2015 — 18 March: Wednesday
Someone around here1 should have a word with my subconscious with a view to reprogramming my internal alarm clock. Here I am (after the usual six hours) already finishing my wake-me-up cuppa and even spotting yesterday's typo. I have nothing in my calendar for today, beyond the need to apologise to both my favourite son and my favourite cousin in advance for my usual failure to find even halfway decent cards in time for their shared birthdays tomorrow.
Do you suppose...
... dear Mama's death is sufficient excuse?2 Speaking of which, I'll register the death in Eastleigh rather than schlepping to Winchester.3 There's a "Tell us Once" facility that will be a huge help. I'll pick up death certificates (£4 a copy, cash in advance) on Friday. The funeral? A thing of Zen simplicity, like me. (Cheap and cheerful.) Then I'll get Probate sorted, and split the estate between me and Big Bro. The £275,000 in care-home fees "solved" any inheritance tax issues.
And that should just about be that, methinks. "So long, and thanks for all the fish."
Breakfast?
Good idea. I'm starving. Hey, look! The sun's shining. [Pause] Brian's emailed some useful thoughts after yesterday's marathon attempt to get graphics cards stable enough under Mint 17.1 to support the 4K screen. He has a Cunning Plan:
What I propose we try next is to rebuild Linux on that test drive but this time with the Radeon card in place (this is probably the easier to get working because of the weird NOMODESET stuff with the Nvidia) and then install the drivers - i.e. Linux is always working on the gfx card it will eventually be driving the 4k screen with. I'll wager this will work without too much effort. If it does we can then repeat the experiment with the Nvidia card. I'm not worried about losing a screen due to the BIOS - I think we proved yesterday that should we choose Display1 on PCI1 in the BIOS, when we remove the PCI card we get fully functioning display on the next card in the sequence (i.e. the mobo gfx card). This is exactly what happened when we finished y'day - if you remember I said that we'd forgotten to put the BIOS back when we took the Radeon out.
I do indeed :-)
I've just been performing...
... some pre-late-lunch minor-league open-heart surgery on BlackBeast Mk III and have only just sewn it up. Among other things, I removed the "smart card and extra USB / eSATA port" unit from the front panel. Since I couldn't get it to work with my Digital SLR's Compact Flash, and had no need for any of the other I/O, it enabled me to remove several meandering leads to various parts of the motherboard and thus tidy up the innards considerably. As did moving the BD drive up a slot, and swapping its power lead. It also opens up an easier space in which to park the temporary spinning rust ahead of further experiments.
However, my main reason for the tinkering was to remove the PCI X-Fi sound card as, depending on which of the two (large, and larger) graphics cards I end up using for the 4K screen, the X-Fi was either uncomfortably close to a potentially hot thing or, worse, actually touching it. We insulated it yesterday, temporarily, with a folded sheet of paper that got quite warm. I decided on the excision as I still have my external USB Creative Soundblaster box. It, too, offers 24-bit digital audio and both optical and co-ax I/O. Last time I was regularly using it, it would provoke a BSOD from my WinXP Gateway PC each time I forgot to switch the card on before attempting to boot the PC. I'm trusting Linux to be a little more, erm, robust (but we shall see).
Here's another...
... interesting "viewpoint" from the Linux side of the fence. I found myself nodding in almost total agreement when I read it. Then, after I'd read this (click the pic)...
... I actually considered putting the graphic on my home page (despite its ugly kerning)! On balance, I think I'm less cynical (or do I mean paranoid?) than Richard Stallman, but he makes some very good points.
Why do they bother?
People work so hard at dishonesty...
No (digital) luck with the external soundcard, dagnabbit. I dimly recall exactly the same lack of (digital) success with it in my early Ubuntu days. [Pause] After further poking and prodding with 'alsamixer' to no avail I've therefore just refitted the X-Fi card, this time in the lowest PCI slot available, well clear physically and thermally from whatever graphics card ends up as the eventual 'winner'. Glorious digital stereo is instantly back on tap.
Now, how about that HP printer/scanner...? I predict I'll be needing it for drafting a few letters in the near future.
Vengeance Victory is mine!
With the clear instructions here I was soon admiring a Printer Test Page. Linux Mint 17.1 already has the necessary proprietary binary module of the right level (though I noted a newer one on the HP website). Crikey! I've even got a new HP status indicator sitting on the bottom of the screen. How about the scanner? Not an intellectual stretch, granted, but the front cover of this morning's delivery from "Wordery" (of the book I ordered last Saturday) makes an excellent test case...
... after first remembering to (a) install the XSane plugin, and (b) reload the GIMP, to give it a sporting chance to find it. Perhaps I'll try the networked Epson colour inkjet next?