computers

I've been experimenting with Jupiter (currently version 0.0.51) on my Ubuntu 10.04 notebook to see if I could improve the battery life on this old System76 Serval (version 5). Though there is the applet built in Mono to that is accessible to the user to quickly adjust a few options, the real meat are the scripts it places under /usr/lib/jupiter that are run a notebook is placed on AC power or not.

Unfortunately, it looked like the scripts were not detecting whether the notebook was running on AC or battery power properly. While looking around those scripts, I think I found the problem in /usr/lib/jupiter/scripts/state. In the script on line 10, it looks for an AC device in /sys/class/power_supply that contains either a ADP or AC in the name, and on the next line it points to the online file in that device.

Unfortunately, on my Ubuntu 10.04 setup, there was no device with that name, only the battery was shown with the name BAT0. In this device, there is the file status available that seems to contain either "Discharging", "Charging", or "Full" (and possibly other states) depending on the current status of the battery.

[img_assist|nid=192|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=100|height=63]As might be obvious from the title (and the tags), I've been somewhat hooked on Minecraft for the past few weeks. I have a private multi-player server for just my girlfriend and me, and I've taken to experimenting with various map-generating software so to visualize where to build structures next. I've ended up settling on two packages, both Python-based.

I am now running off of LUSFiber Internet. We picked out the top tier with its 50 Mbps symmetrical connection1. Of course, after getting it setup, I couldn't help but run some speed tests on it from speedtest.net2:

:jawdrop: ... I thought I was on 50 Mbps symmetrical? Oh well, I'll take it!3 :)

• 1. with 100 Mbps to connections inside the LUS fiber loop
• 2. the system seems to want you to pick the Baton Rouge server, but I couldn't get the speeds past 5 Mbps down or up there. The Dallas, TX server, on the other hand...
• 3. This definitely is strange, unless that particular server is considered to be within the "100 Mbps" local loop for some reason...

It's been a while since I last posted here. Just a short little update on a few things. First of all, I've changed employers; I'm currently developing in Flex, which has been an interesting and fun learning experience. I use Flex Builder 3 as my development Environment, but since the Linux Beta of it is somewhat limited at the moment, I've end up running the Windows version on Windows XP Pro in a virtualbox on my work laptop.

I've set the bar for myself to leave the house some time over the weekend1 and attend Lafayette CampFiber tomorrow. I've been getting a bit down and burnt out lately; hopefully this might get me out of that funk and maybe get me some ideas.

Frustration defined: EA Games.

For some reason, EA Games thought that an auto-save function wasn't important. And Sim City 4 had a habit of crashing to desktop on me after one to three hours of play. Talk about frustration when after working on a city for two hours, getting so into the game that you forget to save. So after you feel like your city is taking shape, next thing you know you're staring at your desktop saying "What the Hell?". Then the pressing doom of the fact that the work you did for the past few hours just went bye bye in the blink of an eye. Just like that, what was a very fun game becomes the target of ire. I'm surprised I haven't destroyed the game disks yet (like I did with another EA game, NHL 2001...). For many years now, I'd find the disks, go and install them, play a few hours, hit the CTD, then uninstall the game and throw the discs back into storage out of frustration where they lie forgotten for some time until the next time I find them.

The Blue Screen Screensaver from Microsoft.

It looks quite convincing, too!

NoMachine's NX Free Edition Linux terminal client and the Synergy server don't seem to get along when running at the same time, at least on Linux. It seems to be a case of how the programs take over the mouse causes issues with sending mouse events through the NX Client. Not a big problem, as I can just run the NoMachine NX Client on the windows machine to the left while it's running the Synergy client without issue. Or shutdown Synergy server if I need to run the NX Client on the Linux notebook.