Cav's Place

As I said a year ago, I will now be starting over with the statistics, so check that previous statistics post for the data covering the first five years since launching this site. Not that it should be of any interest to anyone, of course, especially considering the low number of visits, but I’m posting it nevertheless, largely for my own use.
Next time there will be three columns once again, but now there will be only two, with the first one covering the entire period since the previous post, so from September 21, 2015 to September 20, 2016, while the second is the usual one I add at the end, covering the last month, so starting on August 21, 2016 and also ending on September 20, 2016.

[1] Ever since switching to the new Analytics code, I ended up with a number of entries listing my own site as source, which are quite clearly direct hits from returning visitors. As a result, all such entries were added to the number of direct visits.

It sure was far less work to put this post together, compared to all previous ones which had that total column as well. Still took me a few hours, but considering my current mental state, only a few hours and having only one moment when I wanted to take a longer break, not even considering giving up at least for the day, sure says it was quite easy. Not even putting together entries that are wrongly counted separately was much of a problem, as there were very few of those now. Of course, it’s possible that some mistakes slipped through and I won’t check yet again now, but think I checked quite thoroughly while writing this, so it should be good enough.
As for the records, those are unchanged, namely 169 visitors and 180 visits, set on the old site by that large spike on August 16, 2009, and 333 pageviews, set on March 3, 2013. And it sure took me a long time to remember I hadn’t added them initially due to the situation with my computer at the time I posted this but, as a much later edit, here are the graphs for visitors, visits and pageviews for this period as well.

At the end of the previous post from this series, written on the last day of 2015, I was saying I’ll set a clear goal for two more in 2016, and a tentative one for either three regular ones or two bigger ones, to include a total of at least 15 bands. However, it’s the second half of September and this is only the first, so we’ll see about even managing a second before the end of the year. And I’m hoping to finish this tonight, so no way I’ll include more than the regular five bands, even if it was quite easy to select that many as I glanced through the list.

Decided to go alphabetically this time around, so I’ll start with Aeternitas, definitely brought back to my attention these days thanks to Madeline, which I got rather stuck on. I had initially added them to the list probably over two years ago, judging by the upload date of Ethelred, since that’s the first song of theirs that I heard and apparently the first one that could have caught my attention, since their first three albums, released between 2000 and 2009, were in German, this song marking their switch to English. And now their first English album is about to be released next month, and if Madeline is anything to judge by, I have reasons to hope it’ll be a good one.

Next comes a Romanian band, Between Colors. Now I’ll readily admit they’re not something I’d actually listen to, the sound being rather too harsh for my liking, and I’d have probably dismissed them if they wouldn’t have been from here, but as it is and considering the low number of active Romanian bands that caught my attention in any way and that they’ll release their first album in November, let’s say I’m adding them here as encouragement. Sadly, though they actually list themselves as melodic metal, they don’t fit my definition of the term, seeing as for me that requires a lack of growls and they’re actually struggling to include some, which you can notice for just a couple of moments even on the older and softer Ghost Dance, which was probably the song that initially made me think I could hope for something more to my liking from them. However, Dark Side sure seems to indicate that they’re heading in the opposite direction.

Moving on, Imperial Age is a band I randomly stumbled into when YouTube happened to recommend the live version of Turn the Sun Off! to me and I clicked that link. Now I normally avoid linking to live performances, but I was completely stuck on this, the sound is definitely not a problem and this is in fact the proper version of the song, which was also included on their second album, which I’d actually consider their first proper one. Did try to listen to the original version of the song and to the first album as a whole, but I’d advise others to stay away from that, since I gather it was a one-person affair that’s quite worthless in my opinion. However, following the model of Therion, which they actually receive a lot of direct support from, other musicians were later gathered to fill the available positions and, while they may and do get changed, the end result at that point sure was awesome. That said, the second song I’ll link to will be another live version from that same concert: Aryavarta.

An actual recent find is Reagal, who are about to successfully crowdfund their first album after finding their way through some very difficult times. Admittedly, that success is largely due to the low target, of only £1100, and a few generous donors, but if they’ll manage with what at the moment, three days before the deadline, is 125% of that amount, good for them. Meanwhile, they seem to have plenty of gigs and also sing a fair number of covers, but The Flames and Wild Heart are their songs that are properly recorded and available at the moment and they definitely show a lot of promise.

And now allow me to finish this post with Trees of Eternity. Apparently first stumbled into them three years and a few days ago, seeing as that’s when I shared A Million Tears, and last month they announced that their album will finally be released in November, more than half a year after Aleah’s death. It’s a tragic story I don’t know enough about to say more, and it wouldn’t be my place to do so even if I did. As such, I will limit myself to simply sharing the other two songs officially available, Sinking Ships and Broken Mirror, and leaving it at that. Enjoy the music and, if you will, spare a good thought for her and those she left behind.

Guess that’s it, and I have to say at one point I was beginning to wonder whether I’ll manage to post this tonight after all, since it took quite a while. But here it is, and now let’s see how I’ll manage to post at least one more of these before the end of this year. There’s absolutely no chance I’ll post one including ten bands, so that idea of 15 bands included in such posts this year even if there will only be two of them is definitely abandoned, but I guess it’s not entirely impossible that I’ll have two more such posts by the end of the year. It is highly unlikely, however.

Internet cable was cut again first Saturday morning, so exactly one month after the previous time. It seemed to be the same sort of issue as that time too, in the sense that it was probably not theirs but what links them to their provider, and the initial message was that the guy will see what can be done Sunday morning, but then it was fixed around 8 PM that same evening, and around 8:30 PM he actually called to notify us and ask to check if it’s really working.
Well, with all the construction work in the area lately, the problem was likely to repeat itself and did just this morning, also at about 8:30 AM, which was the time it failed on Saturday as well. However, this time my system actually noticed the lack of a connection, so it was something between me and their servers, not farther on. Got even scarier when the signal was completely gone for a while, making me think somebody was cutting the cables in this area one by one, but I guess what was going on was that they were working on fixing the issue, as the signal reappeared after a while and eventually the connection was restored as well, though it took some more time before that happened.
This isn’t looking good, since they really started working on the buildings on this street leading from me to them, right on the section in between, plus that they just recently actually started working on the front side of the building next to mine, after largely dragging their feet and only now getting around to finishing the back despite supposedly starting to work on it almost a year ago. So something’s telling me this will happen again, and I can only hope it’ll continue to at least be fixed on the same day, and perhaps even within a few hours as it was today, and that it won’t drive them out of business or away from the area.

Today’s loss of connection also seemed to cause an odd computer issue, where the CPU load was reported wrong, one SETI@home work unit appearing to take about 55% and the other about 45% instead of each of them at 50%, so fully using one core, and I was noticing some refresh rate issues, which became more obvious when I loaded a game, at which time I noticed a lot of cracking in the sound as well. After rebooting, the issue seemed solved, but the connection also worked after that reboot, and it’s also possible that something had to be reset before the connection could be restored after the work they did, though the LEDs on the switch only started blinking quite normally mere seconds before the reboot. However, when the connection failed again as I was writing this, the problem reappeared after turning the network chipset off and back on, disappearing when I unplugged the switch and reappearing when I plugged it back in. Rebooted again and, even though the connection still didn’t work right away, the problem was no longer there, but the connection was also restored within a minute or two, though the LEDs look all wrong. No idea what’s going on, but there sure is reason to fear a serious hardware problem here.
Also, on top of those issues with Emsisoft that aren’t actually solved but which at least in case of the apparently corrupt logs don’t seem to act up again, now I have something else which I wonder whether it has to do with hardware or software. What I mean is that I rebooted again on Monday to test something and for some reason also decided to install two optional Windows updates then, including the August bundle. Why did I do that, no idea, but after that reboot I saw all coolers being reported at 70.6% instead of the around 78% normal speed for the CPU temperature on the setting I selected, and that speed never changed. And I do know they were running slower, because the rear one is a bit noisy at higher speeds and I wasn’t hearing it at that level.
Uninstalling that update didn’t fix the issue, and neither did reinstalling it again today, along with the important ones and the July bundle which I had never installed before, both of them being reissued yesterday. Changing the minimum speed in BIOS to a custom 80% from the 70% of the selected preset worked as expected, but now I did another test by setting 70% at 30°C, 75% at 50°C and 80% at 60°C and I’m getting a steady 72.5%, which led me to believe that the BIOS had suddenly decided to set the fan speeds according to the system temperature, reported as 37-38°C, instead of the CPU one. But after this other reboot now, I changed it to 80% at 40°C, and still 80% at 60°C, and I’m getting 81.6%, so I’m completely at a loss, but it definitely is worrying and I’m thinking of anything from motherboard or CPU failure to some really nasty malware infecting the BIOS or something else that can’t be scanned. No idea what I’m going to do here.

And also no idea what to do about the health issues, since I once again shat black yesterday. Maybe not quite the same shade and definitely wasn’t as “explosive”, but I was rather expecting it after how things felt the night before, after quickly eating shortly before bed since dad only went to sleep around 3:30 AM. And things definitely aren’t well in my abdomen at all, and I keep feeling that odd feeling of pressure or whatever it is on the left side. And all I’m doing about it is panicking more and more… To the point that I sent someone a rambling message in which I was also asking if she’ll actually go with me if I will go to have things checked out, though we didn’t even meet before and it’ll be all sorts of fucked up and I have no idea how to do these things and won’t be able to think or speak or anything if I will go.

But at least I ran today, on about three hours of sleep and an apple and two plums, after not eating at all last night since dad seemed to have no intention of going to bed at 3:30 AM and I therefore decided to crawl in bed myself, eventually falling asleep at some point after 4 AM and waking up shortly before 7:30 AM. Tried to go to the kitchen and make a salad and grab the other things then, but his alarm rang at 8 AM, so I rushed back to my room as soon as he went to the bathroom and then just went out to run after determining that the Internet problem wasn’t going to be fixed right away. Did finally eat after I got back, since he wasn’t back yet, but I sure wonder when he sleeps anymore and how he manages this… And also how will I manage it if I won’t even be going to eat at night anymore…
But back to today’s run, despite the cool temperature and lack of wind, I really couldn’t keep up the passable pace of the first lap in the second, so the time was 35:44, with sector times of 4:37, 5:15, 6:12, 4:49, 5:25, 6:18 and 3:08, making for lap times of 16:04 and 16:32, that second lap being the slowest lap out of all proper seven-kilometer runs during the day. And I must say I really pushed towards the end to even manage that, even having someone in front of me that I struggled to not fall farther behind of on the second lap’s third sector, so without that it’d have been even worse. And things hurt in my abdomen after I was done in a way that didn’t really happen in quite some time even so.

I’m not keen on short stories and the first four in this book more or less just proved me right once again. They are well written and it is a plus that they’re connected, with bits of a bigger story to be found inside them, but they are nevertheless pretty much just short stories, at times forced, at times striding too far either into humor or into a fairy tale, at times simply seeming to not quite fit, and overall rather missing the tone, setting and mood that I expected, and which they perhaps sought. Also, one particular reason to be angry with Yennefer sure is stressed at some point, and by that I don’t mean the one most people reading this will assume. That one just makes me feel even worse about the way what to me is the only right choice was treated in The Witcher 3.
However, I rated this the way I did thanks to the last two stories, which definitely belong alongside the proper books in the series, being properly connected and certainly finding that tone and mood and setting, never losing their way. After reading the fifth and seeing as the book is titled after it, I assumed that will be the best one, but the last then proved me wrong. That was in good part thanks to the outstanding and guttingly bittersweet scene between Geralt and Yennefer, which caused me to need to take a break and which I’ll probably need a longer time to recover from, but definitely not only because of that.

Rating: 4/5

Not doing much of anything else, except spiraling down even further perhaps, but at least I finally started reading Sword of Destiny this Monday, and should finish it Friday, so that should also take care of this week’s second post. Even went to read for close to an hour in a nearby park last evening, not knowing what else to do…
Does make me feel even worse about a certain thing I unintentionally found out happens if you make certain choices in The Witcher 3. Since I don’t want to put spoilers for others here, won’t say what it is, but if you do want to know you can see for yourself. Granted, the actual scene isn’t what I had in mind, but I’m talking about the fact that the only right choice is actually available but treated as the wrongest possible one. And then there’s one more “little” detail in one of the stories in this book that makes the way the matter was treated in the game even worse, and I’m invested in this story and those characters enough to feel terrible about it. Not even angry or frustrated, but just really depressed and disappointed and thinking it’s a very good reason to seriously fear ever playing the game.

As for this week’s run, it was yesterday, on about three hours of sleep since I wanted to go early, and marked yet another failed attempt to get back under 35 minutes. In fact, it was the worst of the three, at 35:35. Intermediate times were 4:41, 5:26, 6:05, 4:42, 5:21, 6:16 and 3:04, making for lap times of 16:12 and 16:19, so it was quite clear from the first lap’s second sector that it was going to be a poor run, even though I felt so slow during the first that I feared the time would be close to five minutes and had some little reason to hope when I saw it wasn’t. The first lap’s final sector wasn’t quite bad either, but that was pretty much it, and definitely didn’t feel well at all. But I’m not feeling well at all in general, and had two more things to worry about yesterday after the run, so it’s no surprise.