Bianca Schroeder's talk on DRAM errors is worth watching. (Though it did remind me how annoying EE380 sessions could be--- it's generally not students asking the same question over and over, it's faculty or random people off the street ( Read more... )

My keyboard is dying. For no particular reason I could discern, it stopped playing nice with X last week, so I had to change the configuration file I'd been using for a couple years and lost the ability to use the number pad as arrow keys ( Read more... )

My computer was running quite a bit hot tonight (as reported on the front temperature reading), about 56C at the heat sink when normally I expect to see about 46C. I opened up the case to check for dust, but it was in pretty good shape, as expected ( Read more... )

Trying to fit all the new hardware into my office and not very happy with the results:


( Read more... )

or, "Why I Miss Fry's ( Read more... )

My Wacom Bamboo tablet arrived today. I had checked out Linux compatibility beforehand, but it was still easier than I expected to get it working ( Read more... )

Some surprising results from a hash-table microbenchmark comparing __gnu_cxx::hash_map with a couple of perfect hashes, using a 64-bit key ( Read more... )

I've been wondering about getting a tablet input device for Linux. This would be mainly for shared-whiteboard sketches rather than art or photo editing. Anybody have a recommendation, or know of a review site? I found the Aiptek HyperPen 8000U and 12000U, which can be used as X pointers under Linux, but I'd like to know about other options.

I'm hacking away, fumble at the keyboard, and all the sudden the keyboard stops working. Mouse is fine, system is responsive... except that no key presses seem to have any effect ( Read more... )

Is it still a webcam if it's not hooked up to the web in any way? I bought a Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 today and got it working under Linux. The USB system was balky but I eventually attained success by rebooting the machine with the webcam already plugged in. (Also I was confused about which tools would work with this webcam driver, evidently ( Read more... )