New Desk

New Desk with Chromebox and Sceptre display

My wife helped me purge my paper files last weekend. It's something I had been meaning to do for years, but somehow I never got a round toit. I had two file drawers in Steelcase desk crammed full of important papers. We went through and funny enough, most of those important papers were useless. I am left with maybe a foot of files. We're going to need to make second pass through that. I imagine we will cut it in half. 

Cleaned out the bottom shelf of my bookcase, too. It held a bunch of 3-ring binders full of technical notes from my time at Intel. Most of that stuff is obsolete. No doubt there are still places that are using old Multibus computer equipment, but those that are, probably have all the information they need. When I started at Intel, I was big on filing every bit of technical information that came my way. No internet back then. After a while, I realize that filing something was like dropping it in a black hole. I never saw it again, so I start making notebooks, one for each particular subject / product / system, and kept those notebooks on a bookshelf in my office. That worked much better, especially since the notebooks had clear, legible labels. Never made that change at home, probably because I didn't access those files every day, I only opened them up maybe once or twice a month. 

This weekend we're clearing out old furniture in preparation for the big remodeling project. Wonderful, big, old oak desk is going to the garage sale, my old steelcase desk went to younger son, and I got my wife's  fancy basement table. See how shiny it is!

Previous iterations of my office PC here.

Passwords

The problem with having a reliable device that is connected to the internet is that some day you are going to have to shut it down and when you restart it you are going to need to enter your password slash validate your existence. If the machine has been reliable, it might have been months since the last time you did this, so are you going to remember your password? When I was using a Windows computer, lo, these many years ago, I used to shut it down at the end of the day and fire it up again in the morning, so I used that password every day, so it kind of got engraved on my brain which was great until I had to change it. 

Computers need to ask you if you remember your password before they shut down, especially if it's been over a week since the last time it was restarted. Some people keep their passwords in a file on their computer. That doesn't do you any good if you can't logon. I do that, but then I print it out and put in a folder in my desk, a special folder, just for that one sheet of paper. I need to make up a new one, the old one has been scribbled over so much it looks like a kindergartner's homework. Well, it would if kindergartners had homework.

When I was using a Windows computer for writing computer programs, I used to shut down the computer every day because it would frequently crash and I would have to restart the machine. It might do this one or two or several times a day depending on what I was working on, but shutting it down at night eliminated at least one of those restarts, so some days everything ran smoothly all day long. Yes, I know, hard to believe with a Windows system.

Anyway, the cheap Windows computer I had at the new house was being kind of stinky. Besides all the usual Windows bullshit of having to do updates and security checks, it would lose its connection with the internet. I'm using a cell phone modem. Now there might be a way to hack into the modem and toggle a switch that says 'don't forget me', but to find out what needs to be done, not to mention if it even can be done, I need to talk to tech support at Verizon, and to do that I need a password. Which is in my special file at home, ten miles away.

Since I don't know what the secret is to getting this cell phone modem to reconnect, the only solution I had was to restart the computer, and being that it's a Windows computer it takes forever and a day to  go through its stupid shutdown and startup procedures. 

Acer Chromebox
$226

After a couple years of putting up with this Windows bullshit, I decided a new Chromebox might be the best solution, so I ordered one from Amazon. 

Sceptre 24" Professional Thin 75Hz 1080p LED Monitor
$133

The Chromebox only has an HDMI video output and my current display only has a VGA input jack, so I bought a big, new, cheap display. The Chromebox came with a slightly smaller keyboard. I used it for a few days but then I decided I liked my old Dell keyboard better, probably because I am used to it.

Now Posthip Scott sends me this video and I'm thinking that this computer is very cute, very small, and very capable, and then it hits me that it is very similar to what is inside the Chromebox.

Khadas VIM 4: Powerful ARM SBC with HDMI Input
ExplainingComputers
Khadas VIM 4 product page here.

Pocket Computer Comparison

The VIM 4 is the more capable device. The Chromebox is entirely adequate for what I'm using it for.  At this rate of technological improvement it won't be long before Asimov's positronic brain shows up. Shoot, some research lab is probably testing one right now.

GDSH

HP Printer, DIYPC case with mystery innards, Samsung monitor, Dell keyboard and mouse.

I have put aside my Chromebook and gone back to Linux and Firefox. It was getting annoying navigating through Google Drive every time I needed a file, there are some programs that won't work on Chromebook, or not without some kind of special monkeyshines, and you can't unzip a zip file.

Not a problem, I have a Linux box I can use. It has a largish disk so I can copy all the stuff from my external hard drive onto it, so now I have two local copies of my nine zillion files. Everything works pretty well, and I have a printer connected so I can print things with a point and a click rather that a complicated bit of fiddling with two computers. I was so thrilled I printed a page today, just because I could.

But now I'm running into some petty, annoying problems. The Page Down key is my goto button for reading long documents, that is, anything longer than one screen. It doesn't work. Press it once and it takes you to the next screen. Press it again and it takes you back to the top. But it only does this on some web pages. On some web pages it works correctly. Is this a problem with the browser (Firefox), the OS (Linux Mint), or the web page? I didn't have problems like this with Chrome.

I am still using Gmail, but I am wondering if I am being forced to choose sides in the browser war. I just tried to pull a phone number out of my Gmail Contacts and I couldn't. Normally you click on the name and you get a panel that displays all the info and you can copy and paste to your hearts content. Now all I get is a loading... message. Well, maybe there is another option, let's see what we've got. Hey! Here's Export, let's try that. It works, it generates a short file I can open with the text editor, but the phone number isn't in there! How can this be? I finally resort to retyping the phone number.

I know, a lot of effort to avoid typing a phone number, but dad gum it, that's why I have an address book, so I don't have to type stupid contact information over and over again.

On the plus side I can pay my bills using my bank's website on Firefox, something that had become kind of hit and miss with Chrome.

The mouse is kind of annoying. It isn't as precise as I think it should be. It often appears to off by millimeters in it's thinking. I want to move the edge of a window and the little icon that shows you can move the edge doesn't appear until you are well off the edge.

And playing Minesweeper I often have to click twice to get what I want. Seems like good mouse control would have been worked out a long time ago. I don't understand why it is still such a blatant mess.

I'm beginning to think that personal computers have gotten too complicated for their own good. I was watching a video of a defense attorney this morning explaining why you shouldn't talk to the police, One of his reason was that the Federal law books run to 50 volumes and no one knows what all is in there. I mean you can't, and even if you did, something will have changed.

The software running on personal computers suffers from a similar problem. I think Google tried to fix this with Chrome, but the market is changing so fast, and so many new things keep popping up that can't keep all the variations corralled, and if you are using a desktop, well, you are obviously obsolete and nobody cares.

P.S. Any links I click on in Gmail open a new tab, but that's as far as it gets because FIrefox blocks the link, so if I want to see the page I have to click on allow. Now you might think that there would be some kind of "preference" or "setting" that could be modified to stop this, but I haven't been able to find it. It's probably right up front, I just don't recognize it because I've spent too much time in Google-land and can no longer recognize a Firefox control panel.

Chrome-Linux-Mint-Book-Google Mashup

Chromebook running Remote Desktop, connected to Zbox running Linux (hiding under the paper). Big monitor is connected to Linux. Mouse is plugged into Chromebook. Text on virtual screen on Chromebook is too small to read. Move mouse and watch the cursor on the Linux box. It's a little disconcerting when this stuff actually works.

Remote Desktop works! For a couple of minutes anyway.
    Is Thursday something special in the Google-verse? Because now it's working. Yesterday it wouldn't even pretend to work. Downloaded and installed the 32-bit remote host package, it tells me it's already installed. Downloaded and installed the 64-bit version and it tells me it's the wrong architecture. That's reassuring. For a while there I was afraid 64-bit had become some kind of new-speak for ungawdly amounts of memory. Issued the cryptic start-host-service command. Nice command, doesn't even acknowledge that it has been invoked. I suppose that's par for a service.
    I got connected for about 30 seconds and then the Chrome browser or Linux or both crashed. Restarted and was able to reestablish a connection, but now I need a new access code. This is may not be the solution I am looking for. The whole point is it to have constant, uninterrupted access to the Linux box. If I have to keep a keyboard and monitor plugged in so I can restart the remote-desktop every time it crashes, that kind of defeats the purpose.
    When I got connected it was kind of slick. The virtual Linux desktop was scaled to fit the smaller Chromebook screen, which made it kind of hard to read. But the Chromebook mouse's cursor is showing up on the remote desktop image, and on the real Linux monitor, so I could ignore the virtual image and just use the virtual cursor on the real screen.
     The upshot was I was able to scan a couple of documents using the Linux box, and now I am back on the Chromebook. Unfortunately, during the time I was writing this the remote connection died.

More Fun with Chromebook

What we have here is a Chromebook connected to a Dell keyboard and a Samsung video display. The Chromebook lid is propped open with a 3-hole paper punch. If you close it much further it will shut off. The three-hole punch has a nice wide base that spans the evil touch pad, and it is tall enough to hold the lid open. The mouse is a little weird. Sometimes it disappears, but since it's a big screen and a small cursor I'm not sure whether it really disappears or I just fail to track it. But I circle around for a couple of seconds and we sync up, so not perfect, but good enough.
     Open up the Files app (which accesses files actually stored on the Chromebook, not in the Cloud), and the big screen goes dead. Now you need to open the laptop screen to see what you are doing. I went through this rigamarole to get this picture up here, though I'm not sure I needed to. Too many places to put stuff, too many places to get stuff. Whether you can get by without making use of the Files app remains to be seen.
     Meanwhile, over on codingame.com, I was working on a program to deal with the Teads programming puzzle. I had gotten my program to successfully deal with most of the test cases, but there were two where it timed out. Timed out? Hmmph. Must be a glitch in the coding games site. So I tried it on my Zotac Zbox running Mint Linux (that's it sitting under the left hand edge of the monitor with its cool glowing blue circle). It took over two minutes to deliver an answer. Hmmm. Program did run to compeletion, but two minutes? That is a heck of a long time to run for a simple academic exercise. I mean this isn't a Windows program that is spinning its wheels mindlessly while it tries to figure out what it should do next, this is a heads down, running full tilt, adding the numbers, making the calculations, marching down the lists, no dilly-dallying around here, and it's taking two minutes? That's enough time to count the population of Earth. Twice. Something is not right.
    Okay, enough the with mental gymnastics (programming) for a bit. Let's see what else we can do. Well, I got my Chromebook out this afternoon to talk to my daughter (on Skype). Let's see what else it can do. So I plug in my Chromebook, just for grins, see if it will work, and lo and behold, it mostly does. But can I compile a C program here? Well, yes, you can. Seems there are several websites that will let you write, compile and run programs, just as though you were sitting at a regulation Linux terminal. Okay, let's try out our test case. I'll be durned. It compiles and runs, and it only takes seconds to complete. How can that be?
    Now the Zbox has an Intel Atom processor, which is like the cheapest and feeblest Intel processor from 3 or 4 years ago, but it is still a 32-bit processor running at some number of giga-hertz. This website ran this program ten times faster. What kind of processors are they running? This is just a little unnerving.

P.S. I wrote this post with the help of a bottle of cheap grocery store Champagne. Coincidentally,  Detroit Steve sent me a this link today.

P.P.S. A couple of development websites. Might only work with Chromebooks.

• Source Lair (used this one for my sample program)
• Cloud 9 (haven't tried this one)

Update: Google's already been here. Adjust the settings, leave the power supply plugged in and you can even dispense with the paper punch.

Fun with Chromebook

Chromebook connected to desktop display.

I am being enfolded in the Google's loving embrace / sucked into the vortex of unending torment that is the fate of all Googlers. I refuse to pay Apple's inflated prices, unless it's for my family. I've never liked Microsoft, but it was cheap and easy. Linux is lovely, but who's got the time to spend sorting out all the dribs and drabs? I suppose if you were brought up on it, it might be okay, but if you want to get anything done (on the front side anyway) it's more trouble than it's worth. If you are working on the back end, well, there probably isn't anything better, at least if you are broke.
      Along comes Google. First we get the search engine with no ads on the opening page. Then we get gmail. No installation, no backups, get to it from anywhere, and the reading format makes sense. Then I started a blog, and not wanting to spend any energy evaluating the various blog programs, I took the easy way and started using Google's Blogger. Then I got a camera and I needed something to handle the pictures. I did look around a bit here, but Picasa had some advantages, so one more step into Googledom.
     Now I'm traveling and I need a laptop. Last Windows laptop I bought cost somewhere north of a grand and did not even last two years before it crapped out. Effing HP. What about a Chromebook? Last year's refurbished Toshiba (with better than average speakers) was $200 from Amazon, delivered. As Senator Clay Davis from The Wire says: Sheet. That's a no brainer, son.
     So I took the Chromebook to Buenos Aires with me and it worked fine. It helps that I was in a modern city with high speed wireless internet available. I'm pretty sure it was via the cable TV company, because uploading pictures took actual time, not like what I get at home with 'whoever it is this week but it's not the cable company'. They don't get a mention because they are now like a utility. It generally works and if it doesn't, calling them isn't going to change a thing.
      Problems? I've had a few. The biggest one is that it's a laptop, and trying to type on a laptop sitting on a table for more than about 15 minutes is painful in the extreme. This may be a personal problem. Setting the Chromebook on an empty 3" ring binder helps immensely. Even though I have plugged in a mouse, I haven't bothered to take the time to figure out how to turn off the touchpad, so sometimes when I am in the middle of doing something important something weird will happen and I will have to stop, look around and figure out how to get back to where I was. Since I didn't do anything wrong, and the Chromebook doesn't have any bugs, it must have been the touchpad messing things up, right?
     The keyboard doesn't have a:

•  CAPS LOCK
• PAGE UP
• PAGE DOWN or
• DEL

keys, and the arrow keys are half-size. The worst part about the keyboard is that it is different than the Dell I have been using for years. I'm looking at them now and the differences are pretty small. It may just be a combination of a slightly different size and spacing, but it makes even plain old typing a bit of an adventure. If there was just some tactile feedback so you could tell whether you were pressing the alt, ctrl or shift keys. That way your fingers could learn even if you could never remember. And by you I mean me. You would never have these kinds of problems, I am sure.
    Just for grins I plugged in my desktop display into the Chromebook's video port, and as you can see the wallpaper shows up fine. You will also notice that the logon box (the white square in the middle of the Chromebook display) does not show up on the desktop display. The mouse cursor only shows up on the desktop display. So we won't be using the desktop display. There was an amazing part to this and that was that I had a cable on hand that worked. Will miracles never cease?
     The 'better than average speakers' I spoke of earlier do have a slight problem, and that is that it takes both the YouTube volume control and the Toshiba volume control in order to get the volume you want. Some audio tracks are so soft you need to turn both up all the way, and for others you need to turn the big one down to a half or a quarter in order to have a usable control range with the YouTube control. That is all for now.

Nvidia Twinview & Linux

I finally got around to installing the Nvidia driver that supports two screens. This is the proprietary Nvidia driver, not the open source driver. It wasn't too much trouble and it seems to work pretty well. Downloading and installing the driver went very smoothly. The hiccups came with the configuration.

Update: Chewearn's blog was very helpful.

My hardware:

• ViewSonic VA902b LCD flatpanel display, 1280 x 1024 resolution.
• Princeton VF912 19" CRT with resolution out the ying-yang (data sheet).
• Nvidia 7600 GT dual head video card.

nvidia-settings is the configuration program. I did not find it in any of the system menus after I installed the driver, but the instructions I found on the web named it. Later on, I wanted to run it again and I couldn't remember the name nvidia-configure? nvidia-configuration? I had to go look it up again. I still don't know where it is, but it is in the search path somewhere, so I can invoke it from a terminal window.

Both of my screens are roughly the same size, so I wanted to set the resolution to be the same on both. The first resolution drop down box in nivdia-settings has a list of maybe a dozen settings, but it does not have 1280 x 1024. It has several that are smaller, and one that is bigger. Bugger. Some fooling around and I click on the resolution box for the other screen and it has got a list of a about a gazillion settings. Whoa! And one of them IS for 1280 by 1024. Okay, so we will switch the cables on the ports on the card. But now the LCD screen complains the signal is NOT IN RANGE. Bah. Now what? 1280 by 1024 IS the correct resolution. Is there something else we can change? The second part of the resolution line contains the vertical refresh frequency. I end up setting it to 75Hz and that seems to work.

The instructions I found warn not to Save to X Configuration File, it will bugger your system. It means running nvidia-settings after each re-boot, but at least it works. The instructions were written a few months ago, and things change, so I thought I would try it and see if it works. Especially after I rebooted and then ran nvidia-settings again. I click on apply and everything disappears. I have to quick-lean-down-and-swap-the-cables-before-the-five-second-time-limit-expires-and-everything-reverts-to-the-way-it-was. It takes three or four tries before I manage. Okay, we certainly don't want to have to deal with this every time we reboot so let's see if writing to the config file works or not.

The first time doesn't, but that really isn't surprising, I was not master-of-my-universe (sudo, or super user do). Invoking the program with the sudo prefix (sudo nvidia-settings) fixed that, and rebooting worked fine. So far. This is what the setup looks like in the dark. Aren't all the LED's pretty?

I have encountered some minor bugs, but basically things are working okay. The main reason I wanted this was for working with Eclipse (a software development tool) it wants to put up all these panes, and there just isn't enough room on one screen. The way Twinview works here is kind of interesting. If you click on the maximize button, the program window will fill one screen. So how do you get it to fill two screens? Do I have go back and make a major configuration change? No, simply unmaximize the window, and then stretch to fill both screens. Kind of backwards, but it works.

As far as bugs I have noticed two things:

1. Title bars on windows sometimes disappear. Somethings they just go white, sometimes they vanish completely and the window title is appears in some kind mutated kaleidoscope font. When they go white, the window control buttons still work. The tool tips still pop up when you are over them.
2. I was running Firefox yesterday and I opened a bunch of windows and the screen I was working on started fading to gray. I would click something and it would come back, but then it would go to gray immediately. Things went downhill from there.

One thing I have noticed that is kind of cute, is that when you close a window instead of just disappearing, it does this vanishing act, kind of like what you see on Mac's. Makes me realize I have not come anywhere close to making full use of this video card.

Update November 2016 replaced missing pictures.