But what if you don’t have dozens of hours? What if before you spend that much, you just want a general idea? Something to start from, so you can decide whether it’s even worth looking at an upgrade in the current market, like: “will doubling my GPU performance cost around $50 or around $500?” for example. How do we quickly find out roughly how fast a particular CPU or GPU is?

Here are 3 sites using 3 different methods that can quickly give you a general idea of performance. Mad props to the r/buildapc community for recommending some of these.

Tom’s hierarchy charts

Included at the end of Tom’s ”best value” articles for GPUs and CPUs published every month or two. Ranks parts by performance:

CPU hierarchy – July 2011 (check here for newer, if you’re reading this later)

GPU hierarchy – July 2011 (newer)

Pros

• Quickly see if a C/GPU is faster than another
• Based on a large number of benchmarks by a reputable team
• Based on gaming performance (which is what most people want the performance for)

Cons

• Can’t see how much faster it is (say GPU A is 2 tiers above GPU B – does that mean it’s 5% faster? 500% faster?)
• The CPU charts only show somewhat recent CPUs (so I can’t see how my current machine compares unless I upgrade every few years – in which case I know a lot about recent hardware and probably don’t really need these charts).

AnandTech Bench

Also includes a nice price-performance graph, useful for those who live in the US and therefore can buy from NewEgg.

CPU benchmark results

GPU benchmark results

Pros

• Gives and actual number (so you can see how much faster one C/GPU is over another)
• Based on a large number of benchmarks by a reputable team
• Can also select two C/GPUs and compare them in detail over dozens of benchmark tests

Cons

• Can’t compare older hardware (such as your current PC, unless you upgrade frequently)

Passmark Lists

More comprehensive, but less accurate lists:

CPU list

GPU list

Pros

• Gives and actual number (so you can see how much faster one C/GPU is over another)
• Includes a large number of both desktop, notebook and server CPUs and GPUs, including very old ones for comparison

A very small (but very vocal!) minority of Christians view J.K Rowling’s series as a gateway to the occult for young people (“look how popular it is! Anything today’s kids like must be evil!”).

A much larger group of Christians view it as harmless fun (many have actually read the books, and I imagine the others simply rely on the fact that of all the millions of kids who’ve now read Harry Potter, the percentage who’ve actually started worshipping Satan as a result is zero).

But the rest of us Christians think Harry Potter is not just harmless fun. It’s extremely-beneficial-to-humanity fun.

We believe J. K. Rowling is a Godsend. Here are a couple of reasons why:

For one, the Harry Potter books are chock-full of good moral values:

• Guess what, that terrible guy Snape wasn’t so evil after all – guess you can’t judge anyone, can you?
• The recurring theme about “purebloods” – showing how evil prejudice and bigotry are
• The recurring theme that our choices, not our circumstances or innate talents that determine who we are: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” and “…the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are…”
• Harry’s Mum, and that bloke Dumbledore, actually sacrificed their lives to save others (who do we know who’s done something like that?)

… just off the top of my head. Here’s some more MissInterpretation added last time I wrote on this topic:

• Doing what’s right instead of what’s popular is its own reward (Longbottom trying to stop Harry, Hermione, and Ron)
• Magic doesn’t fix real-world problems (peer pressure, homework, etc) even if you’re a wizard
• Adults are there to help you in situations too big to handle (in the beginning, Harry & friends did not trust the teachers enough to bring their problems to them; by the end, Harry learns that he can benefit from the guidance and council of those older and wiser)

This is no big surprise really, as Rowling identifies herself as a church-going Christian.

But the excellent morals in Harry Potter, while leaving most of popular entertainment in the dust, aren’t even the best argument in favour of Harry Potter, even strictly from a Christian perspective. That honour belongs to their ability to encourage people to read.

How many children (and adults), worldwide, now read books regularly that never would have picked one up if not for Harry Potter? 50% more? 10 times as many?

Think how much more literate the world is, as a result of this one woman. Think how much a person’s life (and the lives of those around them, and often the lives of many others only vaguely connected to them) are improved by that person’s acquiring a lifelong love of learning and knowledge from an early age.

In a world where video games are entertaining enough to entice kids to play literally all day, where enough movies and TV shows are released to take up all our waking hours many times over, young people are actually reading books.

Christ taught that if you want to know whether something is good or not, you have to look at the actual results:

A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit… Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Matthew 7:20

That’s why Christians should be the last people on Earth to condemn these books.

Details so far (check his calendar for updates between now and then):

A few things I found fascinating:

• Suits and ties everywhere, no bogans
• Stay-at-home mums
• Almost all white people
• The “old rattler” train carriages that were still running until recently (yes, they’re that old!)
• The opera house being constructed
• Red-brick buildings shown off as stylish and new
• Is that girl at the rock’n'roll dance rocking out in her underwear?
• Time traveller from the 80′s at 17:02
• The traffic was bad, even then

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Now Borders, too.

Can someone please explain to me why this happens over and over:

1. I hear about/visit some awesome chain in the US. I wish we had it here.
2. I hear it’s coming to Oz! (It still takes several years…)
3. It comes! (Everyone’s excited because they’ve heard of it on TV/movies).
4. It does massive business (for years). People line up around the block.
5. Despite no apparent slackening of demand, it suddenly closes down, owners claiming there was a lack of interest (!?).

Now Borders I can understand somewhat, as of course now everyone’s going e-book or buying online to avoid the hideous triple-the-price mark-ups we’ve been forced to pay all these years to buy a book in an Australian bookstore (Australian publishing industry’s fault, I’ve heard – good riddance to their little monopoly, if so).

But Krispy Kremes? People still line up to buy them (at like $3 for one donut). How could this possibly be not profitable enough? Did their initial business plan depend on every man, woman and child in Australia buying at least two donuts for every meal, 365 days a year? Is there some exclusive license-to-bring-US-chains-to-Australia that’s owned by complete dimwits?

Occasionally you’ll see an ipod or a laptop playing movies – maybe even a book – but an astounding number of people spend an hour or two on a train every day staring into space.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s healthy to sit and do nothing occasionally. Just not for an hour or two every day.

I recently ran into a person who actually reads MX (a catalogue of ads with second-hand gossip about reality TV, mostly copy-pasted from Twitter, that pretends to be a newspaper, and is handed out for free in the afternoon at some major train stations here in Sydney). I’ve seen these creatures of course, there are lots of them, but I’ve never tried to actually talk to one. When I asked them why on earth they did it, they said “it helps pass the time” as if there was nothing else to do.

How can so many people never once consider what to do with the hours they spend on the train each week?

There are loads of worthwhile things you can do on a train. Here are a couple of suggestions, if you or anyone you know needs them:

reading

Don’t have any good books? Rubbish. Your local library (yes they’re still around!) is full of them. Don’t know which ones to read? Google “top ten” “all time” and the name of your favourite genre. Here are a couple of my own suggestions:

Non-fiction: A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

Fantasy: The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss

Modern “literature”: Life of Pi – Yann Martel

Don’t want to buy/borrow/carry a real book? Your phone can display ebooks. Even if you don’t have a smartphone, your phone has (or can have, if you install it) a usable e-reader (as long as it’s less than 5 years old):

iPhone: eReader

Android: Aldiko

Any phone that can view text or html files or run Java games/apps: ManyBooks

Many of the best novels ever written in (or translated into) the English language are old enough that copyright has expired, and you can legitimately read them for free. I’d recommed the following authors (I tried reading them years ago in school, but find I understand and enjoy them much more as an adult):

Charles Dickens (Great Expectations, David Copperfield, etc)

H. G. Wells (The War of the Worlds, etc)

Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Christo, The Three Musketeers, etc)

calling old friends

… you never see these days (or otherwise only see on facebook!). They might be sitting on a train doing nothing too!

studying something

Find something you like. It’s healthy for your brain, and the knowledge is usually useful. I’m currently studying for a technical certification for work. (In fact, my boss has agreed to pay for my study time for this qualification, as he needs certified staff for licensing purposes – maybe your boss would be interested in something like this?).

writing

I write original fiction on the train, on my laptop (when I’m not being paid to study). Good fun, and the distractions an amateur writer faces at home don’t interrupt me on  the train.

other

… and that’s just the most useful stuff – if you have the right gadgets (mostly just a phone less than 5 years old), you could also: watch movies and/or TV; listen to music (with headphones of course!); play video games; surf the web; the list goes on.

All can be done on the train.

All are much better than doing nothing.

(And honestly, even doing nothing is probably better than reading MX).

He’s doing an AMA on Reddit right now, check it out:

IAmA 74-time Jeopardy! champion, Ken Jennings. I will not be answering in the form of a question.

Bonus Trivia: He was roommates at BYU with my current favourite author Brandon Sanderson (I originally found out about Brandon from Ken’s blog).