I had a big week, all things considered. As at the end of this week, we went out all the way to #LakesEntrance as a family. A 4-hour drive each way and loads of activities to do, that the 2 nights were just not enough to get everything done. We definitely have to go back!

In saying that though, having a quick glance at the beginning of the week, and really, as a whole. I did 1 day of my exercise and reading. Once again disappointing myself with my fitness goals, as last week. I can probably forgive myself for the first day, due to it being more of a recovery day from night shift. Looks like I kept myself busy at the start of the week though with a new CPU cooler upgrade and strimer cables for #RGB goodness inside my PC setup. And the end of the week was taken by 3 days on a family trip to Lakes Entrance. Hmm, OK, I can forgive myself here!

PC Tinkering

I have had my PC for a good 15 years now and done some hardware upgrades to it along the way to keep it relevant. Recently updating my PC case as well to be able to see what’s inside, although I had never been much of a RGB fan prior.

I think with my new home office setup though, the sit-stand desk that I had custom made and all the other nice nick-nack’s to make the room mine, having the PC on display became an objective.

For years, I had this huge Cooler Master CPU cooler, which actually does a great job with its heat sinks. And late last year during summer, I noticed my PC hitting some kind of limitation with tiny system hangs, frame rate limitations and so forth. This was because, not only was it a warm summer, but I was also doing a lot of live streaming which would put more strain on the system.

I decided to give the whole PC a clean by pulling it apart. Assuming the CPU cooler needed dust removed to make it more efficient, I pulled that off of the CPU as well.

Unfortunately I cannot find the photo of this, as it was a while ago and not sure where I saved it, but I noticed I had forgotten to remove the piece of plastic that sits on the copper heat-sink and is suppose to have direct contact with the CPU. The piece of plastic clearly had written on it, “WARNING: Remove before use”. I built the whole PC from scratch, so I can’t blame someone else for it! So glad my CPU made it through all those years without overheating!

Removing the sticker improved my system performance significantly and I was off and away back into streaming and making videos for our game SL Colonies. But that wasn’t before adding a liquid cooled upgrade on my list of things I wanted for the PC.

So I went and finally purchased a Corsair iCUE Liquid CPU Cooler this week with an LCD display, and installed it. What do you think? And now the temperatures on the PC hover around 25 and 26 Celsius constantly. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to fully stress test the system with heavy CPU workload, but this is nice, and it really compliments the whole look.

Ethernet Issues Gone

I’m also happy to report that my Ethernet issues I had been having for a few months now are gone. I couldn’t figure it out. I thought it was my Linux distribution causing issues at the kernel level with my Ethernet going to sleep or being managed by the system somehow.

Basically, randomly, my network would die on the PC, and the only way to get it back, was to physically unplug the Ethernet cable and plug it back in. Not even turning Ethernet on and off seemed to work. And it was happening at random times, not just when walking away from the PC; I could be in the middle of working and the network would go offline.

This was an issue, as I need a stable connection for my daily needs. Especially for video calls and live streaming. I also run a Tor node in a VM which was being affected.

After much troubleshooting, I was not able to fix it at the motherboard level, and my solution was to purchase a [USB to Ethernet adaptor](www.amazon.com.au/dp/B00MYT… which I am happy to report, has remained online during my 3 days away to Lakes Entrance, returning home to a network that has remained online and functioning as expected!

Apparently, Intel NIC’s are known to have this issue? Have you come across it?

Movies

I watched two movies during the week that I briefly posted about. Those were Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and The Social Dilemma.

Bandersnatch was a great movie. It’s very unique, like those novels that you can pick your characters ending by choosing your path. Well, Bandersnatch does that in a movie form, where the path you pick throughout the movie, provides you with multiple different types of possible endings, dead-ends and just fun! I loved it, it felt very… schizophrenic? Don’t do LSD kids, not without intention (and a good sitter)!

The Social Dilemma on the other hand, was an eye-opener. I mean, I have already made a lot of changes in my life to move away from Social Media and more into my own identity on the web by following IndieWeb principals. As well as completely DeGoogling my life - especially on my phone! My phone is practically a brick with the bare minimum apps to suit my needs and nothing more. But I have taken it further, by not just DeGoogling, but also DeApping. So no emails, no social media, no nothing. The phone does two things. Handle phone calls, and messaging (encrypted through my own self-hosted Matrix instance). Other than that, my phone is in airplane mode, connected to home WiFi. Bluetooth and WiFi scanning off, all tracking off and running on GrapheneOS. Highly recommend watching this documentary - it will open your eyes.

Car Maintenance

I did a little car maintenance on my wife’s vehicle. I’m not very hands on and definitely not a mechanic, unlike my brother. But I changed some light globes for the headlights and number plates and got my hands dirty. It’s an old Toyota Camry Altise - I think 2015 odd? She’s getting old, but still very reliable.

Actually need to arrange with my brother to do its shock absorbers, as they’ve reached their end-of-life!

Voting

We had to vote in Victoria for state parliament and local government. I did something different this year, as usually I just vote based on what I know personally, and that’s nothing… as I really am not interested in any politics. But that is the wrong way to vote, and I fear a lot of us vote like I did.

I used AI

Yes, you read right. I used AI to help me in making my informed decision. And no, I don’t mean that I typed into the prompt, “Who do you recommend I vote for?” - that would be outright stupid.

But I used AI as a tool to help me make my informed decision, and it performed very well.

Basically, first I got AI to help me setup a score matrix spreadsheet. Where I listed topics that were important to me, not important to me and topics I was against. Each with their own score based on importance to me.

For me, digital privacy, encryption, security, open source solutions and so forth are my top priorities. Among many others of course which I wont discuss here publicly. But AI was able to work a uniquely tailored scoring system for me.

So then, there were 16 parties for me to rank based on my scoring. And AI helped here by writing me, essentially, an essay on each party and their representatives, one by one and scoring with me, giving each party a total.

I made sure to look out for any controversial topics. Scoured the web for sources on anything that would raise red flags for me to lower my preferences for a certain person or party.

In the end, I had 16 parties in order of preference that I was able to make informed decisions about to cast my vote.

I would not recommend AI to give you its own opinions about people or parties. Remember that AI is an LLM and gathers its information from the WWW and will base its opinions on others opinions and not your own. Also, remember that opinions can be coded in by those who control the software.

What you need, are sources you can read, watch and listen to.

The process I used took a full day for me with everything else on hold. It was worth it, and I felt better using this method than my old method.

Oh, and here’s a funny video I recommend you watch, just for a laugh:

Funny right?

Lakes Entrance

Over the #AnzacDay long weekend, I took the family out to #LakesEntrance which is a 4 hour drive from #Melbourne and with my Tesla, requires at least one charge on route. This is good though, as it means I take a rest at least every 2 hours and stretch the legs.

The beautiful thing about electric vehicles, in my opinion, is that when you do need to charge on a long road trip, you get to leave the car plugged in and all get out of the car to go for a walk, go for a bite to eat in the local town and enjoy the scenery before continuing. I think this in itself will help with the road toll of drivers falling asleep at the wheel.

We started our trip with a visit of the Raymond Island, which included a trip on the Raymond Island Ferry. The island has hundreds of koalas that you can see while going on walks around. There are some trails marked out on AllTrails you can check out if you like, but you can basically walk anywhere along the Island and you are sure to find koalas all over the place. They were introduced back in 1953 to Raymond Island, from Phillip Island due to the population of Koalas in Australia almost becoming extinct due to not only disasters, but to the fur trade (we humans…).

We then went for a dinner at a place called Cathy’s Asian Kitchen in Lakes Entrance. Hidden inside a motel carpark, we found it to be a hidden gem, with authentic and extra-tasty Malaysian Cuisine. Kudo’s to the family owners on this one, as we absolutely loved it.

The next location was the Buchan Caves in Buchan, Victoria. We went into the Fairy Cave and the Royal Cave and those were absolutely beautiful. Highly recommend you go pay those a visit and enjoy the day out there with the family, as there’s also a multitude of walking trails to do. You can camp there, bring a caravan (with bookings) and all.

Here’s a video that I managed to record inside the Royal Cave in Buchan. It is essentially a walk-through from the end back to the exit on the way back out, as I was the last in my group with no one behind me to make me have to walk quicker.

After the caves, we went for a 2 hour cruise on the waters using Peel’s Lake Cruises. There are other companies around that offer cruises, and I am sure they are just as good. However we picked this one last minute after lunch and after the caves and this cruise had some spots left for us.

We got to see Fraser Island, Flannagans Island, Rigby’s Island, Raymond Island and the beautiful surrounds of the local areas as a whole.

Not only that, but the Captain took us to the entry of Lakes Entrance, known as “The Entrance” where seals are commonly seen sun bathing on the rocks. And that didn’t disappoint, as the seals were indeed there having a wonderful time. Here’s a video!

On our final day we went to the Metung Hot Springs. Our kids had never gone to any hot springs before, so this was an experience for them.

It’s not as big as some of the other hot springs around Victoria, but given that it was not too busy when we went, there’s was plenty for us to enjoy. I love the barrels up top with a view of the scenery below!

We could have ended our trip there, considering the 4 hour drive back home, but the kids really wanted to see the beach. So we completed a walk around some of the 90 mile beach. The trail was called the Lakes Entrance Loop via 90 Mile Beach. This was a beautiful walk with the family - and most important of all, the kids loved it. We got to see the seals again by The Entrance and loads of crabs! Check out these two small videos below:

Conclusion

All in all, a productive week indeed. I hope that you enjoyed the read and thank you for taking the time to read all the way to the end if you did!

I enjoy conversation and appreciate any comments left in the discussions and will respond when I can. So please feel free to. It’s always good to know when people appreciate a blog entry and enjoy reading up!