I know why the computer's frozen

SWMBO visited a Telstra site with a semi-broken chunk of Flash on its front page, which jams up any broswer with a Flash plugin, & in fact makes the whole screen unresponsive. Most unusual for Linux. SWMBO had just been for a morning walk.

Miss 5 had a “bird television”-style explanation:

You haven’t been sitting at it, & now it’s cross.

Oh, if only computer problems were that simple. (-:

Anyway, a few seconds with top(1) & the k (kill) command, & it seems to be right again.

Comments

Tim Connors said…

There are two reasons I will keep my laptop powered up once I transfer everything over to an old sun workstation I have.

1) multimedia. The card is capable of accelaration, but the FB driver is dead in the 2.6 kernel.
2) to be able to ssh into the workstation when something buggers up.

So often I've rescued myself with 2.

09 January, 2007 12:37

Leon RJ Brooks said…

timc: so often I’ve rescued customers across town with 2. (-:

Well... not that often — maybe a couple of times a month — but it makes a big difference to them to be able to yell over a ’phone at someone and have a problem mysteriously fix itself.

Calls from Windows users are sad. I can’t help you because the machine doesn’t have remote access software — & even if it did, it’s been totally trashed by a virus, so not only can I not revive it, but you’ll probably find if you do revive it that your files are no more.

I did have one happy experience like this, though, in that they had a Windows 2000 server & a SaMBa server on the LAN; whatever trick the virus was using to blast files with didn’t work through SaMBa, so the files on that server were untouched. Unlike, of course, the smoking ruins dribbling off the Win2k server.

19 January, 2007 09:59

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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