2015 — 1 July: Wednesday — rabbits!
It's going to be a hot day.1 So I've already turned down the brightness of my new screen to a mere 25% of its original setting :-)
An early start...
... assuming my companion remembered to set his 'alarums' clock for the coming excursions...
Meanwhile, I formally declare an end to all the (dear Mama-related) paperwork clear-out. It's now been 107 days which seems time enough for those Great Institutions of Income Tax and State Pension to, erm, get off the pot. I've thus prepared my final Probate Summary (in case the Court ever asks to see it), and winged a copy over to my fellow "Powers Reserved" Executor who, even as I type, is now somewhere over the Pacific, doubtless enjoying a drink with a little umbrella floating in it.
Cheers, Big Bro!
A third runway...
... at Heathrow, 34 years after I moved away from Old Windsor?2 "They" were discussing the possibility even then. Of course, by the time it's built there will be even less fossil fuel to pump into these new-fangled heavier-than-air jalopies. The 13-week stint I did in the Market Research department of Hawker Siddeley Aviation well over 40 years ago (when, in fact, a little flivver called the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet had just entered service) was more than enough to convince me that many UK industrial crystal balls were just that — balls.
Not that computers are any smarter.
An interesting...
... argument, amusingly expressed. Source and snippet:
And of course it is precisely the kind of text that is wilfully complex and difficult — Ulysses, In Search of Lost Time, The Magic Mountain, Gadda's That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana,
Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! — that allows the professor, who has read it ten times, to stay safely ahead of his bewildered students...
In short, our betters will tell us from their experience which books we should be reading — rereading, that is — since our first reading is hardly reading at all. Once the canon is established, then,
it is unlikely to change, since who has time to check out the stuff that didn't make it?
Not only do I read the wrong stuff, I generally enjoy re-reading it, too. Even before breakfast.
Some people...
... cling comfortingly to a concept called Intelligent Design. This sounds like a bit of an outlier:
"Each to his own."
Ever have...
... one of those days when things go increasingly awry? I seem to be right in the middle of one such right now. The walk and chat was fine. (No further new tyres and exhaust needed.) The cooling shower when I got home was fine. Yesterday's new, 27", PC display screen? Not so good, actually. The best it can currently manage — after 90 minutes of faffing around — is a maximum resolution3 of 1,280x1,024 (refreshed at a delirious 77Hz) and squirted out via the DVI-D port on the integrated motherboard graphics. From a "default" screen none of whose characteristics can be altered.
Nothing on DisplayPort or hdmi from the Radeon. Nothing on hdmi from the motherboard. Haven't yet tried DVI-D from the Radeon... I was just glad finally to get something I could actually see. And, more or less, work with. I would re-instate the 4K 40" Philips but am almost too hot and bothered to, erm, bother. It's a toasty 28.3C here in the living room and I think I'm nearing the end of my patience with BlackBeast Mark III. For today, at least. There's a lot more besides my PC to amuse myself with.
When I think back to how many years I worked with a 14" screen at slightly more than VGA resolution I hafta smile.
Assuming the Radeon is now dead in the water, I have removed it. I'm now using hdmi only, from the motherboard, and this time am seeing exactly the same 1,280x1,024 at 77Hz as I was via the DVI-D. This is the same hdmi that could drive the 4K screen at 24Hz. Jinxed, I tell you, jinxed. Though whether that's me, Linux Mint, or BlackBeast Mark III remains an open question.
Tell me again how bad an iMac is. Or a Mac Pro! :-)
It's been suggested...
... that I download and burn a brand new Mint 17.2 ISO on to a USB and try booting from that, to see what an unbiased 'inspection' of my PC has to say for itself, ab initio. Sounds like a good plan. My problems may be linked to wrong drivers. By now, BlackBeast has a mish-mash of proprietary Nvidia and Radeon drivers as well as the OS ones and gawd knows what is actually in use. It's also been suggested I equip myself with bell, book, and candle.
Failing which, perhaps I need to sit down and ask myself exactly what I want these devices for and make sure I'm not just operating out of lazy habit. OS-X and Windows each have their own peculiarities. Android, perhaps?
After a suitable pause...
... to download a fresh ISO and pop it in bootable form on to the USB stick that previously held my Mint 17.1 system, and then resetting the BIOS to boot from the stick... [pause, for dramatic effect] I now know that booting from a clean 64-bit Linux Mint 17.2 MATE ISO works perfectly. My new screen is correctly detected and set to its full native resolution. All looks extremely tickety-boo.
That is very heartening, suggesting I can rule out motherboard hardware problems. But it leaves me some minor, teensy-weensy decisions: do I install Mint 17.2, reverting to MATE (which I actually quite like) and do all the re-configuring to bend it to my evil desires? Do I take Mint 17.2 Cinnamon out for another test drive? Or do I simply wait (putting up with the crappy low-resolution display) until Mint 17.2 Xfce appears, in the hope that upgrading to it will also magically fix all my screen hassles?
No guarantee it will, of course. (I have no idea how much Minty housekeeping and cleanup takes place during an upgrade in situ.) My instinct (derived, if I'm honest, from some pretty horrid Windows misadventures) leans more towards the complete re-installation route. Again. <Sigh>
From this very ¬blog just over six years ago:
I'm trying to decide precisely what subset of applications I still need Windows for, and am vaguely contemplating a complete XP re-installation. Like an old carpet, I find Windows needs to be taken out and beaten soundly from time to time to dislodge all the crud that accumulates. And it's usually better to do that before the inevitable crash rather than after...
Diagnosis of the root cause will start tomorrow, after lunch out somewhere with air-con. It's still 28.3C in my living room at 20:10 or so. The recent curry may have been unwise.