Paul Smith's Blog

I’ve been playing a bit of Minecraft this weekend and noticed much worse raytracing performance than previously. After a bit of investigation it looks like a regression was introduced with 1.16.220 which has substantially reduced performance, dropping from around 90+fps to 30ish, this is on an RTX 3080 with DLSS turned on at 3440x1440. After a bit of troubleshooting it looks like its related to v-sync, changing: gfx_vsync:1 to gfx_vsync:0...

In 2020 CityFibre started digging up parts of Worthing to install Fibre to the Premises (FTTP), they sell this wholesale to ISPs, similar to BT Openreach. Their network allows for gigabit-ish speeds. The main difference for consumers however is CityFibre offer a symmetrical connection for residential and not just business customers, so around 900Mbps down and up. In comparison BT Openreach FTTP residential packages offer around 900Mbps down and 100Mbps up....

I know the Brexiteers have been out in force lately trying to blame the EU, remainers or anyone else for Project Fear becoming Project Reality, but this flowchart will help them figure out who’s responsible for this shitshow.

Damn those remainers, asking government ministers for meetings to discuss ways to help out many industries now suffering due to trade issues with the European Union. The Daily Express headline clearly demonstrating how remainers are plotting. The Daily Express, buried under all the fake-outrage, ultra nationalism and clickbait headlines actually goes on to mention some figures: “But I am sure he would agree we have a particular problem at the moment with the export of animals, meat and shellfish, where exports are down by between 56 and 83 percent....

I've recently been porting a fairly substantial website over to a static generator from a CMS, I've wanted to maintain a commenting system on it however as it is still fairly active. So I decided to use Remark42 as its self-hosted and pretty powerful, plus still under development. One of the areas not well documented was running it on Apache without a subdomain. I figured it would be easier to run it under a folder, and not have to worry about getting Let's Encrypt through a proxy for SSL renewals....

One of the main reasons for getting a GeForce RTX 3080 last year was for Minecraft, so I can play with raytraced/RTX lighting enabled. I was expecting to take a substantial hit in draw distance - with RTX disabled I’d always play with at least a 64 chunk draw distance. Disappointingly the maximum view distance in Minecraft with raytracing enabled is only 24 chunks, at least as far as setting it in the user interface....

More blatantly misleading headlines from everyone's favourite Brexit-supporting newspaper the Daily Express. EU's 'devastating' Brexit export ban cripples UK fishing industry Should read: United Kingdom leaving the European Union, means its no longer treated like an EU member. Ya know like the Daily Express wanted...? Nicki Holmyard, director of Offshore Shellfish in Brixham, Devon, said she is bracing for the "disastrous" worst case scenario of having to close her shellfish farm due to the post-Brexit trade fiasco....

However the media in this country feel that bullying Meghan Markle is a more important story based on today's front pages. Tory press bullying Meghan Markle again Meanwhile we're stuck with a government that's left over one hundred thousand British citizens dead, while simultaneously giving the survivors the worst economic decline in the western world. A government that continues to get away with that and dishing out dodgy contracts to their donors as they break transparency laws with not a word about it mentioned in most of the press....

After traveling since July 2020, the new Perseverance rover has successfully landed on Mars. Hopefully it'll go on to be as successful as Pathfinder's Sojourner rover, Spirit, Opportunity and the still active Curiosity. First photos from Perseverance Only low-resolution images from its engineering cameras have been transmitted back, but they're enough to confirm its safely on the surface.

Nigel Farage has been making angry videos on Twitter calling for the "EU Human Rights Act" to be scrapped. Great right? Except there's no such thing as the EU Human Rights Act. Farage, determined to get rid of human rights and take us back to some sort of 1942 Nazi-dominated Europe is attempting to rally his simpleton-Brexit supporting followers against human rights by attempting to link them with the European Union....