HardlyNormal comes through

Late last year, someone told me that they wanted a “normal” PC, so I grabbed a good cheapie Acer from HardlyNormal West Perth. It turns out that the asker had lied, again, which left me with a spare PC which had no particular purpose.

It’s sat around for the intervening half-year or so, not doing much (some children have played games on it, it’s been idly used for browsing) but it ran Ubuntu fairly well after I’d brain-washed it into being useful (adios, XP Home).

To my surprise, HardlyNormal rang me last week, chasing the lying asker, but actually seeking the PC sitting across the room from me. Apparently, the ads had mentioned a different spec to what shipped, so they were giving out free replacements — with 8x the RAM, 8x the hard disk, 2x the CPUs (& those running 3.6x faster) — tough decision: not!

So yesterday, I dragged el anciento Acero PCo in to West Perth & swapped it for an hp Pavilion a6430a — which runs a newer version of Ubuntu much faster than the old (adios, Vista Home), plus has enough storage to be worth using as a server.

I’ve also dropped a card with instructions to tell me about any spares, which will become a games machine(s) for two excitable young lads who are currently in conflict over their sole laptop, which leads them to commandeer Mum’s laptop at opportune times.

If anyone in Perth knows where I can get cheap flat-screens (under $100 a throw, any size), please drop me a line so I can take advantage of those as well.

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

Search This Blog