The 23rd personal pan pizza sized podcast
I am doing my best to not fade out, but for more of my thought and opinions, subscribe to DLN Xtend, a podcast with the Destination Linux Network where I have a chat about Linuxy things with my co-hosts Matt and Wendy.
Gaming Rack Design and Construction
I have collected a number of gaming systems throughout my life and there is little point in having them if they sit in a box or using them takes an annoying level of set-up time, making it fun prohibitive. I was then inspired by Perifractic Retro Recipes video where the computer museum has everything so nicely laid out. I looked at my mess and decided that I had to do something about it because my arrangement just isn’t presentable.
openSUSE Breeze Dark Plasma Style
About two years ago, I started using Kdenlive to do video editing. The dark theme I had been using, a modified version of the “openSUSE dark alternate” theme, was not getting along with Kdenlive and I had to use the “Breeze Dark” theme to be able to properly distinguish the widgets and such on the application. Shortly there after, I set out to modify the Breeze Dark theme to give me that openSUSE feel I have been enjoying for years. I have made it available on this page of my site but I decided to push it to the “KDE Store” which I previously thought was “look and feel” but is now called Pling but store.kde.org is essentially the same thing. I’m still confused but less now than when I started the publishing journey.
Bpytop on openSUSE | Terminal
As I was finishing my article about how great Bashtop is on openSUSE, I was told about Bpytop and realized it was the successor to Bashtop as well. After publishing that article on Bpytop, I was told that there are yet cooler terminal system monitoring tools. I am not sure how far behind the curve I am but I am sure I will get more feedback on either my missing the party on the new hotness out there. None the less, I still like and use Bpytop.
Logitech K400+ Keyboard Water Spill Repair
One of the big life enhancements I have had in the last few years was mounting a computer in the Kitchen above the sink. I realized that there is an inherent hazard in mixing electronics and kitchen activities but I maintain a strong belief that this can also be a very beneficial mix. Having openSUSE available to me, with all its application and reliability goodness has been a life-enhancer for the kitchen. I went through a series of keyboards only to find that I was best served in buying a quality keyboard. That was all find and good until I was a giant numpty and dribbled my sopping wet hands on the keyboard, rendering it useless. I threw it in my pile of broken things to get back to and I did. Not a bad repair.
HP EliteBook 840 G7 running openSUSE Tumbleweed
I was given an incredible gift by my former employer as a parting gift, an HP EliteBook 840 G7. I didn’t unpack it right away as I wasn’t sure how I was going to integrate it into my mess of computer equipment. I have been very happy with my Dell Latitude E6440 and decided my next system was going to be a desktop system. I have since upgraded it and it currently has 40GiB of RAM and a 1 TiB NVME SSD. I will eventually follow up on this.
Dell Latitude D630 Retirement
With the digit changes into the new year, so goes some changes for the layout of the tech in my home. My new HP EliteBook needs a place besides my lap or in a computer bag and my Dell Latitude D630 that has been beside my main machine has been getting less and less use due to the encumberment of the Nvidia GPU. This D630 has served me well since I purchased it new from Dell in 2007 and I am not going to just get rid of it. I will bring it out from time to time to keep Tumbleweed rolling on it.
openSUSE Corner
Tumbleweed Gets Newest KDE Frameworks for Plasma
All openSUSE Services in Provo database center now support IPv6
New openSUSE Step Project Looks to Build SUSE Linux Enterprise on More Architectures
Reducing the scope of software.opensuse.org
Tumbleweed Roundup
- 20210212 moderate 84
- This is a full rebuild based on glibc 2.33. For me I had some issues with this snapshot that required filing a bug report and some intervention on my part. It appeared that my issue wasn’t all that common.
https://review.tumbleweed.boombatower.com/
Computer History Retrospective
This is my segment where I like to look back in time and see how the world of technology has advanced and how things have stayed the same. I find we often forget how far we have come and how good we have it while not always remember how we got here. Having some historical perspective on computers and technology can help to drive some appreciation for what we have today.
Computer Chronicles on Artificial Intelligence (1984)
The point of Artificial Intelligence is to duplicate not just human intelligence but to duplicate the end results. A then current application of AI was in the form of “Expert Systems”. These expert systems of the time would respond to user input much like the queries we give modern day search engines. At the time, these expert systems would require enormous computational power to dissect and process user input. Today, we can enjoy, without any cost or really much effort on our parts, the fruits of these efforts.
The early “Expert Systems” for “Microcomputers” were really quite rudimentary in respect that they would lead you to solutions. In its most simplistic form, this is essentially making accessible the knowledge to a wider audience.
As an aside, at the end of this video (27:00) from Computer Chronicles, there is a portion called “Random Access” and this software review is rather enjoyable about an game or application to help you make better bets with Black Jack.
What is particularly amusing to me is how the graphics are described as being “crisp, the table is green the cards realistic and the sound is good too”. I know, for the time, this is the case but that description just doesn’t hold up today. This is just food for thought, should you describe a bit of software or hardware.
I must say, I love the early time of computer graphics, the innocence and the optimism. We were so happy with color and sound. I wish we would be so gracious today with open source applications. Perhaps being a little bit more grateful will lead to more smiles on a daily basis.
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Wow, I’m glad I didn’t cut you from my podcast feeds that I just cleaned up recently. I thought, “Cubiclenate will come back eventually.” I was not disappointed, great job on this episode! It was fun to listen to and brought a smile to my face.
I’m glad I made the cut and smiles is what I am targeting so thank you!