Rotational Molds

At the moment, I have in my possession five rotational carousel horse molds that I'd like to sell. Unfortunately, while they are rather expensive, and there's a decent market for the horses they produce, the market for the molds themselves is rather small. So, I have turned to the internet for help. If you know anyone who might be interested in these, let them know. I'm fully willing to offer a decent finder's fee if a sale goes through.

About a metre long and 60-70cm high. As far as I'm aware, this has never been used. The other half is in similar condition.

This one's the same size, with the legs in a slightly different position. It needs to be cleaned, but otherwise the mold seems to be in excellent shape. The other half is in similar condition.

I also have molds for the following. I'm not 100% sure of the condition because the frames are rusted, but I believe the molds themselves are in good shape.

Again, about a metre long and 50cm or so high.

Around 50cm high and 50cm long.

Around 40cm high and 50cm long.

I also have one rotational elephant mold.

Around 35cm high and 45cm long.

If you'd like to make an offer, leave a comment below, and I'll get back to you.

I Still Don't Like It!

It has now been over a year since the last time I "liked" something on Facebook... or any other social media platform, for that matter. Here's what I've learned:

I'm somewhat less stressed about not liking other people's stuff. When I first stopped, I was a little concerned that the slight decrease in likes might (marginally) discourage people from posting things they're excited about. Now I think enough people know that I still like their stuff -I just don't "like" like it- that I'm no longer worried. Everyone knows that I still think their babies are cute and their new haircut is fabulous. Their memes I can take or leave, though, no matter how dank they may be.

Not liking stuff can be hard. The impetus to be lazy is great, especially on the internet. There have been many instances where I wanted to click the button and move on, but instead had to spend a minute or two thinking up an appropriate comment. Sometimes I couldn't think of anything appropriate and just gave up. Which is definitely a failing on my part. I shall endeavour to do better in the future.

Facebook doesn't know me anymore (if it ever really did). Whatever algorithm it uses to determine what to show me is just firing stuff at the wall to see what sticks at this point. Without likes, sads, wows and whatnot, it has to rely on the rare instances when I click on a link someone's posted, and those can be so wildly different that they don't really build a useful data profile. Unfortunately, I also don't get any of those pre-fab videos with the "you liked such and such thing x number of times" stats in them, but I think I'll live.

At this point, I don't think I'll ever "like" anything ever again. I didn't like anything on Facebook until 2009, and it took another two years to get my total likes into double digits. The world will get by without my single-click input. I'm not going to proselytize, though. Some people like liking things, and that's perfectly fine. It's just not for me anymore.

I Don't Like It!

Now, I don't have anything against "liking" things per se, but around December of last year, I decided that it's way too impersonal. Twenty years ago, when someone showed you a picture of their newborn baby, or got a new haircut, or something like that, we at least needed to have the interpersonal skills to say "Hey, cute baby!" or "Cute bangs!" or whatever. Today, we just click a button and don't even bother with the generic pleasantries. I've spent good chunks of my life as a solitary misanthrope, and even to me that seems a bit sad. What's more, who knows if a person actually likes your new haircut when they "like" it? To some people, that little thumbs up is basically just an acknowledgement that they've seen something, or a button that they hit on everything because they feel it's expected of them.

It's also become way too much of a score-keeping mechanism for my tastes. The legitimate news now talks about posts that go viral and how many likes they get, which is one of the most depressing things about today's incredibly depressing media. But what's worse is that it can be a huge blow to someone's self-esteem and ruin an otherwise good day if someone puts up a photo of themselves that not enough people like. I've seen more than one photo disappear for just that reason.

So, I've stopped "liking" things. For the past six months, if someone's posted something that I've really enjoyed, I've just made a quick comment. It takes only slightly longer than hitting the like button, and I think that tiny bit of effort shows my appreciation a lot better. Moreover, I don't care if other people "like" what I post anymore, either. I share stuff because I think it's interesting or funny, and if no one else likes it, then that doesn't diminish my enjoyment or make my hair look any less awesome.

Video I've Seen Too Many Times #10: Stronger

Today's video features a lot of crappy amateur video of synchronized dancing. Apparently it's supposed to represent a global flash mob dance, which was a fad that had fallen out of style before the video even came out. Seriously, flash mobs are so dated that Kelly might as well be wearing parachute pants. There's also a guy playing the keytar, so I really do have to wonder if time travel was involved in the production.

The song itself is about how Kelly's doing all right after getting dumped and she's totally fine without her ex and she didn't like him that much anyway and he had stupid hair. Here's Kelly Clarkson with Stronger:

Video I've Seen Too Many Times #9: Love Story

Tay Swizzle's going to appear a lot in these posts. Despite the fact that she's only 11 years old, she already has forty billion views on Vevo, about half of which are me.

Like many of her songs, this one's about a dude. It's more country and not as catchy as her recent work. Also a tad more optimistic, since this one ends with her getting married instead of left in the desert by some d-bag in a hat. Enjoy!

One last time

Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy the musical stylings of Mr. Leonard Nimoy:

Time for an upgrade

My computer turned four years old in October. Well, most of it did. A couple of the hard drives were considerably older than that. They still worked, but they've been slowly failing over the past little while, so it was time to replace them. And, I figured since I was replacing the drives, I might as well upgrade the rest of my computer, too.

For starters, I popped in a beefier PSU that I got from a friend a while back. My old one probably would have sufficed, but there was no reason not to make the switch, and it's as lot easier to get new components into a case when it's not clogged up with power cables.

Used Cooler Master GX Bronze 650W.
Price: Free

To replace my two old 200GB hard drives, I grabbed a couple of Western Digital 1TB drives. One Green, and one Blue. The old drive in the Green one's current slot had problems with noise and overheating, so the Green drive was probably a good way to go since it's both quiet and cool. It's a bit slow, however I plan to use it mostly for backup purposes (which actually necessitated swapping out one drive at a time because I didn't have an extra SATA cable). I kinda wish I'd bought the 2TB version, which was only about $20 more, but I don't really need that much storage.

1TB Western Digital Green HDD.
Price: $75.56 incl. tax+shipping

The Blue one is 7200RPM with a 64MB cache, and I'm considering making it my primary drive. Although, I still might get an SSD to replace the HDD that's currently holding my OS and applications.

1TB Western Digital Green HDD.
Price: $76.82 incl. tax+shipping

On the RAM front, I grabbed a couple of G.SKILL Ripjaws 2GB sticks to up my total to 8GB. I went with DDR3-1333 to match what I have now, with CL8-8-8-24 timing. Obviously, it's not top-of-the-line stuff, but my motherboard can only handle 2GB sticks for some reason, and if I ever buy a new system, I'll probably wind up using at least 4GB sticks, so I'll buy better stuff at that point. Apparently it's compatible with Z97... whatever that means.

2x2GB G.SKILL Ripjaws 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory
Price: $50.84 incl. tax+shipping

Finally, I grabbed a slightly-used PowerColor Radeon HD7950 off eBay. The card first came out about three years ago, so it's not the most powerful thing out there. However, it still makes the top 40, and it's generally cooler, quieter, and uses less power than other cards in its class. The only major issue is that it's fairly large; more than twice as big as the OEM GeForce GT-320 it replaced. In fact it was so large that I was barely able to fit it in. But, after a little finagling I managed to get it in there. It's a vast, vast improvement over the old card. Whereas the old one threatened to burst into flames at the slightest provocation, the new one has yet to break 55 degrees.

Used PowerColor Radeon HD7950
Price: $101 incl. tax+shipping

It just barely fits in my case.

I now have an extra 100W of power, 2.5x as much storage, twice as much RAM, and a video card that scores 8.5x as well on benchmarking tests. Total cost: $304.22