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A new computer from Eric Mesa Computing
I got to engage in one of my favorite activities this week – building computers! My father-in-law’s Windows Vista laptop was going so slow, he often thought it was about to kernel panic. So I saw the computer he wanted at dell and spec’d it and found out I could do it for $400 cheaper…
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Playing Civ4 on the New Computer
At first, Civ4 seemed not to play much better on this computer with twice the stats of my old machine. Yeah, the game didn’t take 15 minutes to load, but it wasn’t as close to instantaneous as I’d hoped. But then I slowly began to see the places where Civ4 was much better on this…
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new computer built
It only took me about 4 hours. Most of it was spent doing tedious things like trying to get the motherboard screws to align with the motherboard and getting the dagnabbin’ default motherboard I/O template and the new one in. So to replace my 1.5 Ghz 1 GB RAM dell that died, I now have…
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Review: The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty ComputerReview:
The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was a very interesting collection of short stories. They are companion piece to the dystopia described in Janelle Monáe’s concept album Dirty Computer. That said, these stories are mostly full of hope. They also depict a…
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Web Browsers: Brave on Linux and Brave in the News
As I did last time, I wanted my web browser post to contain both news stories about browsers that have caught my attention and my thoughts on the newest web browser I’m trying out. Let’s start with the news. As you probably have heard if you’re paying any attention to browsers, one of the selling…
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Upgrading Bowser (Windows Gaming Computer)
I hadn’t upgraded anything other than the graphics card for about a decade and so my gaming computer was starting to drag a little, even on games that shouldn’t have been that demanding. It was time for an upgrade! But I hadn’t kept up all that much with computer tech since I knew we didn’t…
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Reviews: The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan; Cibola Burn; Edgedancer; Sixth of the Dusk; The Virtuous Feats of the Indomitable Miss Trafalgar and the Erudite Lady Boone; The Churn; Altered America: Steampunk Stories; Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Roguelikes Changed the Course of Video Games; Nemesis Games; Legion
The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan by Masumi Washington My rating: 3 of 5 stars Another anthology. As usual, I’ve included my status updates with some spelling fixes. Overall it was a very uneven collection in terms of what I enjoyed. The stories all seemed to…
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Reinstalling Fedora 23 on my main Linux Computer
After daydreaming about running my Linux computer from an SSD for years (ever since I saw how fast it made my wife’s Linux install), I finally did it on the main Linux computer (SuperMario) as the root hard drive was getting old and was liable to die at any moment. The last time I’d installed…
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Exploring btrfs for backups Part 2: Installing on My /Home Directory and using my new Python Script
I got my new hard drive that would replace my old, aging /home hard drive. As you read in part 1, I wanted to put btrfs on it. This is my journey to get it up and running. Plugged it into my hard drive toaster and ran gparted. Because of the peculiarities of btrfs and…
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A New Copyright Exception Should Be Considered
In the past week I’ve listened to the most recent episodes of The Commandline Podcast and The Giant Bombcast. The former was a discussion of those who willingly violate copyright law as a comparison to those who violated the Volstead Act and 18th Amendment to the US constitution both of which made it illegal to…
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Ubuntu to the Rescue: A Tale of Broadcom Wifi Drivers, Prerelease Software, and a new Acer Aspire One Netbook
note: I wrote this on 17 April, a full week before it is published on the blog Nearly six years ago I bought my first laptop. I’d never seen the point of laptops over desktops – the value per dollar just isn’t there. But I was going to be traveling for work now and again…
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Getting my new Sandisk Sansa Fuze to work with gPodder
So, a while back I caved and got an iPod shuffle. While it worked well at first, over the last year it has been a constant pain in my butt. All I want to do is use gPodder to get my podcasts and listen to them on the way to work and at the gym.…
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Taking photography in a New Direction
The summer issue of Aperture magazine arrived at my door a couple days ago. It came with a supplement titled “Made in Polaroid”. Apparently, Ansel Adams was heavily involved in Polaroid’s early days, helping them research how to make it relevant to artists. Since he was a founder of Aperture magazine, the two organizations have…
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New Gear: Lexar Professional UDMA 4 GB CompactFlash Card
editor’s note: I’m writing this blog in real-time on Friday, 10 July, when I got the card from B&H. The post will appear on a later date Today I got my Lexar 4GB UDMA 300x CompactFlash Card from B&H. I don’t yet have a UDMA capable camera, but I decided if I am going to…
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gNewSense 2.0 (deltah) Review
So gNewSense 2.0 came out a few days ago as the gNewSense crew is tracking Ubuntu LTS releases. Of course, the bad part is that there is no upgrade path from gNewSense 1.0 to 2.0. Ubuntu recommends upgrading by going from release to release so upgrading is not feasible (or is too hard for the…