Category Archives: Computer

Computer Desk (Office)

So I think my computer desk is just not big enough. It’s a simple desk with side drawer, cabinet, and a keyboard drawer. When I need space for writing or drawing I have to use another desk or basically use tables like coffee tables or dinner tables. And all the computer gadgets like my music controller, drawing tablet, musical keyboard have no place. This makes a big mess around the computer area. Think I’d like an L shaped desk where the dual monitor setup, along with all the extra gadgets can have enough space. Oh, I forgot to mention two laptops, joystick, near field monitors, phone charging stuff, etc.

Maybe time to setup a home office!! It could act as home office during the day and recording studio at night. It could even be the game room for playing video games. I mean it’s not like I would play ping pong!

That would be fun.

Internet of Things

So reading some article on linkedin, I came across a term, “Internet of Things”. Really? Is that what we’re stooping to now? Are we out of acronyms? Are we out of buzzwords and catchphrases? Is the synergy gone? Is the Web 2.0 old now. Is cloud computing (since when has an internet based application been anything else?) and Internet of Things the future?

I understand that each year so many grad students need to get published and so many PhD students need to get published. All these students need to have original research and they need to contribute something unique and new, but it’s as if people have stopped even trying. It was meh enough that some guy created rules for how the internet was already working and called it REST. Now all of a sudden 14 years later it’s all the rage. Where were all these RESTful API authors in 2000? That’s right, they just didn’t pay attention until some professional software designer (read professional author) decided he needed a new chapter in his/her latest book.

Ok, then! Internet of Things committed to memory. I’ll be sure to mention this in my next interview along with RESTful API, agile methodologies, sprint, huddle master, cloud computing, and others.

So long Web 2.0, even tho you were about really big buttons, we have Internet of Things now.

P.S. I’m not saying RESTful API isn’t a helpful architecture, or that agile methodologies should be ignored. I’m just saying that using these technical terms pointlessly is just a waste of time and a counter productive effort. In addition, creation of new terms that re-describe what already exists isn’t helpful.

Gentoo Problems with Sound – VMWare

A while ago I blogged about sound problem on Gentoo in VMWare. You can read about it here – Gentoo Problems with Sound.

As it turns out, it was an issue with the in-kernel sound driver for the soundcard that vmplayer emulates. If you’re using kernel 2.6.30-r6 or older, it should work fine. But if you update to a later kernel, it will plays the audio messed up. Solution? Well you could do:

  1. Compile kernel without sound driver, then find the driver independently and use a version that works.
  2. Rollback to 2.6.30-r6 or older.

For compiling kernel without sound driver, it will be a bit of work to find which driver it uses for emulated vmplayer soundcard. lspci on my vmplayer 3 reports:

00:12.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97] (rev 02)

If you can find in the kernel the modules and disable it and then either find the driver binary for your distro or find the source, then you can roll back to a version that works. Keep in mind that it could be some kernel setting that is causing the audio to be played badly. Some realtime or clock settings.

For #2, most distros are on old kernels so it should be fine. By the time more distros move to the newer kernel, it could get fixed in the kernel or a better solution may be blogged about.

Until then, enjoy your linux distro.

What a Slow Day

Today was a real slow day. Didn’t get much done. Lost some money today.

Recently, my power supply went out. And I had to pay good money to get it. This is a power supply that isn’t more than 2 months old. It just gave out. Not one shot either. It went out in bursts. It would give out and then run again which would cause a reboot. But then after two days it just stopped working. Anyway, had to be replaced.

Now the new power supply is running nicely. I’m not sure if I want to send the old one for a warranty replacement. I heard the new power supply is pretty nice. I like the unit and I like how quiet it is. Maybe the other one was quiet too. But when the box says, “New”, “Quiet”, etc. you really notice such things.

Also saw a movie. Nice movie. It was fun to hang out. Tomorrow’s Firday. Maybe tomorrow I’ll watch another movie or just hang out. I gotta go out and make some friends to find some girls and to have some friends.