00:11
Hi, Len.
Hi, Asami.
It is Friday night. We're a little tired
because I guess I asked you last minute to be on the recording,
given that I didn't ask for your weekend schedule, but...
You did nothing of the sort. This is an entirely professional podcast.
No, I feel like this week in particular just flew by.
It was one of those weeks where I had a good weekend last weekend,
and then came back to work pretty refreshed,
and then before I realized it was already end of Friday.
In a good way, you were saying.
For the most part, for the most part.
I think it's one of those weird period of my life, phase, whatever,
where despite the chaos of what's happening outside of work.
Well, it's not really fully outside of work.
It's more like my places I'm living and whatnot.
Those life logistics.
That's been rather chaotic, but my work is hitting targets left and right,
and I'm like, I don't know why.
Don't question it. Just let the targets keep getting knocked down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see.
We all know that this doesn't last long.
No, yeah.
You'll run into problems or things that you have to deal with,
and that's fine, but it's nice to sit and sort of ride out.
Yeah, like, wow, the code you wrote works the first time.
That never happens.
Or like a collaborator wanting to bring in another collaborator.
I'm like, sure, more the merrier.
It's a party.
Oh, no, wait, it's a research project, but it's a party.
I mean, I'm not used to this kind of people.
Oh, and my grad student, if I can call him my grad student,
like he's not my grad student, but a grad student working on my project.
He made a massive progress in the simulator I'm asking him to build.
I'm like, damn, I didn't even have to say anything to you.
I just gave you the vaguest idea and you delivered.
Isn't that what most PIs are looking for, right?
03:00
I'm like, wow, I just either got super lucky that you're fucking smart
or this problem is relatively tackleable.
Maybe both, right?
Like the alignment worked out really well this time, whatever it was.
Yeah, I'm just super impressed by this guy.
But anyway, how have you been?
What's been on your mind?
I know you shared a couple of things you might want to talk about.
I did, yeah.
Well, we were looking for something sort of light and easy to talk about.
By the way, I want to thank everyone who actually listened
to our 56 minute long episode on women's empowerment, female empowerment.
If you did, thank you so much.
I think there's some thought, I don't want to say thought provoking,
but like seed planting contents in there.
Yeah, thoughts sparking.
Yeah, yeah, like something like a lighter grade of thought provoking
because I don't want to be responsible for provoking thoughts.
But discussion starting.
Yeah, yeah.
Like I feel like we were able to plant a lot of seeds for that,
but it was a long ass episode.
So, you know, if you got through, thank you.
It was very long.
Yeah, thank you for listening.
We want lighthearted items today.
Yeah, something easier.
And if you haven't listened to the long episode, we understand.
But also, you should go listen to the long episode.
Maybe it'll be interesting.
So yeah, light topics for today.
So I had two of them.
First one, we've got a cool task, which I think aligns with the idea of
like just having things sort of, you know, going right.
Things are going well.
I've been preparing for the last maybe two weeks or so to build myself a new computer
because this laptop.
Because you're one of those people.
Hey, now, what's that supposed to mean?
One of those people crazy enough to want to build your own computer.
Audience, do you hear what Asami is doing?
He's calling me out over here.
Yeah, I am.
I do fit that.
In fact, this is the second time that I've done it.
So.
Really?
Wow.
Yeah.
So the first time I did it.
I am impressed.
Oh, well, thank you.
That's very nice to hear.
But don't be too impressed yet.
I still have things that I have to gripe about.
But the build that I did way back when was, you know, 10 or more years ago.
Right.
It was like an undergrad build that I was doing during undergrad.
I had built the computer.
I think so.
Yeah, somewhere around that time.
And so, yeah, I decided I knew I needed a new computer.
06:04
Uh, because my laptop is doing just fine for, you know, anything from work stuff to,
you know, YouTube.
Right.
Everybody's watching YouTube.
But if I wanted to do anything that required an actual graphics processor, a GPU,
uh, which, you know, if I wanted to play games, if I wanted to do some 3D modeling stuff,
uh, it's not working anymore.
It's just absolutely not handling it.
Um, and I'm pretty sure that means that my dedicated GPU is dying.
So that's my first gripe, uh, which is really unpleasant thing to have.
Right.
I really want that to be functioning.
There's no good timing for a computer to kind of, you know, die.
No, no.
Especially when you're in a situation where you may only have like one.
Right.
I do have a work computer, like a machine at work in my office.
But I, you know, my office is far away.
I like to have things that I can do stuff on, you know, from wherever.
So if you only have one machine, that makes it really hard, especially because now
if something breaks, that is your only access point.
Right.
Right.
Um, so I made, you know, I was like, all right, let's, let's go and let's go and do
a computer.
Um, debated, maybe just buying one and saving myself the time, but I wanted specific things.
And so I said, I'll just, I'll just build it.
Um, what my, my second gripe is about opening some of the boxes and only like one out of the
many parts that I had to purchase had like, I would say a sufficient and effective manual
included in the box for me to check my sanity against for like plugs and like adapters and
the voltages that I'm supposed to like, make sure they go into.
Um, and so the first one is like an overall, why is that not in that box?
Was I just unlucky?
Was it not in this box?
The main one that you get a manual for is the motherboard.
And that's really important.
That was obviously a key piece.
That one gives you most of the information you need to like plug in all of them.
But I feel like it's a trend nowadays.
They refer you to the online repository of the manual, even like the lasers and stuff
that I buy for research.
Um, I think they used to come in this like, you know, nicely bound, uh, like hard cup,
not hard cover, like a book bound, but like a long lasting manual.
And now you get like a flimsy one that teaches you which button to press to turn it on with
09:02
like graphics, not words.
And then, and then they go refer for any details to this, you know, 700 page document that
we put on our website.
Which just contains like everything, right?
Or like every model number ever.
Um, but it's like, well, it would have been nice if you printed it out for me.
It would have been great if in the box that I spent, you know, I'm thinking about the
power supply unit right now in particular.
And I will, I will say there are lots of things I like compared to what I had had in
the past with particular pieces I picked up.
But, uh, something that, cause you just mentioned, right?
It's like, it's on the website, right?
Well, it would be great if they included like a QR code or like a URL link that goes to
like the place that you need to go to.
But that couldn't hurt, right?
Like that could just be printed on the box.
Um, I didn't see it.
Um, and like, so hunting that down, you know, now we talked actually here about like video
tutorials and things versus like written tutorials.
And like, I wanted that one, but I ended up going to the video tutorials because that
was where people were talking about the particular piece of equipment I had.
And like demonstrating for my own sanity that this one is the one they're talking about.
It goes to, you know, another part of the board.
Yeah.
And I'm like, this is great.
There's a use case, right?
For that sort of thing.
But it meant I had to like, you know, scroll through a bunch of videos and try to figure
out which one it was.
And I got very lucky that somebody had a video that was short, concise, like well, clearly
sort of delineated.
Great.
You know, and I could just double check that everything was in the right spots.
Um, but yeah, so, so manuals.
But good point, right?
They just don't print them anymore.
It's just online, right?
You can just go, just go look it up, I guess.
Right?
Yeah.
I do like that it's online only for the fact that if I lose it, I know where it is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a good point.
And I can control F.
That's also nice.
Yes.
Yes.
But I feel like when you're unboxing and you want to like get your hands on it immediately,
you know, your thought isn't like, let me look up this like 20 digit serial number onto
my laptop and like, look for the correct manual.
Yep.
So when, when are you launching this new machine?
I'm going to test run it tomorrow.
Um, so yeah.
Wait, I thought computer building was somebody's summer project, not like a one night project.
No.
Well, it can take longer if you have less experience with it.
12:03
A whole summer, maybe not, unless you're taking time to really
like kind of debate between different parts and wait for specific things to go on sale.
Yeah.
Like if you include all of the process of researching what parts to buy and whatnot.
Right.
Like I've, I've been thinking about it and then I hadn't really gone to do anything about it for
like the last two months, but I didn't do anything.
And then in the last three weeks, I think I started going into the computer stores that
are here.
So like, uh, Tsukumo, so the Tsukumo PC parts stores, um, to be like, what is here?
What are the prices?
What are my options?
Um, and then like last, the last two weeks, I, maybe last week, actually, I just, I was
like, all right, I'm, I'm going to start, I'm starting to buy parts.
And then I sort of kept going until I had all the parts and I have a, a list next to
me, uh, where I've sort of summarized how much it costs me to do this.
Um, and, uh, and, and once you have them, like once you have everything, somebody who
is skilled, I don't know, take them like an hour to put it together.
Like, or less.
It's like, cause once you have all the parts, it's just kind of fitting them in together
and then test running it.
And.
An advanced Lego kind of.
Yeah.
It's, it's an advanced Lego.
I mean, it's designed at this point to be, I don't know, these ones in particular, user
friendly ask.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I see.
Like I want user friendly for a very specific kind of users.
I was going to say, I won't go as far to say user friendly per se, because there are a
lot of those sort of upfront, uh, maybe barriers, like you can't just kind of like, you know,
snap it in like a piece of, it's fine.
You know, um, there's a reason why I'm happy paying somebody like five, $600 to build one
for me.
Right.
Yep.
Yep.
So like there, there are fair reason for that.
And this at the current market, you don't save a lot of money building it on your own.
Um, like it would have cost me maybe a few hundred dollars extra to like have one built
with relatively similar specs from like the one that I have.
Um, but it's more just like your customizability and the joy of making one yourself.
Yeah.
That's sort of what leaned me into doing it.
So that's lovely.
Yeah.
So now I have a computer.
It looks pretty cool.
Sorry, listeners, you can't see the computer, but, uh,
Yeah.
And if we stop updating the episodes, it's because something happened to his laptop.
15:00
It's because I died in a fiery explosion due to, you know, RIP.
RIP, Len.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's no, no other gripes.
I think it's, I'm actually much more pleased with it than I think I was.
There are minor things here and there, but maybe we can talk more about computers in the future.
All right.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
