Frankly speaking ...

After working for over 2 years, essentially problem free, it was finally time to upgrade. I looked at just upgrading XBMC to Kodi , but found a much easier path of installing OpenELEC . Before doing so, I tested the installation on a spare machine. It worked really well. The things that concerned me, and required further investigation were: how to manage machine using SSH? can I use cron to perform maintenance tasks? will remote work will wireless connection work I must congratulate the OpenELEC team on such an easy installation and configuration. It was simple and painless. Preparation Backup media on XBMC host: music, videos onto external USB drive Prepare installation media. Here I used OpenELEC Stable - Generic x86_64 Version:4.2.1 (tar version) and the installation script to write to a USB flash stick:  link Installation I just followed instructions on from this link. For setup, I connected a keyboard to make data entry easier. I also selected ...

I've just been updating some Bash scripts and noticed that there are two ways to refer to array elements: one using the "*" the other using "@". So what is the difference? According to the manual The "@" variable allows word splitting within quotes (extracts variables separated by whitespace). This corresponds to the behaviour of "$@" and "$*" in positional parameters. So you get two different outcomes as demonstrated below: $ ARRAY = ( 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 )   # first using "@" inside quotes, # you get the same output with no quotes ... $ for i in " ${ARRAY[@]} " ; do echo " $i " ; done 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9   # same as above but using "*" ... $ for i in " ${ARRAY[*]} " ; do echo " $i " ; done 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9   # but without quotes ... $ for i in ${ARRAY[*]} ; do echo " $i " ; done 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ...

On my previous post, I noted that the X11 trackpad customisations. Since then I have implemented the SSD optimisation recommendations as recommended here . I'll give a summary below, where detailed notes on my configuration are here . First off is  /etc/fstab options to reduce writes: # /dev/sda1 UUID=??? / ext4 discard,noatime,commit=600,errors=remount-ro 0 1 # /dev/sda5 (swap) UUID=??? swap swap sw,discard 0 0  Next, reduce swappiness. Add to /etc/sysctl.conf # optimise for SSD vm.swappiness = 0  Finally, use the deadline scheduler. In /etc/udev/rules.d/60-ssd-scheduler.rules # Only sda is SSD, see https://wiki.debian.org/SSDOptimization # set deadline scheduler for non-rotating disks ACTION=="add|change", KERNEL=="sd[a-z]", ATTR{queue/rotational}=="0", ATTR{queue/scheduler}="deadline" In my case I need only do this on the sda device. Please read my document on this as it provides extra informa...

I am now using a  Lenovo X1 Carbon  for work. After the installation hassles with the Samsung Series 9 , I'm certainly sticking with Lenovo . It was such a breeze. While I had every intention to maintain the Windows 7 partition, between Lenovo and Windows they consumed all the spare volumes. If required, I can resort to Mac OS X as a commercial alternative. Besides, I have been Windows free since 1998, so have not got a valid reason to retain it. So Windows and Lenovo recovery got dumped onto an unused external hard disk. Someday, I may need to recover, but history is against it. My notes on the installation, though thin are here . It is running Debian , with Xfce installation . The only customisation worth noting are the X11 settings for the trackpad. The custom settings used are: # # File: /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf # Section "InputClass" Identifier "lenovo x1 carbon touchpad" Driver ...

I have been using a Samsung Series 9 with Linux Mint Debian Edition for nearly two years. It is a wonderful machine to use. Crisp screen. Fast. Silent. Lovely keyboard. But it was a real pain to get working reliably under Linux. And with the reported BIOS bug you feel like on tender hooks doing a reinstall or upgrade. I'm, however, relatively happy to report that apart from the occasional kernel panic when using USB ports it has been reliable. Now that I know it is USB sensitive, I take extra precautions when yanking out USB devices. Ensure it is properly unmounted, eject if able. Put machine into suspend mode, then yank out. A pain, but I'm more confident going the extra effort to avoid uncontrolled panics while in the middle of an edit. I am disappointed with recent change of direction of Linux Mint Debian Edition. I like the rolling release. Having successfully implement two updates now, the process is relatively smooth. However they have abandoned the Xfce desktop as ...

Here is the latest quackery, Scientists claim that quantum theory proves consciousness moves to another universe at death from Robert Lanza . This has been addressed many years ago by the respected physicist  Victor Stenger in Quantum Quackery . Here is a direct response, Biocentrism Demystified . Figures from the UK suggest that while people are leaving organised religions, they are increasing in spiritualist organisations. It requires constant and disproportionate effort to debunk spiritualist claims. It is far easier to make stuff up than to convince people of their fiction.