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Graphics Cards help!
I got my graphics card today. Nothing crazy – just a $30 PNY 128 MB nvidia graphics card from newegg. I haven’t installed the nvidia drivers yet, but it has already been amazing in difference. The colors are brighter and more vibrant, the cpu, bereft of its need to draw the graphics runs faster, and…
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The OTHER Free Operating System
After reading about the BSDs in Linux Format Magazine a few months ago, I started to wonder about these Linux cousins. The original Berkely Software Devision port of Unix was developed a long time ago, but the free ones developed almost simultaneously with the Linux kernel had remained hidden from me up til now. Even…
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My first project on Freshmeat!
Frustrated with the lack of an easy way to create a video DVD on Linux, I decided to write a program to do just that! I wrote a program that will generate the dvdauthor.xml file needed to create the video DVD. Then I realized that if I had been so frustrated, perhaps others were too,…
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Today’s Jargon File Entry
Acme: n. [from Greek akme highest point of perfection or achievement] The canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, and non-functional gadgetry — where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson (two cartoonists who specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop. The name has been humorously expanded as A (or American) Company Making Everything. (In fact, Acme was a real brand…
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Today’s Jargon File Entry
ACK: /ak/, interj. 1. [common; from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge. Used to register one’s presence (compare mainstream Yo!). An appropriate response to ping or ENQ. 2. [from the comic strip Bloom County] An exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in “Ack pffft!” Semi-humorous. Generally this sense is not spelled in caps (ACK) and is…
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Today’s Jargon File Entry
accumulator: n. obs. 1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it as a synonym for register is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of microprocessor registers, for example,…
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Lego Difference Engine
Someone built a difference engine – the first computer ever designed by Charles Babbage – out of Legos. The difference engine is more of a calculator than a computer in that you can’t load multiple programs on it, but it was still extremely revolutionary for its time. In fact, it was only designed on paper…
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Setting up a Virtual Computer with Xen (on Fedora) Part 1
If you haven’t done so already, install xen by typing yum install xen This will install xen as well as taking care of any needed dependencies. Now you need the xen-enabled kernel so type yum install kernel-xen0 (That’s a zero there) While we’re waiting for that to install, it’s time to learn some Xen terminology.…
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Fedora Core 5: Bordeaux is out!
Fedora Core 5 is out. I’ll probably download and install it on my main computer over the next few days.
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Xen – a more enlightened look
I first read about Xen while still at Cornell. I think it may have been my Junior year. I don’t have the magazines with me at the moment, so I can’t verify. When I finished reading about the new technology in Linux Format Magazine, I racked my brain, but couldn’t find a reason to run…
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Computer Compatibility finally arriving!
In the olden days of computers, they were as good at communicating as the people on earth after the Tower of Babel incident. Not only did none of the scant networking protocols interact well, but the floppy disks were sometimes completely different sizes. That is, when there were disks; there were some systems based on…
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FOSS Tidbits
F-Spot is looking really good and sporting a much better looking website. They now support RAW files as well as XMP data. Perhaps some of their programmers can share this with the GIMP people – hint hint! Fluxbox, one of my favorite window managers, and the one I’m using now, won a 2005 linuxquestions.org Choice…
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Ten Best Flickr Mashups
Webmonkey has run a special on the ten best flickr mashups. What is a mashup with respect to flickr? I only know of mashups as songs where different groups put their songs together to create something new such as Jay-Z and Linkin Park. Basically, since flickr has opened up their API (as has Google with…
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My GIMP Wishlist
What GIMP needs to implement for me to stop using Adobe. (Thus saving myself and others $600+) RAW Support (preferably the new standard of DNG) 16bit File Editing XMP Tag support Panorama Tool Adjustment layers Number 1 is important for those of us who wish to capture the camera’s RAW data and then losslessly manipulate…
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HD DVD To to leave Early HD Adopters High and Dry
Leave it to content providers to mess everyone up. Slashdot reports that, in an effort to stop piracy, the HD signal in the component jacks of HD DVD players will be down-sampled because it’s analog and letting it come out at normal quality would allow pirates to get around their copyright protections. This is BS!…