Older blog entries for riggwelter (starting at number 36)

Wow, actually used my webcam for something productive today. We're working on an online CCTV archiving system, which of course we're doing with free software. So my Linux box has been a testing CCTV server today. It's doing motion detection on the cam, when it takes a motion-inspired grab, it then uploads it to a machine which categorizes it, and ooh, it's all very clever! :)

In other news, I installed GNOME2 via Garnome on my machine, and while it looks nice enough, it totally hung my macbhine within a couple of seconds of logging in each time. Oddly, so did KDE3 when I installed that! I think it's probably something to do with Xft, I'm going to install Xfree86 4.2.0 at some point, see if that makes a positive difference - hope so.

Can't wait till GNOME2 is really useable though - the screenshots on the dotplan showing alpha transparency support in pixmap themes are gorgeous, and frankly, I gotta get me some o'dat!

I was right, the issue with the cam was the drivers in 2.4.10, upgraded to 2.4.16 today, and sure enough it loads and runs fine. Also got the new NVidia drivers, which is nice for my machine, although I'm still waiting to see some difference in performance ;-)

Well, I lasted three days on my last attempt to come back to work. This is the second day of my second attempt, lasted Friday without too much agony, so hopefully I'll last this time...

Webcam's still not working, think it may be a problem with the pwc module in 2.4.10, I was using 2.4.16 on my old install, but until NVidia do a new build of their 3D kernel driver for SuSE to install for a SuSE 2.4.17 kernel, I'll not be changing kernel (too busy to build my own alas)

Looks like in my absence someone's put together a new Revo/Revo+ image, I'll have to try it out, and then play with it. The guy built it for the Revo+ so it's quite large, although it does apparently work on a vanilla Revo, I could always strip it a bit if need be I guess...

Built a new PC at home, so finally have a LAN, and it's rocking - Athlon XP 1700+, 512M, GeForce3 etc etc... Championship Manager 2001/02 works like a dream under WINE on it, which is nice, and I certainly won't be selling Fowler to Leeds ;)

Well, yesterday was my first day back in the office after my op. I was in so so so much pain by the end of the day :(

Reinstalled my machine from scratch with SuSE 7.3, and can't get my webcam to work now - ack

Also, I've had to setup the hotplug service to not load the USB Audio driver, otherwise it knackers sound output on the sound card.

Things like that say to me that we're quite some way from large scale desktop penetration, I'm quite happy to hack about with config files of course, but Joe User certainly ain't. Think there's another article there...

Well, this is it - my last day online for quite some time I expect, so I guess this will next get updated when I'm back...

Happy New Year!

Life
A week tomorrow I'm going into hospital for surgery, and I'll be offline for a while afterwards. I've stepped down from leading the Win2Lin FAQ team because of this, and today we had a meeting to talk about what'll happen in my absence.

Christmas was nice and relaxing - I spelt lots and hacked none :)

Going out for a chinese tonight, which'll be nice...

Hacking
Other people seem to be using my Revo Linux boot tree with success, which makes me a happy bunny.

Next step will be to change the initrd so that it doesn't try to start installing Woody, but just boots ;)

I'm hoping to work out if it's possible to somehow (realising it'll take some hardware abuse) to expand the Revo to allow me to attach CompactFlash or something similar, 8Mb ain't very much when it's got to act as RAM and a disk.

If I can, then it'll make it easier to get a working system going that will be good for something more than hack value (cos really "ooh, I can run ash and ping localhost!" is not what a PDA is for)

Wishlist for the future (if I ever get around to this...) is basically expansion, followed by a decent editor (more space means I can have vi) and maybe MicroWindows.

Might also see if I can spot a cheap secondhand 5MX for sale, so I can make use of the CompactFlash...

Revo status: got kernel 2.4.16 booted, and shell & editor running, nice :)

Happy Christmas! Back in the new year!

Ooh, just thought of a use for my Psion Revo, time to see if I can get Linux running on it, guess I knwo what I'm doing in my lunch break tomorrow :)

Party party party!!!

Cluster went into final-stage deployment testing today, when we put one of our SSL/DB-driven sites on it internally.

It worked! It only flippin' worked!

Suffice to say that makes me a happy bunny.

What makes me less of one is that my good lady, Mrs Riggwelter departed today towards her parents for Christmas. I'll be following when I finish work on Christmas Eve.

Also, installed a new version of gnome-pilot today, libgpilot.so was barfing when I tried to start the panel applet, works nicely now.

I can hear the beer calling me to go home and celebrate, so that's what I shall do!

Ooh, 9 days since I posted - bad, bad Riggy!

darkworm: You swine! Mention me, but not certify me will you? ;-)

LVS setup is now in deployment tetsing, I've spent far too long recently in our Comms Room, sure I've got frostbite as a result ;)

Christmas has sort of started here, people have started vanishing for the break, I'm here till Christmas Eve, but I'm not bitter (not much!)

Published another article on Gnome, which the community seem to have gone bananas over. Had requests to look at direct comparisons between Gnome & it's apps and Windows & it's apps, in terms of issuing a call to developers to improve the 'snappiness' of things. I'm not sure, the majority of Gnome hackers are focussed on 2.0, Abi guys are looking towards 1.0 and 1.2 and the Evo guys have got their own things to worry about. As I've mentioned before too, Galeon (IMHO) is there, period!

Oh, and apologies to the writers of SuSEconfig - it didn't break our rc scripts single-handed, bad use of insserv settings helped it more than a little ;-)