Testing VDPAU in DebianTesting VDPAU in Debian
VDPAU is the Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix [1]. I noticed an error with mplayer “Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_i965.so: cannot open shared object file: No such[...]
Thinkpad Storage ProblemThinkpad Storage Problem
For a while I’ve had a problem with my Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 1 [1] where storage pauses for 30 seconds, it’s become more common recently and unfortunately everything seems[...]
Phone Plan Comparison 2020Phone Plan Comparison 2020
It’s been over 6 years since my last post comparing 3G data plans in Australia. I’m currently using Aldi Mobile [1]. They have a $15 package which gives 3G of[...]
Electromagnetic Space LaunchElectromagnetic Space Launch
The G-Force Wikipedia page says that humans can survive 20G horizontally “eyes in” for up to 10 seconds and 10G for 1 minute. An accelerator of 14G for 10 seconds[...]
Links December 2020Links December 2020
Business Insider has an informative article about the way that Google users can get locked out with no apparent reason and no recourse [1]. Something to share with clients when[...]
ZFS 2.0.0 ReleasedZFS 2.0.0 Released
Version 2.0 of ZFS has been released, it’s now known as OpenZFS and has a unified release for Linux and BSD which is nice. One new feature is persistent L2ARC[...]
KDE Icons Disappearing in Debian/UnstableKDE Icons Disappearing in Debian/Unstable
One of my workstations is running Debian/Unstable with KDE and SDDM on an AMD Radeon R7 260X video card. Recently it stopped displaying things correctly after a reboot, all the[...]
Links November 2020Links November 2020
KDE has a long term problem of excessive CPU time used by the screen locker [1]. Part of it is due to software GL emulation, and part of it is[...]
Video DecodingVideo Decoding
I’ve had a saga of getting 4K monitors to work well. My latest issue has been video playing, the dreaded mplayer error about the system being too slow. My previous[...]
First Attempt at Gnocchi-StatsdFirst Attempt at Gnocchi-Statsd
I’ve been investigating the options for tracking system statistics to diagnose performance problems. The idea is to track all sorts of data about the system (network use, disk IO, CPU,[...]