"It was on fire when I lay down on it"

"It was on fire when I lay down on it" - updating on the fly

Today’s daredevil feat is upgrading my laptop’s software from Cooker while I’m still using it. Some bits of KDE got cranky after the 3.3 libraries were swapped out for 3.4 so I was limited to the programs which were already running until I picked an opportune time (after the fundamental kde packages had all been updated), shot URPMI, logged out and back in again.
KDE 3.4 tooltip forming

KDE 3.4 has some sweet gadgety eye-candy, such as a fade-in mode for tooltips which looks kind of like a slo-mo of old-fashioned spot printing, but in reverse: a grid of blobs rolls across the area, left to right, with each blob shrinking constantly to reveal more of the tooltip until they've all dwindled to nothing and the tooltip is solid and complete. I’m looking forward to one day having time to explore it all. [big pause] The updates have all finished now, the difference between running and disk versions of assorted libraries are driving Firefox spaccy and have killed Konqueror (but Kontact and everything in it seem to be fine), so I’ll just wrap up this post, shut then applications down, and restart X.

Only a few KDE and a few GNOME apps seem to have been distressed by having the wings and undercarriage changed out in flight, so to speak. All of the “little” apps, and OpenOffice, seem to have survived bliplessly. An interesting experiment.

Comments

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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