I’ll be adding a set of steps to this post to fix up a Linux Mint installation for use. This is a post in progress that I would normally hide from the home page, but can’t do that here. Continue reading “Linux Mint – Steps to Fix an Installation”
Category: Computers
My System – Is It Hot or Not
These instructions let you figure out what is overheated about your system so it can be fixed.
Game Screenshot Archive Program
I have lots of screenshots from the games I play. I used to use screen capture programs to do this, but almost all the games use PrintScreen now to save the images. Most tag the images with unique names based on the date and time, but Guild Wars 2 is not doing that. They tag the files with sequential numbers which makes it difficult to archive the images.
The problem is that the names are not unique if you delete the files in the screen shot folder and take more screenshots. In that case they start over from gw001.jpg again. So I wrote a program to archive my screenshots from my game programs.
I back up my screenshots to folders in the form yyyy_MM, like 2013_11 so that I can easily find them and so that not too many files appear in a single folder. Also, since my system drive is an SSD, I don’t want screen shots to accumulate there to excess and use up that valuable space.
Update: 11 Mar 2014 – Get Version 1.5 to add zoom/pan and reorder pairs. Read more below.
Update: Get version 1.2 with a fixed installer and screen shot image review. Read more below.
Update: Get version 1.1 that supports sub-folders. Read more below.
If you want to skip ahead , you can get the program on SourceForge. Continue reading “Game Screenshot Archive Program”
WordPress.org – Trust Violated
The last update from WordPress.Org has left us all with less trust in WordPress. They released 3.7 with a nasty bug that caused images in the “Visual” display of the edit post windows to be displayed wrong. Easy issue to test for.
They have now fixed the bug with a 3.7.1 update.
We all trust WordPress.org a little less this week.
– ww
Linux Mint – Migrate to SSD
Every post should start with an interesting picture.
Ok. Now for the article.
I’m using a Linux Mint system hooked to my TV to watch Netcasts from the Twit.tv network and other things. It’s built using an Thermaltake Armor 30 case and a Core i5 Haswell processor, 8GB RAM, GFX 640 graphics, and a 250GB HD.
But the system is slow. So I’ve decided that the best approach would be to get a cheap SSD for it. I found a Refurbished 60GB SSD on Newegg for about $40. That should do the trick. Given there aren’t that many apps installed on the Linux system, it uses far less than 60GB, so the small size is no problem.
Migration to SSD
I don’t want to completely rebuild the system. I’d rather migrate it to the SSD. A forum post led me to using gparted to migrate the partitions from the 250GB hard drive to the SSD. Also, it seems best to test this scheme using a virtual machine before I actually migrate the system. One of the VMs I keep current is a Linux Mint 15 system in a 60GB VM disk on my Windows 7 system. I use Virtual Box.
After I did the experiments with the VM, I successfully migrated a 250GB HD – 9GB used- to a 60GB SSD with no problems using this scheme. Continue reading “Linux Mint – Migrate to SSD”
CMS – The Agency Model
Over the past 15 years or so we have seen several levels of abstraction develop in the evolution of tools for the web. At this point, there are WYSIWYG website builders that model the page and it’s high level elements and allow building of entire websites. Among these site builders are SquareSpace, Weebly, and several others. There are also other tools such as Joomla, Drupal and other CMS schemes that solve more flexible problems.
However, as far as I can determine, none of these CMS schemes to date solve what I am calling here, for lack of a better name, “The Agency Problem”.
There is a natural extension to the abstraction that we have thus far reached that does solve this “Agency Problem”. It occurs to me that this problem is of sufficient generality that it deserves consideration as the next level of abstraction for CMS systems to solve. In this paper, I’ll present my take on the levels of abstraction in the technology of building websites and present a scheme which solves “The Agency Problem”. Continue reading “CMS – The Agency Model”
Alienware Aurora R2 Saga
Recently I’ve gone round and round with my Aurora R2 system.
I finally chose to upgrade the system with new Motherboard, processor and memory, but I get ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.
You may remember this system from previous tales on this blog.
As you can see from the image of the system on that page, the system had 8GB of memory that was all working. Somewhere along the way it developed an issue where it would only use 1/2 of the memory.
Update: See note at the bottom about performance of Intel Graphics on Haswell.
Update: System is now stable. I moved back to a previous version of the Nvidia GTX drivers for the 560ti.
GTX 760 Upgrade – Very Nice
Did I mention that I upgraded my video card? Woo hoo!! I got a new ASUS GTX 760 and it is hot – or rather cool. This is an upgrade from a GTX 560ti, which I passed along to the Aurora R2 system.
I have noticed that the new drivers are a little glitchy. I’ve had a few driver crashes – black screen followed by a popup indicating that the driver failed and restarted. Oh well. I’m sure that Nvidia is working on fixing those problems.
I’ve not noticed that the video performance is better in Tera. I was using maxed out settings with the GTX 560ti. But with 4 times the Cuda cores things surely are going to be better.
– ww
Creeping Obsolesence of Media PCs
In early 2011, I made a media PC to watch netcasts on my TV. At the time the system was connected to a plasma display and was running at 1440 resolution. Also at the time, it was perfectly able to play the netcasts from the Twit.tv network, as well as other videos.
Currently the jetway atom PC is connected to my new TV which is full HD and it has been upgraded to Linux Mint 14. Also I’ve noticed that it will no longer play live broadcasts or recorded shows from this site. So what has changed? Continue reading “Creeping Obsolesence of Media PCs”
Considering an Upgrade
I’m using two of my computers for, among other things, to edit and convert videos for upload to YouTube. Here’s my channel. One of he machines is an Alienware Aurora R2 I obtained used with Core i5-750, circa Q3 ’09. The other is a system I built from scratch, with a Core i7-2600 circa Q1 ’11.
I’m considering upgrading the older Alienware system to an Ivy Bridge 3770 processor. This upgrade of the processor, motherboard and memory will cost about $550. So the question is: How effective will this upgrade be in increasing Video Conversion performance?
A BenchMark
I decided to do some testing to find out whether the two systems that I have are very different in performance before proceeding with the upgrade. When using both systems to edit videos, they perform very well using Corel Video Studio X5 [2600] and X6 [750]. The editing process proceeds with no noticeable delays or lags. Any performance issue has to do with how long it takes to convert the video. Continue reading “Considering an Upgrade”
Windy Weather 