Weird graphics glitch OSX 10.9.3 on MacMini

Just had a mild panic when I switched on my Mac and displayed the desktop with very strange artefacts not dissimilar to a lower colour depth than necessary after updating OSX to 10.9.3

I wish I'd got a screen shot to aid recognition, but it may have not been relevant any way.  The areas that I now see that were problematic were predominantly white, and possibly even transparent or overlays.  It appeared on bitmaps, window chrome and the OSX Menu Bar and menu items when highlighted.  Essentially, it looked like a fog/glare or that anti-aliasing was incorrectly applied.  There was a few greens/purples punching through, too.  I've seen similar faults when a flatscreen monitor was dropped hard on a corner, but two at the same time?

I tried detaching both my monitors (one on HDMI, one on Thunderbolt) and cycling power on both monitors.  I tried using one at a time, but regardless of monitor/port combination, the glitch remained.

Had a Google about and noticed that 10.9.3, which I'd upgraded my Mavericks OS to the last time it was switched on, had a few users of older machines complaining of a similar but not the same glitch.  As I'm relatively new to the Mac OSX world, I sighed and thought I'd look into how to work around or try to ignore it until a fix is released.  I'd noticed that previous updates that involved graphics driver improvements had similar unintended problems for older hardware.

So only one thing left to try.  The IT Helpdesk standard "turn it off and on again".  It worked.  As silly as it sounds, it does work more often than I'd care to admit.  Hopefully this doesn't become a recurring fault.

I've tried looking for a screenshot of a similar glitch, but no one seems to have posted one - they seem to be much more broken than mine was.

Broadband Down

I've been dealing with Virgin Media to try and get a reliable internet connection at home.  I thought I'd put down a short resume of the trouble we have with their broadband.  I'll also post a review of their TV service too in the coming days as it is so full of niggles it's barely acceptable as a beta test version.

We've been customers for a number of years, with TV, phone and broadband, paying somewhere in the region of £80 per month.  We've got a number of gripes with the service, but predominantly, the main problem we have with the service is the broadband reliability.  It ranges from working perfectly and super fast to being none existent, you see.

We get a total drop out of signal to the router and we've had numerous and multiple engineers out to fix the issue. About eighteen months ago, it seemed fixed, one of the numerous engineers finally seemed to crack the problem.  It had something to do with the signal to noise ratio on our feed.  It seems Virgin broadband is very susceptible to fluctuations in the signal.  Whatever the engineer did, it didn't last.  About a month ago, it all started again.

So, as anyone unlucky enough to have to had reason to call Virgin Media will attest, I avoided calling 150 for as long as possible.  Finally, after it happened during Skype calls, trying to work on a server remotely and generally not being able to use any streaming service one night, we checked the service status page.  No reported faults. 

With a deep sigh, 150 is called and the endless loop of "are you on wireless?", followed by requests to restart the router begins. Being passed around, followed by promises that it's a temporary area fault that will resolve in X number of days. Not fobbed off by this, you explain that you know more about the fault than they do, and request to be passed to someone not reading from a script.  They promise a call will be made to you in the new day, which never happens.  Finally, your only option is being a pain in the arse on social media.

Fast forward a number of hoops jumped through, hours spent talking to them, and days waiting around for call backs that have a 66% chance of actually being made at current reckoning, we get a senior area engineer out. He arrives as advised (unusually from past experience - 12noon until 4pm included 6pm once) and does the usual triumvirate of new router (a different version this time), swapping the 'tap' we're fed from and a poke around with signal meters.  He can't see a fault and short of telling us the issue is in our heads, he leaves the set up and a resolution of "let's see if this fixes it".  No attenuator was fitted, swapped or fiddled with this time.  We're told to take a screen capture of the network status of the router when it goes down for aiding diagnosis.

I sit down today with internet radio on, after a few evenings of our Android phones reporting "unstable internet connection" but assumed they were just twitchy as they're relatively new.  My radio feed drops for a few seconds.  Annoying, but meh, could be wifi issues.  Drops again, this time long enough for me to see the device is trying to reconnect to the stream, but the wifi is at full signal.  Again, before I can grab my iPad, the device reconnects.  Next, it's down for a few seconds.  Okay, this is getting tedious.  I log my iPad into the router on the correct page to get a capture next time it happens.  I'm not left waiting for long.  It seems from my experience it actually happens every few minutes, for differing amounts of time.  Watching the status page, it's very common to happen and I only notice it drop when the radio cache is exhausted.  We've been watching YouTube and NetFlix all week since the engineer, but they're not live so can cache quite a lot of the stream.  Radio is a lot less cache happy by it's very nature, and so it's much more noticeable.  Luckily neither of us play online games and have been avoiding using our broadband for important Skypes and remote connections to servers.

So, I'm back at square one.  To be fair to Virgin Media this time, they are trying to fix the problem, but I did have to call, tweet and email a lot of people to get an engineer out.  I'll post updates as and when I get a resolution to the fault, but for now, I'll just have to live with musical statues FM.

I hate TV

That is kind of a lie. I don't hate TV, I hate most of what is on it. It's not a semi-pompous "I'd rather read a book" or "I'd rather do something interactive", it's just I get bored of most television series or shows. I'm sure I'm not alone in this predicament. So I need your help if you're the same. I do like some TV, so I'll start here.

I loved seasons of the Scandinoir drama "The Bridge" and awaited each episode, I adored the BBC parody 2012 and the follow up W1A. I liked The Thick Of It and really enjoyed Sherlock and Luther was amazing. I watch Doctor Who and all the seasons of Star Trek. I liked ITV's Cracker back in the 1990s, recently watched like a fiend all the episodes of the sometimes difficult to follow French political drama "Spiral" and regularly end up watching other detective shows that are admittedly dated and poorly acted, like Taggart.

I've been recommended shows as "I know it'll be your thing" and ended up so, so bored of them after a few episodes. I'm not talking I dislike them per se, just I can't really be bothered making time to watch them, apathetic to them if you like. I've tried watching the stand out favourites people rave about Lost, 24 and Game of Thrones. All of them just annoy me by being so predictable or just so monotonous and, for a better way of putting it, long. I've watched hoping I'd get into it Battlestar Galactica and watched Firefly under some duress of my other half. I never caught on with Buffy, Angel or Xfiles back when I was younger, or really understand the appeal of many American made serials, even with British actors in them.

Like I say, I've had numerous series suggestions and I look into them and they just appear too daunting to attempt, combined with a complete lack of willing on my part as they seem so... magnolia. So boring. So monotonous. So expected, even or especially while they are attempting to be bombastic and novel. I think the "look at me, look at me" nature of them make me switch off. I want something to tease me in, almost surprise me that I've found it. Like Cracker, The Bridge or The Thick Of It.

I thought I'd found that with the BBC's recent series Happy Valley: it was acted okay, I enjoyed the overarching story but haven't watched past episode four. And yet I can't really say why. It should be up my street, it's based up north, police based and has some good actors in. But it's just a bit drawn out. The low key approach I was just hoping for back fired. It was too dull. I had a bad taste in my mouth from the first episode, but I listen to the voice inside that suggests this kind of attitude means I'll never enjoy anything new, so I continued and persevered for another three weeks and gave up.

This post is brought up after my other half just asked me to watch the Netflix original drama Orange Is The New Black. I have nothing really against it, but I can't be bothered watching it and paying attention. It would be okay as wallpaper TV, to have on while I did something more interesting, or perhaps snoozed on the couch. But that's not really watching TV, that's just having TV on. Similarly I couldn't really watch Fringe, I watched the odd episode but commitment to that much TV was beyond my patience so I left him to watch it whenever he liked and I dipped in and out of it. I didn't feel like I missed much story-wise and enjoyed the little of it I watched but I'm not tempted by more. I don't know how the story of Fringe ends, but I really don't care. I suppose I'll trip over the storyline on some page at some point or I'll find out by social osmosis, but I won't be tempted to watch it.

For the future however, I'm hoping I'll find out why I dislike series so much. I'm not after suggestions for series, I'm asking if anyone else is in the same boat when it comes to this. Could you please offer an explanation so I can at least understand how to try and enjoy series from the first episode. I just seem to dislike them from the start and then like a child sulk through them. Maybe there's no way through this and I should just take up a TV friendly hobby like knitting, doodling or snorting crack.

What your coffee says about you

I've augmented something on twitter and added a few personal options.  Don't ask me for sugar in your coffee.