Internet TV... without the internet TV bit.

So I bought a 32" LED backlit (not LED pixel) LCD Samsung a couple of months ago.  It's hard to compare "Internet" TVs because each brand puts their own spin on exactly what "internet" means.

The Samsung series 6 has an Ethernet port, and by default Windows (Vista and higher) detect it and ask if you want to "trust" it or not.  The TV detects DLNA servers you might have easily on your network too.

But what about this "internet" claim?  When I first bought it, there were some simple internet "apps" that you can choose from and install.  Mostly boring stuff from a TV perspective like Google Maps, Picasa, Facebook, Youtube, etc.  This is all good but not exactly what I'd call internet "TV".

SATA disk beeping

I've never heard a hard drive beep!  Until yesterday.

I just yoinked a free second hand Inspiron 9400 laptop for a media centre, sans disk.  I purchased the cheapest SATA 2.5" disk I could find - 320Gb for about $50.  I started installing MythBuntu and then the drive started clicking and beeping, and the installation froze!  It was the usual crunch of a failing drive with an intermittent "beep" (much like the electrical interference noise you sometimes get in laptops / desktops).  The drive worked fine in a USB caddy.

At a complete loss, I turned to the oracle (Google) and found this.  Strangely, some drives are sensitive to the 5V power supply (it was the cheapest drive I could find).

Up until then I had been working on battery, so I plugged in the power, rebooted, and the drive worked flawlessly.  Hopefully it won't do the same when I loose power...

update: The problem seemed to be getting worse, so I returned the drive under warranty.  With the Christmas break I'll have to wait until they get back to me...
update: The drive was returned, and Seagate replaced it under warranty.  For the same price I purchased a 320Gb Western Digital Caviar Black 2.5".  It is infinitely quieter (I can't hear it with my head pressed to the laptop).

Live and Learn!

WakeOnLan from your Pocket PC

There are various programs and tips around for those of us who still use Windows Mobile (yes, I don't have an iPhone nor and Android phone...)

I've gathered some tips to set up "Wake on Lan" so you can wake any computer in your house from your mobile/PPC.

nvidia, opengl, compositing: play nice!

I was pleased to see this in the ChangeLog for the nvidia drivers 256.53:

"Fixed a bug that caused extremely slow rendering of OpenGL applications on X screens other than screen 0 when using a compositing manager."

Well that sounds nice.  Hands up who runs compiz on an nvidia card with two screens using xinerama?  You might notice your GL screensavers run incredibly slow.  Here's some examples, for testing I used glmatrix which you might be able to run directly via /usr/lib/misc/xscreensaver/glmatrix.

I have a Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9500 @ 2.60GHz laptop with an nVidia Quadro FX 1600M, 1920x1200 screen and a second 1920x1200 LCD.  I've loaded the new 256.53 nvidia module.  Here are the results:

The Principle of Least Surprise

An oldie but a goodie.

When you write / design / create, be it a building, a program, a document or something else, try and think what reaction would cause the least amount of surprise to some input (eg. if you walked down a hallway and came to a dead-end, you would probably be surprised, ergo don't design dead-ends into hallways for no reason).

Why then, does the Windows XP "ctrl + alt + del, u" always shutdown straight away, unless there happen to be 50 updates waiting to be installed?  Now I'm stuck waiting for half an hour with a dead computer, because the shortcut I always use to shut down has changed from "shut down now" to "install updates and then shut down".