2015 — 30 June: Tuesday
It's going to be a long day.1 And — if the 30C forecast for London is any guide — a hot one, too.
I have been gripped...
... really rather tightly by the first two seasons of "Orange is the New Black" and am now looking forward to wherever Jenji Kohan takes us next. (My Oppo Blu-ray player has a Netflix facility baked in, so I may even follow in Junior's subscription footsteps.) I must say it's a whole lot darker than "Weeds" while shining a light into areas I've never really chosen to inspect before.
But man cannot live...
... on the thin gruel of TV shows alone, so it's time for a small-scale return to computing (possibly even before noon, if Mr DPD gets his van started and his act together). I set in motion a cunning plan yesterday with my super-fast chums at Overclockers. It's costing a spot of money (thank you, dear Mama) and is designed to return me and BlackBeast MkIII to the slightly more "primitive" state that I already know is perfectly satisfactory. My problem is the (actually highly irritating) DisplayPort 1.2 mediated tearing ...
However, 4K and 5K monitors have severe shortcomings. Their major problem is that they suffer from horrendous tearing and lag, mainly due to the way the DisplayPort bus has to split and then recombine the data output from the graphics card into multiple streams.
... all too evident on my super-spiffy (but, sadly, restricted to 60Hz display refresh rate) Philips 4K 40" monitor. I'm thoroughly fed up with it, so I've simply ordered another 27" Asus display to refill the gap left when I donated my previous pair to a far more needy Junior and his g/f as part of a quid pro quo for a hard day's grafting (which I really appreciated) in my jungle for me. All will be revealed (if it works2). If it doesn't, listen out for a howl of rage.
But not before breakfast.
Besides, there's ...
... not only a pile of further supplies shopping needed if I want any fresh food, but also Big Bro's impending visit to plan for, and around, in just a week from now. Things to do, places and (sometimes far flung) people to see. Little or no rest for the retired unwicked siblings. Still, at least he says he has no interest in wading through the cubic foot of dear dead Mama's papers I've been saving for him, so that's one item off my checklist. Has anyone seen Christa's shredder, I wonder? (That, and her beloved fax machine, were her own domestic deities as she worked on all those technology patent abstracts and translations.)
Needful precautions
I have SSH server on BlackBeast in case of a dreadful graphics meltdown. I shall start by hooking up the 27" screen on the hdmi output of the onboard graphics at the same time as having the 4K screen on the DisplayPort output of the Radeon graphics card. My current uncertainty is whether I actually need to reset the BIOS to use the onboard graphics, or whether that will happen by automagic once I've removed the Radeon. (That seemed to be what happened back in April.)
Worst case? Re-install Linux from scratch without the Radeon installed and without any attempt to use the 4K screen. Five minutes, right?
What could possibly go wrong? :-)
I shall try...
... using the 4K screen attached to the Marantz A/V amp that lives up in the reading room. After all, it claims to be fully 4K-capable.
Shopping done...
... and all the grotesquely-angled larger cars dodged — what is it about a Tuesday morning? — I now await my gentleman caller:
It's getting quite warm out there. [Pause]
My other Linux guru suggests:
If you unplug the displayport from the 4k screen and plug it into the 27" unit Linux will notice and resize automatically. Try this before you do anything else because if you start twiddling the graphics settings in the BIOS you could end up in a mess. In the incomprehensible situation where it does not work, you can always plug it back into the 4k but that will not happen.
I shall assume he means "power everything down first".
[Another pause]
And I'm back in business, not a single video tear shed. I'm still using the DisplayPort output from the Radeon. I doubt there's any reason to switch over to the motherboard graphics, but I shall give it a while, and see how hot3 the card gets. Meanwhile, it's definitely time for my next cuppa.
Blimey!
I suspect this doesn't mean quite what was intended...
... but who am I to doubt the BBC's home page?
Hard though it is...
... to believe, my fractured relationship with dear Mama continued even after the death of her greatest rival for my affections. I've just found this typical billet-doux from the dear ol' thing, written three months after Christa's death (by which time she'd got into the faintly unnerving habit of referring to me as "Christa's husband"). A good old bollocking in advance from beyond the grave. Today? It makes me smile:
And really not too bad for a 91-year-old. Perhaps a tad harsh. I'd only been preparing detailed annual summaries of her finances for her blessed accountant — no Spring chicken, either — for two decades by then. Highly selective memories, some people. It's 20:08 so I suppose I'd better start thinking about a bite to eat. Hot weather does very little for my appetite.