:07 +0100

“Rosalind was calling me; the real Rosalind, the one who dwelt inside, and showed herself too seldom. The other, the practical, capable one, was her own convincing creation, not herself. I had seen her begin to build it when she was a sensitive, fearful, yet determined child. She became aware by instinct, perhaps sooner than the rest of us, that she was in a hostile world, and deliberately equipped herself to face it. The armour had grown slowly, plate by plate. I had seen her find her weapons and become skilled with them, watched her construct a character so thoroughly and wear it so constantly that for spells she almost deceived herself.

I loved the girl one could see. I loved her tall slim shape, the poise of her neck, her small pointed breasts, her long slim legs: and the way she moved, and the sureness of her hands, and her lips when she smiled. I loved the bronze-gold hair that felt like heavy silk in one’s hand, her satin-skinned shoulders, her velvet cheeks: and the warmth of her body, and the scent of her breath.

All these were easy to love — too easy: anyone must love them.

They needed her defences: the crust of independence and indifference: the air of practical, decisive reliability; the unroused interest, the aloof manner. The qualities were not intended to endear, and at times they could hurt; but one who had seen the how and why of them could admire them, if only as a triumph of art over nature.

But now it was the under-Rosalind calling gently, forlornly, all armour thrown aside, the heart naked.

And again there are no words.

Words exist that can, used by a poet, achieve a dim monochrome of the body’s love, but beyond that they fail clumsily.

My love flowed out to her, hers back to me. Mine stroked and soothed. Hers caressed. The distance — and the difference — between us dwindled and vanished. Neither one of us existed any more; for a time there was a single being that was both. There was escape from the solitary cell; a brief symbiosis, sharing all the world….

No one else knew the hidden Rosalind. Even Michael and the rest caught only glimpses of her. They did not know at what cost the overt Rosalind had been wrought. None of them knew my dear, tender Rosalind longing for escape, gentleness and love; grown afraid now of what she had built for her own protection; yet more afraid still, of facing life without it.

Duration is nothing. Perhaps it was only for an instant we were together again. The importance of a point is in its existence; it has no dimensions.”

—— John Wyndham, The Chrysalids

Edinburgh Shows

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 15:20:00 +0100

Second day of the Edinburgh Festival yesterday, and me and my lovely set off to sample the afternoon’s delights while spending as near to nothing as possible. This is easier than you might think with the plethora of shows that are part of institutions such as the Free Festival and Free Fringe. Armed with only our Fringe programme, our disregard for organisation, our poverty, and our attitude of devil-may-care adventurousness, we met up in a Rose Street pub and planned our afternoon on the back of an envelope.

The comedy song is not an unfairly maligned musical genre; the malignity is frequently fair. But I rather enjoyed Pig With The Face Of A Boy (The Newsroom, 13:55, 55 mins,) who played some silly and occasionally tasteless songs. Donald is a mild-mannered proto-Hugh-Laurie, and Dan plays the accordion. Their most memorable song titles included “Man ‘Flu (Has Crossed The Barrier Of Gender)” and “I Want To Eat Your Placenta,” but the real reason to go and see this Boy-Faced Pig is for the grand finale, “The Complete History Of The Soviet Union (To The Tune Of ‘Tetris’).” A perfectly respectable way to spend an afternoon. 2/5.

We crossed from east to west for Banterland (The Rat Pack, 15:10, 1 hr,) of which the best that can be said is that it ended early. Three nervous young comics, but no material, so no laughs. 0/5. I don’t mean to be cruel, and it is early days in the festival calendar, but I can’t advise anyone to go and see this. We were only there at all because it preceded the following:

I might have a biased opinion of Bad Things Happen In Trees (The Rat Pack, 16:20, 1 hr,) because I unexpectedly won a very welcome cup of tea from the awesomely hirsute Nick Helm, whose pleasingly ramshackle act alternates songs of sweetness with furious ranting poems and some tree-based disasters. My tea was very enjoyable too, although in one of his more ferocious moments I felt that perhaps Nick needed it more than I did. It’s an odd sort of mix, but rather a charming whole, so do go and see. 3/5.

Enjoying beautiful sunshine on the first day of the Edinburgh Festival!

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:46:26 +0100

Enjoying beautiful sunshine on the first day of the Edinburgh Festival!

Keeping an eye on @Textfyre !

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:19:24 +0100

Keeping an eye on @Textfyre !

Photo

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:50:00 +0100