Linux Screen Resolution, Part 2

I finally returned to the screen resolution problem on my Linux box today. I was able to boost the resolution up to the max of 1600 x 1200, which is so good that this text I am writing in Google Blogger is almost too small to be legible. I did this by adding three lines to the "Screen" Section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

SubSection "Display"
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection

All is still not right however. CTRL-ALT-"Keyboard Minus Key" and CTRL-ALT-"Keyboard Plus Key" will cycle through these six available resolutions, but the menu bar at the top of the screen is only available on the first one (1600x1200). I should be able to get the resolution I want by editing this file and putting the resolution I want at the head of the list. We shall see.

System/Preferences/Screen Resolution has it's own set of problems. Clicking on the Resolution box gives you a much larger drop down list now, but it still has the big white space above the highest resolution. That's minor. What's bad in my case is that the list of resolutions is extensive, it includes many that are NOT in the list in xorg.conf. This is a problem because resolutions that are not in the list DO NOT WORK with my monitor. Selecting one of these other resolutions cause the monitor to simply shut down.

Update: CTRL-ALT-Plus-or-Minus do not work with highest resolution moved to the end of the list. You get a black screen with a small white screen icon in upper right corner of the screen. The size of the icon changes each time you change the resolution using the special key combinations, but you can never get back to your desktop, you are stuck in la-la land. Rebooting does fix the problem.

I cut my maximum resolution to 1152x864 and it seems be a good compromise between what I can see/use and what I would like. I dropped the two higher resolutions from the list and now the magic key combinations work, though the menu bar at the top does not shrink to fit.

P.S. I got the list of valid resolutions from the Princeton data sheet.

Rocket Man

Flight of Fusion Man Previous title: FUSIONMAN - YVES ROSSY'S 1st OFFICIAL FLIGHT - 14 MAY 2008 | HUBLOT
Yves Rossy flying his jet wing backpack in Switzerland.

Via Law Dog.

Update June 9, 2010. Original video gone bye-bye. Found another one.
Update December 2016. Original video gone bye-bye. Found another one.
Update May 2020. Original video gone bye-bye. Found another one.

Quantum bogodynamics

The internet is just full of useful information, like:

There are bogon sources (such as politicians, used-car salesmen, TV evangelists, uninformed philosophers, and suits in general), bogon sinks (such as taxpayers, gullible students, and computers), and bogosity potential fields.^[2] Bogon absorption causes human beings to behave mindlessly and machines to fail (and may also cause both to emit secondary bogons). The precise mechanics of bogon-computron interaction are not well-understood, but when a heavy particle such as a computron is impacted by a bogon, which is a fast, low-mass particle, computrons appear to preferentially decompose into multiple bogons and fat electrons, creating a cascade of failures in nearby equipment.

From our friend.

Update December 2016 replaced missing image.

Hippies

A picture of this couple in the local paper today prompted this post. My boys surprised me recently with their vehement hatred of hippies. Something about their being worthless and stupid.
Tam seems to have a similar opinion. I always thought they were fairly harmless, running around with flowers, free love, incense, posters, music and dope. I even thought I sort of was one, but I never really seemed to fit their mind set. Guess I had run into too many scammers and had become too cynical to really get into the share-everything-all-the-time groove. Recent conversations have caused me to think that maybe, back in the day, I was a longneck, rather than a hippie.

Did he really call Charlie Daniels funky?

Update November 2015. Replaced the missing picture with a different one.

Wood Screws

Two weeks ago we drove down to Eugene to hang the new, trimmed to fit, curtains in Ross's apartment. Never mind the wisdom of doing this. The decision has been made and it's my job to do it. You would think this would be a simple job, but it's like one of those stair climbing machines at the gym: up two steps to see where the curtain rod should be mounted. Down two steps. Up two steps to measure and mark. Down. Up to drill. Down. Up to put the screws in. Down. Up to hang the curtain rod. Down. Multiply by four windows and two or three brackets per window and you can see it's a little wearing. Especially since it never is quite that simple.

The screws were all the same, #8's I think, about an inch long. I start with a 3/32" drill bit, which is a little small. A "correctly" sized hole is liable to strip in soft wood. I'm using my cordless drill to drive the screws and it works pretty well, for a while, and then it twists the head off of one of the screws?!?!? There is an 1/8" of an inch of the screw protruding from the wood trim and I use a small pair of vise grips to try and unscrew it from the wood. It twists that 1/8" piece off, leaving the broken end of the screw flush with the trim. Maybe the 3/32" pilot holes are a little small.

Maybe this wood isn't all that soft. I work up through 7/64", 1/8" and finally to a 9/64" diameter drill bit. The wood is probably as old as the house, which is at least 50, maybe 100 years old. The rest of the screws go in fine.

Then there is the bathroom. Someone mounted a bunch of oak towel bars, or rather, put some screws in the wall. Most of the screws just went into the drywall, which means these pieces are loose and just barely hanging on. Fortunately I have a kit of plastic anchors. Some of them are oversized, originally intended for concrete, but they work just fine here.


Lastly we have the front door latch plate. The deadbolt has a solid latch plate, but the plate for the regular latch is just kind of floating in space. I brought some 4" long screws thinking I could just replace the screws. I pull out the old screws and they are like 6" long and are not even screwed into anything. It is like a cavern. I brought along a "fixit" latch plate that has two latch holes, one for the dead bolt and one for the latch, but the holes are too close together for this door. I also brought a can of wood putty. We start stuffing wood putty in the hole, and stuffing, and stuffing. Eventually it seems to be full. Supposed to dry in ten minutes, but evidently that is only if you are patching something, not trying to restore the dead to life. I get tired of waiting and push the giant screws and latch plate into the putty and call it good.

We stopped there on the way back from SF, and while it looks pretty ugly, it seems to be holding. Wood putty is nasty stuff. It's basically Bondo. Since I did not have a putty knife, I used my pocket knife to push the putty in the hole. I got some on the handle and the stuff just does not come off. My knife is still encrusted with it. My younger son thought using his hands would work better than the knife, and maybe it did, but he spent 15 mintues scrubbing his hands with a brush to get the putty off.

Google Toolbar AutoFill

I've been using AutoFill a bunch, mostly on online job applications, but the default always puts in the wrong email address. So this morning I set out to track down information that would enable me to correct this deficiency. I finally found a video, but it was on a browser window without an address. Further, it was "Modal", meaning I couldn't try out what it was recommending without closing it. Bah! But I did get the embed code, so now it's here, where I can find it.

I play the video and it tells me to click on the "wrench" on the toolbar. There is no wrench on the toolbar. Why isn't there a wrench on the toolbar? Oh, it's because I don't have the latest Beta version of the toolbar. Point, click, buzz, whir, snick, clunk, and it's installed and there's the wrench and now I can muck about to my hearts content.

Sunday Drive

Gave my wife a ride to downtown Portland this morning at 6AM so she could participate in the marathon. Leaving downtown I head into the tunnel under the West Hills and there is no one else on the road. No one, not ahead of me, not behind me. Kind of like one of those freaky scenes in a movie where an entire city is empty. Understand that normally, like every other time I have driven this road, it is a stampede of cars and people screaming to escape. After I got through the tunnel, I could see the traffic heading into town, but still no one on my side of road. Didn't see another vehicle until I came across a disabled truck just past the zoo. Still no traffic until I got over the top of the hill at Sylvan. And no, I wasn't in the train tunnel.