2016 — 28 May: Saturday
Happily1 yesterday's new nVidia graphics card and its proprietary driver both worked a treat on BlackBeast's Mint 17.3 system (which has an older kernel than the one used by Ubuntu 16.04 on my other two PCs). Though only after a game of "Hu's on first", played on the 27" Asus screen (just in case the 34" Dell proved a step too far).
10 steps to happiness
- edit 'nomodeset' into the grub file in place of the existing 'quiet' and 'splash' kernel options (to allow time for the video driver to load before the login screen needs it — the cause of yesterday's blank screen)
- run sudo grub-update to write this change permanently into the system's grub.cfg file
- confirm (reboot #1) a working desktop display
- use the Driver Manager to disable the Radeon proprietary driver, thus reverting to the open source one
- confirm (reboot #2) a working desktop display (albeit now of less resolution and [purportedly] a 77Hz refresh rate)
- power off
- replace the Radeon card by nVidia GTX950 card, and remember to plug in its 'auxiliary' PCI power supply lead
- power on
- on arriving (thank goodness) at a Linux login screen of about 1024x768 (I estimate) — login and immediately fire up the Driver Manager, this time to select and install the proprietary nVidia driver
- reboot, at which point full resolution and normal 60Hz refresh rate kick automagically back in
One might almost think that less attention has been paid to start-up issues than Josephine Public might like.
The next step...
... is "simply" to bring back the 34" Dell, and make sure that both BlackBeast and Skylark still play nicely with it. They are, after all, both now using exactly the same graphics cards. What could possibly go wrong?
But that can wait until after some more sleep, methinks. G'nite.
I shall plug in...
... the Dell's video cables while it's out on the dining table and thus much easier to "get at".
The Bertie Russell anecdote...
... on the very first page of this new arrival...
... made me laugh rather immoderately. Russell had initially thought "that the dons were a wholly unnecessary part of the university":
"While I was an undergraduate, I had regarded all these men as merely figures of fun, but when I became a Fellow and attended college meetings, I began to find that they were serious forces of evil."
The particular issue Russell had in mind involved the Junior Dean of Trinity, who had to be got rid of after a scandal in which he raped his own daughter. This occasioned a debate in the college meeting where
the Master, speaking in alleviation, stressed most particularly how excellent the dean's sermons had been.
This first chapter is called "Entering the Secret Garden" :-)
Breakfast...
... was ingested just before I would have had to call it brunch. And now the 34" Dell is back in place with, currently, just BlackBeast using it and via the DisplayPort to mini-DP input.
I shall next park the NUC once again on the corner of my desk and connect it via its HDMI2 output — thus regaining the full 3440x1440 resolution the NUC is capable of for use in my NoMachine Remote Desktop control window. The NUC's digital audio will make its convoluted way over to the Rotel A/V pre-amp by way of the optical digital audio from BlackBeast's external Xonar USB sound card. Been there, done that, and it sounds fine.
Providing all that works OK, I shall finally reconnect my Skylark PC to the Dell via the full-size DisplayPort input. So both DisplayPort inputs on the Dell will now be driven by exactly the same graphics cards.
Some glorious desert images. (Link.)
Kraken?
I'm listening to the latest radio adaptation while contemplating one of the longest-owned books in my little library:
I bought this Penguin edition in Wilmslow, in 1963. It was my third SF paperback, if I can believe the John Bull Printing Outfit's stamp inside it! (I was an odd child.) And it survived the more usual parental culling.3
I wonder if...
... Big Bro followed my link to this fabulous essay last time I referred to it? Truer every day. A small repeat snippet, considering the 3,000 year stint enjoyed by the Ancient Egyptians:
Starting with only a cubic meter of physical possessions (to make calculations easy), I asked how much physical wealth they would have had 3,000 years later at 4.5% compounded growth. Now, these were trained mathematicians, so I teased them: "Come on, make a guess. Internalize the general idea. You know it's a very big number." And the answers came back: "Miles deep around the planet," "No, it's much bigger than that, from here to the moon." Big quantities to be sure, but no one came close. In fact, not one of these potential experts came within one billionth of 1% of the actual number, which is approximately 1057, a number so vast that it could not be squeezed into a billion of our Solar Systems.
Which unerringly reminds me of this equally engaging story of a much smaller number — a mere 1035 years. It's from an essay that appeared in Mathematical Gazette, July 1948, Vol XXXII, No. 300:
§2. Certain ancient Indian writings reveal an awestruck obsession with ideas of immense stretches of time. See Buckle's History of Civilisation in England, pp. 121—124 (2nd edition). (I thought the following came from there; I cannot have invented it, surely.)
There is a stone, a cubic mile in size, a million times harder than diamond. Every million years a very holy man visits it to give it the lightest possible touch. The stone is in the end worn away.4 This works out at something like 1035 years; poor value for so much trouble, and an instance of the 'debunking' of popular immensities.
Listening...
... yet again to William Orbit's third "Strange Cargo" album I find my pleasure enhanced by being able to see these details full size on the NUC's remote desktop...
... though they are (of course) only one-quarter "life size" in this image.