Geeky stuff. Internet, Games, Free Software, Sci-fi etc.
Here’s a practical example of how Beryl’s seamless zoom feature can help you prevent eye strain and allow you to see details more easily.
[youtube]SmwrZUWKGCA[/youtube]
I mostly used the GPG forums to zoom into some screenshots with text inside that was not always easy to room and also did a sample zooming on thumbnails in my hard drive. Easier than going to the options and increasing the icon size 😉
After many tries to get a 3D desktop working, I have finally managed it. It seems the problem lies squarely with the latest and “greatest” Nvidia drivers. I have no idea why, but whenever anything 3D was activated on my computer, the system would totaly hang after a few minutes (usually more before the first time) as if my card was overheating (which is pretty impossible. My card has never overheated and I’ve run much more 3D intensive stuff *coughsupremecommandercough*)
Initially I was trying to achieve this using Linux Mint which is a pretty sweet Ubuntu-based distro in itself. However ever since Ubuntu started randomly freezing, I though it must have been some kind of weird distro bug. In the past I had some lock-ups with Kubuntu so it seemed plausible at the time. Just in case, I decided the try Sabayon from the moment I heard about it. User friendly gentoo based distro? count me in (more on that in a later post).
After not having any random lock-ups in the liveCD, I decided to give it a try. 10 minutes into the installation, BAM. Freeze. No mouse, no keyboard, no Alt-F1 nothing, same thing as before. At this point I was seriously considering smashing something on something else but I held on. Instead I decided to start experimenting a little bit more.
Initially I tried with GLX instead of AIGLX. No help. Then fearing that beryl itself might be the culprit, I tried just running an OpenGL screensaver. No luck. After about 10 minutes it hang up. Not willing to give up, I disabled all desktop accelerationand fired up an another OpenGl Screensaver. 2 minutes in it, dead again (needless for me to explain what this has done to my poor /home partition)
So as a desperate measure, I decided to install the legacy nvidia drivers. I didn’t know how well they would work, so I installed them and rebooted today after I returned from work.
It works! YES! 2 hours later with full acceleration and various screenshot and screencast attempta later there has been no freeze! I cannot express how happy I currently am 🙂
Although the drivers are not that good, resulting in a but of a stutter at some points, the Geforce is more than capable of handling a 3D desktop. The result? See for yourself 🙂
However I am seriously pissed at Nvidia for putting me through all this trouble with their crappy drivers. They have dropped the ball with Vista but did they have to drop it on GNU/Linux’s foot?
Anyway, here’s a screencast as well. I’m trying to upload it on YouTube as well but it doesn’t seem to like Ogg Theora.
EDIT: Fuck it! Here’s an embeded video. Done with the help of the coolplayer plugin.
EDIT: Video finally uploaded to youtube after I converted it into Mpeg with the help of mencoder. Find embedded video below.
[youtube]jdt7HjTydMQ[/youtube]
A very strange thing is happening and I’m not sure how to go about resolving it. I just installed a virtual firewall using VMware and IpCop. Now everything seems to be working as expected with one difference, my speed seems to be borked.
It’s not just a case of the speed simply dropping as I expected originaly, but the speed seems to be as expected in some cases (such as downloading the eve-online client at 1.4MBps), medium in some others (such as bandwidth tests where I get a half the speed I have without it and 1/4 of the upload speed) to non-existant (such as 20KBps Download and Upload on Azureus, where at least upload should be close to 100)
I was going to post a guide for the setting up of IpCop under VMware as a cheap and reliable firewall solution but I want to figure what I’ve configured incorrectly first…
It is ruined…
After something close to 7 years of faithful service, my MS optical mouse has finally given it’s last gasp. Yes it was an MS mouse, that I bought before I came to despise MS itself 🙂
I have to say however that this mouse lasted much much longer than any other I ever had. This might have to do with the fact that it is optical so it has less mechanical parts to break down.
I actually have no idea why I decided to die on me so suddenly but I think it might have something to do with the last few drops it had in the last week (redecorating obviously has its costs). Now, after a few hiccups as I was using it, it decided to shut down for the last time at the worst possible moment, Sunday morning.
I did try to give it an emergency CPR (AKA “Smash-it-with-my-fist”), Heimlich Maneuver (AKA “Smash-it-against-the-wall”) and Surgery (AKA “Violently-pull-the-cover-that-popped-up-while-smashing-it-against-the -wall-and-try-to-see-what’s-going-on-inside”) until I finally gave up when its small heart gave up (AKA “I-heard-parts-moving-unhealthily-inside”).
Surprisingly, a few of those tricks worked for a few minutes/hours, but Sunday night it seems was the final sleep. Nothing I did in the morning could revive the poor cyber-rodent. In the end, I let my EVE buddies know I would not be joining them in the low-sec mining and I surrendered myself to browsing the internet using keyboard shortcuts (How the fuck do you go out of a text box is what I want to know. I was trying to blog this on Sunday and I couldn’t.) and watching disturbing movies (Salo and Suspiria for now. Tomorrow Once were Heroes follows).
Salo is just wrong. I did manage to watch it all but that just exemplifies just how much blaze I’ve become. The dinner of shit was pretty gross though.
Anyway, I don’t know if I’ll bury my old mouse since it served me quite well. I may just keep it for a memory, after I thoroughly and carefully dissect it (AKA “Smash-it-against-the-wall-until-it-pops-open-and-the-guts-spill-out”)
Captured in the store display in Tottenham Court Road in London.
I couldn’t have said it better if I tried.
They cannot even have their OS run on display without crashing…
Τελευταία εβδομάδα, αμέσως αφότου γύσισα απο το Λονδίνο με μια εβδομάδα διακοπές να περισσεύει, το υπέρτατο λιώσιμο στον υπολογιστή. Ο Λόγος; Supreme Commander.
Τι παιχνίδι είναι απίστευτο μιλάμε ναούμ! Τεράστιοι χάρτες, άπειρες μονάδες για μάχη, γαμάτα γραφικά και στρατηγική…αλλα στρατηγική λέμε όχι μαλακίες. Όταν έχεις μονάδες Γής, Νερού, Αέρα και υβριδικές καθώς και το κλασσικό παιχνίδι πέτρα-ψαλίδι-χαρτί-πυρηνικό ολοκάυτωμα, βάλε και τους άπειρους τρόπους προσέγγισης του αντιπάλου, χώσε και δεκάδες τρόπους να αναπτύξεις την βάση σου, οικονομικά, αμυντικά και ακόμα και επιθετικά (ναι ναι, επιθετική “βαση”), χωρίς να περιορίζεσαι στο ποιός θα βγάλει τα περισσότερα παπαδάκια με τσεκουράκια να κόβουν ξύλα…ε ΓΚΑΒΛΑ
7 μέρες δεν ξεκόλησα απο την οθόνη και το campaign, δωδεκάωρα και βάλε. (Εύκολα κάθε αποστολή μπορεί να σου πάρει 2-3 ώρες.)
Λιώσιμο
Τα μόνα άσχημα είναι οτι το campaign δεν λεχει παρα πολύ ψαγμένο storyline αλά blizzard φάσεις, και ακολουθεί το κλασσικό μοτίβο των τριών διαφορετικών campaign, μια για κάθε faction που είναι ακριβώς ίδιες στο storyline (δηλ εκεί που με τους μεν κάνεις επίθεση και καταστρέφεις την πόλη του άλλου και προσπαθείς να εξοντώσεις όσους περισσότερους πρόσφυγες μπορείς, στους δε προσπαθείς να καθυστερήσεις τον άλλο μέχρι να φύγουν αρκετοί πρόσφυγες κλπ. Μόνο στην τελευταία αποστολή διαφοροποιείται το όλο θέμα, ανάλογα με το ποιος θα νικήσει. Ενδιαφέρον θα είναι στο expansion να παίζεις κάθε campaign σαν το faction σου να ήταν το νικητήριο.
Anyway, αρχίζω να ξεφεύγω. Πάρτε μια ιδέα απο παιχνίδι με μερικά screenshots, αν και είναι πολύ εύκολο να δείτε το πολυ καλό trailer.
Η επίθεση του Γαλαξιακού Κολοσσού. Το πιο μεγάλο και δυνατό unit του παιχνιδιού
Μια επίθεση σε βάση απο μακριά
Η ίδια επίθεση, zoomed in 🙂
Φυσικα το παίχνίδι είναι γουρούνι στα resources. Εαν θέλεις να το παίξεις με άνεση, τουλάχιστον dual core και 2 gig ram καθώς και μια VGA 400 τουλάχιστων έουρο.
Αυτά
Yay! I now have my very own animated avatar (a few of them actually) 😀
On other news, I’ve reinstalled Eve Online to check out the gameplay with all the new expansion and patches. It seems pretty good but slow as snails. It took me four friggin’ hours to complete my training and get my first frigate. At the time it was 1:30 am and I didn’t have time to kill any nasties. I tried to go on the missing my first agent gives me and I got my ass handed to me by about a dozen pirates, even after I spend all my money on firepower and defence. How the hell do they expect us to complete these?
Last time I played Eve, I stayed for about 1.5 months until I got bored, but maybe this has to do with the fact that I was mostly playing alone. I’ll try to get more social this time in case it helps.
Aaaanyway, at least my character portrait is kewl (Damn, wanted to upload it but it is not available on the site. Maybe because I have a trial account).
Update: and here it is
He is supposed to be blind and I’m planning to have an interesting background for him to fit with his drone fetish 🙂
So if you’re playing eve atm, look for Fygokentros 😉
After 9 months offline I have finally my own internet connection again. And at 16Mb no less.
W00t!
Finally I can start installing Linux
Χάρiς στο Into.the.Void, ανακάλυψα σήμερα το meebo το οποίο είναι ακριβώς ότι χρειάζομαι για να συνδεθώ απο την ECB στα ΙΜ clients μου. Δυστυχώς το gaim που προσπάθησα να χρησιμοποιήσω μπλοκάρεται απο το εταιρικό firewall και δεν έχω όρεξη να προσπαθω να βρώ τρόπο να το κάνω να δουλέψει.
Το ωραίο με το meebo είναι οτι γίνεται embed μέσα στην σελίδα και δημιουργεί το προσωπικό μου chatbox απο το οποίο μπορεί να επικοινωνήσει με IM όποιος θέλει, ανεξάρτητα με το IM service που χρησιμοποιεί ή με το που βρίσκομαι εγώ. Αρκεί να είμαι online στο meebo.
Οπότε, αγαπητοι/ες φίλοι, (ποιοί; που;) μπορείτε να επικοινωνείτε ακόμα πιο εύκολα μαζί μου τώρα. Απλά κοιτάξτε στο sidebar στα δεξιά, κάτω απο το “Other stuff”.
