Checkout the chick?

So... you wander into a local supermarket, collect a few necessary purchases, wander back to a register, politely greet a fairly intense, well-stanced, neatly-dressed “checkout chick” & pass across the shopping... & what does she tell you? “Nice weather?” Sports results? Shop specials? Plain old hello?

Nup.

She tells you that she tried to install Linux on her PS3, & it didn’t work yet.

Er... what?

Nah, dead serious!

Her “slow” BigPong “internet link” (I’m presuming a crippled 256/64 DSL1) took a “very long time” to download the pieces.

So... I’ve pulled down an ISO, burned an appropriate CD, stuck a config file onto a used USB stick & tossed the lot at the shop. Can’t let dedication like that go unpunished^H^H^Hunrewarded, can we? (-:

Let’s see if her flame of curiosity burns strongly enough. Her careful intensity reminds me uncannily of Mrs Waugh, so if we get a fraction of that strength aboard, we’ll not only have a more dynamic FOSS culture, we might even have katana swordplay before each Conf... (-: & of course, we can always put Zebee in charge of that if we want it fully cultured & interesting... :-)

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…

Fetched some lunch-ingredients from there today, was cornered & profusely thanked.

The CD had been investigated, but I needed to explain the config file’s use (it cues up the PS3 to install “Other OS” from the CD).

29 February, 2008 19:03

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.

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...

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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