Time Unknown (Entries tagged as computers)

Picasa EULA

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:33:11 +0300

When Chrome came out, there was a huge outcry about the EULA. Now Picasa 3 has pretty much the same evilness in the EULA, but no outcry is happening. Bizarre. One would have expected people to care more about their own photos.

One needy Fox

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:35:50 +0300

Powertop result with idling Firefox3:

Power usage (ACPI estimate): 22.1W (2.6 hours)

Without:

Power usage (ACPI estimate): 19.2W (2.9 hours)

That's one needy Fox!

External monitor goodness

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:53:13 +0300

Seems I ridiculously overestimated the difficulty of getting an external monitor working with my HP NC8230 laptop in Kubuntu. I fiddled with the GUI settings. I fiddled with the xorg.conf. No image. I pressed Fn+F4 (the button for external monitor) till my finger was sore. Only a login screen, then nothing. I asked for help in#kubuntu and they fiddled with the settings with me. Occasionally I got settings that worked worse than my originals and had to revert. I tried displayconfig-gtk with miserable results.

Then I thought to try xrandr --auto and it just worked! Not only did it work, but when I closed my laptop, the image on the external monitor just briefly blinked off and then came back. I'm one happy geek now.

2008-05-02:
Alas, later I discovered this too easy fix might not been all without drawbacks. I needed to switch the video.driver setting in Xine to get video playing work again in Miro and Kaffeine. For Kaffeine it was easy, just modify the settings from within the app, Miro however does not offer a human-writable config file, so I ended up adding --xine-driver=xshm to Miro's flags.

The route to techtoy satisfaction

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:41:37 +0300

Most people probably buy a new computer in one go, new monitor, keyboard, components and all. But is this the route to the optimum techtoy satisfaction?

Let's think about the alternative and assume that the current computer is a somewhat old but still functioning laptop. First you might upgrade to a new and fine 24" monitor. It's a pleasurable new toy, though the laptop video card might not be modern enough to use it with the full range of colours. Next you maybe get a new keyboard and a better mouse and enjoy snappier typing and speedier response in gaming. Eventually you get the new main unit, with fancy new CPU, a modern video card and other components, except it has just 2G of memory compared to your planned 4G. The next month or so the rest of the memory gets inserted. At each step you experience some techtoy pleasure.

This gradual approach feels maybe less appealing than the "everything right now" way of getting all you want in one go, but I do think it's likely to provide greater amounts and longer time oftechtoy joy than the one-time joy of getting a totally new system.

Interesting topics, less interesting articles

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 13:29:25 +0300

I subscribe to the ITtoolbox RSS feed. I regularly mark many of their entries interesting as they write a lot about topics that interest me. Unfortunately nearly never the articles are as interesting as their titles. Their articles seem often shallow and way short.

Could someone recommend me a feed with similar topics but more in-depth articles?

Monospace yummies

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 13:23:21 +0300

I got tired of my previous monospace font and went looking for something that would work for coding and also for things like irc. After a long hunt I found ShareTech Mono, which is a light font with very good clarity. It looks really good. White Rabbit is similar but slightly less crisp.

Unispace and ModeNine are good alternatives for those situations where you want to show the screen to someone else and need the extra visibility.

Color Match for Gimp, please

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 06 May 2007 11:04:43 +0300

Photoshop feature Match Color seems to give amazing results on photos. I'd like to see this implemented for Gimp

Wallpapermania

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Thu, 03 May 2007 07:49:30 +0300

Yesterday I got tired of there not being many desktop wallpapers for the resolution I use (1680x1050), so I have one. Please take a look at them and rate them according to your opinion.

Easy way to accidentally delete your usb drive contents

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:32:00 +0300

Lately I have been occasionally accidentally clicking on 'Move to Trash' instead of clicking on the similarly placed 'Safely Remove' when wanting to unmount an usb drive. As the result the contents of the drive got moved to trash. This being my own computer, nothing is permanently lost as long as I notice it happening before emptying the trash. However were I to do this on someone elses computer, the data might be permanently gone.

Does anyone ever want to move their whole usb drive to Trash? In what kind of situations? This is one case where I'd actually value an "Are you sure?" dialog if that option has to be in the context menu at all.

Non-blue, please

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 15:07:47 +0300

I'd be happy to see a non-blue crisp icon set for KDE. I kind of like NicoCrystal but it is a bit too soft for my taste. I like my icons crispy and yummy.

'New' computer

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 12:22:09 +0200

Somehow adding more disk, more memory and a new version of Kubuntu made my computer feel brand new.

Inoffensive sounds

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 22:47:31 +0200

If you happen to want a computer to make sounds when you do things, you know, to beep at you and stuff, try Borealis soundtheme for KDE. Even if you do not use KDE, you can use the individual sound in whatever system you use.

Unlike most other sound themes, these sounds are designed to be non-irritating in a setting where there are a lot of computers in the same room. Try them.

Desktop wallpapers

nospam@example.com (Lynoure) — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 10:50:56 +0200

Occasionally I look at a pretty picture meant to be a desktop wall paper, try it and then, within an hour, remove it and go back to a solid background, or to a pretty gradient. Today I realized why.

When I stop to think about it, I realize I do not really get the idea of desktop wallpapers. They seem to be there to be stared at when there is no windows. Why would I want to stare at the area that is not a window or another (except if it is console, of course)? My aim tends to be to maximize the work area. That makes all the desktops I look at least 2/3 covered, leaving not enough visibility to allow for a picture. There is simply no room in my life for a desktop wallpaper, no matter how pretty.